to catch the thief, but instead
of capturing the foe, it happened that one day he got caught himself,
and falling down, struck his head against a stone, and was killed.

Not long after the marten came by on the look out for his supper. Seeing
the dead man lying there, he said to himself: 'That is a prize, this
time I have done well'; and dragging the body with great difficulty to
the sledge which was waiting for him, drove off with his booty. He
had not driven far when he met a squirrel, who bowed and said:
'Good-morning, godfather! what have you got behind you?'

The marten laughed and answered: 'Did you ever hear anything so strange?
The old man that you see here set traps about his hen-house, thinking
to catch me but he fell into his own trap, and broke his own neck. He is
very heavy; I wish you would help me to draw the sledge.' The squirrel
did as he was asked, and the sledge moved slowly along.

By-and-by a hare came running across a field, but stopped to see what
wonderful thing was coming. 'What have you got there?' she asked, and
the marten told his story and begged the hare to help them pull.

The hare pulled her hardest, and after a while they were joined by a
fox, and then by a wolf, and at length a bear was added to the company,
and he was of more use than all the other five beasts put together.
Besides, when the whole six had supped off the man he was not so heavy
to draw.

The worst of it was that they soon began to get hungry again, and the
wolf, who was the hungriest of all, said to the rest:

'What shall we eat now, my friends, as there is no more man?'

'I suppose we shall have to eat the smallest of us,' replied the bear,
and the marten turned round to seize the squirrel who was much smaller
than any of the rest. But the squirrel ran up a tree like lightning,
and the marten remembering, just in time, that he was the next in size,
slipped quick as thought into a hole in the rocks.

'What shall we eat now?' asked the wolf again, when he had recovered
from his surprise.

'We must eat the smallest of us,' repeated the bear, stretching out
a paw towards the hare; but the hare was not a hare for nothing, and
before the paw had touched her, she had darted deep into the wood.

Now that the squirrel, the marten, and the hare had all gone, the fox
was the smallest of the three who were left, and the wolf and the bear
explained that they were very sorry, but they would have to eat him.
Michael, the f