Page:An argosy of fables.djvu/211

PART IV

AVIANUS, ABSTEMIUS, ETC. THE BOY AND THE THIEF

BOY sat weeping at the brink of a well, with his lips all puckered in apparent grief. A rascally Thief, finding him with tear-stained face, asked what had happened to make him so unhappy. The Boy then told how his rope had broken in two and let a Crock of Gold fall into the well. At once the Thief eagerly threw off his cloak; the next moment he had stripped himself and plunged to the bottom of the well. The Boy promptly wrapped the cloak around his own thin shoulders, crawled under a bramble thicket and lay there, safely hidden. When the disappointed Thief at last struggled back from his dangerous and fruitless search, he seated himself to rest beside the well, considerably sadder and wiser, and found what comfort he could in the thought:

"Any one who is so foolish as to believe that a Crock of Gold will float on the surface of water is lucky if he gets off with no worse loss than his cloak!"

(Avianus, Fable 25.)

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