Along came the butcher, and saw the shoe. “Now,” he said, “I can have a pair of good shoes for the lifting. I’ll take them home and put my old woman in a good humor for once.”
Down he got, lifted off the calf, tied his horse to the hedge, and ran back, thinking to get the other shoe. While he was gone Tom picked up the calf and the shoe and tramped off home.
The butcher did not find the shoe he went back to get, and when he returned to his horse the other shoe was gone and so was his calf. “No doubt the calf has broken the rope that was about its feet,” he said, “and has run into the fields.”
So he spent a long time searching for it amongst the hedges and ditches. Finally he returned to Tom’s master and told him a long story of how he had lost the calf by means of a pair of shoes, which he believed the devil himself must have dropped in the roadway and had picked up later and the calf too.
“I suppose I ought to be thankful,” he said in concluding, “that I have my old horse left to carry me home so that I don’t have to walk.”
“Wouldn’t you like to buy another calf?” Tom asked.
“Why, yes,” the butcher responded, “if you have one to sell.”
Tom then brought from the barn the very calf that the butcher had lost, but as Tom had made a fine white face on it with chalk and water, the butcher did not recognize it. So the sale was made, its legs were tied and it was hoisted onto the horse in front of the butcher. As soon as he was gone, Tom told his master he believed he could get the calf again.
“Oh, no!” the farmer said, “you’ve fooled him once and he’ll be on the lookout for mischief now. But you can try if you want to.”
Away ran Tom through the fields until he got ahead of the butcher near where he had taken the calf from him. There he hid behind the hedges and as the butcher was passing he put his hand on his mouth and cried, “Baw, baw!” like a calf.