Once upon a time there lived a rich gentleman. He found out that there would be a crop failure. He began to buy rye, and did not sell it to anyone; he kept waiting for a lean year. A lean year has arrived. And people cannot get bread anywhere, only from a rich master. And he’s already charging a ruble and a half per measure.
And not far from the rich master lived a poor man.
He scraped together one and a half rubles and went to the master to buy some rzhitsa.
And the master says:
“I don’t sell them for one and a half rubles anymore.” Today my measure costs three rubles.
A poor man came home and didn’t know what to do. The wife is crying, the hungry children are roaring loudly. He collected everything that could be sold, sold it, and scraped together three rubles. Again he goes to the master to buy some rye. And the master says:
“I don’t sell them for three rubles anymore.” Today my measure costs five rubles.
Apparently, the man has to give up his life. I’ll go, he thinks, to the master’s garden and hang myself on an apple tree. That's what I decided. He took off his belt, threw it on a branch, and tied it in a loop.
But in order to reach the loop, you need to climb onto something. He saw a stone not far from the apple tree. So, he thinks, it’s better not to. But as soon as he rolled it up, he saw that under the stone there was a cauldron full of gold. The man took the money, went back to the master and bought off all the rye that he had in his crate.
He brought it to himself and distributed it to all the poor people who had nothing to eat.
Meanwhile, the master decided to hide the proceeds. He counted them and went to the garden, where he kept the wealth under a stone. Yes, when he saw the turned away stone and the empty cauldron in the ground, he screamed in a voice that was not his own, fell down and gave up his ghost.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru