A CERTAIN business-man in Damascus, whose efficiency was only surpassed by his personal ugliness, was informed that in a distant vilayet dwelt a peasant of whom it was currently rumoured that he possessed a goose that laid eggs of pure gold.

He accordingly chartered a caravan, and with much jingling of silver bells set out across the desert to make a proposition to the peasant. In his company was a young man who was reputed (though it had not been finally brought home to him) to be a poet. Whether this were true or no, it cannot be denied that he paid much heed to the ascensions of the moon.

On the third day of the pilgrimage that pale planet was bewitching in her pensive hair the reluctant black beauty of the desert. All was still except when a grave camel kneeling shook a bell. But presently, with the clear monotony of a bird, the young man’s voice was heard singing:

“As I feared,” said the merchant, raising his head from his silken and tasselled pillow, “the fellow is a poet. I must cope with this.” Thereupon he lifted the flap of his embroidered tent, and in a sleeping suit, of which the radiant texture did not conceal the irregular contours of his frame, with one arm behind his back, strode across the sand to where, in a patch of shadow, the poet was crooning.

“Young man,” said the merchant, breaking somewhat harshly on the singer’s reverie, “was that your own poem?”

“It was, merchant,” replied the poet, “but now, since you have heard it, it is yours also.”

“Tell me,” said the merchant craftily, “how much would you be paid for such a poem in Damascus?”

“If I were lucky,” said the poet, “I might earn a kiss, or if unlucky a dinah.”

“A dinah,” said the merchant. “By the beard of the Prophet, no bad pay for a mouthful of sweet words. And is it difficult to acquire the trick?”

“All that is needed,” answered the poet, “is a rose behind the ear and the moon behind the heart.”

“In Damascus,” cried the merchant, “I have a hanging garden stained with roses, and at night the moon rises in the garden. My ears are longer than yours, and my heart, if one may judge by a comparison of our persons, is incomparably larger. I will accordingly give up the quest of the goose, and will return to Damascus and in my rose garden lay my own golden eggs. But in the meantime,” he added reflectively, stabbing the poet to the heart with the pearl-handled scimitar which he had hitherto concealed, “I may as well dispose of a dangerous rival.”“O fool,” whispered the dying poet, “it was only the goose who thought the eggs gold, because of the golden goslings hidden in their cool blue shell, as the peasant discovered when he killed her.”

“Why did she think so?” said the merchant, daintily wiping the curved blade.

“Because she was a poet,” whispered the dying man. “And why did she tell the peasant?” asked the merchant, preparing to return to his interrupted rest. “Because,” said the poet, turning over on his side with a little sigh, “because she was a goose.”