One day, what should come down to the water to drink but an Ox with one eye.
"Ho! ho! one-eyed Ox!" screamed the Jackal, "not a drop till you sing your psalm."
The Ox blinked his one eye stupidly, and looked round. "What psalm?" asked the one-eyed Ox.
"Mine," said the Jackal, who was very proud of his psalm, "my own composition." Then he sang it over to the Ox, that he might hear it.
"'A temple all of gold I found—'
"That's this, you know," he explained, pointing to the scraggy thatch—
"A temple all of gold I found,
With golden lamps hung all around;
And see! the God himself is here,
With two big pearls in either ear."
"Ah," said the one-eyed Ox, "I'm rather stupid, I fear, and it will take me a minute or two to learn that psalm. It's a mighty fine psalm, that; I never heard the like in church. Suppose I say it over to myself while I'm a-drinking? that will save time, and it would be a thousand pities to spoil a thing like that."
This flattered the Jackal so much that he agreed.
One-eye went down to the pool, and took a long, long pull at the water. Then he came out of the water, and went slowly up to the Jackal, as he was sitting under his thatch, with its string of dead Frogs, and the two Frogs in the Jackal's ears.