A little farther on our travellers saw a countryman who had just paid the price of some purchases he had succeeded in making, and was hurrying away with them, when the shop-keeper called after him, “Sir! Sir! you have paid me by mistake in finer silver than we are accustomed to use here, and I have to allow you a considerable discount in consequence. Of course this is a mere trifle to a gentleman of your rank and position, but still for my own sake I must ask leave to make it all right with you.”
“Pray don't mention such a small matter,” replied the countryman, “but oblige me by putting the amount to my credit for use at a future date when I come again to buy some more of your excellent wares.”
“No, no,” answered the shop-keeper, “you don’t catch old birds with chaff. That trick was played upon me last year by another gentleman, and to this day I have never set eyes upon him again, though I have made every endeavour to find out his whereabouts. As it is, I can now only look forward to repaying him in the next life; but if I let you take me in in the same way, why, when the next life comes and I am changed, may be into a horse or a donkey, I shall have quite enough to do to find him, and your debt will go dragging on till the life after that. No, no, there is no time like the present; hereafter I might very likely forget what was the exact sum I owed you.”
They continued to argue the point until the countryman consented to accept a trifle as a set-off against the fineness of his silver and went away with his goods, the shop-keeper bawling after him as long as he was in sight that he had sold him inferior articles at a high rate and was positively defrauding him of his money. The countryman, however, got clear away, and the shop-keeper returned to his grumbling at the iniquity of the age. Just then a beggar happened to pass, and so in anger at having been compelled to take more than his due he handed him the difference. “Who knows,” said he, “but that the present misery of this poor fellow may be retribution for overcharging people in a former life?”
