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The Ifrit gave her the lie again, adding, "By Allah, O my sister, the damsel I speak of is fairer than this; yet none but he deserveth her, for they resemble each other like brother and sister or at least cousins. And, well-away! how she is wasted upon that Hunchback!"

So he kissed Gharib's hand and thanked him, and they rested till the end of the day, when they set out for King Sabur's capital. Meanwhile, the fugitives of the defeated force reached Isbanir and went in to Sabur, crying out and saying, "Alas!" and "Well-away!" and "Woe worth the day!" Quoth he, "What hath befallen you and who with his mischief hath smitten you?"

The crime which she had intended to commit against herself was thus prevented. In the evening, in place of a bridal song, the De Profundis was chanted, and now each one seemed to say: "The roads shall mourn, and, veiled in gloom, So fair a corpse shall leave its home! Should mourn and weep, ah, well-away, So fair a corpse shall pass to-day!"

Then Ruark's mother took hold of Bhanavar a strong grasp, and eyed her long, piteously, and with reproach, and rocked forward and back, and kept rocking to and fro, crying at intervals, 'O Ruark! my son! my son! this feared I, and thou art not the first! and I saw it, I saw it! Well-away! why came she in thy way, why, Ruark, my son, my fire-eye?

Howbeit this I must need confess, that the sand and clay do bear great sway: but clay most of all, as hath been and yet is always seen and felt through plenty and dearth of corn. "When the sand doth serve the clay, Then may we sing well-away; But when the clay doth serve the sand, Then is it merry with England." Likewise of the fourth, of Whitehart or Blackmoor in Dorsetshire.

Thus day by day this child began to cry, Till in his father's lap adown he lay, And saide: "Farewell, father, I must die!" And kissed his father, and died the same day. The woeful father saw that dead he lay, And his two arms for woe began to bite, And said: "Fortune, alas and well-away! For all my woe I blame thy treacherous spite."

And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. When it was the Four Hundred and Sixty-fourth Night, She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that quoth the Death-messenger to the King, "Well-away, well-away! this may be in no way. How can I grant thee a reprieve when the days of thy life are counted and thy breaths numbered and thy moments fixed and written?"

Whereupon Iskandar wept with sore weeping and straining the King to his bosom cried, "If thou be minded to company with me, I will commit to thee as Wazir the government of my affairs and share with thee my kingdom." Cried the other, "Well-away, well-away! I have no mind to this."

Their hearts were so troubled that they let fall their veils from before their faces and said, "Happy she who belongeth to this youth or to whom he belongeth!"; and they called down curses on the crooked groom and on him who was the cause of his marriage to the girl-beauty; and as often as they blessed Badr al-Din Hasan they damned the Hunchback, saying, "Verily this youth and none else deserveth our Bride: Ah, well-away for such a lovely one with this hideous Quasimodo; Allah's curse light on his head and on the Sultan who commanded the marriage!"

Then she drew the cilice over his raw and bleeding skin and threw the robe upon all and went down to the slave with a goblet of wine and a bowl of meat broth in her hands. She entered under the dome weeping and wailing, "Well-away!" and crying, "O my lord! speak a word to me! O my master! talk awhile with me!" and began to recite these couplets.