The Dream Hunters

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A monk lived in solitude beside a temple on the side of a mountain. It was a small temple, and the monk was a young monk, and the mountain was not the most beautiful or impressive mountain in Japan.

The monk tended the temple, and he passed his days in peace and quiet until the day that a fox and a badger passed the temple and spied the monk hoeing the little plot of yams which fed him for much of the year.

The badger looked at the monk and the temple, and he said, «Let us make a wager. Whichever of us succeeds in driving that man from the temple will keep the place as a home; for it has been many years since pilgrims or travellers came to this temple, and it will be a finer place by far to live than a badger's set or a fox's den.»

And the fox smiled with her sharp teeth, and blinked her green eyes, and she swished her brush and she looked down the hill at the temple and at the monk, then she looked at the badger and she said, «Very well. A wager it is.»

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