So saying, she began to look about for a rope long enough to reach down the chimney; but she couldn't find one. All at once her eye fell on the bucket standing outside the well. Joyfully rushing to it, she cut the rope, and dragging the bucket after her, scrambled out on the roof, and began letting it down the chimney. While she was thus engaged, a poor little frightened swallow, who had built its nest there, suddenly flew up the chimney and darted right in her face. Silly Catharine was so much frightened, that she gave a loud scream and let go of the rope. The bucket, of course, fell into the middle of the fire, and in a twinkling was burnt to cinders. Down from the roof, and into the kitchen, rushed Catherine, but too late; nothing save the iron hoops now remained of the bucket.
"What shall I do?" cried Silly Catharine. "Not an hour passes but some new misfortune occurs. Alas! I am no longer able to draw water for my soup! but stay, I think of a way!" So saying, she took the pot from the hook, tied a rope to the handle, let it down the well, with the cabbage still in it, and when it was filled carried it back to the house, and hung it over the fire.
Soon afterward the dairy maid went to draw some water for dinner. She could not find the bucket; so she let down a milk pail instead; but when she came to taste the water, she tasted also the flavor of the cabbage, and ran to her mistress, calling out, "Why, mistress, who has been meddling with our fine well? It had once the best water in the neighborhood, but now the flavor is precisely that of a greasy, horrible cabbage!"
"Nonsense!" cried Silly Catharine, with an air of contempt; "it is all your fancy. Don't tell me that water can taste of cabbages!" Her heart beat with affright, however, and as soon as the servant maid had left the room, she ran in great terror to the wine cellar. "What the servant said must have been true," thought she; "and Wise Peter will never forgive me when he finds out that I have spoilt the well. I will, therefore, pour some wine into the water, to take away the taste of the cabbages." So saying, she seized one of the wine barrels, and in the strength of terror she managed, with great difficulty, to push it up the cellar stairs, and roll it through the kitchen out to the well. Then she removed the spile and tilted the cask forward; when out streamed at least thirty gallons of the finest Tokay down the well!
Having done this, Silly Catharine hid the barrel away with great precipitation; and, determined to leave nothing else undone, she called the reapers and bid them go directly to the large field and reap the wheat. Then she went back, and began eating her dinner, saying, "Thank heaven, I have a good dinner to sit down to, at least; there are always cabbages enough!"
Meanwhile, the reapers made ready to go a-field; and before they went, one of them drew a bucket of water to carry with them. But no sooner had they tasted the water, than they cried out, "'Tis wine! the finest wine!" and scarcely able to believe their senses, they drew up bucket after bucket of this new liquor, drank till they became drunk, and then tumbled senseless among the wheat; for it happened that the well was very low, and what they drew was nearly all wine. While they lay there, a violent hail storm came on, and in an hour's time the whole of the wheat was beaten to the ground, drenched, crushed, and ruined.
Unconscious of this fresh misfortune, Silly Catharine prepared her soup for supper, and then, having finished her work, she sat down in the front porch and began to knit, feeling as if at last all her troubles were over. Presently the gate was opened, and a man entered the garden. It was he who was appointed to gather the tax, and knowing Wise Peter to be well off, it was to his house that he first came.
"Oh, you are very much mistaken if you think I will pay your outrageous tax!" cried Silly Catharine. "No, no! Wise Peter would know better than that, and his wife will not be behind hand! He told me before he went that he had no money to pay, and if he had, he wouldn't give it to support your lazy nobles; so be off with you!"
While Catharine had been making this tirade, the tax gatherer, to whom she had unwittingly given a valuable hint, hit upon a new plan by which to secure his guilders. So as she paused, out of breath, he exclaimed, in a contemptuous tone: "There is no use in making such a noise, good woman; I see plainly that I was a fool to suppose the owner of this beggarly house was worth five hundred guilders. Five kreutzers would be much nearer the mark!"
"What! do you dare to call the house of Wise Peter beggarly!" cried Catharine in a rage; "beggarly, indeed! you could never get such a fine one if you live a thousand years."