“Well, I never!” the miller thought. “I don’t care if it is sin to admire a devil, I do admire this one; he would never let his lawful property slip between his fingers, one can see that!”
Yankel sat up and began to yell with all his might. Even the devil could do nothing to stop him. Every one knows that as long as a Jew has a breath in his body nothing will make him hold his tongue.
“What does it matter, though?” thought the miller, looking round at his empty mill. “My man is either amusing himself with the girls or else lying drunk under a hedge.”
A sleepy frog in the mud answered Yankel’s pitiful screams with a croak, and a bittern, that foul bird of the night, boomed twice as if from an empty barrel: boo-oo, boo-oo! The moon had finally sunk behind the wood, assured that the Jew was dead and done for; darkness had fallen upon the mill, the dam, and the river, and a white mist had gathered over the pond.
The devil carelessly shook his wings, and lay down again, saying with a laugh:
“Scream as loud as you like! The mill is deserted.”
“How do you know it’s deserted?” snapped the Jew, and he began to scream for the miller.
“Mr. Miller! Oi, Mr. Miller! Golden, silver, diamond Mr. Miller! Please, please come here for one little tiny second and say three words, three little tiny words! I’ll make you a present of half the debt you owe me if you’ll only come!”
“You’ll make me a present of the whole debt!” said a voice in the miller’s heart.
The Jew stopped screaming, his head sank forward on his breast, and he burst into a fit of bitter weeping.