Knowing how anxious his brother had been to be possessed of such a treasure, however, the brother thought the alleged misfortune was an excuse to rob him of it; therefore he would not give it into her hand. Nevertheless, he went to his brother’s house with it, and asked him what was the service he required of his sack. Then he was obliged to tell him all that had befallen, and to show him his knotted nose. “But,” said he, “if with thy hammer thou will but loose the knots, behold the half of all I have shall be thine.”
His brother accepted the terms; but not trusting to the promise of one so avaricious, he stipulated to have the terms put in order under hand and seal. When this was done he set to work immediately to swing his hammer, and let it touch one by one the knots in his brother’s nose, saying as he did so,—
“May the knots which the eight rows of evil Dakinis made so strong be loosed.”
And with each touch and invocation the knots began to disappear one after the other.
But his wife began to regret the loss of half their wealth, and she determined on a scheme to save it, and yet that her husband should be cured. “If,” said she, “I stop him before he has undone the last knot he cannot claim the reward, because he will not have removed all the knots, and it will be a strange matter if I find not the means of obtaining the hammer long enough to remedy one knot myself.” As she reasoned thus he had loosed the eighth knot.
“Stop!” she cried. “That will do now. For one knot we will not make much ado. He can bear as much disfigurement as that.”
Then the elder brother was grieved because they had broken the contract, and went his way carrying the sack, and with the hammer stuck in his girdle. As he went, the younger brother’s wife went stealthily behind him, and when he had just reached his own door, she sprang upon him, and snatched the hammer from out his girdle. He turned to follow her, but she had already reached her own house before he came up with her, and entering closed the door against him: then in triumph over her success, she proceeded to attempt loosing the ninth knot. Only swinging it as she had seen her brother-in-law do, and not knowing how to temper the force so that it should only just have touched the nose, the blow carried with it so much moment that the hammer went through the man’s skull, even to his brain, so that he fell down and died.
By this means, not the half, but the whole of his possessions passed to his elder brother.
“If the man was avaricious, the woman was doubly avaricious,” here exclaimed the Khan, “and by straining to grasp too much, she lost all.”