or some other valuable property. We will go there after dark, and you shall let me down into the hole; after I have ransacked it we will share the plunder, and then I will pay you your twopence. This proposition was accepted. In the evening the parson's servant took up a sack and a rope, and having come with his confederate to the hole, he got into the sack, and the confederate fastened the rope round his waist and let him down into the hole. When the man reached the bottom he came out of the sack. Having examined the hole and not finding anything but corn, he said to himself, "If I tell my brother that there is nothing in the hole, he is likely to go away and leave me here; what would my master say to-morrow if he were to find me in this hole?" He quickly got into the sack again, fastened the rope to it, and then called out to his confederate, "Brother, pull up the sack, it is full of various things."
As the man was pulling up the sack, he said to himself, "Why should I divide these things with my confederate? I had better take it myself, and he may come out of the hole as well as he can." Having lifted up the sack, with the confederate in it, he put it on his shoulders and hastened through the village; he was followed by a large number of dogs barking furiously. As he grew tired he allowed the sack to slip close to the ground, upon which the confederate in the sack called out,—
