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306 clown, conceiving that the bird was mocking him, felt provoked, spite of his usual good-nature, and took up a heavy stone to fling at it; the bird, however, flew away, very leisurely while the stone falling, unluckily, upon one of his oxen, killed it on the spot. This was a terrible misfortune for Kibitz; yet there was no means of restoring the dead animal to life, so thinking that its yoke-fellow would be but of little service by itself, he, without more ado, killed the other also, then flaying them both, carried the hides to a tanner, in order to make thereby some little trifle in return for the heavy loss he had sustained.

When he arrived at the tanner’s, finding that no one seemed very anxious to answer his knocking, he peeped in through a casement, and perceived that the good man’s wife was cramming a gallant into a chest, in order to conceal him from her unwelcome visitor. Master Kibitz was not altogether so displeased at this scene, as the tanner himself would have been, for he shrewdly thought that he might