Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/175



HOUGH the Gnome’s protegé took the greatest care to keep secret the true source of his opulence, in order to save his patron the visits of importunate suitors, yet, after a time, the thing became known all over the neighbourhood. When a woman has once got any secret of her husband’s at her tongue’s end, however important to be preserved, the lightest breeze in the world will burst it, as easily as a soap-bubble. First, Veit’s better-half told the matter, of course in the strictest confidence, to an immensely discreet female neighbour; this immensely discreet neighbour, in turn, whispered it to a gossip of her own; the gossip communicated it to her godfather, the village barber, who related it to all his customers; so that in a very short time indeed it was known to the whole village, the whole district. Forthwith, every broken trader, every idle vagabond in the place, pricked up his ears, and started off, troops of them, to the mountains, thinking they had nothing to do but to bawl “Rubezahl! Rubezahl!” and he would come and hand them over a hundred dollars a-piece, as had happened to Veit. The Gnome not