“That is well,” answered the master, and then he mounted a great black steed and rode away.
The lad stayed at home and cleaned and polished and ate and drank. “I wonder what can be in those cellars that my master does not want me to see!” thought the lad. “Not that I mean to look, but it does no harm to wonder about it.”
Every hour the lad stayed there in the house alone he grew more curious about the cellars. At last he could bear it no longer. “I’ll just take a wee peep into one of them,” he said. “That can surely do no harm to any one.”
So he opened the cellar door and went down a flight of stone steps into the first cellar. He looked all about him, and there was nothing at all there but a switch made of brier lying on a shelf behind the door. “That is not much for the Master to have made such a fuss about,” said the lad. “I could see as much as that any day without coming into a cellar for it;” and he went upstairs again and shut the door behind him.
The next day the master came home, and the first thing he asked was, “Have you looked into any of the cellars?”
“Why should I do that?” asked the lad. “I have plenty to do upstairs without poking my nose in where it is not wanted.”
“I will just see for myself whether or not you have looked,” said the master.
He opened one of the doors and went down into the first cellar. When he came back his face was as black as thunder.
“You have disobeyed me and have gone into one of the cellars,” said he. “Now you shall suffer for it!” He took up a cudgel and beat the lad until he was black and blue. “It’s lucky for you you went only into the first cellar,” said he. “Otherwise you would not have come off so lightly.”
Then he sat down to supper.