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A hedgehog met Master Reynard in a field, and said to him, “Hello, master! Whither away?”

“Oh, I’m just loafing around!” answered the fox.

“Tell me, now,” said Reynard to the hedgehog, after they had been chatting a while, “how manifold is your understanding?”

“Threefold,” answered the hedgehog.

“Why, how is that?” asked the fox.

“Why, you see, I have one sense above, one below, and the third everywhere,” replied the hedgehog; and added: “And how manifold is your understanding?”

“Oh, mine is seventy-sevenfold,” answered the fox.

“Well, well!” said the hedgehog.

Thereupon they walked along through the fields, and so eagerly were they talking that they gave no heed to the way, and presently stumbled into a wolf’s den. Then was good counsel precious! How should they ever get out of this scrape?

Said Reynard to the hedgehog, “Come now, search around in your head-piece for a means of getting out of this pickle.”

“I should have done that before,” answered the hedgehog, “but I was afraid that by and by you would curse me. How shall I, a little hedgehog, with only a threefold understanding, devise anything better than you, who have a seventy-sevenfold understanding?”

However, after talking back and forth a long time, the hedgehog made this suggestion: “Say, Reynard, just seize me by the ear and throw me up out of the den, because I am the smaller.”

“Yes, but how shall I get out?”

“Oh, just stick up your tail, and I will pull you out!”

So Reynard seized the hedgehog by the ear and tossed him up out of the den. Then he called upon him to keep his word. “Hello, there, Gossip, now pull me out!”

“Do you know what,” answered the hedgehog, “I’ll tell you something. I have only a threefold understanding, and yet I found a way of helping myself. Now do you help yourself with your seventy-sevenfold understanding.”

By this time a peasant came along, and finding the fox in the den he made short work with him. But the hedgehog crept away through the thicket with his threefold understanding, while Reynard, with all his seventy-sevenfold understanding, was carried off by the peasant.