Page:The crimson fairy book (IA crimsonfairybook00lang).pdf/331

 wager; you cannot deceive me, But in reality it was he who had deceived himself. The soldiers, conceiving that their king was being attacked, seized the tanuki by the legs and flung him over into the river, and the water closed over him.

And the little tanuki saw it all, and rejoiced that his mother’s death had been avenged. Then he went back to the forest, and if he has not found if too lonely, he is probably living there still.