When he came home and found the hunchback, he took him for a
robber and beat him, so that he fell to the ground, and he
concluded that he had killed him. So is it not enough for me to
have killed one Muslim unwittingly, without burdening myself with
the death of another wittingly?' When the prefect heard the Jew's
story, he said to the hangman, 'Let the controller go, and hang
the Jew.' So the hangman took the Jew and put the rope round his
neck, when behold, the tailor pressed through the folk and cried
out to him, 'Hold thy hand! None killed him save I, and it fell
out thus. I had been out a-pleasuring yesterday and coming back
in the evening, met this hunchback, who was drunk and singing
lustily to a tambourine. So I carried him to my house and bought
fish, and we sat down to eat. Presently, my wife took a piece of
fish and crammed it down the hunchback's throat; but it went the
wrong way and stuck in his gullet and choked him, so that he died
at once. So we lifted him up, I and my wife, and carried him to
the Jew's house, where the girl came down and opened the door to
us, and I said to her, "Give thy master this quarter-dinar and
tell him that there are a man and a woman at the door, who have
brought a sick person for him to see." So she went in to tell her
master, and whilst she was gone, I carried the hunchback to the
top of the stair, where I propped him up, and went away with my
wife.
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