The thing only laughed and screeched and mocked as long as Tom went on berating it, but as soon as his breath gave out it said with a grin: “Tom, my lad, I’ll tell you something. Truly, I’ll never help you again, and even if you call me you will not see me after today. But I never agreed to let you alone, and that I shall not do, my lad. I was where I could do no harm under that stone, Tom, and you let me out. If you had been wise I would have been your friend and worked for you, but I am your friend no longer, and in the future when everything goes crooked you can know that it is Yallery Brown’s doing. Mark my words, will you?”
Then it began to sing and curse and call down misfortunes on him, and it danced round Tom with its yellow hair and beard all flying and a savage scowl on its wrinkled bit of a face. Tom could only stand there shaking all over and staring down at the gruesome thing until at last it rose in the air and floated away on the wind over a wall out of sight with a parting shriek of cunning laughter.
In the days and weeks and years that followed Tom worked here and he worked there, and turned his hand to this and to that, but whatever he did always went wrong. There was no end to Yallery Brown’s spite even until Tom’s life ended.
VII—THE LITTLE JACKAL
Once upon a time a little jackal lived near the bank of a great river. Every day he went down to the water to catch the crabs that were there.
Not far away, in the same river, dwelt a cruel alligator. He saw the little jackal come down to the water every day, and he thought, “What a nice tender morsel that little jackal would make if I could only catch him!”
One day the alligator hid in the mud, where the water was shallow near shore. Only the tip of his nose stuck out, and that looked very much like the back of a crab.
Soon the little jackal came running along the bank of the river seeking his usual food. When he saw the end of the alligator’s nose he thought he had found a fine big crab, and he put in his paw to scoop it out of the mud.
The moment he did that, snap! the teeth of the alligator came together, and the jackal was caught by the paw. He was terribly frightened, for he knew the alligator intended to pull him into the river and eat him.
However, he began to laugh, though the alligator’s teeth hurt him sadly. “Oh, you stupid old alligator!” he said. “You thought you would catch my paw, and instead caught a bulrush root that I stuck down in the water to tickle your nose. Ha, ha! you silly, silly alligator.”