to his humble relations. So, bidding an
affectionate adieu to his brother, he took the
three boys with him to the town, where he
in the first place, sent them to school, and
when their education was complete, placed
them in the professions of their choice. The
young connoisseurs of ash and oak were
respectively bound 'prentices to a joiner and
wheelwright; and as the merchant was on
kindly terms with a robber, who lived, with
his band, in a cave near the city, there was
no difficulty in providing for the third
nephew, according to his wish. As a friendship
founded on reason is of all friendships
the most estimable, it is worth mentioning,
that the respect entertained by the robber
for the merchant was based on the good
offices of the latter towards the former.
Whenever other merchants left the town
with their goods, the robber was apprised of
the circumstance by his commercial friend,
and took measures accordingly. Thus, while
the Damon of the heath filled his vaults
with plunder, the Pythias of the town got
rid of dangerous competitors.

Though the youth found much to admire
in the robber-band of which he had become
a member, there were certain peculiarities
repugnant to his better nature. The robbers
had the bad habit of murdering people after
they had plundered them, and this practice
struck him as not only barbarous, but absurd.
He therefore wished to work a moral reform.
"If you kill people for the sake of taking what
they have," he argued, "you act as wise
robbers ought to act, and no reasonable man
could object to the proceeding; but surely,
when a poor devil is stripped of everything,
it is as well to let him go." The robbers
shook their heads, and answered according
to their several temperaments. The more
sentimental said they would never abandon the
principles bequeathed by their fathers; the
sagacious alluded to the practical inability
of dead men to tell tales; the sarcastic
talked about milksops. "Well," said the
young man, "to prove that craft is better
than violence, I will undertake to steal a
goat three times over, and sell it twice."
"Humph!" said the robbers in chorus.

The intelligent youth, who, for brevity's
sake, we call Slyboots, proceeding to a
town where a fair was held, took his
station at the gate, and waited for the arrival
of the country-folk with their goats.
Presently au old man appeared with a fine
white animal, which he offered to sell
for three dollars. Slyboots agreed to the
price, proposed to seal the bargain with a
social glass at a neighbouring public-house,
and while the old man was absorbed in the
contemplation of his liquor, skipped out of
the back door into a corn-field, where he
ingeniously spotted the goat's hide with
black. This operation effected, he boldly
returned to the town, and the first person he
met was the old man, who, of course, failed
to recognise him. For Lithuanian cunning
to have fair play, it must have Lithuanian
dulness to work upon.

"Is that goat for sale, worthy youth?"

"Of a truth is it, good father, an any one
will give ten florins for the same."

"Marry. I will buy it; for, lo! when I
came to town this morning, I had with me a
white goat, of which a scurvy knave hath
robbed me. I may say 'robbed' with a
good grace; for. though I gave him the poor
beast with my own hands, he never paid me
the price I demanded, but vanished like a
thing of nought."

The bargain was again concluded over a
glass, and again did Slyboots escape without
paying into the corn-field, where he painted
the gout black all over. Returning once
more to the town, the first person lie met
was again the old man, who, again failing to
recognise him, again purchased the goat for
ten florins. Little docile as he had hitherto
been to the instructions of experience, the
old man, on this occasion, refrained from
crowning the bargain with a social glass,
and walked straight home.

First he put the blackened goat into the
stable, the door of which he neglected to lock;
then he proceeded to the house, and told his
wife that he had performed a series of
intricate commercial operations, the ultimate
result of which was the exchange of the
white goat for a black one. The old lady
listened with small admiration, and when, on
visiting the stable with her thick-headed
spouse, she found no goat whatever, her rage
knew no bounds. Nay, she vociferously
stated her conviction, that the money
obtained by the sale of the white goat had been
expended on tap-room luxuries, and that the
commercial operations so circumstantially
narrated were but the creations of a
brandy-heated brain. The old gentleman answered
the accusation by setting off immediately in
search of the missing animal, and as he soon
heard a bleating in his vicinity, he proceeded
in the direction of the sound. A veritable
ignis fatuus was that unfortunate bleat. It
led the pursuer to a marsh; and it induced
him to step into the marsh, and it caused him
to cast off a considerable portion of his
habiliments that he might go deeper into the
marsh. But the goat was never found; the
clothes disappeared from the spot in which
they had been laid; and the old gentleman
went home a sadder, a colder, and we trust,
a wiser man.

When the robbers heard from Slyboots the
narration of these facts; when they heard
iiim describe how, without change of attire,
le had passed for three several persons in the
jyes of one individual, and had robbed that
ndividual three times over; how he had
followed the dupe to the stable, and observing
he unlocked door, had abstracted the goat;
how, lastly, he had led the old gentleman
into the marsh, by pinching the goat's tail