ONE nightfall a man travelling on horseback toward the sea reached an inn by the roadside. He dismounted, and confident in man and night like all riders toward the sea, he tied his horse to a tree beside the door and entered into the inn.
At midnight, when all were asleep, a thief came and stole the traveller’s horse.
In the morning the man awoke, and discovered that his horse was stolen. And he grieved for his horse, and that a man had found it in his heart to steal.
Then his fellow-lodgers came and stood around him and began to talk.
And the first man said, “How foolish of you to tie your horse outside the stable.”
And the second said, “Still more foolish, without even hobbling the horse!”
And the third man said, “It is stupid at best to travel to the sea on horseback.”
And the fourth said, “Only the indolent and the slow of foot own horses.”
Then the traveller was much astonished. At last he cried, “My friends, because my horse is stolen, you have hastened one and all to tell me my faults and my shortcomings. But strange, not one word of reproach have you uttered about the man who stole my horse.”