“Why, you’ve run over and killed my old mother! that’s what you’ve done!” said Taland, emerging from his hiding-place. “And now you must come with me before the judge.”
“Really, I meant no harm,” pleaded the good lord; “I called to her to get out of the way, and I couldn’t help it if she was deaf. But I’ll make you what compensation you like. What do you say to accepting my chariot full of gold, and the horses and all, to drive home with?”
“Why, if you say you couldn’t help it, I suppose you couldn’t,” replied Taland. “I don’t want to hurt you; and since you offer fair terms, I’m willing to accept your chariot full of gold, and the horses to drive it home. I’ll square the account to your satisfaction.”
So the lord took him home to his castle and filled up the chariot with gold, and put the reins in his hands, and sent him home richer and merrier than if the neighbours had never attempted his life.
When these same envious neighbours, however, saw him coming home in the chariot full of gold, driving the prancing horses quite gravitêtisch[96], they knew not what to make of it. And that, too, just as they were congratulating themselves that they had made an end of him!
“It must be his ghost!” they cried. There was no other way of accounting for the reappearance. But as he drove nearer, there was no denying that it was his very self in flesh and blood!
“Where do you come from? where did you get all that heap of money from? and what story are you going to palm off on us this time?” were questions which were showered down on him like hail.
Taland knew how easily they let themselves be ensnared, and that the real story would do as well this time as any he could make up, so he told them exactly what had happened, and then whipped his horses into a canter which dispersed them right and left, while he drove home as gravitêtisch as before.
Nor was he wrong in expecting his bait to take. With one accord the peasants all went home and killed their wives, and set them, with their spinningwheels before them, all along the road. Of course, however, no lucky chance occurred such as Taland’s—no file of noblemen driving lordly chariots, and silly enough to mistake the dead for the living, came by; and while Taland was rich enough to marry the best woman in the place, they had all to bury their wives and live alone in their desolated homes.
To have been so tricked was indeed enough to raise their ire; and the only consolation amid their gloom was to meet and concoct some plan for taking signal and final vengeance. This was at last found. They were to seize him by night, as before; but this time they were not to beat him to death in the dark, but keep him bound till daylight, and make sure of their man, then bind him in a sack and throw him over the precipice of the Hoch Gerach.