NOT A PIN TO CHOOSE

But it was no longer as Abdallah that he was known,
but as the Emperor of India; for the former emperor
had been killed in the war, and Abdallah had set the
crown upon his own head.

The little taste that he had had of conquest had given
him an appetite for more, so that with the armies the
Genie provided him he conquered all the neighbouring
countries and brought them under his rule. So he be-
came the greatest emperor in all of the world. Kings
and princes kneeled before him, and he, Abdallah the
fagot-maker, looking about him, could say: ‘No one in
all the world is so great as I!”

Could he desire anything more ?

Yes; he did! He desired to be rid of the Genie!

When he thought of how all that he was in power and
might—he, the Emperor of the World—how all his riches
and all his glory had come as gifts from a hideous black
monster with only one eye, his heart was filled with
bitterness. ‘I cannot forget,’ said he to himself, “that
as he has given me all these things, he may take them
all away again. Suppose that I should lose my ring,
and that some one else should find it; who knows but
that they might become as great as I, and strip me of
everything, as I have stripped others. Yes ; I wish he
was out of the way!”

Once, when such thoughts as these were passing
through his mind, he was paying a visit to his father-
in-law, the king. He was walking up and down the
terrace of the garden meditating on these matters, when,
leaning over a wall and looking down into the street,
he saw a fagot-maker—just such a fagot-maker as he

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