his stomach to be cut open, and finding the milk
        not yet digested, quoth he to the woman:  “Thou didst not
        complain without reason.”  And, having caused her to be
        recompensed for her loss, “Now go thy way,” he added,
        “for thou hast had justice for the wrong done thee.”

Next day the master goes to town.  Esop works in the field, and entertains with his own food some travellers who had lost their way, and sets them on the right road again.  They are really priests of Artemis, and having received their blessing he falls asleep, and dreams that Tyche (i.e.  Fortune) looses his tongue, and gives him eloquence.  Waking, he finds he can say bous, onos, dikella, (ox, ass, mattock).  This is the reward of piety, for “well-doing is full of good hopes.”  Zenas, the overseer, is rebuked by Esop for beating a slave.  This is the first time he has been heard to speak distinctly.  Zenas goes to his master and accuses Esop of having blasphemed him and the gods, and is given Esop to sell or give away as he pleases.  He sells him to a trader for three obols (4-1/2d.), Esop pleading that, if useless for aught else, he will do for a bugbear to keep his children quiet.  When they arrive home the little ones begin to cry.  “Was I not right?” quoth Esop, and the other slaves think he has been bought to avert the Evil Eye.

The merchant sets out for Asia with all his house-hold.  Esop is offered the lightest load, as being a raw recruit.  From among the bags, beds, and baskets he chooses a basket full of bread—­“a load for two men.”  They laugh at his folly, but let him have his will, and he staggers under the burden to the wonder of his master.  But at the first halt for ariston, or breakfast, the basket is half-emptied, and by the evening wholly so, and then Esop marches triumphantly ahead, all commending his wit.  At Ephesus the merchant sells all his slaves, excepting a musician, a scribe, and Esop.  Thence he goes to Samos, where he puts new garments on the two former (he had none left for Esop), and sets them out for sale, Esop between them.  Xanthus, the philospher, lived at Samos.  He goes to the slave market, and, seeing the three, praises the dealer’s cunning in making the two look handsomer than they were by contrast with the ugly one.  Asking the scribe and the musician what they know, their answer is, “Everything,” upon which Esop laughs.  The price of the musician (1000 obols, or six guineas) and of the scribe (three times that sum) prevents the philosopher from buying them, and he turns to Esop to see what he is made of.  He gives him the customary salutation, “Khaire!” (Rejoice).  “I wasn’t grieving,” retorts Esop.  “I greet thee,” says Xanthus.  “And I thee,” replies Esop.  “What are thou?” “Black.”  “I don’t mean that, but in what sort of place wast thou born?” “My mother didn’t tell me whether in the second floor or the cellar.”  “What can you do?” “Nothing.”  “How?”