Juan, being a joker, once thought to have a little fun at others' expense, so he robed himself in a shroud, placed a bier by the roadside, set candles around it, and lay down so that all who went by should see him and be frightened. A band of robbers went by that way, and seeing the corpse, besought it to give them luck. As it happened, they were more than usually fortunate, and when they returned they began to make offerings to him to secure continuance of their good fortune. As the entire proceeds of their adventures were held in common, they soon began to quarrel over the offerings to be made. The captain became angry, and drew his sword with a threat to run the corpse through for causing so much dissension among his men.
This frightened the sham dead man to such a degree that he jumped up and ran away, and the robbers, who were even more frightened than he, ran the other way, leaving all their plunder.
Juan then returned and gathered all the money and valuables left behind by the robbers, and carried them home. Now he had a friend who was very curious to know how he came into possession of so much wealth, and so Juan told him, only he said nothing about robbers, but told his friend, whose name was Pedro, that the things were the direct reward of God for his piety.
Pedro, being afraid of the woods, decided to lie just inside the church door; besides, that being a more sacred place, he felt sure that God would favor him even more than Juan. He arranged his bier with the candles around him, and lay down to await the shower of money that should reward his devotions. When the sacristan went to the church to ring the bell for vespers, he saw the body lying there, and not knowing of any corpse having been carried in, he was frightened and ran to tell the padre. The padre, when he had seen the body, said it was a miracle, and that it must be buried within the church, for the sanctification of the edifice.
But Pedro, now thoroughly frightened, jumped off the bier and ran away, and the priest and the sacristan ran the other way, so the poor man never received the reward for his piety, and the church was deprived of a new patron saint.
CHAPTER 6
The Adventures of Juan.
Juan was lazy, Juan was a fool, and his mother never tired of scolding him and emphasizing her words by a beating. When Juan went to school he made more noise at his study than anybody else, but his reading was only gibberish.
His mother sent him to town to buy meat to eat with the boiled rice, and he bought a live crab which he set down in the road and told to go to his mother and be cooked for dinner. The crab promised, but as soon as Juan's back was turned ran in the other direction.
Juan went home after a while and asked for the crab, but there was none, and they ate their rice without ulam. [12] His mother then went herself and left Juan to care for the baby. The baby cried and Juan examined it to find the cause, and found the soft spot on its head. "Aha! It has a boil. No wonder it cries!" And he stuck a knife into the soft spot, and the baby stopped crying. When his mother came back, Juan told her about the boil and that the baby was now asleep, but the mother said it was dead, and she beat Juan again.