“Bad!” said the wife.
“Good, I tell you!” cried the husband. “We will watch to-night and catch the thief, and to-morrow we will take him before the judge and ask that he be forced to pay us twice the value of the cheeses.”
“Good!” said the wife. “What a clever fellow you are!”
“Oh! I have not a pumpkin on my shoulders!” said the husband, chuckling.
Accordingly, the husband and wife concealed themselves under the bed the next night, and watched to see what would happen. About midnight the door opened softly, and in came a large brown monkey. He looked all about, and seeing no one, he went to the cheese cupboard, took three of the finest cheeses, and made off. The wife was for following him, but the husband said, “No! let us wait and see if he comes again.”
So they waited, and sure enough the monkey returned in a few minutes, and taking three more cheeses went off again. This time the man followed him. Holding the cheeses carefully in his arms, the monkey took his way through the woods till he came to the mouth of a cave, into which he ran. The cheese-maker slipped noiselessly after him. They went through a dark, winding passage, which led to a vaulted chamber hollowed in the solid rock. Here the monkey entered, while the man concealed himself behind a point of rock and peeped after him. The room was full of monkeys; and at the farther end sat the Monkey King, on a throne made of a huge mass of gold. The cheese-maker stared at that, for he had never seen such a sight. When the Monkey King saw the cheese, he howled with delight, seized the largest one, and gobbled it up.
When the cheese-maker saw that, he turned about and went home again, for he needed to see no more, having a head on his shoulders, and not a pumpkin.
“How now?” asked his wife. “You come back without the cheeses?”
“Hold your tongue, good wife!” he said. “Knowledge is better than cheese.”
“Truly!” said the wife, scornfully. “It must be a fine knowledge to be worth six of my best cheeses.”