Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/103

Rh exclaiming, "Hollo there! you are getting too troublesome; but leave off this sport, and let's have a bout of it, if you have any pluck, for you have found the last to your shoe."

At these words he heard a shout of laughter, and then a hollow voice saying, "Come down here, and I will tell you who I am." Then Cienzo, without losing courage, answered, "Wait awhile, I'll come." So he groped about, until at last he found a ladder, which led to a cellar; and going down, he saw a lighted lamp, and three ghost-looking figures, who were making a piteous clamoiur, crying, "Alas, my beauteous treasure, I must lose thee!"

When Cienzo saw this, he began himself to cry and lament for company sake; and after he had wept for some time, the Moon having now with the axe of her rays broken the bar of the Sky, the three figures who were making the outcry said to Cienzo, "Take this treasure, which is destined for thee alone, but mind that you take care of it." And so saying they vanished, like one who has never appeared. Then Cienzo, espying the sunlight through a hole in the wall, wished to climb up again, but he could not find the ladder; whereat he set up such a cry, that the master of the tower, who had come to hunt for something in the old house, heard him, and asked him what he was about; and when he