Soon after these peasants discover that they are clean bewildered; they find themselves surrounded by deep ravines and insurmountable obstacles, so that they cannot get out, for they have lost their way.
There came an old beggar who asked them, ‘Why do you tarry here? Why are you not getting on?’
‘Alas!’ they answered, ‘we cannot get out of this; we had a beautiful road, but we have lost it.’
‘Whip up your horses a bit,’ said the old man, ‘perhaps they will go on.’
A lad touched up the horses, and all of a sudden the peasants see a magnificent road before them. They wish to thank this beggar, but he has vanished. The peasants fall to weeping, for, say they to themselves, ‘This was no beggar; more likely was it the good God himself.’ They reach the castle; the peasant is in ecstasies with it. The peasants work for him, and he and his wife take their ease.
Ten years rolled by. Once he had three daughters, whom he had already forgotten. ‘The good God,’ said he, ‘gave me three daughters, but I have never yet had a son.’
One day the good God so ordered it that this peasant woman was brought to bed. She was delivered (pray excuse me) of a boy. This boy grew exceedingly; he was already three years old; he was very intelligent. When he was [[164]]twelve years old his father put him to school. He was an apt scholar: he knew German, and could read anything.
One day this boy, having returned home, asked his father, ‘How do you do, father?’ His mother gave him some food, and sent him to bed. Next day he got up, and went to school. Two little boys who passed along said the one to the other, ‘There goes the little boy whose father sold his daughters to the devils.’ The boy reached the school filled with anger; he wrote his task quickly, for he could not calm his angry feelings. He went home to his father as quickly as possible; he took two pistols, and called on his father to come to him. As soon as his father came into the room, the boy locked the door on them both.
‘Now, father, tell me the truth; had I ever any sisters? If you do not confess the truth to me, I will fire one of these pistols at you and the other at myself.’
The father answered, ‘You had three sisters, my child, but I have sold them to I know not whom.’