She opened her saddlepack to reveal a wad of money and jewels. The villagers goggled at the money, but they felt uncertain and turned away to whisper amongst themselves.

“We can’t sell our limbs,” Farmer Pullman reasoned. “I need my legs for walking!”

“Then only sell your arms,” said Farmer Bachelard.

“But we need our arms for swamp-mucking!” said Farmer Hayworth.

“If we’re being paid for our arms, we won’t need to grow swampweed anymore,” said Farmer Anderson. “We hardly earn anything from farming, anyway.”

“It doesn’t seem right, selling ourselves that way,” said Farmer Hayworth.

“Easy for you to say!” said Farmer Bettelheim. “You’ve got a house made of wood!”

And so the villagers made a deal with the cannibals: those who were right-handed would sell their left arms, and those who were left-handed would sell their right arms, and they’d keep on selling them as they grew back. That way they’d have a steady source of income and would never again have to spend all day mucking or endure a difficult harvest. Everyone seemed pleased with the arrangement except Farmer Hayworth, who rather enjoyed swamp-mucking, and was sorry to see the village give up its traditional trade, even if it wasn’t very profitable compared to selling one’s limbs to cannibals.

But there was nothing Farmer Hayworth could do, and he watched helplessly as all his neighbors gave up farming, let their swamps go fallow, and hacked their arms off. (Their peculiarity was such that it didn’t hurt much, and the limbs came off rather easily, like a lizard’s tail.) They used the money they earned to buy food from the market at Chipping Whippet—goat-rump became a dish eaten daily rather than annually—and to build houses made of wood, like Farmer Hayworth’s. Everyone wanted a door that swung on hinges, of course. Then Farmer Pullman built a house with two floors, and soon everyone wanted a house with two floors. Then Farmer Sally built a house with two floors and a gabled roof, and soon everyone wanted houses with two floors and a gabled roof. Every time the villagers’ arms regrew and were hacked off and sold again, they would use the money to add to their houses. Finally the houses grew so big that there was hardly any room between them, and the village square, once wide and open, was reduced to a narrow alley.

Farmer Bachelard was the first one to hit upon a solution. He would buy a big plot of land on the outskirts of the village and build a new house there, even larger than his current one (which had, incidentally, three doors that swung on hinges, two floors, a gabled roof, and a porch). This was around the time when the villagers stopped going by “Farmer this” and “Farmer that” and started calling themselves “Mister this” and “Mrs. that,” because they were no longer farmers—except for Farmer Hayworth, who kept on mucking his swamp and refused to sell any more limbs to the cannibals. He liked his simple house just fine, he insisted, and didn’t even use it that much because he still enjoyed sleeping in his swamp after a hard day’s work. His friends thought him silly and old-fashioned, and stopped coming by to see him.