XIII—CUNNING TOM
Once there was a bad boy named Tom, and the older he grew, the wiser and slyer he thought himself. Many were the tricks he played until no one liked him or trusted him.
One day he asked his grandmother for some money. She had plenty, but she would not give him any. So that evening Tom went to the pasture and caught the old woman’s black cow. He took the cow to a deserted house which stood at a distance from any other, and there he kept her two or three days, giving her food and water at night when nobody would see him going and coming.
Tom made his grandmother believe that some one had stolen the cow. This was a great grief to her. At last she told the lad to buy her another cow at a fair in a neighboring town, and she gave him three pounds with which to make the purchase.
He promised to get one as near like the other as possible and went off with the money. Then he took a piece of chalk, ground it into powder, steeped it in a little water and rubbed it in spots and patches over the head and body of the cow he had hidden.
Early the next morning he took her to an inn near the fair and spent the day in pleasure. Toward evening he drove the cow home before him, and as soon as he got to his grandmother’s the cow began to bellow.
The old woman ran out rejoicing for she thought her own black cow had been found, but when she saw the spots and patches of white she sighed and exclaimed, “Alas, you’ll never be the kindly brute my Black Lady was, though you bellow exactly like her.”
“’Tis a mercy you know not what the cow says,” Tom remarked to himself, “or all would be wrong with me.”
The old woman put her cow to pasture the following morning, but there came on a heavy shower of rain, which washed away the chalk. So the old woman’s Black Lady came home at night and the new cow went away with the shower and was never heard of afterward.
But Tom’s father had some suspicions, and he looked closely at the cow’s face and found some of the chalk still remaining. Then he gave Tom a hearty beating and turned him out of the house.