When we came to our abiding place they took the booty from our shoulders and put it carefully away. Then they fell to and dined, and when night came they went off to secure the rest of the things. "Why do we take this wretched ass?" said one of them. "He is useless with his wounded hoof. We will carry some of the things and the horse the rest." So they went off, leading the horse. It was a bright moonlit night. Then I said to myself: "You poor wretch, why do you stay here any longer? Vultures and the children of vultures will dine off you. Don't you hear what they are plotting against you? Do you want to be thrown over a precipice? It is night now and there is a bright moon. The robbers are off on the road. Fly, and save yourself from these cutthroat masters." While I was thus thinking to myself I perceived that I was not even tied to anything, but that the halter by which they led me on the road was hanging alongside. This added circumstance spurred me to the greatest eagerness for flight, and I emerged at a run and was making off; but when the old woman saw me on the point of escaping she seized me by the tail and held on. However, I said to myself that if I were caught by an old woman I should deserve the precipice and any other death, and I dragged her. But she shrieked with all her might to the captive maiden to come out. She ran forward, and when she saw the old woman hanging on to the ass like a second Dirke she found courage for a brave deed and worthy of desperate youth. She sprang onto my back, seated herself there, and urged me on. I, fired with love of freedom and the girl, fled with all my might and ran like a horse, leaving the old woman behind. The girl prayed to the gods to grant her a safe escape, and to me she said: "If you bring me to my father, my pretty ass, I will free you from all labor, and you shall have a bushel of barley every day for breakfast." I ran on, quite forgetting my wound in my eagerness to escape my murderers, and the hope of getting plenty of assistance and attention if I should save the maiden.

But when we came to where the road split into three the enemy met us on their homeward way. They recognized their unhappy prisoners in the moonlight while we were still at a distance, ran up to us, and laid hold of me, saying: "Oho, my fine madam, where are you going at this unseasonable hour, you poor, suffering thing? Aren't you even afraid of ghosts? Come home with us and we will hand you over to your friends." This they said with a sardonic laugh, and they turned me about and dragged me back. Then I remembered my lame foot and fell to limping. "What," said they, "are you lame now because you were caught running away? When your mind was set on flight you were sound and flew on wings, swifter than a horse." These words were followed by the stick, and I got a wound on my thigh at once as a warning. When we turned into our lodging again we found the old woman hanging from a stone by a cord. Apparently she had been so afraid of her masters when they should discover the girl's flight that she had hanged herself. They spoke admiringly of her courage, cut her down, and threw her over the precipice with the cord round her neck. The girl they tied up inside the house, and then they supped and drank heavily.

Meanwhile they began at once to talk with each other about the girl. "What shall we do with the runaway?" asked one of them. "There is nothing to do," said another, "but throw her down on top of our old woman. She has robbed us of as much treasure as she could, and was on her way to betray our whole establishment. For be assured, my friends, that if she had reached her kinsmen not one of us would have been left alive, for our enemies would have fallen on us with every preparation and captured us all. So let us take our revenge on the foe, but not by giving her such an easy death as falling onto the rock. Let us invent for her the most painful and lingering death, and one that will only kill her after keeping her a prisoner in long torment." Then they set themselves to think out a form of death, and some one said, “I know you will applaud my invention. We must kill the ass who is a nuisance, and, moreover, pretends at present to be lame, and helped and ministered to the girl's flight into the bargain. Let us slaughter him, then, early in the morning, cut open his belly, take out all his vitals, and place this virtuous maiden in the ass. We will let her head project so that she may not be stifled at once, but all the rest of her body shall be hidden inside. Then we will stitch her securely in and throw them both out to the vultures, preparing them a novel breakfast. Note, my friends, the horror of the torture: in the first place, to live in the dead body of an ass, then to bake with the beast in the hottest sun of summer, and to die of lingering starvation, unable even to strangle herself. And, finally, the vultures will make their way in through the ass, and tear her flesh along with his while she is yet alive."