The Hundredth Cow

By Megan Powell

There was a very rich priest, and every week he would give a sermon to tell people that if they made donations to the church (which was to say, the priest) God would repay their generosity a hundred times over. And so people who had money gave the priest money, and people who had chickens gave the priest chickens, and people who had cows gave the priest cows, and so on.

One day a Rom came home after listening to the priest's sermon and told his wife he was going to give their only cow to the priest.

"How can you think of that?" she protested. "The priest already has ninety-nine cows; what does he need with one hundred? And if you give away our cow, how will we feed our children?"

But the man was insistent, and led the cow to the priest's pasture to graze with the other ninety-nine cows. That night, the Rom's cow made her way back home, and the rest of the herd followed. In the morning, the Rom woke up and exclaimed to his wife: "Look! We had one cow, now we have a hundred! We're rich!"

Soon the priest came running to the Rom's house. "How dare you steal my cows!"

"I didn't steal your cows," the Rom protested. "You said in your sermon that God would repay my generosity a hundred times over, and look--one cow has become one hundred."

The priest, of course, could say nothing to that, so he made his unhappy way back home.

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