She jumped to her feet and ran swiftly after him. As she came close to him, he dropped behind him the embroidered scarf. She stooped and picked it up and examined it awhile. Then she saw the man was escaping, so she tossed the scarf aside and again ran after him. This time he dropped the red handkerchief. Its bright color caught the maiden's eye and she picked it up and lost a few more minutes admiring it while the man raced on. Then the maiden remembered him, threw away the handkerchief, and started off again in pursuit.
This time the man dropped the mirror and the maiden who of course was a Vila and had never seen a mirror before picked it up and looked at it and when she saw the lovely reflection of herself she was so amazed that she kept on looking and looking. She was still looking in it and still admiring her own beauty when the man reached the third hill beyond which the maiden couldn't follow him.
So the poor man got home with the hair safely wound about his finger.
"It must be of great value," he thought to himself. "I'll take it to the city and offer it for sale there."
So the next day he went to the city and went about offering his wonderful hair to the merchants.
"What's so wonderful about it?" they asked him.
"I don't know, but I do know it's of great value," he told them.
"Well," said one of them, "I'll give you one golden ducat for it."
He was a shrewd buyer and the others hearing his bid of one golden ducat decided that he must know that the hair was of much greater value. So they began to outbid him until the price offered the poor man reached one hundred golden ducats. But the poor man insisted that this was not enough.
"One hundred golden ducats not enough for one red hair!" cried the merchants.