ate, and he was in want of both.

Cho had plenty of good rice and excellent silkworms' eggs, but he was
such a miser that he did not want to lend them. At the same time, he
felt ashamed to refuse his brother's request, so he gave him some
worm-eaten musty rice and some dead eggs, which he felt sure would never
hatch.

Kane, never suspecting that his brother would play him such a shabby
trick, put plenty of mulberry leaves with the eggs, to be food for the
silkworms when they should appear. Appear they did, and throve and grew
wonderfully, much better than those of the stingy brother, who was angry
and jealous when he heard of it.

Going to Kane's house one day, and finding his brother was out, Cho took
a knife and killed all the silkworms, cutting each poor little creature
in two; then he went home without having been seen by anybody.

When Kane came home he was dismayed to find his silkworms in this state,
but he did not suspect who had done him this bad trick, and tried to
feed them with mulberry leaves as before. The silkworms came to life
again, and doubled the number, for now each half was a living worm. They
grew and throve, and the silk they spun was twice as much as Kane had
expected. So now he began to prosper.

The envious Cho, seeing this, cut all his own silkworms in half, but,
alas! they did not come to life again, so he lost a great deal of money,
and became more jealous than ever.

Kane also planted the rice-seed which he had borrowed from his brother,
and it sprang up, and grew and flourished far better than Cho's had
done.

The rice ripened well, and he was just intending to cut and harvest it
when a flight of thousands upon thousands of swallows came and began to
devour it. Kane was much astonished, and shouted and made as much noise
as he could in order to drive them away. They flew away, indeed, but
came back immediately, so that he kept driving them away, and they kept
flying back again.

At last he pursued them into a distant field, where he lost sight of
them. He was by this time so hot and tired that he sat down to rest. By
little and little his eyes closed, his head dropped upon a mossy bank,
and he fell fast asleep.

Then he dreamed that a merry band of children came into the field,
laughing and shouting. They sat down upon the ground in a ring, and one
who seemed the eldest, a boy of fourteen or fifteen, came close to the
bank on which he lay asleep, and, raising a big stone near hi