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Once, when I could no longer bear my many cruel sufferings, I let out at him with my heels, and he never forgot that kick. He was ordered one day to carry some tow from one village to another, so he took me, collected a mass of tow, tied it on my back, and made it fast with an additional and painful strap, brewing a fearful plot against me as he adjusted the load. When it was time to start he stole an ember still hot from the hearth, and when we were at some distance from the house he hid it in the tow. The tow immediately burst into flame-for what else would it do?—and my load was nothing but a huge conflagration. I saw that I should be roasted in an instant, and, coming upon a deep mud-hole in the road, I flung myself into the wettest part of it. There I rolled the tow, and twisted and turned myself until I had sprinkled that hot and painful burden with mud. Then I made the rest of the journey with more safety, for the boy could not set me on fire any more because the tow was mixed with mud. And when he arrived he had the impudence to tell this lie about me: that I had plunged into the fireplace of my own accord as I was passing it. Well, that time I survived the tow, though I did not expect to;
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but the villain of a boy invented something much worse than this for me. He took me up the mountain and put a great load of wood on me, but this he sold to a neighboring farmer, and drove me home with no load and no wood, and accused me falsely to his master. "I don't see the good, sir," said he, "of supporting this ass, for he is terribly lazy and slow."
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When the master heard this he said, "Well, if he is willing neither to walk nor to carry a load, kill him and give his vitals to the dogs, but save his flesh for the work-people, and if any questions are asked as to the manner of his death lay it to the wolf." The rascally boy, my driver, was charmed, and was for killing me at once,
