Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/160

 with disappointment and grief, and having no money to pay for a lodging at the inn, he was fain to lay down under a hay-stack in a neighbouring field; where, without once closing his eyes, he waited impatiently until day-break, and then began his journey home.

When he got back to the mountains, he felt so overcome with grief and weariness, that he almost yielded to despair. “Two day’s labour lost,” groaned he; “worn out with heart-sorrow and hunger; no hope! no hope! What shall I do, what can I do when my toil-worn limbs shall reach my wretched hovel? the starving inmates will hold up their hands, crying to me for bread, and I have none to give them! Father’s heart, can’st thou bear this? Break rather, ere this extreme of misery comes upon thee!” He threw himself beneath a sloe tree, and tore up the grass with his nails and teeth, and wept and howled in his despair. As the sailor who sees his vessel sinking will have recourse to any expedient, even jumping into the boiling waves, in the hope of escaping, or at all events postponing immediate destruction, so poor Veit, after forming and rejecting a thousand futile schemes, resolved at last to have recourse to the Spirit of the Mountain. He had heard a hundred stories about the Gnome from travellers with whom he had conversed at different