t, "I
have fallen into a trap."

Then the tiger sat on the ground and just bent double with laughter to
think that at last he had the hare in his power, but the little animal
down in the hole although she did not say anything, thought harder in a
few minutes than the tiger had in all his life. By and by as she looked
up through the hole she had made in the roof, she saw that the sky
overhead was getting darker and darker as a storm was coming on, so in
great glee, although she pretended to be very much frightened, she
called out as loudly as ever she could:

"Our lord tiger! our lord tiger!"

At first the tiger did not answer, so the hare then called, "Does not
our lord see the great danger approaching? Let our lord look at the
sky."

The tiger looked up and saw the dark clouds coming slowly, slowly on,
covering the whole sky; his laughter stopped and he soon began to get
very frightened.

After a while, when it had become still darker, he called to the hare:
"O friend, what is the matter with the sky? What is going to happen?"

Then the hare replied: "Our lord, the sky has fallen where you see it is
dark; that is far away, but in a few minutes it will fall here and
everybody will be crushed to death."

The foolish tiger was now frightened half to death and called to the
hare: "O friend, I have treated you badly in trying to kill you. Do not
be angry and take revenge on me, but take compassion on my terrible
condition, and graciously tell me how to escape this danger, and I swear
that I will never try to harm you more."

It was the hare's turn to laugh now, but she only laughed quietly to
herself, for she was afraid the tiger would hear her, then she said,
"Down here our lord's slave is quite safe. If our lord descends, he too
will be safe," and before the hare had hardly finished, the cowardly
tiger made a jump for the hole the hare had made and joined her at the
bottom of the trap.

But the hare was not out yet and she began to plan how she could get out
herself and yet keep the tiger in. At last a happy thought struck her.
She sidled up to the tiger and began to tickle him in the ribs. The
tiger squirmed and twisted first one way and then the other, first to
one side and then to the other; at last he could stand it no longer and
catching the hare he threw her out of the trap and she landed on solid
ground.

As soon as the hare found she was safe, she began to call at the top of
her voice: "O men, come!