“What can you do?” Yezibaba asked.
“I’ll do anything you set me to. I’m trustworthy and industrious.”
Yezibaba didn’t want to take him, but the old man wanted him and in the end Yezibaba with very ill grace consented to give him a trial.
He rested that night and early next morning presented himself to the old witch and said:
“What work am I to do today, mistress?”
Yezibaba looked him over from head to foot. Then she took him to a window and said: “What do you see out there?”
“I see a rocky hillside.”
“Good. Go to that rocky hillside, cultivate it, plant it in trees that will grow, blossom, and bear fruit tonight. Tomorrow morning bring me the ripe fruit. Here is a wooden hoe with which to work.”
“Alas,” thought Raduz to himself, “did ever a man have such a task as this? What can I do on that rocky hillside with a wooden hoe? How can I finish my task in so short a time?”
He started to work but he hadn’t struck three blows with the wooden hoe before it broke. In despair he tossed it aside and sat down under a beech tree.