"Why don't I get that sifter?" thought the innkeeper. "I work very hard serving my guests even though the table provides the food for them. If I had this sifter I wouldn't have to work. I'd close the inn and pass the rest of my life enjoying the money I'd sift into my pockets so easily."
That night he stole the sifter and substituted another which looked exactly like it.
When the man reached home there was plenty of money in his pockets and his wife and children were happy for a little while. However, he soon wanted to display the magic gifts of his new sifter. Accordingly, he called his family together.
"Sifter, sift," he commanded.
The sifter behaved just like any ordinary sifter.
"You have been tricked again!" cried his wife. She was very cross indeed and told her husband exactly what she thought of him.
Home was not a comfortable place for him that day, so he decided to hurry back to the king after he had emptied all the money in his pockets into his wife's lap.
"This will supply you for a while," he said. "It is quite as much as any ordinary husband would have brought home for a year's work."
"A woman hates to have her husband made a fool of," replied the woman as she rolled up the money and tucked it away carefully.
When the king had heard the story he was entirely convinced that the man had an enemy who had stolen both the table and the sifter.