“Let us leave him that,” said the maiden. “Have we not done enough in taking away his means of getting riches?”
That made the old woman very angry, and she said, “The cloak is so rare and wonderful a thing that I am determined to have it, and I shall punish you unless you get it for me.”
The maiden seated herself at a window and looked sadly out at a distant blue mountain. Soon the huntsman joined her and asked, “Why are you so sad?”
“Alas! my sweetheart,” said she, “over there is the granite mountain, on which are great quantities of precious stones. I long for those precious stones so much that I grow melancholy whenever I think of them. But who can ever get them, except perhaps the birds, for the mountain-sides are too steep to climb.”
“If that is all your trouble,” said the huntsman, “I have a remedy for it.”
Then he drew her under his cloak and wished to be on the granite mountain, and they were there almost instantly. Precious stones glittered all around them and rejoiced their sight, and they eagerly gathered some of the largest and finest. But the witch had cast a spell on the huntsman, and a great drowsiness began to come over him. He said to the maiden, “We will sit down and rest a while, for I am so tired I can hardly stand.”
They sat down, and he laid his head on her lap, and went to sleep. Then the maiden slipped the cloak off his shoulders and put it on her own, loaded herself with the precious stones, and wished herself at home.
By and by the huntsman awoke and realized that his beloved had betrayed him and left him alone on the wild mountain. “Oh, what treachery there is in the world!” he exclaimed, and he sat there overwhelmed with grief and knew not what to do.
The mountain belonged to some savage and mighty giants, and before long he saw three of them striding toward him. He hastily lay down and pretended to be fast asleep. The first one, when he came to where the huntsman was, kicked him, and said, “What kind of an earthworm is this?”
“Tread on him and kill him,” said the second.