Then he amuses the great Nichus with all his stories and all the clever tricks he has been playing during his nocturnal visits to the people in the villages and towns on the river.
These merry tricks of Master Nixcobt form even in our day an ever welcome staple of amusement to the young spinners during the long winter nights, accompanied as they are by the cheerful hum of the swiftly turning wheels.
One day Nixcobt calls upon the tax collector of a little town on the Rhine, whom he finds in great consternation. His wife has left his house and he does not know what has become of her. To console him Nixcobt tells him that she is dead, having drowned herself, and as a proof of it, he shows him a letter which he has with his own hands taken from the pockets of the deceased.
The husband, whose tears had been flowing freely, dries them quickly, becomes furious, and looks at his children with fierce glances. He is jealous of their dead mother. Nixcobt laughs and goes to some one else.
That some one else, an honest vintner of the Rheingau, has the night before killed his friend in an excess of passion and then thrown the body into the Rhine, together with the knife with which he had committed the murder. This knife Nix-cobt now presents to him, for he takes delight in restoring lost objects of this kind.
While the murderer stands petrified at the sight of the still bloody knife, the Gnome hastens to the Mayor to report to him the whole matter.
An inquiry is held, the vintner is found, holding the bloody knife in his hand, he is hanged and Nixcobt laughs heartily.
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One night a notary of Badenheim, near Mayence, hears in his sleep a voice saying:—