"Take what thou wilt," said the fairy; "but choose wisely."
He filled his pockets with gold and costly jewels, but in his rapid movements the flower fell from his hat. He looked around seeking the door and rushed out, hearing only the words, "Forget not the most beautiful treasure," and never stopped till he had reached the meadow and his sheep. He emptied his pockets of the precious treasures, when lo! they were worthless stones.
Legend of the Devil's Mill.
The summit of the Ramberg, or Victor's Höhe, is strewed with gigantic ruins of the primeval rocks, and is called the Brocken of the Unterharz.
Two huge granite boulders, lying as if they had been placed there by hands, are the remains of the Teufelsmühle.
At the base of the mountain, in the ages long ago, a miller possessed a windmill.
But the mill, an inheritance from his great-great-grandfather, was in a tumble-down condition, and when the wind blew from the north or west the sweeps stood motionless, for mountain and forest intercepted the "breath of God."
Often the miller had sat on the summit of the mountain, and thought how nice it would be if the mill only stood there in the free, full breeze, with a strong tower, built from the materials that lay scattered around in superfluous abundance.
Once, as he thus sat and mused in the twilight, the bats and owls just beginning their nocturnal rounds, a huge, swarthy labourer suddenly appeared before him, greeted him with a Gott-sei-bei-uns! and told him he would build him a mill, so soon as the miller signed a promise with blood to be his in thirty years.