Page:Panchatantra.djvu/370

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CROWS AND OWLS
361


pered Live-Strong further with varied viands, including plenty of meat.

Then Red-Eye called together his personal adherents, and said to them privately: "The end is at hand. The welfare of our king, and his fortress, are things of the past. I have given him such counsel as an ancestral counselor should give. Let us now, for our part, seek another fortress in the mountains. For the saying goes:

Joy comes from knowing what to dread,
And sorrow smites the dunderhead:
A long life through, the woods I've walked,
But never heard a cave that talked."

"How was that?" they asked. And Red-Eye told the story of


THE CAVE THAT TALKED

There was once a lion in a part of a forest, and his name was Rough-Claw. One day he found nothing whatever to eat in his wanderings, and his throat was pinched by hunger. At sunset he came to a great mountain cave and went in, for he thought: "Surely, some animal will come into this cave during the night. I will hide and wait."

Presently the owner of the cave, a jackal named Curd-Face, came to the door and began to sing: "Cave ahoy! Cave aho-o-oy!" Then after a moment's silence, he continued in the same tone: "Hello! Don't you remember how you and I made