Kitinda will be as
good as her word."

"Very well, I will take you at your word. I am to serve you every time
you need help, and if you speak of my services to a soul, you are
willing to lose your life by the first animal you may meet."

Thus they made a solemn agreement as they travelled to market.

Kitinda sold her palm-oil and fowls to great advantage that day, and in
exchange received sleeping-mats, a couple of carved stools, a bag of
cassava flour, two large well-baked and polished crocks, a bunch of ripe
bananas, a couple of good plantation hoes, and a big strong basket.

After the marketing was over she collected her purchases together and
tried to put them into the basket, but the big crocks and carved stools
were a sore trouble to her. She could put the flour and hoes and the
bananas on top with the mats for a cover very well, but the stools and
the crocks were a great difficulty.

Her dog in the meantime had been absent, and had succeeded in killing a
young antelope, and had dragged it near her. He looked around and saw
that the market was over, and that the people had returned to their own
homes, while his mistress had been anxiously planning how to pack her
property.

He heard her complain of her folly in buying such cumbersome and weighty
things, and ask herself how she was to reach home with them.

Pitying her in her trouble, the dog galloped away and found a man
empty-handed, before whom he fawned and whose hands he licked, and being
patted he clung to his cloth with his teeth and pulled him gently
along--wagging his tail and looking very amiable. He continued to do
this until the man, seeing Kitinda fretting over her difficulty,
understood what was wanted, and offered to carry the stools and crocks
at each end of his long staff over his shoulders for a few of the ripe
bananas and a lodging. His assistance was accepted with pleasure, and
Kitinda was thus enabled to reach her home, and on the way was told by
the man how it was that he had happened to return to the marketplace.

Kitinda was very much tempted there and then to dilate upon her dog's
well-known cleverness, but remembered in time her promise not to boast
of him. When, however, she reached the village, and the housewives came
out of their houses, burning to hear the news at the market, in her
eagerness to tell this one and then the other all that had happened to
her, and all that she had seen and heard, she forgot her vow of the
m