This page has been validated.
THE LOSS OF FRIENDS
189

Stir an enemy to action
That destroys him with his faction."

And he said aloud: "Uncle, conditions being as they are, scatter bits of fish all the way from the mungoose burrow to the snake's hole. The mungoose will follow that trail and will destroy the villainous snake."

When this had been done, the mungoose followed the bits of fish, killed the villainous snake, and also ate at his leisure all the herons who made their home in the tree.


"And that is why I say:

The good and bad of given schemes, . . . .

and the rest of it."

But Wrong-Mind disdained the paternal warning, and during the night he hid his father out of sight in the hole in the tree. When morning came, the scamp took a bath, put on clean garments, and followed Right-Mind and the magistrates to the mimosa tree, where he cried in piercing tones:

"Earth, heaven, and death, the feeling mind,
Sun, moon, and water, fire and wind,
Both twilights, justice, day and night
Discern man's conduct, wrong or right.

O blessèd goddess of the wood, which of us two is the thief? Speak."

Then Wrong-Mind's father spoke from his hole in the mimosa: "Gentlemen, Right-Mind took that