The Fox and the Wolf



At the foot of some high mountains there was, once upon a time, a small
village, and a little way off two roads met, one of them going to the
east and the other to the west. The villagers were quiet, hard-working
folk, who toiled in the fields all day, and in the evening set out for
home when the bell began to ring in the little church. In the summer
mornings they led out their flocks to pasture, and were happy and
contented from sunrise to sunset.

One summer night, when a round full moon shone down upon the white
road, a great wolf came trotting round the corner.

'I positively must get a good meal before I go back to my den,' he said
to himself; 'it is nearly a week since I have tasted anything but
scraps, though perhaps no one would think it to look at my figure! Of
course there are plenty of rabbits and hares in the mountains; but
indeed one needs to be a greyhound to catch them, and I am not so young
as I was! If I could only dine off that fox I saw a fortnight ago,
curled up into a delicious hairy ball, I should ask nothing better; I
would have eaten her then, but unluckily her husband was lying beside
her, and one knows that foxes, great and small, run like the wind.
Really it seems as if there was not a living creature left for me to
prey upon but a wolf, and, as the proverb says: "One wolf does not bite
another." However, let us see what this village can produce. I am as