One of the lads then goes after eleven o’clock towards the house. He meets an old woman, who said to him:
“Where are you off to, lad? There is nothing like the truth.”
“I was going, then, to such a house; the lady has been confined, and I wish to take advantage of it to steal a sheep. They will not pay any attention to-day. And you, where are you going?”
“I too am going to the house. I am a witch, and it is I who have killed all their children.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Easily. When the infant sneezes nobody says, ‘Domine stekan,’[11] and then I become mistress of the child.”
The witch enters, doubtless as she liked, much more easily than our lad; but nevertheless he got in himself too. He was busy choosing his sheep, when he hears the infant sneeze. He says very, very loudly:
“Domine stekan; even if I should not get my sheep.”
They go to see who is there, and what he was saying. The lad relates what the old woman had told him. As you may imagine they thanked him well, and told him to choose the finest sheep. The father and mother were delighted that they would save this child; but, poor wretches, they had not seen everything. A devil had come, who took their child and carried it to the roadside, and left it there. A coachman passing by sees this child, and takes it with him. He was married, but had no children. They had a great desire to have one. They were very well off also. His wife was delighted to see this fine child; they gave it a good nurse, and the child grew fast and became wonderfully handsome. The devil had placed himself in the child’s cradle. This mother gave him suck, and, contrary to the other, he did not grow at all. The parents were vexed at having such a child; they did not know what to think of it. Their true child was more than extraordinarily clever. The coachman and his wife were dazed with joy, and they loved him as (if he were) their own child. When he was twelve years old, he said to his father and mother that he wished to become a monk. The coachman and his wife were very sorry, and they asked him to become only a priest. But after having seen his great desire they allow him to do as he wished.
He went away then, and at the age of eighteen years he was able to say mass. When he was there, one day two men were passing in front of the garden of his real father, and they began to quarrel. They got so enraged that one killed the other, and threw him into his father’s garden. This father was tried and condemned to death for having killed this man.