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72 down to the dog; but the dog would not even look at it. Then the house-cock ran up, and began to pick at the bread; and the dog said to it,—

"You miserable greedy thing, you! You can eat, and yet you see that the master is going to die!"

The cock answered the dog, "And let him die since he is such a fool! I have a hundred wives, and I call them all together whenever I find a grain of corn, and as soon as they have come round me, I swallow it myself. And if any one of them got angry, I should be at her directly with my beak. The master has only one wife, and he cannot even manage her."

When the husband heard this he quickly sprang out of the coffin, took up a stick, and called his wife into the room.

"Come, wife," he said, "I will tell you what you so much want to hear."

Then as he beat her with the stick he cried, "This is it, wife! This is it!"

In this way he quieted his wife, and she never asked him again what he had been laughing at.