But what became of the light?
You have neither pipe nor smoke."
"Yes, yes," said the other, "a pleasant company indeed. As soon as I got
inside the door, the shoemaker began to beat me with his last, so that I
fell head foremost into the open fire, and there sat two smiths who blew
the bellows, and made the sparks fly, and struck and punched me with
red-hot tongs and pincers. As for the hunter, he went scrambling about
looking for his gun, and it was good luck he did not find it. And all
the while there was another who sat up under the roof and slapped his
arms and cried out, 'Drag him hither, drag him hither!' That was what he
screamed, and if he had only got hold of me, I should never have come
out alive."
The wolves never went calling on their neighbors any more.
THE PARSON AND THE CLERK
There was once a parson who was such a bully that whenever he met anyone
driving on the king's highway, he called out, ever so far off--"Out of
the way! Out of the way! Here comes the parson!"
One day when he was driving along and behaving so, he met the king. "Out
of the way! Out of the way!" he bawled a long way off. But the king
drove on and held his own; so it was the parson who had to turn his
horse aside that time, and when the king came up beside him, he said,
"To-morrow you shall come to me at the palace, and if you can't answer
three questions which I shall ask you, you shall lose your office for
your pride's sake.
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