There was no help for it; off set the seigneur. But by that time the Smith had returned home, and had gone into the smithy. He looked about; the journeyman wasn’t to be seen. He searched and searched, he enquired and enquired, never a thing came of it; not even a trace of the youth could be found. He took to his work by himself, and was hammering away, when at that moment up drove the seigneur, and walked straight into the smithy.
“Make a young man of me,” says he.
“Are you in your right mind, Barin? How can one make a young man of you?”
“Come, now! you know all about that.”
“I know nothing of the kind.”
“You lie, you scoundrel! Since you made my old woman young, make me young too; otherwise, there will be no living with her for me.”
“Why I haven’t so much as seen your good lady.”
“Your journeyman saw her, and that’s just the same thing. If he knew how to do the job, surely you, an old hand, must have learnt how to do it long ago. Come, now, set to work at once. If you don’t, it will be the worse for you. I’ll have you rubbed down with a birch-tree towel.”
The Smith was compelled to try his hand at transforming the seigneur. He held a private conversation with the coachman as to how his journeyman had set to work with the lady, and what he had done to her, and then he thought:—
“So be it! I’ll do the same. If I fall on my feet, good; if I don’t, well, I must suffer all the same!”