When he had walked for an hour or more, as he reckoned by the height of the sun, and was puzzled that he had not yet reached the great city at the rate he was going, he thought he heard someone calling after him: “Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, twee! Please do stop, Master Luck of the Bean-rows.”
“Who is it calling me?” cried Luck of the Bean-rows, clapping his hand on his pronged hoe.
“Please do stop at once. Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, twee! It is I who am calling you.”
“Can it be possible?” asked Luck, raising his eyes to the top of an old pine, hollow and half dead, on which a great owl was swaying in the wind. “What is it we two can settle together, my bonnie bird?”
“It would be indeed a wonder if you recognised me,” answered the owl, “for you had no notion that I was ever helping you, as a modest and honest owl should, by devouring at my own risk the swarms of rats which nibbled away half your crops, good year and bad year. That is why your field now brings you in what will buy you a pretty kingdom, if you know when you have enough. As for me, who have paid dearly for my care of others, I have not one wretched lean rat on the hooks of the larder against daylight, for now at night, with my eyes grown so dim in your service, I can scarcely see where I am going. So I called to you, generous Luck of the Bean-rows, to beg of you one of those good quart measures of beans hanging from your staff. It will keep me alive till my oldest son comes of age, and on his loyalty to you you may reckon.”
“Why that, Master Owl,” cried Luck of the Bean-rows, taking one of his own three quart measures from the end of his staff, “is a debt of gratitude, and I am glad to repay it.”
The owl darted down on the measure, caught it in his claws and beak, and with one flap of the wing carried it off to the tree-top.
“My word, but you are in a hurry to be off!” said the Luck. “May I ask, Master Owl, if I am still far from the great town mother is sending me to?”
“You are just going into it,” answered the owl, as he flitted off to another tree.