The Golden Axe

Once upon a time, a very poor man lived in Vietnam near the jungle with his wife. Every day he would go deep into the jungle to chop wood. His wife then brought the wood for heating to the market, where she exchanged it for rice. The man honestly worked hard from dawn to dusk, but still he barely earned a living.

One day the lumberjack was working on the river bank. All at once, his axe slipped from his tired palms and fell right into the water making a loud splash. The man immediately jumped into the water, but his search was in vain.

The ground seemed to have swallowed the axe. He climbed ashore, soaked and unhappy. He sat down and sighed. How would he feed himself and his wife now that he didn't even have an axe?

He sat there with his head down for a moment when he noticed someone was looking at him. He looked up - indeed! A little old man was standing in front of him.

“What is bothering you, my son?” asked the strange old man while he sat down with him.

The lumberjack told him everything: how they had little to eat with his wife, how he worked hard all day, and how now, to his great misfortune, he had lost his axe, their livelihood, and their only possessions.

“I can see you are a good and honest man,” the stranger said, patting him on the shoulder. “So I will help you. If you wait here for a moment, I will bring the axe back.”

But the lumberjack couldn’t help but feel sad. “I have already looked everywhere, and there was no trace of my axe. I only got wet! Old man, I'm afraid you’ll get soaking…