So said, so done. Father Kant sat himself upon a stone and applied the bow to the strings of the [[163]]instrument. Instantly he lost all control of himself. Such a polka as now came from his fiddle he had never expected to hear, much less play. The tones seemed to come without help from him. The bow bounded over the strings and his arm was forced to follow. One melody followed another; his arm became numb, but the music continued in the same wild measure.
Kant now understood that something was wrong. Finally he burst forth:
“God forgive me, poor sinner. What have I brought upon myself?”
Upon the instant the fiddle strings parted, and an awful-sounding laugh was heard from the brook at the foot of the hill. Heavy of heart, Kant hastened homeward, acknowledging to himself that the devil, after all, was his superior. For a long time he could not be persuaded to again take up his fiddle, but, when he finally complied, he found that one of the beautiful waltzes he had played on the eventful night had fastened itself upon his memory, and he acquired greater renown than before as a fiddler. [[164]]
The Snipe.
The snipe, as is well known, is a bird which inhabits low, marshy meadows, and which, in flight, [[165]]makes a noise with its wings not unlike the neighing of a horse.
A farmer, who himself never looked after his property, had in his employ a lazy and negligent servant. One dry summer the man rode his master’s horse, many days in succession, to a pasture where there was no water, without first giving it drink, as he had been instructed. So the poor animal was thus left to suffer through the long dry period.
It happened one day that the farmer would go to the city, and commanded the servant to fetch the horse from the pasture. The man went, but search where he would, no horse could be found. The servant not returning in season, his master set out after him, but neither could he find the animal. It had disappeared from the pasture completely, and was not found again.