“Would you like to try?” inquired Taland, anxiously; “it won’t be so bad for you, as, if you get in now, the men won’t perceive we have changed places, and you’ll get the benefit of three hours for nothing.”
“You’re really very kind!” responded the goatherd, drawing the sack over him; “I don’t know how to thank you enough. I’m sure I can stand four hours easily enough, for the sake of being reckoned a king’s son at the end. I shan’t want the goats, however, when I’m married to a princess, so pray take them at a gift—only make fast the cords of the sack so that the men may not perceive that it has been meddled with.”
Taland tied up the sack exactly as it had been before, and drove home the flock of goats.
He was scarcely out of sight when the men, now well rested, came out, and having taken up the sack again, carried it up the Hoch Gerach; and just as the unhappy goatherd within fancied he was reaching the top of some high terrace leading to the royal palace, bang, bang from rock to rock he found himself dashed by the relentless villagers!
Confident that the job was now effectually completed, they trooped home full of rejoicing over their feat.
The first thing that met their eye, however, was Taland seated before his door, just as if nothing had happened, milking the goats which browsed around him, making a goodly show.
Too much awed at the sight to rush at and seize him, they once more asked him to give explanation of his unlooked-for return, and of how he became possessed of such a fine herd of goats.
“Nothing easier!” replied Taland, gravitêtisch. “Where shall I begin?”
“From where you were thrown over the mountain-side.”
“All right!” pursued Taland. “Well, then, as you may suppose, I struggled hard to get out of the sack, but it was too tough, and I could do nothing with it at first; but, by-and-by, from knocking against the jutting rocks again and again, it got a rent, and this rent I was able to tear open wide, so that by the time I got to the bottom there was a big hole, big enough to get out by. And where do you think I found myself when I got out? In the enchanted regions of the underground world, where the sky is tenfold as blue as it is here, and the meadows tenfold as green! It was so beautiful to look at that I gladly wandered on a little space. Presently I found a way that led up home again; but I had no mind to come away from the beautiful country till I saw, climbing the rocks by the side of the path, numbers of goats, much finer than any goats we ever see in these parts.”