The Foundling Read Online Free

fruit.
    â€œMaibon, it’s the fault of that stone!” wailed his wife. “Get rid of the thing!”
    â€œNonsense,” replied Maibon. “The season’s slow, that’s all.”
    Nevertheless, his wife kept at him and kept at him so much that Maibon at last, and very reluctantly, threw the stone out of the cottage window. Not too far, though, for he had it in the back of his mind to go later and find it again.
    Next morning he had no need to go looking for it, for there was the stone sitting on the window ledge.
    â€œYou see?” said Maibon to his wife. “Here it is back again. So, it’s a gift meant for me to keep.”
    â€œMaibon!” cried his wife. “Will you get rid of it! We’ve had nothing but trouble since you brought it into the house. Now the baby’s fretting and fuming. Teething, poor little thing. But not a tooth to be seen! Maibon, that stone’s bad luck and I want no part of it!”
    Protesting it was none of his doing that the stone had come back, Maibon carried it into the vegetable patch. He dug a hole, not a very deep one, and put the stone into it.
    Next day, there was the stone above ground, winking and glittering.
    â€œMaibon!” cried his wife. “Once and for all, if you care for your family, get rid of that cursed thing!”
    Seeing no other way to keep peace in the household, Maibon regretfully and unwillingly took the stone and threw it down the well, where it splashed into the water and sank from sight.

    But that night, while he was trying vainly to sleep, there came such a rattling and clattering that Maibon clapped his hands over his ears, jumped out of bed, and went stumbling into the yard. At the well, the bucket was jiggling back and forth and up and down at the end of the rope; and in the bottom of the bucket was the stone.
    Now Maibon began to be truly distressed, not only for the toothless baby, the calfless cow, the fruitless tree, and the hen sitting desperately on her eggs, but for himself as well.
    â€œNothing’s moving along as it should,” he groaned. “I can’t tell one day from another. Nothing changes, there’s nothing to look forward to, nothing to show for my work. Why sow if the seeds don’t sprout? Why plant if there’s never a harvest? Why eat if I don’t get hungry? Why go to bed at night, or get up in the morning, or do anything at all? And the way it looks, so it will stay forever and ever! I’ll shrivel from boredom if nothing else!”
    â€œMaibon,” pleaded his wife, “for all our sakes, destroy the dreadful thing!”
    Maibon tried now to pound the stone to dust with his heaviest mallet; but he could not so much as knock a chip from it. He put it against his grindstone without so much as scratching it. He set it on his anvil and belabored it with hammer and tongs, all to no avail.
    At last he decided to bury the stone again, this time deeper than before. Picking up his shovel, he hurried to the field. But he suddenly halted and the shovel dropped from his hands. There, sitting cross-legged on a stump, was the dwarf.
    â€œYou!” shouted Maibon, shaking his fist. “Cheat! Villain! Trickster! I did you a good turn, and see how you’ve repaid it!”
    The dwarf blinked at the furious Maibon. “You mortals are an ungrateful crew. I gave you what you wanted.”

    â€œYou should have warned me!” burst out Maibon.
    â€œI did,” Doli snapped back. “You wouldn’t listen. No, you yapped and yammered, bound to have your way. I told you we didn’t like to give away those stones. When you mortals get hold of one, you stay just as you are—but so does everything around you. Before you know it, you’re mired in time like a rock in the mud. You take my advice. Get rid of that stone as fast as you can.”
    â€œWhat do you think I’ve been trying to do?” blurted Maibon. “I’ve buried