Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/228

204 understood that he meant the piece of written paper he had bid her pick up, and she gave it into his hand.

By this time the wolf had come up with them, and when he saw the hare seated so majestically on the hand-loom for a throne, and with the royal mantle of yellow stuff about him, and the written document in his hand, the lamb moreover standing quietly by his side, he said within himself, "These must be very extraordinary beasts, who do not run away at my approach, after the manner of common beasts." Therefore he stood still, and said to the hare, "Who and whence art thou?" But the hare, still holding the piece of written paper in his hand, made as though he were reading from it as follows:—"This is the all high command of the god Churmusta unto the most noble and honourable hare, delivered unto him by the hands of the moon, on the fifteenth of the month. On the same most noble and honourable hare I lay this charge, that he do bring me, before the fifteenth of the next moon, the skins of a thousand rapacious, flock-scattering wolves." And as the hare read these words, he erected his ears with great importance and determination of manner, and made as though he would have come down from his throne to attack the wolf.

The wolf, still more alarmed at this proceeding, took flight, nor so much as looked back to see whether the hare was really pursuing him.