Page:Tales of old Lusitania.djvu/59



upon a time two students, walking along the high road, met an oil merchant leading a donkey loaded with jars full of oil. The students, being very poor and just then reduced to their last penny, were glad to fall in with such a lucky find; so they agreed together to steal the donkey with its burden, and take them to a neighbouring fair and sell them both.

While the poor man trudged along contentedly, holding the reins of his beast, which trotted behind him, one of the students quietly and cleverly slipped the donkey's bridle off its head and put it over his own, while his companion seized the donkey and marched off with it, unperceived by the owner. The student who now occupied the place of the donkey, wishing to call the merchant's attention to himself, suddenly came to a standstill. Great was the