Page:The pink fairy book (IA pinkfairybooklan00lang).pdf/172

156 With these words they parted, the robbers driving the donkey to their cave in the forest and the shoemaker returning home, very pleased with the success of his trick. He just stopped on the way to pick up a good dinner, and the next day spent most of his gains in buying a small vineyard.

Meanwhile the robbers had arrived at the cave where they lived, and the captain, calling them all round him, announced that it was his right to have the donkey for the first night. His companions agreed, and then he told his wife to put a mattress in the stable. She asked if he had gone out of his mind, but he answered crossly, ‘What is that to you? Do as you are bid, and to-morrow I will bring you some treasures.’

Very early the captain awoke and searched the stable, but could find nothing, and guessed that Master Joseph had been making fun of them. ‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘if I have been taken in, the others shall not come off any better.’

So, when one of his men arrived and asked him eagerly how much money he had got, he answered gaily, ‘Oh, comrade, if you only knew! But I shall say nothing about it till everyone has had his turn!’

One after another they all took the donkey, but no money was forthcoming for anybody. At length, when all the band had been tricked, they held a council, and resolved to march to the shoemaker’s house and punish him well for his cunning. Just as before, the shoemaker saw them a long way off, and began to think how he could outwit them again. When he had hit upon a plan he called his wife, and said to her, ‘Take a bladder and fill it with blood, and bind it round your neck. When the robbers come and demand the money they gave me for the donkey I shall shout to you and tell you to get it quickly. You must argue with me, and decline to obey me, and then I shall plunge my knife into the bladder, and you must fall to the ground as if you were