Aesop's Fables (Joseph Jacobs)
Jacobs 2. The Wolf and the Lamb (Perry
155)
Once upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a hillside, when,
looking up, what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to drink a little
lower down. "There's my supper," thought he, "if only I
can find some excuse to seize it." Then he called out to the Lamb,
"How dare you muddle the water from which I am drinking?"
"Nay, master, nay," said Lambikin; "if the water be muddy
up there, I cannot be the cause of it, for it runs down from you to me."
"Well, then," said the Wolf, "why did you call me bad
names this time last year?"
"That cannot be," said the Lamb; "I am only six months
old."
"I don't care," snarled the Wolf; "if it was not you it
was your father;" and with that he rushed upon the poor little Lamb
and .WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA .ate her all up. But before she died
she gasped out ."Any excuse will serve a tyrant."


The
Fables of Aesop, by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by
Richard Heighway (1894). The page images come from Google
Books. The digitized text comes from Project
Gutenberg. You can purchase this inexpensive Dover edition, The
Fables of Aesop by Joseph Jacobs from amazon.com.
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