to a meadow. Under some. bushes he showed him a rabbit’s hole.
“My little boy’s asleep in there,” he said. “Call him out.”
“Little boy!” the devil called. “Come out and run a race with me!”
Instantly a rabbit jumped out of the hole and went hoppetylop across the meadow. The devil tried hard to overtake him but couldn’t. He ran on and on. They came at last to a deep ravine. The rabbit leaped across but the devil, when he tried to do the same, slipped and fell and went rolling down over stones and brambles, down, down, down, into a brook. When he had dragged himself out of the water, bruised and scratched, the rabbit had disappeared.
“I’ve had enough of that farmer,” the devil said when he got back to hell. “Why, do you know, he has a small boy just one year old and I tell you there isn’t one of you can beat that boy running!”
But the devils when they heard the rest of the story only laughed and jeered and told their comrade that the farmer had again tricked him.
“You’ve got to go back to him another time,” they said. “It will never do for people to get the idea that devils are such fools.”
