The Merchant's Iron Scale and the Hawk's Son

A merchant, leaving town for business, left an enormous iron scale weighing several hundred pounds in the care of a friend for safekeeping. When he returned and asked for it back, the friend — who had secretly sold the valuable iron himself — claimed with a straight face that mice had eaten the entire scale while it sat in storage.

The merchant, recognizing an obvious lie but choosing patience over confrontation, said nothing and simply asked to take the friend's young son along for the day, since he wanted company on a walk to the river. He then hid the boy safely in a cave and told the worried father, when asked, that a hawk had swooped down and carried the child away.

"That's impossible," the father protested furiously, "a hawk cannot carry off a boy — he's far too heavy!" The merchant replied evenly, "And yet in a town where mice can devour an iron scale weighing three hundred pounds, why shouldn't a hawk carry off a child?" The friend, cornered by his own absurd lie reflected back at him, confessed at once and returned the merchant's iron, while the boy was returned unharmed — a fitting lesson that a false claim, however convenient, invites an equally false answer in return.