"Posthumous honours, after all, are the wish of ordinary
men. I, who am a priest, ought not to entertain such thoughts, or to
want money; so pray pay no attention to what I have said;" and the
badger, feigning assent to what the priest had impressed upon it,
returned to the hills as usual.
From that time forth the badger came no more to the hut. The priest
thought this very strange, but imagined either that the badger stayed
away because it did not like to come without the money, or that it had
been killed in an attempt to steal it; and he blamed himself for having
added to his sins for no purpose, repenting when it was too late:
persuaded, however, that the badger must have been killed, he passed his
time in putting up prayers upon prayers for it.
After three years had gone by, one night the old man heard a voice near
his door calling out, "Your reverence! your reverence!"
As the voice was like that of the badger, he jumped up as soon as he
heard it, and ran to open the door; and there, sure enough, was the
badger. The priest, in great delight, cried out: "And so you are safe
and sound, after all! Why have you been so long without coming here? I
have been expecting you anxiously this long while."
So the badger came into the hut and said: "If the money which you
required had been for unlawful purposes, I could easily have procured as
much as ever you might have wanted; but when I heard that it was to be
offered to a temple for masses for your soul, I thought that, if I were
to steal the hidden treasure of some other man, you could not apply to a
sacred purpose money which had been obtained at the expense of his
sorrow.
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