Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/86

74 establishment, the bridegroom having purchased a noble mansion, where he resided in the style of an opulent citizen. Peter, in the meanwhile, set himself down at his ease, which it was believed the liberality of his newly-made son enabled him to do, no one suspecting that the cask of nails was his real treasure. We must now go back and recount our hero’s adventures.

He had, totally unknown to any one, accomplished his journey to the Blocksberg with the greatest success, although certainly not altogether with the celerity with which the wizards ride thither on Walpurgis night; his manner of travelling, however, was quite as safe, and certainly quite as pleasant. He visited each house with a sign attached to it with as much punctuality as if he had been employed in taking a census of all houses of entertainment, and in ascertaining that their cellars were well stocked, and their larders well furnished.

But, at length, the mountains of the Harz appeared in the blue distant landscape, and on the near approach to the scene of action, he heroically braced liimself up for the important enterprise.

Until he began to ascend the Brocken his nose had served him as a faithful compass, but he now found himself in a latitude in which this magnet no longer acted with effect. He wandered in various directions, yet no one could inform him where the Morgenbrod Valley was situated. At length, he got, by chance, into the right track; discovered S. Andrew’s Mount, and the little stream, and last of all, the cave. He entered; the spring-root performed its office; he found the chest and the treasure, and filled his sack with as much gold as he could carry; enough to make him independent for the remainder of his days, and to enable him to bestow a handsome dowry on his dear Gertrude.

When he again beheld the light of day on his return from the cave, he felt like a mariner who, just escaped from shipwreck, has been combating in the midst of the watery element with all the horrors of death, and now again presses once more the firm earth as he exultingly scales the cliff. Notwithstanding the assurances which he had received of perfect security, it was not without certain apprehensions of mischief from the spirit of the mine, that he performed his subterraneous journey; he feared lest the stern guardian of the treasure should appear in some terrific form, and either throw him into a mortal dread, or even plunder him of the rich fruit of his daring enterprise. Everything, however, succeeded to his wish; he neither saw nor heard any evil spirit; only the iron door closed behind him with an awful sound, as soon as he set his foot out of the vaulted chamber. In his hurry, the alarmed treasure-seeker forgot his talisman, the spring-root, which he had laid out of his hand when occupied in scraping up the gold, on which account it was impossible for him to return for another freight; yet this circumstance did not cause him much affliction