“Nele is naughty. Come back, Hanske, my pet!”
It was the following Wednesday when the two devils came again. Ever since the preceding Saturday Nele had slept out at the house of a widow woman named Van den Houte, saying, by way of excusing herself, that she could not stay with Katheline because of that young rogue Ulenspiegel.
Now Katheline welcomed her black master and her master’s friend out in the keet, which is to say the laundry or bakehouse adjoining the cottage. And there did they feast and regale themselves with old wine and with smoked ox tongue, which viands were always prepared and ready in that place for them. And the black devil said to Katheline:
“You must know, Katheline, that we are engaged in a mighty work, and to accomplish it we have need of a large sum of money. Give us, I pray you, what you can.”
When she only offered them a florin they threatened to kill her. But when she had raised the amount to a couple of golden caroluses and seven deniers they let her off.
“Come not again on Saturdays,” she told them, “for Ulenspiegel has discovered that your custom it is to come on that day, and he will certainly be waiting for you and will beat you to death, and that would be the death of me as well.”
“We will come next Tuesday,” they told her.
Now on that day Nele and Ulenspiegel went to sleep without any anxiety, thinking that the devils only came to the cottage on Saturdays. But Katheline got out of bed secretly and went into the yard to see if her friends had arrived. She was very impatient, for since seeing Hanske again her madness had abated, for hers was a lover’s madness, as they say.
But to-night she could nowhere see her friends, and she was greatly distressed, so that when, presently, she heard the cry of the sea-eagle coming as it seemed from the open country in the direction of Sluys, she went out towards that cry, making her way across the field by the side of a tall dike that was constructed of sticks and grass. She had not gone far when she heard the two devils conversing together at the other side of the dike. And one of them said:
“Half shall be mine.”