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"Verily this is an adventure which should be recorded in books!"

Then he said to the hangman, "Let the Jew go and hang the Tailor

on his own confession." The executioner took the Tailor and put

the rope around his neck and said, "I am tired of such slow work:

we bring out this one and change him for that other, and no one

is hanged after all!" Now the Hunchback in question was, they

relate, jester to the Sultan of China who could not bear him out

of his sight; so when the fellow got drunk and did not make his

appearance that night or the next day till noon, the Sultan asked

some of his courtiers about him and they answered, "O our lord,

the Governor hath come upon him dead and hath ordered his

murderer to be hanged; but, as the hangman was about to hoist him

up there came a second and a third and a fourth and each one

said, 'It is I, and none else killed the Hunchback!' and each

gave a full and circumstantial account of the manner of the

jester being killed." When the King heard this he cried aloud to

the Chamberlain in waiting, "Go down to the Governor and bring me

all four of them." So the Chamberlain went down at once to the

place of execution, where he found the torch bearer on the point

of hanging the Tailor and shouted to him, "Hold!