Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 12.djvu/498

464 and please him in everything. He needs only to have a thing in mind, and we do it,—we guess his thoughts. Why, then, should he not be good to us? Stop doing his bidding and do him some wrong, and he will be like everybody else, and will repay evil with evil, much worse than the worst of masters."

And the other slaves began to dispute with Aleb. They disputed and made a wager. Aleb undertook to anger the good master. He undertook to do so oh condition that if he did not succeed in making him angry, he should lose his holiday garment, but if he did, each should give him his own holiday garment, and, besides, they promised to defend him against the master and to free him if the master should put him in irons or throw him into prison. They made this wager, and Aleb promised to anger the master on the following morning.

Aleb was serving in the master's sheepfold and tended on costly thoroughbred rams. And so, when the good master came the next morning with his guests to the sheepfold to show them his favourite expensive rams, the devil's labourer winked to his companions: "Watch me now! I am going to anger the master." All the slaves gathered and looked through the door and over the enclosure, and the devil climbed a tree and looked from there into the yard, to see how his labourer was going to serve him. The master walked through the yard, showing his guests the sheep and lambs, and he wanted to show them his best ram.

"The other rams are nice, too, but the one with the twisted horns is priceless, and I think more of him than of the pupil of my eye."

The sheep and the lambs were shying from the people in the yard, and the guests could not get a good look at the expensive ram. The moment the ram stopped, the labourer of the devil, as though by accident, frightened the sheep, and they got all mixed. The guests could not