The once-humble village of Swampmuck expanded rapidly as villagers bought larger and larger tracts of land upon which they built larger and more ornate houses. To finance this, they began selling the cannibals both an arm and a leg (the leg always on the opposite side from the arm, to make balancing easier), and learned to get around on crutches. The cannibals, whose hunger and wealth both seemed inexhaustible, were very happy with this. Then Mister Pullman tore down his wooden house and replaced it with one made of brick, which touched off a race amongst the villagers to see who could build the grandest brick house. But Mister Bettelheim bested them all: he built a beautiful house made of honey-colored limestone, the sort of home only the richest merchants in Chipping Whippet lived in. He had afforded it by selling his arm and both of his legs.

“He’s gone too far!” complained Mrs. Sally over goat-rump sandwiches in the fancy new restaurant the village had built.

Her friends agreed.

“How does he plan to enjoy his three-floor house,” said Mrs. Wannamaker, “if he can’t even walk up the stairs?”

It was just at that moment that Mister Bettelheim came into the restaurant—carried by a burly man from the neighboring village. “I’ve hired a man to carry me up and down the stairs, and anywhere else I want to go,” he said proudly. “I don’t need legs!”

The ladies were astounded. But soon they had sold their legs, too, and all across the village brick houses were being torn down and replaced by giant houses made of limestone.

The cannibals, by this time, had abandoned the coast of Meek to live in the forest near Swampmuck. There was no point anymore in subsisting on a meager diet of hanged criminals and accident victims’ limbs when the villagers’ limbs were fresher, tastier, and more plentiful than anything available in Meek. Their forest homes were modest because they gave so much of their money to the villagers, but the cannibals were nevertheless content, much happier to live in huts with full bellies than to go hungry in mansions.

As the villagers and the cannibals came to depend on one another, the appetites of each continued to grow. The cannibals became fat. Having exhausted every recipe they had for arms and legs, they began to wonder what the villagers’ ears tasted like. But the villagers would not sell them their ears, because ears did not grow back. That is until Mister Bachelard, carried in the arms of his burly servant, paid a secret visit to the cannibals’ forest and asked them how much they’d be willing to pay. He’d still be able to hear without his ears, he reasoned, and though it would make him a bit ugly, the fine house of white marble he’d be able to construct with the proceeds would be beautiful enough to compensate. (Now, the financially astute among you may be asking: why didn’t Mister Bachelard just save up money from the ongoing sale of his arms and legs until he could afford a marble house? It’s because he couldn’t save money, because he’d taken out a very large loan from a bank in order to buy the land upon which his limestone house was built, and now he owed the bank an arm and a leg every month just to pay interest on the loan. So, he needed to sell his ears.)