He lifted it from the jar, tore open Peter’s jerkin, pulled the stone from his breast, and held it before him.
“How dost thou feel now?” asked Michael, smiling.
“In truth, thou wert right,” answered Peter, beginning carefully to draw the cross from his pocket. “I would never have believed that any one could do such a thing.”
—“No, indeed! And so thou seest that I am a sorcerer after all. But come now, I will put the stone back again.”
“Gently, Master Michael,” cried Peter, stepping back and holding out the cross towards him. “Mice are caught with lard, and this time ’tis thou art the dupe.” And he straightway took to repeating all the prayers he could think of.
Then Michael began to grow smaller and smaller, and dropped to the ground, where he writhed to and fro like a worm, moaning and groaning. And all the hearts round about began to quiver and to throb, so that it sounded like a watchmaker’s workshop. But Peter was filled with dread, and an awe-struck feeling crept over him; he ran as fast as he could from the room and from the house, and, urged by fear, climbed rapidly up the face of the cliff, for he could hear that Michael had risen again, and was stamping and raging after him, sending out terrible curses the while. As soon as he reached the top of the cliff, he hurried towards the “Pine-thicket.” As he went, a fearful storm arose, and the bolts of lightning fell to right and left of him, shattering the trees; but he held on his way, and came in safety to the domain of the little Glass-man.
His heart was beating joyfully, and that merely because it beat. But now he looked back with horror upon his past life—it seemed to him as terrible as the thunderstorm, that had laid bare the noble woods behind him. He thought of Mistress Lisbeth, his good and lovely wife, whom he had murdered out of avarice, and he appeared to himself as the very scum and offscouring of mankind. He was weeping bitterly when he reached the little Glass-man’s mountain-top.
The Treasure-keeper was sitting under the fir-tree smoking a little pipe, yet he looked more cheerful than before.
“Why art thou weeping, Coal-Peter?” he asked. “Hast thou not got thy heart back again? Is the cold one still in thy breast?”
“Alas, sir!” sighed Peter, “while I yet carried the cold heart within me, I never wept—mine eyes were as dry as the fields in August; but now my own, old heart is like to break, because of what I have done. I have driven out my debtors into want and misery—I have set my dogs upon the sick and the poor—and you know yourself how my whip fell upon her fair forehead!”