Want, avarice, and vanity won the day with their unholy counsel, and the bond was signed.
Suddenly scores of little black figures issued forth from the darkness of the night, and began to work among the rocks; trees were cut down with a stroke, chisel and hammer rang on the granite, and the work went forward with a rapidity of enchantment.
The fear of the miller rose to despair, and as he saw the roof and the huge sweeps set up and finished, and the last millstone rolled to its place, he seized it with the power of a deadly terror, threw it from the rollers with such force, that it rolled down the mountain.
Then the black wings of the arch-fiend unfolded and spread themselves, he soared high in the air, let fall the millstone on the miller, who was buried beneath it and the ruins of the mill, broken to atoms.
The Origin of the Rammelsberg Mine, near Goslar.
The rich treasures of the Rammelsberg were discovered in 970, according to tradition, by accident.
Otto the Great hunted in the forest. His squire Ramm dismounted, tied his horse to a tree, and went after some game that had been shot. The impatient animal pawed and stamped, and his rider returning, found a glittering piece of silver ore laid bare.
Another story is, that the discovery was made by a servant girl in the mill at the base of the mountain.
She rose one morning before daybreak, and went out to gather wood, when she saw a fire burning on the mountain. She hurried to the spot, and found several men with white beards sitting around it.