A man from the Galilee once traveled to Jerusalem for the three festival pilgrimages. On his way home, rather than carry all his coin across the dangerous roads, he entrusted two hundred dinars to a man he had met in the city, asking him to hold the money until the Galilean returned on the next pilgrimage.
Some months later the Galilean's business took him farther still — all the way to Babylonia — and years passed before he came back.
When at last he returned to Jerusalem and went looking for the man with whom he had left his savings, he could not remember his face clearly. He stopped a certain Jerusalemite he thought was the one, and demanded his money back. "You are holding my two hundred dinars," he said. "Return them."
"I do not know you," the man said, puzzled.
The Galilean, assuming he was being cheated, raised his voice. A crowd gathered. In front of the whole marketplace, he accused the stranger of theft. He called him a liar and a swindler and stormed off.
Later that day the Galilean saw a different face in the crowd — and recognized him. This was the man with whom he had deposited the money. He went up to him politely, and the custodian handed over the full two hundred dinars without argument.
The Galilean understood at once what he had done. He had publicly shamed an innocent man. He returned to the marketplace, called the townspeople together again, and submitted himself to the same public abuse he had laid on the stranger. He stood there while they called him a liar, and he did not defend himself. He bore the shame he had inflicted.
The court, hearing what had happened, awarded the innocent man six hundred dinars in compensation — three times what he had been accused of stealing. The Galilean paid it without protest.
The Exempla keeps the story to teach two things at once. First, public shame is not a small sin: the Torah requires restitution measured to the injury. Second, the mark of a repentant person is not that he says he is sorry but that he accepts the same measure he gave.
(From The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster, 1924, no. 325, from Codex Gaster 185.)