"What are you
going to do with that cane?" he shouted, a little apprehensively.
"Wait and see," I returned. "Something to make you laugh." Then, after
whirling it round half a dozen times more, I suddenly brought it down
on his head with all my force, and did exactly what I had been
counselled to do by the wise shepherd--knocked him clean off his
horse. But he was not stunned, and starting up in a screeching fury,
he pulled out his knife to kill me. And I, for strategic reasons,
retreated, rather hastily. But his wild cries quickly brought several
persons on the scene, and, recovering courage, I went back and said
triumphantly, "Now we are quits!" Then my father was called and asked
to judge between us, and after hearing both sides he smiled and said
his judgment was not needed, that we had already settled it all
ourselves, and there was nothing now between us. I laughed, and he
glared at me, and mounting his horse, rode off without another word.
It was, however, only because he was suffering from the blow on his
head; when I met him we were good friends again.
More than once during my life, when recalling that episode, I have
asked myself if I did right in taking the shepherd's advice? Would it
have been better, when I went out to him with the bamboo cane, and he
asked me what I was going to do with it, if I had gone up to him and
shown him my face with that broad band across it from the chin to the
temple, where the skin had come off and a black crust had formed, and
had said to him: "This is the mark of the blow you gave me the day
before yesterday, when you knocked me off my horse; you see it is on
the right side of my face and head; now take the cane and give me
another blow on the left side"? Tolstoy (my favourite author, by the
way) would have answered: "Yes, certainly it would have been better
for you--better for your soul.
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