Page:Czech Folk Tales.pdf/204

184 "I am the Knight Bambus, and all these forests belong to this castle. I was a robber-knight, and so as a punishment I have to keep watch here now."

"And how long is it to last?"

"When three poor people come here, and each of them takes away two sackfuls of gold, I shall be delivered. I am bound to give all this gold away for nothing. Already I have outlived three generations of my kinsmen here."

Then he bade him fetch two leather sacks from the other room and collect the gold into them, filling them up to the brim. He must keep it all for himself and must not tell any one what he had seen. The gamekeeper promised that he wouldn't even tell his wife, Hátička, how he had got the money. So he filled the two sacks up to the brim, and the old man helped him to hoist them on to his shoulders and saw him out of the door. All the time he kept warning him to keep his mouth shut: "For what a woman knows all the world knows; that's gospel truth, sure enough."

So the gamekeeper left the castle, carrying those two sacks, and the man shook hands with him before he left. At the border of the