Aesop's Tales/Hermod and the Axeman

An axeman was felling a tree on the bank of a stream, and happened let his axe slip into the water, whereupon it straight away sunk to the bottom. Being thereupon in great woe, he sat down by the side of the stream and bemoaned his loss bitterly. But Mercury whose river it was, looking mildheartedly upon him, stood in the next breath before him; and hearing from him the grounds of his sorrow, dived to the bottom of the river, and bringing up a golden axe, asked the axeman if that was his. Upon the man’s saying that it wasn't, Mercury dived a second time, brought up one of silver. Again the man naysayed that it was his. So diving a third time, he brought forth the axe which the man had lost, “that is mine” said the axeman, gladden to have gotten back his own; and so ptaken was Mercury with the fellow’s truth and uprighteousness, that he at once made him a gift of the other two.

The man goes to his fellow axemen, and giving them a tale of what had happened to him, one of them felt bent to try if he might not have the same good luck. So going to the same place, as if shaping to cut wood, he let slip his axe into the river, and then sat down on the bank, and made a great din and dither of weeping. Mercury came forth as before, and hearing from him that his tears were for the loss of his axe, dived once more into the stream; and bringing up a golden axe, asked if that was the axe he had lost. “Aye, that's it, said the man quickly and wilfully; and was about to grasp it by its' golden head, when Mercury, to scold him for his gall and lying, not only withheld from him that, but would not so much as give back to him his own axe.