“Crack-brained sheep’s-head that you are!” snarled the Dwarf; “what are you going to call other people for? You are two too many now for me; can you think of nothing else?”
“Don’t be impatient,” replied Snow-White: “I have thought of something;” and pulling her scissors out of her pocket, she cut off the end of the beard. As soon as the Dwarf found himself at liberty he snatched up his sack, which laid between the roots of the tree filled with gold, and, throwing it over his shoulder, marched off, grumbling, and groaning, and crying “Stupid people! to cut off a piece of my beautiful beard. Plague take you!” And away he went without once looking at the children.
Some time afterward Snow-White and Rose-Red went a-fishing and as they neared the pond they saw something like a great locust hopping about on the bank, as if going to jump into the water. They ran up and recognized the Dwarf; “What are you after?” asked Rose-Red; “you will fall into the water.”
“I am not quite such a simpleton as that,” replied the Dwarf; “but do you not see this fish will pull me in?”
The little man had been sitting there angling, and, unfortunately, the wind had entangled his beard with the fishing-line; and so when a great fish bit at the bait, the strength of the weak little fellow was not able to draw it out, and the fish had the best of the struggle. The Dwarf held on by the reeds and rushes which grew near, but to no purpose, for the fish pulled him where it liked, and he must soon have been drawn into the pond. Luckily just then the two Maidens arrived, and tried to release the beard of the Dwarf from the fishing-line, but both were too closely entangled for it to be done. So the Maiden pulled out her scissors again and cut off another piece of the beard.
When the Dwarf saw this done he was in a great rage, and exclaimed, “You donkey! that is the way to disfigure my face. Was it not enough to cut it once, but you must now take away the best part of my fine beard? I dare not show myself again now to my own people. I wish you had run the soles off your boots before you had come here!” So saying he took up a bag of pearls, which lay among the rushes, and, without speaking another word, slipped off and disappeared behind a stone.
Not many days after this adventure, it chanced that the Mother sent the two Maidens to the next town to buy thread, needles and pins, laces, and ribbons. Their road passed over a common, on which, here and there, great pieces of rock were lying about. Just over their heads they saw a great bird flying round and round, and every now and then dropping lower and lower, till at last it flew down behind a rock. Immediately afterward they heard a piercing shriek, and, running up, they saw with affright that the eagle had caught their old acquaintance, the Dwarf, and was trying to carry him off. The compassionate children thereupon laid hold of the little man, and held him fast till the bird gave up the struggle and flew off.
As soon, then, as the Dwarf had recovered from his fright, he exclaimed in his squeaking voice:
“Could you not hold me more gently? You have seized my fine brown coat in such a manner that it is all torn and full of holes, meddling and interfering rubbish that you are!” With these words he shouldered a bag filled with precious stones, and slipped away to his cave among the rocks.
The Maidens were now accustomed to his ingratitude, and so they walked on to the town and transacted their business there. Coming home they returned over the same common, and unawares walked up to a certain clean spot, on which the Dwarf had shaken out his bag of precious stones, thinking nobody was near. The sun was shining and the bright stones glittered in its beams, and displayed such a variety of colors that the two Maidens stopped to admire them.