A young shepherd named Hari took the village goats out to graze every morning. One afternoon, while he was sitting beneath a banyan tree, three goats wandered into a neighbour's tomato garden and ate half the crop. Hari ran and brought them back, but the damage was done. When he returned to his master's house that evening, he could have said the goats had eaten wild grass. Instead he told the truth straight away. The master was angry — the day's milk had to be sold to pay the neighbour. But that night, while serving Hari's dinner, the master's wife placed an extra ladle of dal on his plate. "A boy who speaks truth when he could lie," she said, "is worth more than a hundred tomatoes."