It was not long before the two reached the little inn, which stood there even then for the refreshment of travellers.
"What do you say to turning in for a glass of beer?" asked his companion, "you get a capital brand here."
Ráby answered that he did not drink beer, whereupon the pork-dealer pressed him to touch glasses with him, and promptly drew out his purse as a proof of his readiness to pay the reckoning. But Ráby insisted that he only drank water.
"Well, if that is the case," returned his fellow-wayfarer, "you cannot do better than have a glass; the water here is of unusual excellence. Just wait here, and I will go in and get some beer for myself, and send you out a glass of water. It comes from the famous Elias spring; there is no such water in the world."
Ráby gladly assented; tired and thirsty as he was with his walk, he longed for just such a refreshing draught.
So into the inn the good man hurried, but he soon reappeared, followed by a neat little waitress bearing a wooden tray with a large pewter mug of water on it. The girl looked at him while he drank, with her innocent blue eyes, so that Ráby hardly noticed, as he returned her scrutiny, that the water left a curiously bitter after-taste in his mouth. When he set the mug down, he observed that there was a white sediment at the bottom of it.
Rather scared in spite of himself, he asked the girl if there was anything in the water.
"I don't know," she answered, "if so, the gentleman who has just gone, put it in."
"Yes, he went out by the back door. He did not even wait to take the change which I brought him."