beat you, and put heavy
collars round your necks, and compel you to keep watch over their
flocks and herds for them, and, to crown all, they give you nothing
but bones to eat. Don't put up with it any longer, but hand over the
flocks to us, and we will all live on the fat of the land and feast
together." The Dogs allowed themselves to be persuaded by these words,
and accompanied the Wolves into their den. But no sooner were they
well inside than the Wolves set upon them and tore them to pieces.

Traitors richly deserve their fate.

THE BULL AND THE CALF

A full-grown Bull was struggling to force his huge bulk through the
narrow entrance to a cow-house where his stall was, when a young Calf
came up and said to him, "If you'll step aside a moment, I'll show you
the way to get through." The Bull turned upon him an amused look. "I
knew that way," said he, "before you were born."

THE TREES AND THE AXE

A Woodman went into the forest and begged of the Trees the favour of a
handle for his Axe. The principal Trees at once agreed to so modest a
request, and unhesitatingly gave him a young ash sapling, out of which
he fashioned the handle he desired. No sooner had he done so than he
set to work to fell the noblest Trees in the wood. When they saw the
use to which he was putting their gift, they cried, "Alas! alas! We
are undone, but we are ourselves to blame. The little we gave has
cost us all: had we not sacrificed the rights of the ash, we might
ourselves have stood for ages."

THE ASTRONOMER

There was once an Astronomer whose habit it was to go out at night and
observe the stars. One night, as he was walking about outside the town
gates, gazing up absorbed into the sky and not looking where he was
going, he fell into a dry well. As he lay there groaning, some one
passing by heard him, and, coming to the edge of the well, looked down
and, on learning what had happened, said, "If you really mean to say
that you were looking so hard at the sky that you didn't even see
where your feet were carrying you along the ground, it appears to me
that you deserve all you've got."

THE LABOURER AND THE SNAKE

A Labourer's little son was bitten by a Snake and died of the wound.
The father was beside himself with grief, and in his anger against
the Snake he caught up an axe and went and stood close to the Snake's
hole, and watched for a chance of killing it. Presently the Snake came
out, and t