Page:Grimm-Rackham.djvu/36

 think it’s all quite straight about your pig. One has just been stolen out of Schultze’s sty, in the village I have come from. I fear, I fear it is the one you are leading. They have sent people out to look for it, and it would be a bad business for you if you were found with it; the least they would do, would be to put you in the black hole.’

Poor Hans was very much frightened at this. ‘Oh, dear! oh dear!’ he said. ‘Do help me out of this trouble. You are more at home here; take my pig, and let me have your goose.’

‘Well, I shall run some risk if I do, but I won’t be the means of getting you into a scrape.’

So he took the rope in his hand, and quickly drove the pig up a side road; and honest Hans, relieved of his trouble, plodded on with the goose under his arm.

‘When I really come to think it over,’ he said to himself, ‘I have still had the best of the bargain. First, there is the delicious roast goose, and then all the fat that will drip out of it in roasting, will keep us in goose-fat to eat on our bread for three months at least; and, last of all, there are the beautiful white feathers which I will stuff my pillow with, and then I shall need no rocking to send me to sleep. How delighted my mother will be.’

As he passed through the last village he came to a knife-grinder with his cart, singing to his wheel as it buzzed merrily round—

Hans stopped to look at him, and at last he spoke to him and said, ‘You must be doing a good trade to be so merry over your grinding.’

‘Yes,’ answered the grinder. ‘The work of one’s hands is the foundation of a golden fortune. A good grinder finds money whenever he puts his hand into his pocket. But where did you buy that beautiful goose?’

‘I did not buy it; I exchanged my pig for it.’