“As surely as there is a God above us,” he exclaimed, “you will be punished for this sin. The time will come when you, the wealthiest person in Stavoren, will long for a few handfuls of this wasted wheat.”
The lady listened to his words in haughty silence. When he had finished, she took a costly ring from her delicate hand and cast it into the sea.
“When this ring comes back to me,” she said, “I will believe what you say and fear that I may come to want.”
A few hours afterward the lady’s cook was preparing dinner for her. He was opening a large fish which had just been brought from the sea, when to his surprise his eyes fell upon the costly ring. He immediately sent it to his proud mistress. When she recognized it she turned very pale.
Shortly afterward there came a report that one of her counting-houses had been ruined, and another report of disaster came that same evening. All her counting-houses were ruined. Her fleet had been destroyed at sea; her palaces were burning; and her farms were laid waste by storms.
In a few hours everything that she had possessed was stripped from her. The palace in which she lived burned down during the night, and she barely escaped with her life.
Now she was desolate, indeed! The rich people of the city cared nothing for her now that her money was all gone. The poor people whom she had treated with contempt allowed her to die of hunger and cold in a miserable shed.
The city of Stavoren did not profit by the sad end of the haughty lady. The rich people continued to enjoy life and to neglect the poor. It did not matter to them what happened to their wretched fellow creatures. They, like the haughty lady, were truly selfish.
As time went on the sand began to increase in the port, so that it was soon impossible for ships to come to anchor. It grew worse and worse. The waves washed the sand up until a great sand-bar rose above the waters and all further commerce was stopped. It was not very long before the sand bank was covered with little green blades. The people gazed upon it in surprise.
“It is the Lady’s Sand,” they declared. “For it is the wheat that she had cast into the sea that is growing there.”