"'Your lips are cold as death! What has happened?'
"His children kissed him, but they said:
"'Father, your cheeks are cold.'
"He tried to pray at the meal, but his sense of God was gone; he did not love God, or his wife, or his children, or anything any more—he had a stone-cold heart.
"After the evening meal he told his wife the events of the day. She listened with horror.
"'In parting with your heart you have parted with everything that makes life worth having,' said she. But he answered:
"'I do not care. I do not care for anything but gold now. I have a stone-cold heart.'
"'But will gold make you happy?' she asked.
"He started. He went forth to work the next day, but he was not happy. So day by day passed. His gold did not make his family happy, or his friends, or any one, but he would not have cared for all these, for he had a stone-cold heart. Had it made him happy? He saw the world all happy around him, and heavier and heavier grew his heart, and at last he could endure it no longer.
"One day he was sitting in the same place in the woods as before, when he saw the shadowy figure stealing along the mosses of the stream again. He looked up and beheld the giant, and exclaimed: