"Have you taken a whole sack of acorns and nobody tried to punish you for doing so?"
"No," said she. "The foresters are very kind to the poor, and they have done nothing to me—the Lord have mercy on my sins!"
With these words she turned about, and there stood he of the grey cloak, but this time he was without his horse, and carried his head, which was covered with curling brown hair, under his arm.
The woman shrank from him in alarm, but the spirit said—
"Ye do well to pray to God to forgive you your sins, it was never my good lot to do so."
Thereupon he related to her how that he had lived about one hundred and thirty years before, and was called Hans Jagenteufel, as his father had been before him, and how his father had often besought him not to be too hard upon poor people, how he had paid no regard to the advice his father had given him, but had passed his time in drinking and carousing, and in all manner of wickedness, for which he was now condemned to wander about the world as an evil spirit.
THE WAITS OF BREMEN.
An honest farmer had once an ass that had been a faithful hard-working slave to him for a great many years, but was now growing old, and every day more and more unfit for work. His master therefore was tired of keeping him to live at ease like a gentleman, and so began to think of putting an end to him. The ass, who was a shrewd hand, saw that some mischief was in the wind, so he took himself slily off, and began his journey towards Bremen.