ld him, 'in the fireplace.' Directly the jackal was gone,
they filled the stove with live embers and covered them up with ashes;
and went to sleep themselves inside a drum. At night the jackal
came and put his paws into the fireplace; but he only scraped the
hot embers up against his belly and got burnt; this made him scream
and the chickens burst out laughing. The jackal heard them and said
"You have got me burnt; now I am going to eat you." They said, "Yes,
uncle, but please eat us outside the house; you did not eat our mother
in her own house; take us to yonder flat rock."

So the jackal took up the drum but when he got to the rock he
accidentally let it fall and it broke and the chickens ran away in
all directions; but the chicken that had been at the bottom of the
drum had got covered with the droppings of the others and could not
fly away; so the jackal thought "Well it is the will of heaven that
I should have only one chicken; it is doubtless for the best!" The
chicken said to the jackal, "I see that you will eat me, but you
cannot eat me in this state; wash me clean first."

So the jackal took the chicken to a pool and washed it; then the
chicken asked to be allowed to get a little dry; but the jackal said
that if it got dry it would fly away. "Then," said the chicken, "rub
me dry with your snout and I will myself tell you when I am ready to
be eaten;" so the jackal rubbed it dry and then proceeded to eat it;
but directly the jackal got it in his mouth it voided there, so the
jackal spat it out and it flew away.

The jackal thought that it had gone into a hole in a white ant-hill,
but really it had hidden elsewhere; however the jackal felt for it
in the hole and then tried in vain to scrape the hole larger; as he
could not get into the hole he determined to sit and wait till hunger
or suffocation forced the chicken to come out. So he sat and watched,
and he sat so long that the white ants ate off his hind quarters;
at last he gave up and went off to the rice fields to look for fish
and crabs. There he saw an old woman catching fish, and he asked
to be allowed to help her. So the old woman sat on the bank and the
jackal jumped and twisted about in the water and presently he caught
a _potha_ fish which he ate; but as the jackal had no hind quarters
the fish passed through him none the worse. Soon the jackal caught the
same fish over again, and he laughed at the old woman because she had
caught none. She told hi