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hands and buried the packet. Then he returned to sit beside the yogi.
"Now," he told Rup, "close the eyes and let us meditate for a while."
At the end of ten minutes, he announced with confidence, "Now you can go and remove the earth. You will see ten packets instead of one."
Rup's heart was beating with happiness. I will have so many gold ornaments to give to Father and make him rich! He ran off to the place where he had hidden the packet and started digging. There was no packet!
I must have forgotten where I hid it.
He ran frantically to a few different trees and again dug in the earth. But he saw that the first place was the right one because it had the freshly dug mud next to it. He was not mistaken. Let me go back and find the yogi. I will tell him that there has been some mistake.
He hurried back to the tree where the yogi was sitting a few minutes before. He was gone! Rup, poor gullible child, was horrified and ashamed to think of how he had been tricked.
Now the confusion and regret began.
How can I show my face to my father? What will happen when the owner of the ornament comes to pay his money and claim his ornament? If he finds that my father no longer has it, he can sue him.
It was true. Once a mortgage banker was sued in court, his reputation would be spoiled. Often he was put in jail. Moneylending transactions were entirely dependent on maintaining one's good name.
Rup was baffled and frightened. He did not go home right away. He sought out a friend and told him what happened. "You fool!" his friend scolded him. "The man was a thief! And there are so many thieves who wear the robes of yogis and swamis but are not real teachers. He must have had some assistant. He knew you were eager to come the next day, so while you were sitting with your eyes closed, the assistant obviously took the packet and ran off with it by the prearranged plan."
For two days Rup remained with his friend. His father went
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