“‘Grandfather! I’ve stolen Uncle Sidor’s[481] bread!’
“‘Well, what did he say?’
“‘He said, “God be with him!”’
“‘Be off with you!’ says the devil. ‘Hire yourself to him for three years.’
“So the little demon ran back to the moujik.”
The rest of the story tells how the imp taught Isidore to make corn-brandy, and worked for him a long time faithfully. But at last one day Isidore drank so much brandy that he fell into a drunken sleep. From this he was roused by the imp, whereupon he exclaimed in a rage, “Go to the Devil!” and straightway the “little demon” disappeared.[482]
In another version of the story,[483] when the peasant finds that his crust has disappeared, he exclaims—
“Here’s a wonder! I’ve seen nobody, and yet somebody has carried off my crust! Well, here’s good luck to him![484] I daresay I shall starve to death.”
When Satan heard what had taken place, he ordered that the peasant’s crust should be restored. So the demon who had stolen it “turned himself into a good youth,” and became the peasant’s hireling. When a drought was impending, he scattered the peasant’s seed-corn over a swamp; when a wet season was at hand, he sowed the slopes of the hills. In each instance his forethought enabled his master to fill his barns while the other peasants lost their crops.
[A Moravian version of this tale will be found in “Der schwarze Knirps” (Wenzig, No. 15, p. 67). In another Moravian story in the same collection (No. 8) entitled “Der böse Geist im Dienste,” an evil spirit steals the food which a man had left outside his house for poor passers by. When the demon returns to hell he finds its gates closed, and he is informed by “the oldest of the devils,” that he must expiate his crime by a three years’ service on earth.