The maid went and found her sitting before the cask, crying bitterly.
“Alice, what are you crying about?” she asked.
“Alas!” she answered, “have I not reason to weep? If I marry Hans, and we have a child, and he grows up and has to draw beer here, perhaps that pickax will fall on his head and kill him.”
Then the maid said, “What a clever Alice we have!” and she, too, sat down by Alice and began to weep over this misfortune.
After a while, as the maid did not come back and the people upstairs were getting very thirsty, the husband said to the boy, “Go down cellar and see what has become of Alice and the maid.”
The boy went down, and there sat Alice and the maid weeping together. So he said, “What are you crying for?”
“Alas!” said Alice, “have I not reason to cry? If I marry Hans, and we have a child, [[109]]and he grows up and has to draw beer here, that pickax will fall on his head and kill him.”
Then the boy said, “What a clever Alice we have!” and he sat down by Alice and began to howl lustily.
Upstairs they waited for the boy, but when he did not come the husband said, “Do go down cellar, wife, and see why Alice does not come back.”
The wife went downstairs and found the three in the midst of their lamentations. She asked the reason, and Alice told her, also, how her future child, when it grew up and was sent to draw beer, would be killed by the pickax which would fall down. Then the mother likewise exclaimed, “What a clever Alice we have!” and sat down and wept with them.