Once there lived a very wealthy king.  He prized his massive pile of coins over all else.  So it was that when the Royal Accountant came and told him that some of his fabulous wealth was missing from the Royal Vault, The King was most distressed.  The guard were dispatched to find the thieves responsible.

  No clues were found at the scene, so the guards simply played it safe and chased all rogues out of the lands.  Then they closed the borders so that the scalawags could never return.

  The King was feeling good about the guard's work when the Royal Accountant once more approached the King and told him that more coins were missing.

  The King was furious! He rounded up the castle guard and grilled them all at the point of his royal sword, perforating several of the more guilty-seeming ones.  The remaining guards were told to either submit to having their hands removed and replaced with dirks, or leave the lands.

  ...Naturally, all the remaining guards left.

  The King installed a complex locking system on the Vault to replace the guards who could not be trusted, and slept soundly once more.

  The next day, the Royal Accountant once again approached the King with grim news.. Yet more coins were no longer...

  The King stared at the Accountant with daggers in his eyes.  How could he have been so blind? This coin counting fraud must have been embezzling his fabulous wealth all along!

  The accountants remains were catapulted in several different directions.  The King took a good counting of his remaining coins, and sealed the vault so that nobody would be carrying his wealth off again.

  A moon later, the head of the Knights approached the King, bearing grim news.  There were armies amassing on the borders!  Normally they would conscript the castle guard to bolster their defenses, but they were gone!  Adventurers also made good sell swords, but with the borders closed there were none to be found!

  The King scoffed at the Knight's desperate speech.  Money solves all problems, he told the Knight, and went to his Vault to get the coins needed to hire enough mercenaries to stave off this scourge.

  After an hour of winding locks and counter-spells, the King opened the door to his Vault.  Staring inside, his face fell deathly pale.  All his wealth.. gone!  Not a coin to be seen!  Save one single coin, held in the mouth of a rat, which was scurrying towards a small hole in the back of the vault.

  With his precious money gone, the King and his land fell to the might of the invading armies.  The King was dethroned, and left to live life as a beggar in what was once his own kingdom, richer only in the lesson he had learned:

  Sometimes the little things can bring ruin.