'Well, then,' said the Wolf, 'why did you call me bad names this time last year?' 'Nay, master, nay,' said Lambikin 'if the water be muddy up there, I cannot be the cause of it, for it runs down from you to me.' 'There's my supper,' thought he, 'if only I can find some excuse to seize it.' Then he called out to the Lamb, 'How dare you muddle the water from which I am drinking?' Once upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a hillside, when, looking up, what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to drink a little lower down. Precious things are for those that can prize them. What did it turn out to be but a Pearl that by some chance had been lost in the yard? 'You may be a treasure,' quoth Master Cock, 'to men that prize you, but for me I would rather have a single barley-corn than a peck of pearls.' 'Ho! ho!' quoth he, 'that's for me,' and soon rooted it out from beneath the straw.

A cock was once strutting up and down the farmyard among the hens when suddenly he espied something shinning amid the straw.

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