By-and-by a hare came running across a field, but stopped to see what wonderful thing was coming. “What have you got there?” she asked, and the marten told his story and begged the hare to help them pull. The hare pulled her hardest, and after a while they were joined by a fox, and then by a wolf, and at length a bear was added to the company, and he was of more use than all the other five beasts put together. Besides, when the whole six had supped off the man he was not so heavy to draw. The worst of it was that they soon began to get hungry again, and the wolf, who was the hungriest of all, said to the rest: “What shall we eat now, my friends, as there is no more man?” “I suppose we shall have to eat the smallest of us,” replied the bear, and the marten turned round to seize the squirrel who was much smaller than any of the rest. But the squirrel ran up a tree like lightning, and the marten remembering, just in time, that he was the next in size, slipped quick as thought into a hole in the rocks. “What shall we eat now?” asked the wolf again, when he had recovered from his surprise. “We must eat the smallest of us,” repeated the bear, stretching out a paw towards the hare; but the hare was not a hare for nothing, and before the paw had touched her, she had darted deep into the wood. Now that the squirrel, the marten, and the hare had all gone, the fox was the smallest of the three who were left, and the wolf and the bear explained that they were very sorry, but they would have to eat him. Michael, the fox, did not run away as the others had done, but smiled in a friendly manner, and remarked: “Things taste so stale in a valley; one’s appetite is so much better up on a mountain.” The wolf and the bear agreed, and they turned out of the hollow where they had been walking, and chose a path that led up the mountain side. The fox trotted cheerfully by his two big companions, but on the way he managed to whisper to the wolf: “Tell me, Peter, when I am eaten, what will you have for your next dinner?” This simple question seemed to put out the wolf very much. What would they have for their next dinner, and, what was more important still, who would there be to eat it? They had made a rule always to dine off the smallest of the party, and when the fox was gone, why of course, he was smaller than the bear. These thoughts flashed quickly through his head, and he said hastily: “Dear brothers, would it not be better for us to live together as comrades, and everyone to hunt for the common dinner? Is not my plan a good one?” “It is the best thing I have ever heard,” answered the fox; and as they were two to one the bear had to be content, though in his heart he would much have preferred a good dinner at once to any friendship.