"Harkye, now," said the Squire, "if you have a mind to ride into the wood, and hunt about and see if you can fall upon any one lurking about there, you shall have the loan of my horse, and a shilling into the bargain, to drink my health, for your pains."
"I don't see how I can go," said the man, "for I am going to a wedding with this cask of mead, which I have been to town to fetch, and here the tap has fallen out by the way, and so I must go along, holding my finger in the taphole.
"Ride off," said the Squire; "I'll look after your horse and cask."
Well, on these terms the man was willing to go; but he begged the Squire to be quick in putting his finger into the taphole when he took his own out, and to mind and keep it there till he came back. Yes, the Squire would do the best he could; and so the Master Thief mounted the horse and rode off. But time went by, and hour after hour passed, and still no one came back. At last the Squire grew weary of standing there with his finger in the taphole, so he took it out.
"Now I shall have ten dollars more!" screamed the old woman inside the cask; and then the Squire saw at once how the land lay, and took himself off home; but he had not gone far before they met him with a fresh horse, for the Master Thief had already been to his house, and told them to send one.
The day after, he came to the Squire and would have his daughter, as he had given his word; but the Squire put him off again with fine words, and gave him two hundred dollars, and said he must do one more masterpiece. If he could do that, he should have her. Well, well, the Master Thief thought he could do it, if he only knew what it was to be.
"Do you think, now," said the Squire, "you can steal the sheet off our bed, and the shift off my wife's back. Do you think you could do that?"
"It shall be done," said the Master Thief. "I only wish I was as sure, of getting your daughter."
So when night began to fall, the Master Thief went out and cut down a thief who hung on the gallows, and threw him across his shoulders, and carried him off. Then he got a long ladder and set it up against the Squire's bedroom window, and so climbed up, and kept bobbing the dead man up and down, just for all the world like one who was peeping in at the window.
"That's the Master Thief, old lass!" said the Squire, and gave his wife a nudge on the side. "Now see if I don't shoot him, that's all."