Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/155

 has chosen to play his pranks. Often has he paralyzed the traveller’s horse, so that it could not advance a step; or broken the wheel of the carrier’s cart; or thrown down before his very eyes, in the middle of the road, a mass of rock, requiring a world of labour to remove it ere the cart could proceed on its journey. Not unfrequently a waggon perfectly empty has been suddenly stopped by a force so great that six horses could not move it one step forward; and did the waggoner exclaim that this was a trick of Rubezahl’s, or if, in his impatience, he indulged in invectives against the Spirit of the Mountain, a cloud of gadflies assailed his horses, and rendered them utterly unmanageable, while a shower of stones, or a sound cudgelling, inflicted by an invisible hand, left the wretched wight all covered with bruises.

There was one old shepherd, a good and worthy man, with whom the Gnome had made an acquaintance, which had ripened into such warm friendship that he had permitted him to pasture his flock close to the hedges of his gardens, which no other person could have done with impunity. The Spirit of the Mountain sometimes listened with pleasure to the recital which this patriarch gave of several of the unpretending events in his life. Yet even this poor man got into a scrape with Rubezahl; for having one day, according to custom, led his flock to the borders of the Gnome’s domain, a few sheep