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The tiger butted at the nest with all his might and made a big jagged rent in its side, and out flew the angry wasps in swarms, completely covering the poor tiger, who with a dreadful yell of pain tore away from his tormentors. His face was all swollen, and from that day till the present, the faces of tigers have all been wide and flat.

Again he chased the hare, and when the smart from the stings of the wasps had subsided a little, he found to his great joy that he was gaining on his enemy fast. The hare on her part saw that the tiger would soon catch her and looked around for some means of escape, and spied just before her a snake half in and half out of its hole.

The hare stopped as before and sat gazing at the snake so intently that the tiger instead of killing her as he had intended to do, asked her what it was in the hole.

“This,” returned the hare, “is a wonderful flute that only kings and nobles are allowed to play. Would our lord like to play?”

“Indeed I would,” said the tiger; “but where is the lord of this wonderful flute? Whom shall I ask for permission?”

“If our lord watches right here,” said the cunning hare, “his slave will go to the lord of the flute and ask permission,” and the tiger, well content, sat down to wait.

Again the cunning hare deceived the tiger by pretending to ask permission, and when a long distance off he called as before: “Our lord has permission to play the flute. Let him put it in his mouth and blow with all his might. This is the custom of the lord of the flute.”

The foolish tiger immediately took the snake’s head into his mouth, but the sound that followed came from the tiger, not from the flute, and a terrible yell he gave as the snake bit his mouth! But the hare was far away and would soon have been safe but for an unlooked for accident that nearly ended her life.

The people who lived in that part of the hill and water country were at war with the State that joined them on the north, and thinking that the soldiers of the enemy would soon invade their country they had made a trap in the middle of the path over which the hare was running. First they dug a hole so deep that should anybody fall in, it would be impossible to climb out again. The sides of the pit were dug on the slant so that the opening was smaller than the bottom. Over the top they had placed thin strips of bamboo that would break if any extra weight came upon them and they had covered the whole with grass and leaves so that no traveler would know that a trap was there. Into this hole fell the poor little hare.

Presently the tiger came up to see where the hare had gone, and when he saw the hole in the middle of the path, he called out, “Where are you, friend hare?” and the hare from the bottom of the trap called out, “I have fallen into a trap.”

Then the tiger sat on the ground and just bent double with laughter to think that at last he had the hare in his power, but the little animal down in the hole although she did not say anything, thought harder in a few minutes than the tiger had in all his life. By and by as she looked up through the hole she had made in the roof, she saw that the sky overhead was getting darker and darker as a storm was coming on, so in great glee, although she pretended to be very much frightened, she called out as loudly as ever she could:

“Our lord tiger! our lord tiger!”