“No, you are lying and deceiving me again. This time it shall not come off.”
So Sorrow sat fast on the wretched merchant’s shoulders. He brought Sorrow with him home, and his household went from bad to worse. Sorrow began early in the morning enticing the merchant into the beerhouse day after day, and much property was drunk away.
“This life is absolutely unbearable!” thought the merchant. “I have done Sorrow too good a service. I must now set myself free from him. How shall I?” So he thought and he thought it out. He went into his courtyard, cut two oak wedges, took a new wheel, and knocked one wedge from one end into the axle. He went up to Sorrow. “Now, Sorrow, must you lie about like that?”
“What should I be doing? What else is there to do?”
“Come into the courtyard; let us play hide-and-seek.”
This suited Sorrow down to the ground, and at first the merchant hid and Sorrow found him at once.
Then Sorrow had to hide. “You will not find me so easily: I can hide myself in any crack.”
“What!” said the merchant. “Why, you could never get into this wheel, much less into a crack!”
“What! I could not get into the wheel? Just look how I manage to hide myself in it!”
So Sorrow crept into the wheel, and the merchant took the other oak wedge and drove it into the hub from the other side, and threw the wheel, with Sorrow inside, into the river. Sorrow was drowned, and the merchant lived as before.