'Well, at least carry up the strangers' goods; they are now landing,' said he, but the boys replied as they had done before, 'Carry them yourself.' In the end, it was the strangers who carried them and put them down where they could; and they noticed that the old man's sister was crying, and the strangers felt sorry for her.
The old man soon found that he would get no help from anybody, for they were all angry with him for having married a chief's daughter. If he asked them to lend him a basket for his guests to eat off, they told him to use his own; if he begged them to fetch water, they bade him get it himself, and even when he took a very dirty old basket to fill at the stream, as he stooped down the water moved a little further away and then a little further still, as if it also had a spite at him. Indeed, it did this so often that at last he found himself in the mountains, where it vanished into a house. Once more he followed it and beheld a very old woman sitting inside.
'What is the matter?' said she. 'Is there anything I can do for you?'
'You can do a great deal for me if you only will,' answered he. 'I am very poor and have married a noble wife, whose father and brothers have come to visit me. I have nothing to give them, and my neighbours will not help.'
'Is that all?' she said.
'Yes, all! Is it not enough?' But the old woman only smoothed his hair with her hand, and in a moment it was thick and black as it had been in his youth, and his rags became handsome garments. Even the very basket changed into a beautiful new one.
'Go and dip the basket into the spring that is in the corner,' said she, and when he drew it up it was full of water and of shells.
The man made all the haste he could down the mountain, but nobody recognised him except his wife, and those who had seen him when he went to marry her. He refreshed them all with water and gave them handfuls of the shells, which they prized greatly, in return for the slaves and furs his father-in-law had presented to him, for it is the custom of that tribe that, if a man receives a gift from a father-in-law, he shall pay it back with something of much greater value. And he soon grew so rich that the people made him chief of the town.
Now that happened which was bound to happen. The people who had mocked him when he was poor were ready to bow down to him when he was rich, while he and his wife grew harder and prouder every day. They built themselves a large house where they gave magnificent feasts, but they passed most of their time on the roof of the house, watching all that went on below.