Page 102 [102]
OCR
88 PINOCCHIO and on that account I met on the road two assassins in charcoal sacks who said to me: ‘Qut with your money,’ and I said to them: ‘I have got none,’ because I had hidden the four gold pieces in my mouth, and one of the assassins tried to put his hand in my mouth, and I bit his hand off and spat it out, but instead of a hand I spat out a cats paw. And the assassins ran after me, and I ran, and ran, until at last they caught me, and tied me by the neck to a tree in this wood, and said to me: ‘ ‘To-morrow we shall return here, and then you will be dead with your mouth open, and we shall be able to carry off the pieces of gold that you have hidden under your tongue.’ ” " And the four pieces—where have you put them?” asked the Fairy. “TI have lost them!” said Pinocchio; but he was telling a lie, for they were in his pocket. He had scarcely told the lie when his nose, which was already long, grew at once two fingers longer. " And where did you Icse them? ” ‘In the wood near here.” At this second lie his nose went on growing. “Tf you have lost them in the wood near here,” said the Fairy, “ we will look for them, and we shall find them: because everything that is lost in that wood is always found.”
