“When the Black Forest lads saw all that gold, they were beside themselves with joy. Michael divided it into four parts; one he kept for the master, and the other three were for the men. And now they went into the taverns, with sailors and other bad company, and guzzled or played away their money. But the honest man who had given them good counsel, Michael sold to a kidnapping shipowner, and nothing more was ever heard of him.
“From that time forth Holland was the paradise of all the Black Forest lads, and Dutch Michael their king. It was long before the master woodman found out the trick; and meanwhile money, swearing, bad customs, drunkenness and gambling came up into this land from Holland. When the story leaked out, Dutch Michael was nowhere to be found. Yet he is not dead. For more than a hundred years he has haunted this forest, and people say he has helped many men to get rich, but only at the cost of their own poor souls,—I will say no more. Yet this much is certain, that on these stormy nights he still picks out the finest trees from the ‘Pine-thicket,’ where no man may hew wood, and my father once saw him break off a stem four feet thick as if it had been a reed. These he gives to the misguided folk who turn away from righteous dealing, and go to him for help; then they take their raft down to the water at midnight, and float away with Dutch Michael to Holland. But if I were king there, I would have him shot to pieces, for all ships that have a single one of Dutch Michael’s beams in them will go down some day. That is why we hear of all these shipwrecks; for how else should a fine, strong ship, as big as a church, come to harm upon the water? But every time that Dutch Michael hews a fresh tree during a stormy night in the ‘Pine-thicket,’ one of his old beams cracks, and the ship springs a leak, and goes to the bottom with all hands. That is the story of Dutch Michael, and true it is that all the evil in the Black Forest may be traced to him.”
“Oh, he can make one rich, sure enough,” the old man added in a mysterious whisper, “but I would not take anything from him for the world. I would not be in the shoes of fat Ezekiel, or the long Shuffler—and they say the king of the dancing-floor, too, has sold himself to him.”
The storm had died away while the old man told his tale, and now the maidens lit their lamps and went to bed. The men laid a sack full of leaves upon the bench near the stove, as a pillow for Peter Munk, and wished him good-night. But Peter had never had such restless dreams as upon this night. One moment he thought he saw the black-browed giant, Dutch Michael, tearing open the window and thrusting in his long arm to offer him a purse full of gold pieces, which he chinked with a pleasant sound; and the next, it was the kindly-faced little Glass-man who was riding about the room on a huge green bottle, and then Peter seemed to hear the same hoarse chuckle again, that he had heard in the forest. Presently some one muttered in his left ear:
“In Holland there is gold;
Ye can have it, an’ ye will;
For a trifle it is sold—
Gold, gold!”
And again, in his right ear sounded the little song about the Treasure-keeper in the green woods; and a gentle voice added: “Foolish Coal-Peter, foolish Peter Munk, canst find no rhyme to ‘green?’ and yet art born at noon on a Sunday! Rhyme, silly Peter, rhyme!”