The Freeman and His Bits. A Dark Sun Fable.

Not long ago, there was a freeman who used to hide his bits at the base of a boulder outside his home. Every week he would go to the boulder and dig up his bits to gloat over his hoarded wealth. An Elf, who noticed this, went and dug up the bits and ran away with them. When the freeman came to gloat over his treasures the next day, he found nothing but the empty hole. He tore his hair, and raised such an outcry that all the neighbors came and asked what was wrong. He told them how he used to bury and then come and visit his bits.
"Did you ever take any of the bits out?" asked one of them.
"No," he said, "I only came to look at them."
"Then come and look at the hole again," said a neighbor; "it will do you just as much good."