Page:Foreign Tales and Traditions (Volume 1).djvu/226

 reed, was dragged away, amid a thousand curses, towards a dark noisome dungeon, there to starve beside his emptied wallets.

They are just about to lower the unfortunate shepherd into this loathsome place, and all around stand the guests mocking and jeering the trembling rustic,—when lo! the invisible dwarf approaches his half-dead companion, claps the cap again on his head, and in the twinkling of an eye the prisoner disappears.

The spectators stood there as if changed into as many stones, with faces as long as a yard, for the full space of an hour, without bethinking themselves either of eating or drinking, or the merriment of the wedding. And there they might have been standing to this hour, had not the dwarf, compassionating their blank amazement, taken off his cap and revealed himself for a minute’s space in his true form. “Now, Sir Knight,” said he, do not hound me again with your dogs out of your castle-yard; and you, Jacob, I hope you will in future put your bagpipes a little while aside, when I politely ask that favour of you.”

The guests now tumbled over one another, and scrambled out of the house where the mysterious dwarf had appeared, in the greatest consternation.