Then the lad sat down beside the gallows. It grew cold after sundown, and a sharp wind blew and made the bodies on the gallows swing back and forth with a dismal creaking of the ropes by which they were suspended. “Poor fellows!” said the lad, “I am none too warm down here in a sheltered nook on the ground, and you must have a chilly time of it up aloft there.”
Then he curled up and went to sleep. Next morning the man who had been his companion on the day before came and said, “Well, I suppose you know now what shivering means.”
“No,” said the lad, “how could I learn it? Those fellows on the gallows never opened their mouths.”
The man saw that he would get no silver pieces, and he went away, saying, “Never before in my life did I meet such a person as that.”
Soon afterward the lad resumed his travels, and again began saying to himself: “Oh that I could learn to shiver! Oh that I could learn to shake!”
A carter, who chanced to be on the road, heard his plaint, and asked, “Who are you?”
“I don’t know,” said the youth.
“Who is your father?” the carter questioned.
“That I must not say,” was the lad’s response.
“What is it you are grumbling about to yourself as you walk along?” the carter inquired.