When it had done, it said, “I am the giant who built this castle. I have waited here these hundreds of years till one came fearless enough to do what you have done to-night, and now I am free, because to you I may give over the castle; so take it, for it is yours, and with it one of these jars of gold, which is enough to make you rich, but take the other jar of gold and build a church, and let them pray for me, and learn to be better men than I.”
With that he disappeared, and Fearless Johnny slept quietly for the rest of the night.
In the morning, when the sun was up, and the birds began to sing cheerily on the branches, the landlord began to feel some compunction for having abandoned such a fine young Bursch to a night by himself among the unquiet spirits; so he summoned all his courage, and all his servants, and all his neighbours, and, thus prepared, he led the way up to the haunted castle. Finding that it was firmly fixed by the chain, they all entered in a body, for none durst be the first; and the entrance, having been made for the giant, was big enough for all.
Zovanin having had such a disturbed night was still fast asleep, but their footsteps and anxious whisperings woke him. In answer to all their questionings he gave an account of what had happened to him, but still complained that, after all, he had not been able to find Fear!
Zovanin was now a rich man, and had a mighty castle to live in where he might have ended his days in peace, but he was always possessed by the desire of finding out what Fear was, and this desire was too strong to let him rest.
The neighbours, however, told him he might find Fear out hunting; and many were the hunting-parties he established, and wherever the wild game was shyest, there he sought it out. Once, as he sprang over a chasm his horse made a false start, and was plunged into the abyss, but Fearless Johnny caught at the bough of a birch-tree that waved over the mountain-side. The branch cracked, and it seemed as if nothing could save him, but Fearless Johnny only swung himself on to another on the ledge below, and climbed back by its means to the path. Another time, as he was pursuing a chamois up a precipitous track, a great mass of loose rock, detached from the height above, came thundering down upon him. An ordinary hunter, scared at the sight, would have given himself up for lost, but Fearless Johnny stood quite still and let it bound over his head, and he came to no harm.
So he still was unable to find Fear. After some years, therefore, he once more went abroad to seek it. This time, however, he provided himself with a fine suit of armour and a prancing charger, and a noble figure he cut as he ambled forth.
After a long journey, with many adventures, he came one hot day, as he was very thirsty, to a fountain of water in the outskirts of a town, and as he dismounted to drink he observed that the whole place looked sad and deserted; the road was grass-grown, and the houses seemed neglected and empty. As he went up to the fountain to drink, a faint voice called to him from the wayside, “Beware, and do it not! Think you that we all should be lying here dying of thirst if you could drink at that fountain?”
Then he looked round, and saw that, as far as eye could reach, the banks of the wayside were covered with dying people heaped up one on the other, and all gazing towards the fountain!
“Know you not,” continued the weary voice, “that a terrible dragon has taken possession of all the fountains; and that the moment one goes to drink of them he appears, as though he would eat you up, so that you are bound to run away for very fear?”