“So he got her after all,” mused the Hartzman. “Well, when I saw what had befallen me, I guessed that all was lost.”
By this time a crowd had collected round the stranger, and a whisper went round, explaining who he was.
“And what was it befell thee?” asked one of the Hartzman’s former comrades.
“When I reached home,” the latter answered, “I went to the Morgenbrots Valley, near the Brocken, for I knew many wonders happened there, and that it was the likeliest place for me to find the sort of treasure I was after. Many days and nights I wandered about the hills and woods of that district, hoping to overhear some word of counsel from the voices of the underworld. At last, one morning, as I sat near a spring that rises toward the head of the valley, I suddenly saw a man of strange appearance, and wearing a foreign dress, standing by the spring, where no one had stood the moment before; and he was holding a sieve under the waterfall, but as the stream rushed through it, the sieve caught and held a number of large pearls. When his sieve was full of them the man washed his hands in the spring and said:
‘In the Morgenbrots Valley I wash myself,
In Venice town[8] I dry myself.’
With that he disappeared, and I hurried to the water’s edge, but could only pick up one or two pearls that he had let drop; nor could I find any more. This was not enough, so I determined to follow him, and repeated the charm, making sure it would carry me into some hidden treasure-cave. But I had hardly finished the words before I found myself in a strange city, where I saw not a soul I knew, and could not understand a word any one said. I am a bold man, but I am bound to say this dismayed me, and I wandered about till nightfall, wondering how I should keep from starvation. I was beginning to despair, when, on one of the bridges of which the city was full, I met the same man whom I had seen that morning in my native mountains. He could understand me, I knew, and I spoke to him and implored him to help me.
“‘I know thee, and thy history,’ said the man, and his face was ill to look upon. ‘Thou art a fool, and wouldst have been a thief. Wherefore should I help thee?’
“‘Sir,’ I cried, ‘have pity on me this once, and know it was but love that made me covetous and reckless. I am a fool, in truth; but I am also, surely, a countryman of thine, and in a wretched case. I pray thee, send me back to my own land.’
“At last he was moved, and took me home with him to a splendid house, where the very bed I slept upon was hung with tassels of pure gold. And all this treasure he had got out of our Morgenbrots Valley. He told me to go to bed and sleep in peace, and that on rising in the morning I was to take water and wash my hands, saying: