Page 22.
Now it happened that a Sparrow had hatched out her young in a nest just over his house door also. So next day he went up on to the roof, and leaning out over the parapet he picked out a young Sparrow from the nest with a pair of chop-sticks, and dropped it on to the ground below, where the poor little bird broke its leg. He then went down, picked up the young Sparrow, bound up its leg with a piece of thread, and put it back into its nest, saying as he did so that he hoped it would remember his kindness.
Sure enough, when the Sparrow grew up it flew into his house one day, and perched on the table before him. It dropped some grain from its beak, and after a few preliminary chirps it said:
“This grain is a present in return for your kindness to me. Plant it in your garden and see what grows up.”
The rich man was greatly delighted on hearing this, [[23]]and thought to himself that he would soon be the possessor of beautiful jewels like his Neighbour. He prepared a bed very carefully in his garden, and planted the grain in the richest part of the soil. Every day he used to go and watch the spot, carefully examining the young shoots to see how they were getting on.
The seeds sprouted and grew very fast, and one morning, when he went out as usual to see how his crop was doing, to his astonishment he found that instead of a few stalks of barley, as he had expected, a great fierce-looking man, with a bundle of papers under his arm, was standing in the middle of the bed. The rich man was very frightened at seeing this truculent-looking stranger, and asked who he was.
“I was a creditor of yours in one of your former existences,” replied the Apparition. “You were then heavily in my debt, and I have come back here with all the necessary documents to claim what you owed me.”
So saying, the Stranger seized upon the rich man’s house, his cattle, his sheep, his lands, and all his possessions, and reduced the rich man to the position of a slave in his household.
Some months after, Cham-ba, now rich and prosperous, started off on a journey, and before going he asked Tse-ring to take charge of a bag of gold-dust for him, and to keep it until he returned. Tse-ring undertook the charge of the gold, but in his new state of poverty and dependence he was unable to resist the temptation of spending some of it, and at last he found that the [[24]]whole of the gold left in his charge was exhausted. Not knowing what to do he filled the bag with sand, and awaited his Neighbour’s return with some trepidation.
A few days after Cham-ba came back from his journey, and called upon his Neighbour, and asked for his bag of gold. Tse-ring produced the bag and handed it over to Cham-ba without saying anything, and when Cham-ba opened it to see whether the gold was all right he found that it contained sand instead of gold.