Page:Tales of old Lusitania.djvu/54

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42
PORTUGUESE FAIRY TALES.

field of wheat which yields him four hundred cartfulls of loaves of bread, and he has a large number of beehives arranged round the hedges of this field, and you may imagine the number of them when I tell you that he failed in the attempt to count them. But, however, he managed to count the number of bees, and he found that one of them was wanting, which, after much seeking, he found in a wood half eaten up by two wolves. There only remained the hind quarters of this unfortunate bee, so he rescued it from them with his clasp knife; but in the act of so doing he let fall his knife between the wolves. He therefore went home for a light, and set fire to the wood to frighten the wolves away and get his knife back again. The fire, however, melted the knife and only the handle remained. He went to the cutler's and asked him to make him another knife, but instead of a knife the cutler made him a fish-hook. My father then went to fish, and as he drew out the line, a great donkey came out of the water, which had been caught by the lip; this donkey was harnessed with panniers on each side; so that, delighted at his good luck, my father had nothing to do but mount him and ride back to the wood to seek for the hind quarters of the lost bee, which he found. He squeezed out the honey from the bee, or what remained of it, and it yielded him a barrel of honey. He loaded the donkey with it, but from the heavy weight, and the knocking about