was afraid to speak to the Dog. After he had walked on in silence for a
time the Dog spoke to him and said:

'You don't seem to have much curiosity, seeing you never ask my name.'

The Prince then forced himself to ask, 'What is your name?'

'You had best call me Snati-Snati,' said the Dog. 'Now we are coming to
a King's seat, and you must ask the King to keep us all winter, and to
give you a little room for both of us.'

The Prince now began to be less afraid of the Dog. They came to the King
and asked him to keep them all the winter, to which he agreed. When the
King's men saw the Dog they began to laugh at it, and make as if they
would tease it; but when the Prince saw this he advised them not to do
it, or they might have the worst of it. They replied that they didn't
care a bit what he thought.

After Ring had been with the King for some days the latter began to
think there was a great deal in him, and esteemed him more than the
others. The King, however, had a counsellor called Red, who became very
jealous when he saw how much the King esteemed Ring; and one day he
talked to him, and said he could not understand why he had so good an
opinion of this stranger, who had not yet shown himself superior to
other men in anything. The King replied that it was only a short time
since he had come there. Red then asked him to send them both to cut
down wood next morning, and see which of them could do most work.
Snati-Snati heard this and told it to Ring, advising him to ask the King
for two axes, so that he might have one in reserve if the first one
got broken. Next morning the King asked Ring and Red to go and cut down
trees for him, and both agreed. Ring got the two axes, and each went his
own way; but when the Prince had got out into the wood Snati took one of
the axes and began to hew along with him. In the evening the King came
to look over their day's work, as Red had proposed, and found that
Ring's wood-heap was more than twice as big.

'I suspected,' said the King, 'that Ring was not quite useless; never
have I seen such a day's work.'

Ring was now in far greater esteem with the King than before, and Red
was all the more discontented. One day he came to the King and said, 'If
Ring is such a mighty man, I think you might ask him to kill the wild
oxen in the wood here, and flay them the same day, and bring you the
horns and the hides in the evening.'

'Don't you think that a desperate errand?' said the King, '