t moment would answer: 'All right, I am
close up to you.'

Full of astonishment, the stag would redouble his efforts, but it was
no use. Each time he asked: 'Are you there?' the answer would come:
'Yes, of course, where else should I be?' And the stag ran, and ran,
and ran, till he could run no more, and dropped down dead on the
grass.

And the tortoise, when he thinks about it, laughs still.

* * * * *

But the tortoise was not the only creature of whose tricks stories
were told in the forest. There was a famous monkey who was just as
clever and more mischievous, because he was so much quicker on his
feet and with his hands. It was quite impossible to catch him and give
him the thrashing he so often deserved, for he just swung himself up
into a tree and laughed at the angry victim who was sitting below.
Sometimes, however, the inhabitants of the forest were so foolish as
to provoke him, and then they got the worst of it. This was what
happened to the barber, whom the monkey visited one morning, saying
that he wished to be shaved. The barber bowed politely to his
customer, and begging him to be seated, tied a large cloth round his
neck, and rubbed his chin with soap; but instead of cutting off his
beard, the barber made a snip at the end of his tail. It was only a
very little bit, and the monkey started up more in rage than in pain.
'Give me back the end of my tail,' he roared, 'or I will take one of
your razors.' The barber refused to give back the missing piece, so
the monkey caught up a razor from the table and ran away with it, and
no one in the forest could be shaved for days, as there was not
another to be got for miles and miles.

As he was making his way to his own particular palm-tree, where the
cocoa-nuts grew, which were so useful for pelting passers-by, he met a
woman who was scaling a fish with a bit of wood, for in this side of
the forest a few people lived in huts near the river.

'That must be hard work,' said the monkey, stopping to look; 'try my
knife--you will get on quicker.' And he handed her the razor as he
spoke. A few days later he came back and rapped at the door of the
hut. 'I have called for my razor,' he said, when the woman appeared.

'I have lost it,' answered she.

'If you don't give it to me at once I will take your sardine,' replied
the monkey, who did not believe her. The woman protested she had not
got the knife, so he took the sardine and ran o