Then he ground food and drink, and all good things, for the whole Christmas week, and on the third day he invited his friends: he was going to have a party. When the rich brother saw all the nice and good things at the party, he became very wroth, for he could not bear to see his brother have anything.
“Christmas eve he was so needy that he came to me and asked me for mercy’s sake to give him a little food, and now he gives a feast as though he were both count and king,” said he to the others.
“But where in hell have you gotten all your riches from?” said he to his brother.
“Behind the door,” answered he who owned the mill. He did not care to give any definite account, but later in the evening, when he began to get a little tipsy, he could not help himself and brought out the mill.
“There you see the one that has given me all the riches,” said he, and then he let the mill grind both one thing and another. When the brother saw this he was bound to have the mill, and after a long bantering about it, he finally was to have it; but he was to pay three hundred dollars for it, and his brother was to keep it until harvest.
“When I keep it until then, I shall have ground food enough to last many years,” thought he.
Of course the mill got no chance to grow rusty during the next six months, and when harvest-time came, the rich brother got it; but the other man had taken good care not to show him how to regulate it. It was in the evening that the rich man brought the mill home, and in the morning he bade his wife go and spread the hay after the mowers,—he would get dinner ready, he said. Toward dinner he put the mill on the table.
“Grind fish and gruel: Grind both well and fast!” said the man, and the mill began to grind fish and gruel. It first filled all the dishes and tubs full, and after that it covered the whole floor with fish and gruel. The man kept puttering and tinkering, and tried to get the mill to stop; but no matter how he turned it and fingered at it, the mill kept on, and before long the gruel got so deep in the room that the man was on the point of drowning. Then he opened the door to the sitting-room, but before long that room was filled too, and the man had all he could do to get hold of the door-latch down in this flood of gruel. When he got the door open he did not remain long in the room. He ran out as fast as he could, and there was a perfect flood of fish gruel behind, deluging the yard and his fields.
The wife, who was in the meadow making hay, began to think that it took a long time to get dinner ready. “Even if husband does not call us, we will have to go anyway. I suppose he does not know much about making gruel; I will have to go and help him,” said the woman to the mowers.
They went homeward, but on coming up the hill they met the flood of fish and gruel and bread, the one mixed up with the other, and the man came running ahead of the flood.