"Did you see if he had any money?" said the robbers.
"Such a one as he money!" said the old dame, "the tramper! Why, if he had clothes to his back, it was as much as he had."
Then the robbers began to talk among themselves what they should do with him; if they should kill him outright, or what else they should do. Meantime the youth got up and began to talk to them, and to ask if they did not want a servant, for it might be that he would be glad to enter into their service.
"Oh," said they, "if you have a mind to follow the trade that we follow, you can very well get a place here."
"It's all one to me what trade I follow," said the youth; "for when I left home, father gave me leave to take to any trade I chose."
"Well, have you a mind to steal?" asked the robbers.
"I don't care," said the youth, for he thought it would not take long to learn that trade.
Now there lived a man a little way off who had three oxen. One of these he was to take to the town to sell, and the robbers had heard what he was going to do, so they said to the youth, that if he were good to steal the ox from the man by the way without his knowing it, and without doing him any harm, they would give him leave to be their serving man.
Well! the youth set off, and took with him a pretty shoe, with a silver buckle on it, which lay about the house; and he put the shoe in the road along which the man was going with his ox; and when he had done that, he went into the wood and hid himself under a bush. So when the man came by he saw the shoe at once.
"That's a nice shoe," said he. "If I only had the fellow to it, I'd take it home with me, and perhaps I'd put my old dame into a good humour for once." For you must know that he had an old wife, so cross and snappish that it was not long between each time that she boxed his ears. But then he bethought him that he could do nothing with the odd shoe unless he had the fellow to it; so he went on his way and let the shoe lie on the road.