“No!” thundered the dwarf; “I will have the life of her before I’ve done.”
“Never!” in his turn shouted Jössl; and he placed himself in front of the elf.
“Oh, don’t be afraid,” replied the dwarf, with a cold sneer, “I’m not going after her. I’ve only to wait a bit, and she’ll come after me.”
Jössl was inclined to let him go, but remembering the instability of woman, he thought it better to make an end of the tempter there and then.
“Will you promise me, that if I let you return to your hole in peace, you will do her no harm should she visit you there again?”
“I promise you that I will serve her to the most frightful of deaths—that’s what I promise you!” retorted the enraged gnome.
“Then your blood be on your own head!” said Jössl, and, with his large hunting-knife drawn in his hand, he placed himself in a menacing attitude before the now alarmed dwarf.
Jössl was a determined, powerful youth, not to be trifled with. The gnome trusted to the strength of his muscles, and fled with all his speed; but Jössl, who was a cunning runner too, maintained his place close behind him. The dwarf, finding himself so hotly followed, began to lose his head, and no longer felt so clearly as at first the direction he had to take to reach the Röhrerbüchel. Jössl continued to drive him before him, puzzling him on the zigzags of the path till he had completely lost the instinct of his way of safety. Then, forcing him on as before to the edge of the precipice, he closed upon him where there was no escape.
Yes, one escape there was—it was in the floods of the Brandenburger Ache, which roared and boiled away some hundred feet below! Rather than fall ignominiously by the hand of a child of man, the gnome dashed himself, with a fierce shout, down the abyss. And that was the last that was ever seen of the Nickel of the Röhrerbüchel.
Aennerl was now poorer than ever in this world’s goods, but she was rich in one deep and wholesome lesson—that it is not glittering wealth which brings true happiness. The smiles of honest friends, and the love of a true heart, and the testimony of an approving conscience are not to be bartered away for all the gold in all the mines of the earth.