"So be it," said the younger; "let us draw straws."
Mahobane prepared the straws, and arranged very cleverly to cheat his younger brother. He had no sooner carried his point than he put out his brother's eyes with a thorn.
Lovallec screamed loudly under the pain of this operation, but the only sympathy he got from his cruel brother was this:
"Cry louder, my brother! cry louder! for here the people are passing, and when they behold your condition they will give us money."
It was even so. Silver and pennies fell into the wooden bowl they carried, and this success was continued for more than a year. Then a wicked thought entered the head of Mahobane, the eldest, and he made up his mind to get rid of his unfortunate brother. So one day he carried him into the great forest and left him to wander alone and find his way out as best he could; but, being blind, this he was unable to do.
"Where am I, my dear brother? Where are you?" But there was no answer to his heart-rending cries. The cowardly brother, who had deserted him, was already far away. It was long before Lovallec, the blind one, would believe that his brother could be cruel enough to desert him. He called and cried for the absent brother, but the only answer he heard was in the mocking echoes. Night came, and he was tired, hungry, and thirsty. Despair seized him and he continued his lamentations.
"Ah, my brother! my brother! how cruel you have been to forsake me! Is it my fate to die of hunger at the foot of this tree, or become the prey of the ravenous beasts that roam through this forest? No! Better a thousand times that I should die at once."
With this the unfortunate brother climbed the tree, at the foot of which he found himself, groping his way up the trunk, and was preparing to throw himself to the ground to end his existence then and there, when he heard in the forest, near at hand, the terrible roaring of a lion. At this sound the leaves and branches of the tree trembled, and the blind unfortunate paused. The roaring of the Lion, as it seemed, was a call to the Wolf, who soon made his appearance at the foot of the tree.
"You are late, Wolf!" exclaimed the Lion; "where do you come from?"