From the bones of the cattle he laid three bridges
The Devil swallowed hard and said:
“N—no, I’m not going to lose my temper, but I must say, Erkki, that I’m very much annoyed with you!”
The next day the Devil wanted to go a-wooing again and before he started he said to Erkki:
“Now, no nonsense this time! While I’m gone you’re to build three bridges over the lake, but they’re not to be built of wood or stone or iron or earth. Do you understand?”
Erkki pretended to be frightened.
“That’s a pretty hard task you’ve given me, master!”
“Hard or easy, see that you get it done!” the Devil said.
Erkki waited until the Devil was gone, then he went out to the field and slaughtered all the Devil’s cattle. From the bones of the cattle he laid three bridges across the lake, using the skulls for one bridge, the ribs for another, and the legs and the hoofs for the third. Then when the Devil got back, Erkki met him and pointing to the bridges said:
“See, master, there they are, three bridges put together without stick, stone, iron, or bit of earth!”
When the Devil found out that all his cattle had been slaughtered to give bones for the bridges, he was ready to kill Erkki, but Erkki quieted him by saying:
“There now, master, you’re not going to lose your temper over a little thing like the slaughter of a few cattle, are you? Remember our bargain!”
So again the Devil had to swallow his anger.
“No,” he said, “I’m not going to lose my temper exactly but I just want to tell you, Erkki, that I don’t think you’re behaving well!”
The Devil’s wooing was successful and pretty soon he brought home a new wife. The new wife didn’t like having Erkki about, so the Devil promised her he’d kill the boy.
“I’ll do it to-night,” he said, “when he’s asleep.”
Erkki overheard this and that night he put the churn in his bed under the covers, and where his head ordinarily would be he put a big round stone. Then he himself curled up on the stove and went comfortably to sleep.
During the night the Devil took his great sword from the wall and went over to Erkki’s bed. His first blow hit the round stone and nicked the sword. His second blow struck sparks.
“Mercy me!” the Devil thought, “he’s got a mighty hard head! I better strike lower!”
With the third stroke he hit the churn a mighty blow. The hoops flew apart and the churn collapsed.
The Devil went chuckling back to bed.
“Ha!” he said boastfully to his wife, “I got him that time!”
But the next morning when he woke up he didn’t feel like laughing for there was Erkki as lively as ever and pretending that nothing had happened.
“What!” cried the Devil in amazement, “didn’t you feel anything strike you last night while you were asleep?”
“Oh, I did feel a few mosquitoes brushing my cheek,” Erkki said. “Nothing else.”
“Steel doesn’t touch him!” the Devil said to his wife. “I think I’ll try fire on him.”
So that night the Devil told Erkki to sleep in the threshing barn. Erkki carried his cot down to the threshing floor and then when it was dark he shifted it into the hay barn where he slept comfortably all night.
During the night the Devil set fire to the threshing barn. In the early dawn Erkki carried his cot back to the place of the threshing barn and in the morningwhen the Devil came out the first thing he saw was Erkki unharmed and peacefully sleeping among the smoking ruins.
“Mercy me, Erkki!” he shouted, shaking him awake, “have you been asleep all night?”
Erkki sat up and yawned.
“Yes, I’ve had a fine night’s sleep. But I did feel a little chilly.”
“Chilly!” the Devil gasped.
After that the Devil’s one thought was to get rid of Erkki.
“That boy’s getting on my nerves!” he told his wife. “I just can’t stand him much longer! What are we going to do about him?”
They discussed one plan after another and at last decided that the only way they’d ever get rid of him would be to move away and leave him behind.
“I’ll send him out to the forest to chop wood all day,” the Devil said, “and while he’s gone we’ll row ourselves and all our belongings out to an island and when he comes back he won’t know where we’ve gone.”
Erkki overheard this plan and the next day when they were sure he was safely at work in the forest he slipped back and hid himself in the bedclothes.
Well, when they got to the island and began unpacking their things there was Erkki in the bedclothes!
The Devil’s new wife complained bitterly.
“If you really loved me,” she said, “you’d cut off that boy’s head!”
“But I’ve tried to cut it off!” the Devil declared, “and I never can do it! Plague take such a boy! I’ve always known the Finns were an obstinate lot but I must say I’ve never met one as bad as Erkki! He’s too much for me!”
But the Devil’s wife kept on complaining until at last the Devil promised that he would try once again to cut off Erkki’s head.
“Very well,” his wife said, “to-night when he’s asleep I’ll wake you.”
Well, what with the moving and everything the wife herself was tired and as soon as she went to bed she fell asleep. That gave Erkki just the very chance he needed to try on the new wife the trick he had played on the old one. Without waking her he carried her to his bed and then laid himself down in her place beside the Devil. Then he waked up the Devil and reminded him that he had promised to cut off Erkki’s head.
The poor old Devil got up and went over to Erkki’s bed and of course cut off the head of his new wife.
The next morning when he had found out what he had done, he was perfectly furious.
“You get right out of here, Erkki!” he roared. “I never want to see you again!”
“There now, master,” Erkki said, “you’re not going to lose your temper over a little thing like a dead wife, are you?”
“I am so going to lose my temper!” the Devil shouted. “And what’s more it isn’t a little thing! I liked this wife, I did, and I don’t know where I’ll get another one I like as well! So you just clear out of here and be quick about it, too!”
“Very well, master,” Erkki said, “I’ll go but not until you pay me what you owe me.”
“What I owe you!” bellowed the Devil. “What about all you owe me for my house and my cattle and my old wife and my dear new wife and everything!”
“You’ve lost your temper,” Erkki said, “and now you’ve got to pay me a patch of your hide big enough to sole a pair of boots. That was our bargain!”
The Devil roared and blustered but Erkki was firm. He wouldn’t budge a step until the Devil had allowed him to slit a great patch of hide off his back.
That piece of the Devil’s hide made the finest soles that a pair of boots ever had. It wore for years andyears and years. In fact Erkki is still tramping around on those same soles. The fame of them has spread over all the land and it has got so that now people stop Erkki on the highway to look at his wonderful boots soled with the Devil’s hide. Travelers from foreign countries are deeply interested when they hear about the boots and when they meet Erkki they question him closely.
“Tell us,” they beg him, “how did you get the Devil’s hide in the first place?”
Erkki always laughs and makes the same answer:
“I got it by not losing my temper!”
As for the Devil, he’s never again made a bargain like that with a Finn!
The Story of a Young Man Who Respected the Dead
THE MYSTERIOUS SERVANT
There was once a rich merchant who had an only son. As he lay dying, he said:
“Matti, my boy, my end is approaching and there are two things I want to say to you: The first is that I am leaving you all my wealth. If you are careful you will have enough to suffice you for life. The second thing I have to say is to beg you never to leave this, your native village. At your birth there was a prophecy which declared that if ever you left this village you would have to marry a woman with horns. Now that I have warned you in time it will be your own fault if ever you have to meet this fate.”
The merchant died and Matti was left alone. He had never before wanted to travel but now that he knew of the fate which would overtake him if he did, he couldn’t bear the thought of remaining forever a prisoner in his native village.
“What is the use of riches,” he asked himself, “if one can’t travel over the broad world and see wonderful sights? Besides, if it’s my fate to marry a horned woman, I don’t see why sitting quietly at home is going to save me. No! I’m going to take my chances like a man and come and go as I like!”
So he gathered his riches together, closed the old house where he had been born, and started out into the bright world. He traveled many days, meeting strange peoples and seeing strange sights. At last he settled down in a large city and became a merchant like his father.
One afternoon as he was out walking, he saw a crowd of men dragging the body of a dead man in the gutter. They were kicking and abusing the dead body and calling it evil names.
Matti stopped them.
“What is this you are doing?” he demanded. “Don’t you know that disrespect to the dead is disrespect to God? Give over abusing this poor dead body and bury it decently or God will punish you!”
“Let us alone!” the men cried. “He deserves the abuse we are giving him! When he was alive he borrowed money from us all and then he died without repaying us. Are we to have no satisfaction at all?”
With that they resumed their abuse of the dead body.
“Wait!” Matti cried. “Tell me what the dead man owed you and I will pay it!”
“He owed me ten ducats!” said one.
“And me a hundred!” shouted another.
“And me five hundred!”
“And me a thousand!”
“Come all of you to my house,” Matti said, “and I will pay you, but only on condition that first you hand over the body to me and help me give it a decent burial.”
The men agreed. They helped Matti bury the dead man and then went home with him.
Each told Matti the amount the dead man owed him and, true to his promise, Matti paid them all.
When he had paid the last man he found that he had nothing left for himself but nine silver kopeks. The dead man’s debts had exhausted all the wealth his father had left him.
“No matter!” Matti thought to himself. “My riches would have done me no good if I had stood by and allowed a poor dead man to be abused. What if I have nothing left? I’m young and strong and I can go out into the world and make my livelihood somehow. I’ll go home and have one last look at my native village and then begin life anew.”
So, dressed in shabby old clothes with nothing in his pockets but the nine silver kopeks, Matti left the city where people were beginning to know him as a merchant and started back to his native village. He was soon met by a man who addressed him respectfully and asked to be engaged as his servant.
“My servant!” Matti repeated with a laugh. “My dear fellow, I’m too poor to have a servant! All I have in the world are nine silver kopeks!”
“No matter, master,” the man said. “Take me anyhow. I will serve you well and I promise you will not regret our bargain.”
So Matti agreed and they walked on together. The sun was hot and by midafternoon Matti was feeling faint with hunger and fatigue.
“Master,” the Servant said, “I will run ahead to the next village and order the landlord at the inn to prepare you a fine dinner. Do you come along slowly and by the time you arrive the dinner will be ready.”
“But remember,” Matti warned him, “I have no money to pay for a fine dinner!”
“Trust me!” the Servant said and off he hurried.
At the next village he hunted out the best inn and ordered the landlord to prepare his finest dinner without delay. He was so particular that everything should bethe best that the landlord supposed his master must be some great lord.
When Matti arrived on foot, tired and travel-stained and shabby, the landlord was amazed.
“It’s fine lords we have nowadays!” he muttered scornfully, and he wished he had not been in such haste to cook the best food in the house. But it was cooked and ready to serve and so, with an ill grace, he served it.
Matti and his man ate their fill of good cabbage soup and fish and fowl tender and juicy.
It quite enraged the landlord to see poor men with such good appetites.
“They eat as if their pockets were lined with gold!” he muttered angrily. “Well, let them eat while they can for they’ll lose their appetites once they see the reckoning!”
When they finished eating, they rested and then called for the reckoning. It was much more than it should have been but neither Matti nor the Servant objected.
“Like a good fellow,” the Servant said, “will you please to lend me your half peck measure.”
“Like a good fellow, indeed!” the landlord muttered to himself. “Who are you to call me a good fellow I’d like to know!”
Nevertheless he went out and got the measure.
“Now, master,” the Servant said, “give me three of your nine silver kopeks.”
The Servant threw the three silver kopeks into the measure, shook the measure three times and lo! it was filled to the brim with silver kopeks! The Servant counted out the amount of the reckoning and handed the rest of the money to his master. Then he and Matti went on their way leaving the landlord gaping after them with open mouth.
Day after day the Servant paid the reckoning in the same way at the various inns where they stopped until they reached at last Matti’s native village and the old house that still belonged to him.
They settled themselves there and one day the Servant said to Matti:
“Now, master, you know your fate: for having left your native village you know you are destined to marry a horned woman. You might as well do it at once for you’ll have to do it sooner or later.”
“That is true,” Matti said, “and if I knew the whereabouts of the horned woman who is my fate I should marry her at once.”
“In that case we’ll lose no more time,” the Servant said. “The King has three daughters all of whom arehorned. This isn’t generally known but it is true. Let us go to the palace and present your suit. The King will give friendly ear for there are not many suitors for daughters with horns. He will try to make you take the oldest who has big horns and a hoarse voice. When she sees you, she’ll whisper: ‘Take me! Take me!’ But do you shake your head and answer: ‘No! Not this one!’ Then the King will send for his second daughter. Her horns are not so big nor is her voice so hoarse. She, too, will whisper you: ‘Take me! Take me!’ But do you again shake your head and answer: ‘No! Not this one!’ Be firm and the King will finally have to send for his youngest daughter. Her horns are just soft little baby horns and her voice is just a little husky. Take her and soon all will be well.”
So Matti and the Servant went to the palace and got audience with the King.
“My master, Matti,” the Servant said, addressing the King, “is desirous of marrying a wife with horns.”
The King was interested at once.
“As it happens I have a daughter with horns,” he said. “I’ll have her come in.”
He sent for his oldest daughter and presently she appeared. Her horns were long and thick.
“Take me! Take me!” she whispered hoarsely as she passed Matti.
“See what a fine girl she is!” the King said, “and what well grown horns she has!”
But Matti shook his head.
“No, Your Majesty, I don’t think I want to marry this one.”
“Of course you must follow the dictates of your heart,” the King said drily. “However, come to think of it, my second daughter also has horns. Maybe you’d like to consider her.”
So the second daughter was called in. Her horns were not so large as her sister’s nor was her voice so hoarse. But Matti, remembering the Servant’s warning, refused her, too. The King seemed surprised and even annoyed that Matti should refuse his daughters so glibly, but when he found that Matti was firm he said:
“I have got another daughter, my youngest, but, if it’s horns you’re looking for, I don’t believe you’ll be interested in her at all since her horns are so small and soft that they are hardly noticeable at all. However, as you’re here, you might as well see her.”
“She is under an evil enchantment and I am delivering her!”
So the youngest princess was sent for and at once Matti knew that she was the one he wanted to marry.She wasn’t as beautiful as a princess should be but she was gentle and modest and when she passed Matti her cheeks flushed and she wasn’t able to whisper anything. But Matti felt very sure that if she had whispered her voice would have been scarcely husky.
“This, O King,” he said, “is my choice! Let me marry your youngest daughter and I promise to be a faithful husband to her.”
The King would have preferred to marry off the older princesses first for their horns were getting to be very troublesome, but as they all had horns he was afraid to refuse Matti’s offer.
So after a little talk he gave Matti the youngest and in a short time they were married.
After the wedding feast the King led the young couple to the bridal chamber and closed the door.
Matti’s Servant meantime had gone out to the woods and cut some stout switches of birch. When the palace was quiet and all were asleep, he crept softly into the bridal chamber and, dragging the bride out of bed, he beat her unmercifully.
“Oh! Oh!” she cried in pain.
Her screams woke Matti and in fright he jumped out of bed and tried to stop the Servant.
“Wait!” the Servant said. “She is under an evil enchantment and I am delivering her!”
So he kept on beating her until he had drawn blood. Then instantly the horns fell from her head and there she stood a beautiful young girl released from the evil enchantment that had disfigured her.
The Servant handed her over to her husband who fell in love with her on sight and has loved her ever since.
“Now farewell, Matti,” the Servant said. “My work is done and you will need me no longer. You have married a beautiful princess and the King will soon make you his heir.”
With these words the Servant disappeared and Matti was left alone with his lovely bride.
And that was Matti’s reward for having respected the dead. God Himself in the form of the Servant had come down and taken care of him.
I Mary, Mary, So Contrary!II Jane, Jane, Don’t Complain!III Susan Walker, What a Talker!
When she got to the middle of the stream
There was once a farmer who was married to the most contrary wife in the world. Her name was Maya. If he expected Maya to say, “Yes,” she would always say, “No,” and if he expected her to say, “No,” she would always say, “Yes.” If he said the soup was too hot, Maya would instantly insist that it was too cold. She would do nothing that he wanted her to do, and she always insisted on doing everything that he did not want her to do.
Like most contrary people Maya was really very stupid and the farmer after he had been married to her for a few years knew exactly how to manage her.
For instance at Christmas one year he wanted to make a big feast for his friends and neighbors. Did he tell his wife so? Not he! Instead, a few weeks beforehand he remarked casually:
“Christmas is coming and I suppose every one willexpect us to have fine white bread. But I don’t think we ought to. It’s too expensive. Black bread is good enough for us.”
“Black bread, indeed!” cried Maya. “Not at all! We’re going to have white bread and you needn’t say any more about it! Black bread at Christmas! To hear you talk people would suppose we are beggars!”
The farmer pretended to be grieved and he said:
“Well, my dear, have white bread if your heart is set on it, but I hope you don’t expect to make any pies.”
“Not make any pies! Just let me tell you I expect to make all the pies I want!”
“Well, now, Maya, if we have pies I don’t think we ought to have any wine.”
“No wine! I like that! Of course we’ll have wine on Christmas!”
The farmer was much pleased but, still pretending to protest, he said:
“Well, if we spend money on wine, we better not expect to buy any coffee.”
“What! No coffee on Christmas! Who ever heard of such a thing! Of course we’ll have coffee!”
“Well, I’m not going to quarrel with you! Get a little coffee if you like, but just enough for you and me for I don’t think we ought to have any guests.”
“What! No guests on Christmas! Indeed and you’re wrong if you think we’re not going to have a houseful of guests!”
The farmer was overjoyed but, still pretending to grumble, he said:
“If you have the house full of people, you needn’t think I’m going to sit at the head of the table, for I’m not!”
“You are, too!” screamed his wife. “That’s exactly where you are going to sit!”
“Maya, Maya, don’t get so excited! I will sit there if you insist. But if I do you mustn’t expect me to pour the wine.”
“And why not? It would be a strange thing if you didn’t pour the wine at your own table!”
“All right, all right, I’ll pour it! But you mustn’t expect me to taste it beforehand.”
“Of course you’re going to taste it beforehand!”
This was exactly what the farmer wanted his wife to say. So you see by pretending to oppose her at every turn he was able to have the big Christmas party that he wanted and he was able to feast to his heart’s content with all his friends and relatives and neighbors.
Time went by and Maya grew more and more contrary if such a thing were possible. Summer came andthe haymaking season. They were going to a distant meadow to toss hay and had to cross an angry little river on a footbridge made of one slender plank.
The farmer crossed in safety, then he called back to his wife:
“Walk very carefully, Maya, for the plank is not strong!”
“I will not walk carefully!” the wife declared.
She flung herself on the plank with all her weight and when she got to the middle of the stream she jumped up and down just to show her husband how contrary she could be. Well, the plank broke with a snap, Maya fell into the water, the current carried her off, and she was drowned!
Her husband, seeing what had happened, ran madly upstream shouting:
“Help! Help!”
The haymakers heard him and came running to see what was the matter.
“My wife has fallen into the river!” he cried, “and the current has carried her body away!”
“What ails you?” the haymakers said. “Are you mad? If the current has carried your wife away, she’s floating downstream, not upstream!”
“Any other woman would float downstream,” thefarmer said. “Yes! But you know Maya! She’s so contrary she’d float upstream every time!”
“That’s true,” the haymakers said, “she would!”
So all afternoon the farmer searched upstream for his wife’s body but he never found it.
When night came he went home and had a good supper of all the things he liked to eat which Maya would never let him have.
They were so busy eating and drinking
There was once a man who was poor and lazy and he had a wife who was even worse. Her name was Jenny. Jenny was so lazy that it was an effort for her to lift one foot after the other. And in addition to her laziness she was an everlasting complainer. “Oh!” she used to grunt in the morning, “I wish we didn’t have to get up!” and “Oh!” she used to groan at night, “I wish we didn’t have to take our shoes off before going to bed!”
One day when they were both out in the forest collecting faggots, Jenny said:
“I don’t see why we’re not rich! I don’t see why the King should live at his ease while we have to grub for everything we get! I just hate work!”
Of course the trouble both with Jenny and her husband was not that they worked but that they didn’t work. It was because they didn’t that they had so much time to think about it.
“Drat it all!” Jenny went on, whining, “Adam and Eve are to blame for all our misfortunes! If they hadn’t disobeyed God’s commandment and eaten that apple, we’d all be living in the Garden of Eden to this day! It’s all their fault that we have to moil and toil and hurry and scurry!”
“Yes,” the man agreed, “it is, especially Eve’s. Of course Adam was to blame, too, for he should have controlled his wife better. But Eve was the more to blame. If I had been Adam I shouldn’t have allowed her to touch the apple in the first place.”
Now it happened that the King who was out hunting that day overheard this conversation.
“Ha!” he thought to himself, “I’ve a great mind to teach these two people a lesson!”
He pushed aside the bushes that had hidden him from them and said:
“Good day to you both! I have just heard your complaints and I, too, think it very hard that you should be poor while others are rich. I tell you what I’ll do: I’ll take you both home with me to the castle and maintain you in ease and luxury provided you obey me in just one thing.”
Jenny and her husband agreed to this eagerly and just as they were the King took them home with him tothe castle. He lodged them in a room with golden furniture, he gave them fine clothes to wear, and for food he had them served the choicest delicacies in the world.
As they sat eating their first royal meal, he came in to them carrying in his hands a covered dish of silver. He put the dish down in the center of the table.
“Now, my friends,” he said, “I promised to maintain you in this ease and luxury provided you obeyed me in one thing. You see this silver dish. I forbid you ever to lift the cover. If you disobey me, that moment I shall take from you your fine clothes and send you back to your poverty and misery.”
With that the King left them and they stuffed themselves to their hearts’ content with the delicate foods set before them.
They were so busy, eating and drinking and admiring themselves in their fine clothes, that for the first day they didn’t give the covered dish a thought. The second day the wife noticed it and said:
“That’s the thing we’re not to touch. Well, for my part I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to do anything but eat and sleep and try on my pretty new clothes.”
By the third day they had eaten so much and sosteadily that they were no longer hungry and when they lay down on the big soft bed they no longer fell instantly asleep.
“Dear me,” Jenny began whining, “I don’t know what’s the matter with this food! It doesn’t taste as good as it used to! Maybe the cook has grown careless! I think we ought to complain to the King. I’m beginning to feel very uncomfortable and I haven’t any appetite at all! I wonder what’s in that covered dish. Perhaps it’s something to eat, something perfectly delicious! I’ve half a mind to lift the cover and see.”
“Now just you leave that silver dish alone!” the man growled. He, too, had been eating too much and was feeling peevish. “Don’t you remember what the King said?”
“Pooh!” cried Jenny. “What do I care what the King said! I think he was just poking fun at us telling us we mustn’t lift the cover of that silver dish. After all a dish is a dish and it’s no crime to lift a cover even if it is made of silver!”
With that Jenny jumped up and before her husband could stop her she lifted the forbidden cover. Instantly a little white mouse hopped out of the silver dish and scurried away.
“Oh!” Jenny screamed, dropping the cover with a great clatter.
The King who was in an adjoining chamber heard the noise and came in.
“So!” he said, “you have done the one thing that I told you not to do! You haven’t been here three days and although you’ve had everything that heart could wish for yet you couldn’t obey me in this one little matter!”
“Your Majesty,” the man said, “it was my wife who did it, not I.”
“No matter,” the King said, “you, too, are to blame. If you had restrained her it wouldn’t have happened.”
Then he called his servants and had them strip off the fine clothes and dress the couple again in their old rags.
“Now,” he said as he drove them from the castle gates, “never again blame Adam and Eve for the misfortunes which you bring upon yourselves!”
They carried home the treasure on their backs
There was once a man whose wife was an awful talker. Her name was Susanna. No matter how important it was to keep a matter quiet, if Susanna knew about it, she just had to talk. She was always running to the neighbors and exclaiming:
“Oh, my dear, have you heard so and so?”
Her husband was an industrious fellow. He set nets in the river, he snared birds in the forest, and he worked at any odd jobs that came along.
It happened one day while he was out in the forest that he found a buried treasure.
“Ah!” he thought to himself, “now I can buy a little farm that will keep me and Susanna comfortable the rest of our days!”
He started home at once to tell his wife the good fortune that had befallen them. He had almost reached home when he stopped, suddenly realizing that the first thing Susanna would do would be to spread the newsbroadcast throughout the village. Then of course the government would get wind of his find and presently officers of the law would come and confiscate the entire treasure.
“That would never do,” he told himself. “I must think out some plan whereby I can let Susanna know about the treasure without risking the loss of it.”
He puzzled over the matter for a long time and at last hit upon something that he thought might prove successful.
In his nets that day he had caught a pike and in one of his snares he had found a grouse. He went back now to the river and put the bird in the fishnet, and then he went to the woods and put the fish in the snare. This done he went home and at once told Susanna about the buried treasure which was going to be the means of making their old age comfortable.
She flew at once into great excitement.
“La! La! A buried treasure! Whoever heard of such luck! Oh, how all the neighbors will envy us when they hear about it! I can hardly wait to tell them!”
“But they mustn’t hear!” her husband told her. “You don’t want the officers of the law coming and taking it all from us, do you?”
“That would be a nice how-do-you-do!” Susanna cried. “What! Come and take our treasure that you found yourself in the forest?”
“Yes, my dear, that’s exactly what they’d do if once they heard about it.”
“Well, you can depend upon it, my dear husband, not a soul will hear about it from me!”
She shook her head vigorously and repeated this many times and then tried to slip out of the house on some such excuse as needing to borrow a cup of meal from a neighbor.
But the man insisted on her staying beside him all evening. She kept remembering little errands that would take her to the houses of various neighbors but each time she attempted to leave her husband called her back. At last he got her safely to bed.
Early next morning, before she had been able to talk to any one, he said:
“Now, my dear, come with me to the forest and help me to carry home the treasure. On the way we’d better see if we’ve got anything in the nets and the snares.”
They went first to the river and when the man had lifted his nets they found a grouse which he made Susanna reach over and get. Then in the woods he let her make the discovery of a pike in one of the snares.She was all the while so excited about the treasure that she hadn’t mind enough left to be surprised that a bird should be caught in a fishnet and a fish in a birdsnare.
Well, they found the precious treasure and they stowed it away in two sacks which they carried home on their backs. On the way home Susanna could scarcely refrain from calling out to every passerby some hint of their good fortune. As they passed the house of Helmi, her dearest crony, she said to her husband:
“My dear, won’t you just wait here a moment while I run in and get a drink of water?”
“You mustn’t go in just now,” her husband said. “Don’t you hear what’s going on?”
There was the sound of two dogs fighting and yelping in the kitchen.
“Helmi is getting a beating from her husband,” the man said. “Can’t you hear her crying? This is no time for an outsider to appear.”
All that day and all that night he kept so close to Susanna that the poor woman wasn’t able to exchange a word with another human being.
Early next morning she escaped him and ran as fast as her legs could carry her to Helmi’s house.
“My dear,” she began all out of breath, “such awonderful treasure as we’ve found but I’ve sworn never to whisper a word about it for fear the government should hear of it! I should have stopped and told you yesterday but your husband was beating you—”
“What’s that?” cried Helmi’s husband who came in just then and caught the last words.
“It’s the treasure we’ve found!”
“The treasure? What are you talking about? Begin at the beginning.”
“Well, my old man and me we started out yesterday morning and first we went to the river to see if there was anything in the nets. We found a grouse—”
“A grouse?”
“Yes, we found a grouse in the nets. Then we went to the forest and looked in the snares and in one we found a pike.”
“A pike!”
“Yes. Then we went and dug up the treasure and put it in two sacks and you could have seen us yourself carrying it home on our backs but you were too busy beating poor Helmi.”
“I beating poor Helmi! Ho! Ho! Ho! That is a good one! I was busy beating my wife while you were getting birds out of fishnets and fish out of snares! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
“It’s so!” Susanna cried. “It is so! You were so beating Helmi! And you sounded just like two dogs fighting! And we did so carry home the treasure!”
But Helmi’s husband only laughed the harder. That afternoon when he went to the Inn he was still laughing and when the men there asked him what was so funny he told them Susanna’s story and soon the whole village was laughing at the foolish woman who found birds in fishnets and fish in snares and who thought that two yelping dogs were Helmi and her husband fighting.
As for the treasure that wasn’t taken any more seriously than the grouse and the pike.
“It must have been two sacks of turnips they carried home on their backs!” the village people decided.
The husband of course said nothing and Susanna, too, was soon forced to keep quiet for now whenever she tried to explain people only laughed.