ight for thinking of the
matter, and early next morning took a stout club in his hand, and set
forth to learn of his success; when, lo! on drawing near the spot, there
he saw the wolf, sure enough, a huge savage, fast held in the trap.

"Ah," cried he, with triumph, "now I have got you!"

The wolf held his peace until the other was quite near, and then in a
tone of the severest moral rebuke, and with a voice that was made quite
low and grave with its weight of judicial reprehension, said,--

"Is it you, then? Can it be one wearing the form of a man, who has laid
this wicked plot against the peace, nay, as I infer from that club,
against the very life, of an innocent creature? Behold what I suffer,
and how unjustly!--I, of all animals, whose life,--the sad state I
am now in constrains me against modesty to say it,--whose life is
notoriously a pattern of all the virtues;--I, too, ungrateful biped,
who have watched your flock through so many sleepless nights, lest some
ill-disposed dog might do harm to the helpless sheep and lambs!"

The shepherd, one of the simplest souls that ever lived, was utterly
confounded by this reproof, and hung his head with shame, unable, for
a season, to utter a word in his own defence. At length he managed to
stammer,--

"I pray your pardon, brother, but--but in truth I have lost a great many
lambs lately, and began to think my little ones at home would starve."

"How harder than stone is the heart of man!" murmured the wolf, as if to
himself.

Then, raising his voice, he went on to say,--

"I despair of reaching your conscience; nevertheless I will speak as if
I had hope. You never paid me anything for protecting your flock; it was
on my part a pure labor of love; and yet, because I cannot quite succeed
in guarding it against all the bad dogs that are about, you would take
my life!"

And the creature put on such a look of meek suffering innocence that the
shepherd was touched to the very heart, and felt more guilty and abashed
than ever. He therefore said at once,--

"Brother, I fear that I have done you wrong; and if you will swear to
mind your own affairs, and not prey upon my flock, I will at once set
you free."

"My character ought to be a sufficient guaranty," answered the
quadruped, with much dignity; "but I submit, since I must, to your
unjust suspicions, and promise as you require."

So, lifting up his paw, he swore solemnly, by all the gods that wolves
worship, to keep