Page:Panchatantra.djvu/273

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264
THE PANCHATANTRA

Is honored by the world
For charity forlorn.

And again:

Loose they are, yet tight;
Fall, or stick, my dear?
I have watched them now
Till the fifteenth year."

"How was that?" asked the figure. And Soft told the story of


HANG-BALL AND GREEDY

In a certain town lived a bull named Hang-Ball. From excess of male vigor he abandoned the herd, tore the river-banks with his horns, browsed at will on emerald-tipped grasses, and went wild in the forest.

In that forest lived a jackal named Greedy. One day he sprawled at ease with his wife on a sandy riverbank. At that moment the bull Hang-Ball came down to the same stretch of sand for a drink. And the she-jackal said to her husband when she saw the hanging testicles: "Look, my dear! See how two lumps of flesh hang from that bull. They will fall in a moment, or a few hours at most. So you must follow him, please."

"My dear," said the jackal, "nobody knows. Perhaps they will fall some day, perhaps not. Why send me on a fool's errand? I would rather stay here with you and eat the mice that come to water. They follow this trail. And if I should follow him, somebody else