He called to her, "There is nothing, love. Wait until I return to thee." But, ere he had ceased speaking, she clapped to the door with all her might, and did push forward the great iron bolt, so that he was a prisoner in the cave; I being rooted to the ground with astonishment, as fast as was ever the oak-tree under which I stood. At first he thought 'twas but one o' her pretty trickeries, and I heard his gay laugh as he came to the shut door, and he called out, and said, "So, sweetheart, I am in truth a prisoner o' war; but art thou not an unmerciful general to confine the captured in so rheumatic a cavern?"
She sat down and leaned her head against the door, but said not a word.
And he spoke again, saying, "Darling, I pray thee waste not what little time doth yet remain to us."
Still she answered not; and again he spake, and his voice began to be sorrowful.
"Oh, my wife," he said, "canst thou jest at such a time?"
At last she answered him, saying, "I jest not."
His voice changed somewhat, and he said, "What dost thou, then?"
She answered, "I keep what is mine. Where my forefathers did hide their treasure, there hide I mine."
He said, in a loud voice, "God will not suffer it."
Then fell a silence between them. But by-and-by he spoke again. "Darling," he saith, "surely thou dost not mean to do this thing?"