A poor but generous old woman gives two roguish travelers a night’s lodging and a dinner that includes slices of her treasured ham. The two travelers try to steal the rest of the ham in the middle of the night. The old woman is very suspicious of the men, so she watches them all night. She plays a trick on the two travelers by replacing the ham they had put in their travel bag with an adobe brick. After rising in the morning the two travelers were anxious to leave. The old women suggested that they stay for breakfast since it will be a long day of traveling. After leaving, the two travelers joked about the prank that they just played on the old woman. When they sat down to enjoy their stolen goods, they were surprised to see an adobe brick in place of the delicious ham. The moral of the story was honesty prevails. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trophies, 2005)

This lesson was created as part of the Basal Alignment Project, during which teachers created CCSS-aligned lessons for existing literary and information texts in basal readers. All page numbers and unit/week designations found in this lesson relate to the edition of the basal reader named above. If you are using a trade book or different edition of this title, the page/unit/week references in this lesson will not match. Consult the content referenced in the body of the lesson to determine appropriate page numbers for your text.