to die."

"Yes, father," said the boy.

When the morning came, they bound the old man and took him to the
forest. On their way back home the boy said to his father, "Wait! I
will go back and get the rope."--"What for?" asked his father, raising
his voice. "To have it ready when your turn comes," replied the boy,
believing that to cast every old man into the forest was the usual
custom. "Ah! if that is likely to be the case with me, back we go
and get your grandfather again."

This exemplum is known in many countries and in many forms. For
the bibliography, see Clouston, "Popular Tales and Fictions,"
2 : 372-378; T. F. Crane, "Exempla of Jacques de Vitry" (FLS,
1890 : No. 288 and p. 260); Bolte-Polivka (on Grimm, No. 78), 2 :
135-140. The most complete of these studies is the last, in which are
cited German, Latin, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Greek, Croatian,
Albanian, Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, Lettish, Turkish, and Indian
versions. Full as Bolte-Polivka's list is, however, an old important
Buddhistic variant has been overlooked by them,--the "Takkala-jataka,"
No. 446. This Indian form of the story, it seems to me, has some close
resemblances to our Pampango variant; and I give it here briefly,
summarizing from Mr. Rouse's excellent English translation:--

In a certain village of Kasi there lived a man who supported his old
father. The father regretted seeing his son toil so hard for him, and
against the son's will sent for a woman to be his daughter-in-law. Soon
the son began to be pleased with his new wife, who took good care of
his father. As time went on, however, she became tired of the old man,
and planned to set his son against him. She accused her father-in-law
of being not only very untidy, but also fierce and violent, and
forever picking quarrels with her, and at last, by constant dinning
her complaints in his ear, persuaded her husband to agree to take
the old man into a cemetery, kill him, and bury him in a pit. Her
small son, a wise lad of seven, overheard the plot, and decided to
prevent his father from committing murder. The next day he insisted
on accompanying his father and grandfather. When they reached the
cemetery, and the father began to dig the pit, the small boy asked
what it was for. The father replied,--

"Thy grandsire, son, is very weak and old,
Opprest by pain and ailments manifold;
Him will I bury in a pit to-day;
In such a life I could not wish him stay."

The boy caught th