at the foot of a hill a fox that
had brought out its cub to play; and whilst they looked on, struck by
the strangeness of the sight, three children came up from a
neighbouring village with baskets in their hands, on the same errand
as themselves. As soon as the children saw the foxes, they picked up a
bamboo stick and took the creatures stealthily in the rear; and when
the old foxes took to flight, they surrounded them and beat them with
the stick, so that they ran away as fast as their legs could carry
them; but two of the boys held down the cub, and, seizing it by the
scruff of the neck, went off in high glee.

The two friends were looking on all the while, and one of them,
raising his voice, shouted out, "Hallo! you boys! what are you doing
with that fox?"

The eldest of the boys replied, "We're going to take him home and sell
him to a young man in our village. He'll buy him, and then he'll boil
him in a pot and eat him."

"Well," replied the other, after considering the matter attentively,
"I suppose it's all the same to you whom you sell him to. You'd better
let me have him."

"Oh, but the young man from our village promised us a good round sum
if we could find a fox, and got us to come out to the hills and catch
one; and so we can't sell him to you at any price."

"Well, I suppose it cannot be helped, then; but how much would the
young man give you for the cub?"

"Oh, he'll give us three hundred cash at least."

"Then I'll give you half a bu;[78] and so you'll gain five hundred
cash by the transaction."

[Footnote 78: _Bu_. This coin is generally called by foreigners
"ichibu," which means "one bu." To talk of "_a hundred ichibus_" is as
though a Japanese were to say "_a hundred one shillings."_ Four bus
make a _riyo>,_ or ounce; and any sum above three bus is spoken of as
so many riyos and bus--as 101 riyos and three bus equal 407 bus. The
bu is worth about 1s. 4d.]

"Oh, we'll sell him for that, sir. How shall we hand him over to you?"

"Just tie him up here," said the other; and so he made fast the cub
round the neck with the string of the napkin in which the luncheon-box
was wrapped, and gave half a bu to the three boys, who ran away
delighted.

The man's friend, upon this, said to him, "Well, certainly you have
got queer tastes. What on earth are you going to keep the fox for?"

"How very unkind of you to speak of my tastes like that. If we had not
interfered just now, the fox's cub would have