HERE was once a farmer who suffered much at the hands of a money-lender. Good harvests, or bad, the farmer was always poor, the money-lender rich.
At last, there came a very dry season,—so dry that the farmer’s crops withered for want of rain. Then he blew his conch, and wished for a well to water them, and lo! there was the well, but the money-lender had two!—two beautiful new wells! This was too much for any farmer to stand; and our friend brooded over it, and brooded over it, till at last a bright idea came into his head. He seized the conch, blew it loudly, and cried out, “Oh, Ram! I wish to be blind of one eye!” And so he was, in a twinkling, but the money-lender of course was blind of both, and in trying to steer his way between the two new wells, he fell into one, and was drowned.