TWILIGHT LAND
purse of gold fell from his girdle into the tall grass, and
_ he, not seeing it, let it lie there, and went his way.

Now it chanced that two fagot-makers—the elder by
name Ali, the younger Abdallah—who had been in the
woods all day chopping fagots, came also travelling the
same way, and stopped at the same fountain to drink.
There the younger of the two spied the purse lying in the
grass, and picked it up. But when he opened it and found
it full of gold money, he was like one bereft of wits; he flung
his arms, he danced, he shouted, he laughed, he acted like
a madman; for never had he seen so much wealth in all
of his life before—a hundred pieces of gold money !

Now the older of the two was by nature a merry wag,
and though he had never had the chance to taste of plea-
sure, he thought that nothing in the world could be better
worth spending money for than wine and music and
dancing. So, when the evening had come, he proposed
that they two should go and squander it all at the Inn.
But the younger fellow—Abdallah—was by nature just as
thrifty as the other was spendthrift, and would not consent
to waste what he had found. Nevertheless, he was gene-
rous and open-hearted, and grudged his friend nothing ;
so, though he did not care for a wild life himself, he
gave Ali a piece of gold to spend as he chose.

By morning every copper of what had been given to
the elder fagot-maker was gone, and he had never had
such a good time in his life before. All that day and for
a week the head of Ali was so full of the memory of the
merry night that he had enjoyed that he could think of
nothing else. At last, one evening, he asked Abdallah
for another piece of gold, and Abdallah gave it to him,
and by the next morning it had vanished in the same way

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