Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/109

Rh They said, "Give us the honey that we may eat it." It was given, and they ate it, and as they ate they found it contained bitter water.

They asked, "What kind of food is this? It is like salt."

They ate, and all of them died.

When the coney came upon them he found they were all dead. He exclaimed, "Just so! Now I have delivered myself, because my mother-in-law sent me to drive out the wild cats."

He then went to his mother-in-law and said, "I have killed the wild cats. Let us go and see them."

So they all went and came to the place, and found them even dead. The coney then said, "Give me now my wife, seeing that I am a man of power, having killed the wild cats."

They said, "Not so; thou art a bad man, because thou didst eat all our millet."

So they drove him away.

The coney went away, nevertheless his heart was full of anger because they had refused him his wife. He was also full of sorrow, and he took a rope of bark and bound (hanged) himself so that he died.

It came to pass, a man was cultivating his garden. He sowed millet, which sprang up and grew well, and was ripe. Then came the time for reaping, and he went away to reap the millet.

It came to pass the next morning that he found his garden destroyed, for one-half of it was reaped.

Then said the owner of the garden, "Who has reaped one-half of my garden? I will go and inquire at my village."

He came home and inquired, but all there denied having done so.