Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/99

the best ploughman in the village. But his master was a glutton and guzzler, who squandered away all that his faithful, hardworking servant earned, and gave him, moreover, small thanks for his pains and labour. So Rips left him, and went to a neighbour, who entrusted to him the charge of a large flock of sheep. These he tended with the most scrupulous care, conducting them now into the plains, now to the mountain side, wherever the freshest and sweetest grass was to be found. His woolly charge throve amazingly; their number increased and increased, and never was one of them known to break its neck down a precipice, or to be torn in pieces by the marauding wolf, so unremitting was the zeal of excellent Rips. But his new master was a wretched hunks, who, so far from rewarding him as he deserved, himself stole the best ram of the flock, and made Rips pay for it out of his wages. Rips, therefore, left the miser’s service, and entered that of the District Judge, as whose officer he became the scourge of all the thieves for miles and miles around. But the Judge was an unrighteous man, who perverted justice, giving judgment according to favour, and making a mockery of law. When Rips refused to be the instrument of his iniquity, and intimated an intention to leave his service, he threw the honest fellow into prison, whence, of course, Mr Rips Rubezahl forthwith made his exit, slipping quietly