"Enter, you may remain for the
night."
Night came. He took his supper. The woman spread a mat on the floor and he
went to sleep. The woman and her husband slept also. When all was quiet,
the woman got up, took a knife, and killed her husband. The next day at
dawn she began to cry:
"He has killed my husband!"
The whole village ran up to the house and seized the stranger. They bound
him, and everyone brought wood to burn the guilty man.
Sidi Abd-el-Tadu came also, and saw his friend in tears. "What have you
done?" he asked.
"I have done no evil," answered Sidi El-Marouf.
"Did I not tell you yesterday," said Sidi Abd-el-Tadu, "that we would say
the prayer that God should preserve us from the evil we had never
committed? And now you will be burned for a crime of which you are
innocent!"
Sidi El-Marouf answered him, "Bring the woman here."
"Did he really kill your husband?" asked Sidi Abd-el-Tadu.
"He killed him," she replied.
There was a bird on a tree nearby. Sidi Abd-el-Tadu asked the bird. The
bird answered:
"It was the woman who killed her husband.
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