er for
dinner and after midnight we'll set out again.' We ate and went to
sleep. When I awoke they were gone and I started out in the darkness all
alone. On the road I met two Assassins dressed in black coal sacks,
who said to me, 'Your money or your life!' and I said, 'I haven't any
money'; for, you see, I had put the money under my tongue. One of them
tried to put his hand in my mouth and I bit it off and spat it out; but
it wasn't a hand, it was a cat's paw. And they ran after me and I ran
and ran, till at last they caught me and tied my neck with a rope and
hanged me to a tree, saying, 'Tomorrow we'll come back for you and
you'll be dead and your mouth will be open, and then we'll take the gold
pieces that you have hidden under your tongue.'"

"Where are the gold pieces now?" the Fairy asked.

"I lost them," answered Pinocchio, but he told a lie, for he had them in
his pocket.

As he spoke, his nose, long though it was, became at least two inches
longer.

"And where did you lose them?"

"In the wood near by."

At this second lie, his nose grew a few more inches.

"If you lost them in the near-by wood," said the Fairy, "we'll look for
them and find them, for everything that is lost there is always found."

"Ah, now I remember," replied the Marionette, becoming more and more
confused. "I did not lose the gold pieces, but I swallowed them when I
drank the medicine."

At this third lie, his nose became longer than ever, so long that he
could not even turn around. If he turned to the right, he knocked it
against the bed or into the windowpanes; if he turned to the left, he
struck the walls or the door; if he raised it a bit, he almost put the
Fairy's eyes out.

The Fairy sat looking at him and laughing.

"Why do you laugh?" the Marionette asked her, worried now at the sight
of his growing nose.

"I am laughing at your lies."

"How do you know I am lying?"

"Lies, my boy, are known in a moment. There are two kinds of lies, lies
with short legs and lies with long noses. Yours, just now, happen to
have long noses."

Pinocchio, not knowing where to hide his shame, tried to escape from the
room, but his nose had become so long that he could not get it out of
the door.

CHAPTER 18

Pinocchio finds the Fox and the Cat again, and goes with them to sow the
gold pieces in the Field of Wonders.

Crying as if his heart would break, the Marionette mourned for hours
over the length of his nose. No matte