“Au! Au! do for God’s sake set me free. The priest’s life is at stake; he it is whom you have got in the chest”, screamed out some one inside.
“This must be the Deil himself”, said Peter, “who wants to make me believe he has turned priest; but whether he makes himself priest or clerk, out he goes into the river.” “Oh no! oh no! “roared out the priest. “The parish priest is at stake. He was on a visit to the Goody for her soul’s health, but her husband is rough and wild, and so she had to hide me in the chest. Here I have a gold watch and a silver watch in my fob; you shall have them both, and eight hundred dollars beside, if you will only let me out.”
“Nay, nay”, said Peter; “is it really your reverence after all”; and with that he took up a stone, and knocked the lid of the chest to pieces. Then the priest got out, and off he set home to his parsonage both fast and light, for he no longer had his watches and money to weigh him down.
As for Little Peter, he went home again, and said to Big Peter, “There was a good sale to-day for calfskins at the market.”
“Why, what did you get for your tattered one, now?” asked Big Peter.
“Quite as much as it was worth. I got eight hundred dollars for it, but bigger and stouter calves-skins fetched twice as much”, said Little Peter, and showed his dollars.
“’Twas well you told me this”, answered Big Peter, who went and slaughtered all his kine and calves, and set off on the road to town with their skins and hides. So when he got to the market, and the tanners asked what he wanted for his hides, Big Peter said he must have eight hundred dollars for the small ones, and so on, more and more for the big ones. But all the folk only laughed and made game of him, and said he oughtn’t to come there; he’d better turn into the madhouse for a better bargain, and so he soon found out how things had gone, and that Little Peter had played him a trick. But when he got home again, he was not very soft-spoken, and he swore and cursed; so help him, if he wouldn’t strike Little Peter dead that very night. All this Little Peter stood and listened to; and so, when he had gone to bed with his mother, and the night had worn on a little, he begged her to change sides with him, for he was well-nigh frozen, he said, and might be ’twas warmer next the wall. Yes, she did that, and in a little while came Big Peter with an axe in his hand, and crept up to the bedside, and at one blow chopped off his mother’s head.
Next morning, in went Little Peter into Big Peter’s sitting-room.
“Heaven better and help you”, he said; “you who have chopped our mother’s head off. The Sheriff will not be over-pleased to hear that you pay mother’s dower in this way.”
Then Big Peter got so afraid, he begged Little Peter, for God’s sake, to say nothing about what he knew. If he would only do that, he should have eight hundred dollars.