and on what has since happened, you will find it to be a plot of the robbers of the forest, of whose gang there are two missing and now they are reduced to three. All this shows that they had sworn your destruction, and it is right that you should stand upon your guard, while there is one of them alive: for my part, I shall not neglect anything necessary to your preservation, as I am in duty bound.'
When Morgiana left off speaking, Ali Baba was so impressed with a sense of the great service she had done him, that he said to her, 'I will not die without rewarding you as you deserve. I owe my life to you, and I give you your liberty from this moment, till I can complete your recompense as I intend. I am persuaded, with you, that the forty robbers have laid all manner of snares for me. All that we have to do is to bury the bodies of these pests of mankind immediately, and with all the secrecy imaginable, that nobody may suspect what is become of them. But that Abdalla and I will undertake.'
Ali Baba's garden was very long, and shaded at the further end by a great number of large trees. Under these trees he and the slave went and dug a trench, long and wide enough to hold all the robbers, and as the earth was light, they were not long doing it. Afterwards they lifted the robbers out of the jars, took away their weapons, carried them to the end of the garden, laid them in the trench, and levelled the ground again. When this was done, Ali Baba hid the jars and weapons; and as for the mules, as he had no occasion for them, he sent them at different times to be sold in the market by his slave.
While Ali Baba took these measures to prevent the public from knowing how he came by his riches in so short a time, the captain of the forty robbers returned to the forest, in the most inconceivable mortification. He entered the cave, not having been able, all the way from the town, to come to any resolution as to what to do to Ali Baba.
The loneliness of the dark place seemed frightful to him. 'Where are you, my brave lads?' cried he, 'old companions of my watchings, inroads, and labour! What can I do without you? Did I collect you to lose you by so base a fate, one so unworthy of
