“You want me!” said she. “Indeed, I shall go where I please.”
“Well,” said the man, “I have found a currant-bush there, and I want to keep the currants. Don’t eat them.”
“Won’t I?” said his wife. “I will eat them all. You shall not have a single one.”
The man went out, and his wife came after him to find the currant-bush. On they went till the man came to the place where the bush was, when his wife, hurrying past him, got to it first.
“Now don’t you come near,” said she. “I warn you to stand off.”
On she went; all at once her husband heard a crack and a crash. He looked about, but could not see his wife. Sure enough, she had fallen down the hole.
The man returned home rejoicing at the success of his plan. For some days he lived in peace. Then he became curious to know where his wife had really gone to. So he got a very long cord, and set off with it to the forest. He came to the currant-bush and found the hole, and, letting down one end of his cord, tried to touch the bottom. The cord went down and down—the hole seemed to have no bottom at all. Then the man drew the cord up. As he pulled out the last piece of it, he fell back astounded, for there, clinging to it, was a little devil. After the first surprise, the man was about to lay his hands on the imp in order to throw him down the hole again; but it addressed him in a pitiful tone, saying—
“My good man, I beseech you do not throw me down the hole again. No tongue can tell what I have suffered there. A few days since there came a woman amongst us, and she has led us such a time of it that our lives are not worth living. Let me stay aboveground, and I will reward you for it.”
The peasant, when he heard the imp’s tale, felt sorry for him, and had not the heart to send him back again. So he let him go where he would.
No sooner was the imp at liberty than he began to torment the wives and daughters of the wealthy folk, entering into them, and making them so whimsical and sick that they seemed beside themselves. While they were in this condition the peasant would present himself as a physician and undertake to cure the afflicted persons. As soon as he was called in, before he had almost stepped across the threshold of the house in which the sick person lay, the imp would scuttle away as fast as he could, the patient recovered, and the whole place rang with the marvellous cure effected by the doctor. So they went on for some time. The peasant was now rich. Money and all good things were heaped upon him by the relations of those whom he restored to health.