The priest, smiling at this speech, answered:  “Being such as I am, I have no desire and no wishes.  Glad as I am to hear your kind intentions, there is nothing that I can ask you to do for me.  You need feel no anxiety on my account.  As long as I live, when the winter comes, you shall be welcome here.”  The badger, on hearing this, could not conceal its admiration of the depth of the old man’s benevolence; but having so much to be grateful for, it felt hurt at not being able to requite it.  As this subject was often renewed between them, the priest at last, touched by the goodness of the badger’s heart, said:  “Since I have shaven my head, renounced the world, and forsaken the pleasures of this life, I have no desire to gratify, yet I own I should like to possess three riyos in gold.  Food and raiment I receive by the favour of the villagers, so I take no heed for those things.  Were I to die to-morrow, and attain my wish of being born again into the next world, the same kind folk have promised to meet and bury my body.  Thus, although I have no other reason to wish for money, still if I had three riyos I would offer them up at some holy shrine, that masses and prayers might be said for me, whereby I might enter into salvation.  Yet I would not get this money by violent or unlawful means; I only think of what might be if I had it.  So you see, since you have expressed such kind feelings toward me, I have told you what is on my mind.”  When the priest had done speaking, the badger leant its head on one side with a puzzled and anxious look, so much so that the old man was sorry he had expressed a wish which seemed to give the beast trouble, and tried to retract what he had said.  “Posthumous honours, after all, are the wish of ordinary men.  I, who am a priest, ought not to entertain such thoughts, or to want money; so pray pay no attention to what I have said;” and the badger, feigning assent to what the priest had impressed upon it, returned to the hills as usual.

From that time forth the badger came no more to the hut.  The priest thought this very strange, but imagined either that the badger stayed away because it did not like to come without the money, or that it had been killed in an attempt to steal it; and he blamed himself for having added to his sins for no purpose, repenting when it was too late:  persuaded, however, that the badger must have been killed, he passed his time in putting up prayers upon prayers for it.

After three years had gone by, one night the old man heard a voice near his door calling out, “Your reverence! your reverence!”

As the voice was like that of the badger, he jumped up as soon as he heard it, and ran to open the door; and there, sure enough, was the badger.  The priest, in great delight, cried out:  “And so you are safe and sound, after all!  Why have you been so long without coming here?  I have been expecting you anxiously this long while.”