Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/81

Rh Peter quitted the Golden Lamb as joyously as if he had obtained there the golden fleece itself. The only circumstance that now disturbed his happiness was, that he had not the magic root yet in his possession; and when he considered that the black woodpecker did not build its nest in those parts, he became as melancholy as if suddenly roused from a delightful fairy vision. Recovering himself, however, he struck a light, and, taking pen and ink, set down, from beginning to end, the whole process of obtaining the treasure, so that not a tittle might escape his memory. This being done, he felt his hope somewhat revived, trusting that, although he might be obliged to perform the part of ass for another winter, the time would yet come when he should be able to discontinue his sorrowful pilgrimages to the mill.

Full fifty times had our good Peter witnessed the return both of the stork and the swallow, without paying any attention to it; and as often, too, had he, on Maundy Thursday, served up to his friends a mess of cresses and other herbs, and the first produce of the spring, without even tasting them himself. But now he would not have exchanged for the best Martinmas goose, the first sorry cabbage which his frugal housewife dished for him the following spring; and no sooner did he observe the first return of the swallow, than he celebrated the wished-for event in a flask of wine, at the Golden Lamb. He now laid by every penny of the secret money with which he was supplied by his daughter, in order that he might have wherewith to reward the first lucky wight who should inform him where to find a black woodpecker’s nest. He even retained a scout or two in his service, whom he sent to reconnoitre the forest for this purpose. The wicked fellows would sometimes, however, make an April fool of him, by sending him many a mile, over hill and dale, where his labour was at length rewarded by meeting a raven’s or a squirrel’s nest in the hollow tree to which he had been directed; and, if he pretended to be angry at this waggery, they would laugh in his face, and run off. At length, one of these scouts, less knavish as well as more fortunate than the rest, having actually met with a black woodpecker that had pitched its nest on an old decayed tree, arrived post haste with the important news. Our anxious ornithologist instantly flew off, as swiftly as if transformed into a bird himself, to ascertain the correctness of the report. His guide conducted him to a tree, where he saw a bird fly to and fro, which seemed to have its nest there; yet the black woodpecker, not belonging to any of those genera of birds which culinary ornithologists study, and being also less sociable in its nature than either the sparrow or swallow, and less familiar to him than either the capon or goose, he was doubtful how far the information was correct; for, to tell the truth, he was quite as well acquainted with the phnix itself