“Good evening, sir. Where are you going so late?” said the man.
“I am on my way to hell, if I am on the right road,” said the poor man.
“Yes, you have taken the right road; it is here,” said the old man. “Now when you get in, they will all want to buy your ham, for pork is rare food in hell; but you must not sell it, unless you get the hand-mill that stands back of the door for it. When you come out again I will show you how to regulate it. You will find it useful in more than one respect.”
The man with the ham thanked the old man for this valuable information, and rapped at the devil’s door.
When he came in it happened as the old man had said. All the devils, both the large ones and the small ones, crowded around him like ants around a worm, and the one bid higher than the other for the ham.
“It is true my wife and I were to have it for our Christmas dinner, but, seeing that you are so eager for it, I suppose I will have to let you have it,” said the man. “But if I am to sell it, I want that hand-mill that stands behind the door there for it.”
The devil did not like to spare it, and kept dickering and bantering with the man, but he insisted, and so the devil had to give him the hand-mill. When the man came out in the yard he asked the old wood-chopper how he should regulate the mill; and when he had learned how to do it, he said “thank you,” and made for home as fast as he could. But still he did not reach home before twelve o’clock in the night Christmas eve.
“Why, where in the world have you been?” said the woman. “Here I have been sitting hour after hour waiting and waiting, and I haven’t as much as two sticks to put on the fire so as to cook the Christmas porridge.”
“Oh, I could not come any sooner. I had several errands to do, and I had a long way to go too. But now I will show you,” said the man. He set the mill on the table, and had it first grind light, then a table-cloth, then food and ale and all sorts of good things for Christmas, and as he commanded the mill ground. The woman expressed her great astonishment again and again, and wanted to know where her husband had gotten the mill, but this he would not tell.
“It makes no difference where I have gotten it; you see the mill is a good one, and that the water does not freeze,” said the man.