“Good Slow-toes,” said he, “this is Golden-skin, King of the Mice—­pay all honor to him—­he is burdened with virtues—­a very jewel-mine of kindnesses.  I don’t know if the Prince of all the Serpents, with his two thousand tongues, could rightly repeat them.”  So speaking, he told the story of Speckle-neck.  Thereupon Slow-toes made a profound obeisance to Golden-skin, and said, “How came your Majesty, may I ask, to retire to an unfrequented forest?”

“I will tell you,” said the King.  “You must know that in the town of Champaka there is a college for the devotees.  Unto this resorted daily a beggar-priest, named Chudakarna, whose custom was to place his begging-dish upon the shelf, with such alms in it as he had not eaten, and go to sleep by it; and I, so soon as he slept, used to jump up, and devour the meal.  One day a great friend of his, named Vinakarna, also a mendicant, came to visit him; and observed that while conversing, he kept striking the ground with a split cane, to frighten me.  ’Why don’t you listen?’ said Vinakarna.  ‘I am listening!’ replied the other; ’but this plaguy mouse is always eating the meal out of my begging-dish,’ Vinakarna looked at the shelf and remarked, ’However can a mouse jump as high as this?  There must be a reason, though there seems none.  I guess the cause—­the fellow is well off and fat,’ With these words Vinakarna snatched up a shovel, discovered my retreat, and took away all my hoard of provisions.  After that I lost strength daily, had scarcely energy enough to get my dinner, and, in fact, crept about so wretchedly, that when Chudakarna saw me he fell to quoting—­

    ’Very feeble folk are poor folk; money lost takes wit away:—­
    All their doings fail like runnels, wasting through the summer day.’

“Yes!” I thought, “he is right, and so are the sayings—­

    ’Wealth is friends, home, father, brother—­title to respect and fame;
     Yea, and wealth is held for wisdom—­that it should be so is shame,’
    ’Home is empty to the childless; hearts to them who friends deplore:—­
     Earth unto the idle-minded; and the three worlds to the poor.’

’I can stay here no longer; and to tell my distress to another is out of the question—­altogether out of the question!—­

    ’Say the sages, nine things name not:  Age, domestic joys and woes,
    Counsel, sickness, shame, alms, penance; neither Poverty disclose. 
    Better for the proud of spirit, death, than life with losses told;
    Fire consents to be extinguished, but submits not to be cold.’

’Verily he was wise, methought also, who wrote—­

    ’As Age doth banish beauty,
      As moonlight dies in gloom,
    As Slavery’s menial duty
      Is Honor’s certain tomb;
    As Hari’s name and Hara’s
      Spoken, charm sin away,
    So Poverty can surely
      A hundred virtues slay.’

‘And as to sustaining myself on another man’s bread, that,’ I mused, ’would be but a second door of death.  Say not the books the same?—­