While he was thus sitting by the wayside wiping his forehead and looking hot and weary, an old wrinkled woman came limping along, who looked with suspicion at the man and his strange burden.
She wanted to pass by without saying a word, but the stranger stopped her and said: "How far is it from here to Aix-la-Chapelle?" The woman cast a sharp look at the speaker.
As she had reached years of discretion, being now in her seventy-second year, she was shrewd enough to recognise in the man before her the very devil in person. She was also quite sure, that he must have some wicked plan in his head against the good town, Aix-la-Chapelle.
Therefore assuming a very sad expression she answered in a complaining voice: "Kind sir, I am so sorry for you, the way to the town is still very long. Only look at my boots, they are quite worn from the long way, and yet I got them new from the shoemaker at Aix-la-Chapelle."
Master Satan uttered something that sounded like a bitter curse. Then he shook off the sandy dune from his shoulders and flew away in a fury.
The old woman was for a moment terror-stricken, but when she saw the fatal figure of the stranger disappearing, she was inexpressibly glad at having saved the town and outwitted the devil himself.
If he had only looked a little more carefully he could have seen the tower of the new minster not a mile off.
The sandy dune is still lying in the very same place where the devil dropped it. Its name is "Losberg" or "Ridmountain," so called because the town Aix-la-Chapelle got rid of a great danger.
The memory of the poor wolf is also still preserved. Its image is engraved on the middle of the minster door, where you can also see the big cracks produced by the devil's hammering it in his impotent anger.
