BOOK I.
thieves, is told that his desire shall be granted if he can steal this ox on the road, without the owner's knowledge and without doing him any harm. The lad accordingly puts a silver-buckled shoe in the way. The man admires it, but passes on without picking it up, as an odd shoe would be of little use. Presently he sees before him the same shoe, which the thief, having run by another way, has again cast on the road, and tying up his ox hastens back to pick up the fellow, while the lad goes away with the beast. Determined to test him further, the fraternity tell the boy that he shall be as good as any one of them if, under the same conditions, he can steal the second ox, which the man was now driving to market. As he goes along, the peasant sees a lad hung under the armpits to a tree, but passes on with little concern until he sees as he supposes another lad in the same position on another tree. Still not caring to give any help, he plods onwards until the thief hangs himself up for the third time on his road. The man, thinking that he is bewitched, resolves to go back and see whether the other two still hang where he saw them, and the ox which he leaves tied up is the second sacrifice. The thieves now tell the youth that if he can steal the third ox he shall be their master. So he places himself in a thicket, and as the man draws near with his last beast, imitates the bellowing of cattle; and the peasant, his wits even more flustered than before, hurries away to catch the lost oxen, leaving his third animal a prey to the thief.[1] At this point the resemblance of the Norse to the Brahman story ceases; but the career of the Master Thief is as yet scarcely begun. He has yet to overreach the society over which he now presides. The thieves set out to see whether they cannot do something surpassing all that he had done; and the lad, taking advantage of their absence to drive the three oxen into the road to the great delight of their owner, who sees them return to the farm, carries off all the precious things which formed the common store of the robbers. Thus far the Norse story agrees in its main features with the Scottish tale of the Shifty Lad,[2] although even here the points of difference are so great as to preclude the idea that the one was derived from the other. The sequel of the Norse tale is substantially the same as the Teutonic story of the Master Thief. This story has, therefore, really nothing to do with the fable of the Brahman and the goat, and it may fairly be doubted whether, on the supposition that the idea was gained from the Hitopadesa, "nothing was easier than to invent the three varia-
