John was thunderstruck at this, for it had never before occurred to him; he, however, comforted her as well as he could, and declared he would never leave the place without her. He spent the whole night in forming various plans; at last he fixed on one, and in the morning he despatched his servant to summon to his apartment six of the principal of the little people. When they came, John thus mildly addressed them:

"My friends, you know how I came here, not as a prisoner or servant, but as a lord and master over one of you, and consequently, over all.

You have now for the ten years I have been with you treated me with respect and attention, and for that I am your debtor. But you are still more my debtors, for I might have given you every sort of annoyance and vexation, and you must have submitted to it. I have, however, not done so, but have behaved as your equal, and have sported and played with you rather than ruled over you. I now have one request to make. There is a girl among your servants whom I love, Elizabeth Krabbin, of Rambin, where I was born. Give her to me, and let us depart. For I will return to where the sun shines and the plough goes through the land. I ask to take nothing with me but her, and the ornaments and furniture of my chamber."

He spoke in a determined tone, and they hesitated and cast their eyes to the ground; at last the oldest of them replied:

"Sir, you ask what we cannot grant. It is a fixed law, that no servant shall leave this place before the appointed time. Were we to break through this law, our whole subterranean empire would fall. Anything else you desire, for we love and respect you, but we cannot give up Elizabeth."

"You can and you shall give her up," cried John in a rage; "go think of it till to-morrow. Return here at this hour. I will show you whether or not I can triumph over your hypocritical and cunning stratagems."

The six retired. Next morning, on their return, John addressed them in the kindest manner, but to no purpose; they persisted in their refusal. He gave them till the next day, threatening them severely in case of their still proving refractory.

Next day, when the six little people appeared before him, John looked at them sternly, and made no return to their salutations, but said to them shortly, "Yes, or No?" And they answered with one voice, "No." He then ordered his servant to summon twenty-four more of the principal persons with their wives and children. When they came, they were in all five hundred, men, women, and children. John ordered them forthwith to go and fetch pickaxes, spades, and bars, which they did in a second.

He now led them out to a rock in one of the fields, and ordered them to fall to work at blasting, hewing, and dragging stones. They toiled patiently, and made as if it were only sport to them. From morning till night their task-master made them labour without ceasing, standing over them constantly, to prevent their resting. Still their obstinacy was inflexible; and at the end of some weeks his pity for them was so great, that he was obliged to give over.

He now thought of a new species of punishment for them. He ordered them to appear before him next morning, each provided with a new whip.

They obeyed, and John commanded them to strip and lash one another till the blood should run down on the ground, and he stood looking on as grim and cruel as an eastern tyrant. Still the little people cut and slashed themselves, and mocked at John, and refused to comply with his wishes. This he did for three or four days.

Several other courses did he try, but all in vain; his temper was too gentle to struggle with their obstinacy, and he began now to despair of ever accomplishing his dearest wish. He began even to hate the little people whom he was before so fond of; he kept away from their banquets and dances, and associated alone with Elizabeth, and ate and drank quite solitary in his chamber. In short, he became almost a perfect hermit, and sank into moodiness and melancholy.

While in this temper, as he was taking a solitary walk in the evening, and, to divert his melancholy, was flinging the stones that lay in his path against each other, he happened to break a tolerably large one, and out of it jumped a toad. The moment John saw the ugly animal, he caught him up in ecstasy, and put him into his pocket and ran home, crying, "Now I have her! I have my Elizabeth! Now you shall get it, you little mischievous rascals!" And on getting home he put the toad into a costly silver casket, as if it was the greatest treasure.

To account for John's joy you must know that Klas Starkwolt had often told him that the underground people could not endure any ill smell, and that the sight or even the smell of a toad made them faint and suffer the most dreadful tortures, and that by means of stench and these odious ugly animals, one could compel them to anything. Hence there are no bad smells to be found in the whole glass empire, and a toad is a thing unheard of there; this toad must therefore have been inclosed in the stone from the creation, as it were for the sake of John and Elizabeth.

Resolved to try the effect of his toad, John took the casket under his arm and went out, and on the way he met two of the little people in a lonesome place. The moment he approached them they fell to the ground, and whimpered and howled most lamentably, as long as he was near them.

Satisfied now of his power, he next morning summoned the fifty principal persons, with their wives and children, to his apartment.

When they came, he addressed them, reminding them once again of his kindness and gentleness toward them, and of the good terms on which they had hitherto lived. He reproached them with their ingratitude in refusing him the only favour he had ever asked of them, but firmly declared he would not give way to their obstinacy. "Wherefore," said he, "for the last time, think for a minute, and if you then say No, you shall feel that pain which is to you and your children the most terrible of all pains."

They did not take long to deliberate, but unanimously replied "No;"

and they thought to themselves what new scheme has the youth hit on, with which he thinks to frighten wise ones like us, and they smiled as they said No. Their smiling enraged John above all, and he ran back a few hundred paces, to where he had laid the casket with the toad, under a bush.

He was hardly come within a hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe, as if suffering the most excruciating pain. They stretched out their hands, and cried, "Have mercy! have mercy! we feel you have a toad, and there is no escape for us. Take the odious beast away, and we will do all you require." He let them kick a few seconds longer, and then took the toad away. They then stood up and felt no more pain. John let all depart but the six chief persons, to whom he said:--

"This night between twelve and one Elizabeth and I will depart. Load then for me three waggons, with gold, and silver, and precious stones.

I might, you know, take all that is in the hill, and you deserve it, but I will be merciful. Farther, you must put all the furniture of my chamber in two waggons, and get ready for me the handsomest travelling-carriage that is in the hill, with six black horses.

Moreover, you must set at liberty all the servants who have been so long here that on earth they would be twenty years old and upwards, and you must give them as much silver and gold as will make them rich for life, and make a law that no one shall be detained here longer than his twentieth year."

The six took the oath, and went away quite melancholy, and John buried his toad deep in the ground. The little people laboured hard and prepared everything. At midnight everything was out of the hill, and John and Elizabeth got into the silver tun, and were drawn up.

It was then one o'clock, and it was midsummer, the very time that twelve years before John had gone down into the hill. Music sounded around them, and they saw the glass hill open, and the rays of the light of heaven shine on them after so many years; and when they got out they saw the first streaks of dawn already in the east. Crowds of the undergroundpeople were around them busied about the waggons. John bid them a last farewell, waved his brown cap three times in the air, and then flung it among them. And at the same moment he ceased to see them; he beheld nothing but a green hill, and the well-known bushes and fields, and heard the church clock of Rambin strike two. When all was still, save a few larks, who were tuning their morning songs, they all fell on their knees and worshiped God, resolving henceforth to lead a pious and a Christian life.

When the sun rose, John arranged the procession, and they set out for Rambin. Every well-known object that they saw awaked pleasing recollections in the bosom of John and his bride; and as they passed by Rodenkirchen, John recognised, among the people that gazed at and followed them, his old friend Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd, and his dog Speed. It was about four in the morning when they entered Rambin, and they halted in the middle of the village, about twenty paces from the house where John was born. The whole village poured out to gaze on these Asiatic princes, for such the old sexton, who had in his youth been at Moscow and Constantinople, said they were. There John saw his father and mother, and his brother Andrew, and his sister Trine. The old minister, Krabbe, stood there too, in his black slippers and white night cap, gaping and staring with the rest.

John discovered himself to his parents, and Elizabeth to hers, and the wedding-day was soon fixed, and such a wedding was never seen before or since in the island of Rugen; for John sent to Stralsund and Greifswald for whole boatloads of wine, and sugar, and coffee, and whole herds of oxen, sheep, and pigs were driven to the wedding. The quantity of harts, and roes, and hares that were shot on the occasion, it were vain to attempt to tell, or to count the fish that was caught.

There was not a musician in Rugen and Pomerania that was not engaged, for John was immensely rich, and he wished to display his wealth.

John did not neglect his old friend Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd. He gave him enough to make him comfortable the rest of his days, and insisted on his coming and staying with him as often and as long as he wished.

After his marriage, John made a progress through the country with his beautiful Elizabeth, and they purchased towns, and villages, and lands, until he became master of nearly half Rugen, and a very considerable count in the country. His father, old James Dietrich, was made a nobleman, and his brothers and sisters gentlemen and ladies--for what cannot money do?

John and his wife spent their days in doing acts of piety and charity.

They built several churches, and they had the blessing of every one that knew them, and died universally lamented. It was Count John Dietrich that built and richly endowed the present church of Rambin. He built it on the site of his father's house, and presented to it several of the cups and plates made by the underground people, and his own and Elizabeth's glass shoes, in memory of what had befallen them in their youth. But they were all taken away in the time of the great Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, when the Russians came on the island, and the Cossacks plundered even the churches, and took away everything.

_The Little Glass Shoe._

A peasant, named John Wilde, who lived in Rodenkirchen, found one time a glass shoe on one of the hills where the little people used to dance. He clapped it instantly into his pocket and ran away with it, keeping his hand as close on his pocket as if he had a dove in it; for he knew that he had found a treasure which the underground people must redeem at any price.

Others say that John Wilde lay in ambush one night for the underground people, and gained an opportunity of pulling off one of their shoes, by stretching himself there with a brandy-bottle beside him, and acting like one that was dead drunk; for he was a very cunning man, not over scrupulous in his morals, and had taken in many a one by his craftiness, and, on this account, his name was in no good repute among his neighbours, who, to say the truth, were willing to have as little to do with him as possible. Many hold, too, that he was acquainted with forbidden arts, and used to carry on an intercourse with the fiends and old women that raised storms, and such like.

However, be this as it may, when John had gotten the shoe, he lost no time in letting the folk that dwell under the ground know that he had it. So at midnight he went to the Nine-hills, and cried with all his might, "John Wilde, of Rodenkirchen, has got a beautiful glass shoe.

Who will buy it? Who will buy it?" For he knew that the little one who had lost the shoe must go barefoot till he got it again, and that is no trifle, for the little people have generally to walk upon very hard and stony ground.

John's advertisement was speedily attended to. The little fellow who had lost the shoe made no delay in setting about redeeming it. The first free day he got, that he might come out into the daylight, he came as a respectable merchant, and knocked at John Wilde's door, and asked if John had not a glass shoe to sell? "For," says he, "they are an article now in great demand, and are sought for in every market."

John replied that it was true he had a very little little, nice, pretty little glass shoe, but it was so small that even a Dwarf's foot would be squeezed in it; and that God Almighty must make people on purpose for it before it could be of any use; but that, for all that, it was an extraordinary shoe, and a valuable shoe, and a dear shoe, and it was not every merchant that could afford to pay for it.

The merchant asked to see it, and when he had examined it, "Glass shoes," said he, "are not by any means such rare articles, my good friend, as you think here in Rodenkirchen, because you do not happen to go much into the world. However," said he, after hemming a little, "I will give you a good price for it, because I happen to have the very fellow of it." And he bid the countryman a thousand dollars for it.

"A thousand dollars are money, my father used to say when he drove fat oxen to market," replied John Wilde, in a mocking tone; "but it will not leave my hands for that shabby price; and, for my own part, it may ornament the foot of my daughter's doll. Harkye, friend: I have heard a sort of little song sung about the glass shoe, and it is not for a parcel of dirt that it will go out of my hands. Tell me now, my good fellow, should you happen to know the knack of it, that in every furrow I make when I am ploughing I should find a ducat? If not, the shoe is still mine, and you may inquire for glass shoes at those other markets."

The merchant made still a great many attempts, and twisted and turned in every direction to get the shoe; but when he found the farmer inflexible, he agreed to what John desired, and swore to the performance of it. Cunning John believed him, and gave him up the glass shoe, for he knew right well with whom he had to do. So the business being ended, away went the merchant with his glass shoe.

Without a moment's delay, John repaired to his stable, got ready his horses and his plough, and drove out to the field. He selected a piece of ground where he would have the shortest turns possible, and began to plough. Hardly had the plough turned up the first sod, when up sprang a ducat out of the ground, and it was the same with every fresh furrow he made. There was now no end of his ploughing, and John Wilde soon bought eight new horses, and put them into the stable to the eight he already had--and their mangers were never without plenty of oats in them--that he might be able every two hours to yoke two fresh horses, and so be enabled to drive them the faster.

John was now insatiable in ploughing; every morning he was out before sunrise, and many a time he ploughed on till after midnight. Summer and winter it was plough, plough with him evermore, except when the ground was frozen as hard as a stone. But he always ploughed by himself, and never suffered any one to go out with him, or to come to him when he was at work, for John understood too well the nature of his crop to let people see what it was he ploughed so constantly for.

But it fared far worse with himself than with his horses, who ate good oats and were regularly changed and relieved, while he grew pale and meagre by reason of his continual working and toiling. His wife and children had no longer any comfort of him; he never went to the alehouse or the club; he withdrew himself from every one, and scarcely ever spoke a single word, but went about silent and wrapped up in his own thoughts. All the day long he toiled for his ducats, and at night he had to count them and to plan and meditate how he might find out a still swifter kind of plough.

His wife and the neighbours lamented over his strange conduct, his dullness and melancholy, and began to think that he was grown foolish.

Everybody pitied his wife and children, for they imagined that the numerous horses that he kept in his stable, and the preposterous mode of agriculture that he pursued, with his unnecessary and superfluous ploughing, must soon leave him without house or land.

But their anticipations were not fulfilled. True it is, the poor man never enjoyed a happy or contented hour since he began to plough the ducats up out of the ground. The old saying held good in his case, that he who gives himself up to the pursuit of gold is half way in the claws of the evil one. Flesh and blood cannot bear perpetual labour, and John Wilde did not long hold out against this running through the furrows day and night. He got through the first spring, but one day in the second, he dropped down at the tail of the plough like an exhausted November fly. Out of the pure thirst after gold he was wasted away and dried up to nothing; whereas he had been a very strong and hearty man the day the shoe of the little underground man fell into his hands.

His wife, however, found after him a considerable treasure, two great nailed up chests full of good new ducats, and his sons purchased large estates for themselves, and became lords and noblemen. But what good did all that do poor John Wilde?

_The Wonderful Plough._

There was once a farmer who was master of one of the little black ones, that are the blacksmiths and armourers; and he got him in a very curious way. On the road leading to this farmer's ground there stood a stone cross, and every morning as he went to his work he used to stop and kneel down before this cross, and pray for some minutes.

On one of these occasions he noticed on the cross a pretty bright insect, of such a brilliant hue that he could not recollect having ever before seen the like with an insect. He wondered greatly at this, yet still he did not disturb it; but the insect did not remain long quiet, but ran without ceasing backwards and forwards on the cross, as if it was in pain, and wanted to get away. Next morning the farmer again saw the very same insect, and again it was running to and fro, in the same state of uneasiness. The farmer began now to have some suspicions about it, and thought to himself, "Would this now be one of the little black enchanters? For certain, all is not right with that insect; it runs about just like one that had an evil conscience, as one that would, yet cannot, go away:" and a variety of thoughts and conjectures passed through his mind; and he called to mind what he had often heard from his father, and other old people, that when the under groundpeople chance to touch anything holy, they are held fast and cannot quit the spot, and are therefore extremely careful to avoid all such things. But he also thought it may as well be something else; and you would perhaps be committing a sin in disturbing and taking away the little animal; so he let it stay as it was.

But when he had found it twice more in the same place, and still running about with the same marks of uneasiness, he said, "No, it is not all right with it. So now, in the name of God!" and he made a grasp at the insect, that resisted and clung fast to the stone; but he held it tight, and tore it away by main force, and lo! then he found he had, by the top of the head, a little ugly black chap, about six inches long, screeching and kicking at a most furious rate.

The farmer was greatly astounded at this sudden transformation; still he held his prize fast and kept calling to him, while he administered to him a few smart slaps on the buttocks: "Be quiet, be quiet, my little man! if crying was to do the business, we might look for heroes in swaddling clothes. We'll just take you with us a bit, and see what you are good for."

The little fellow trembled and shook in every limb, and then began to whimper most piteously, and to beg hard of the farmer to let him go. But "No, my lad," replied the farmer, "I will not let you go till you tell me who you are, and how you came here, and what trade you know, that enables you to earn your bread in the world." At this the little man grinned and shook his head, but said not a word in reply, only begged and prayed the more to get loose; and the farmer found that he must now begin to entreat him if he would coax any information out of him. But it was all to no purpose. He then adopted the contrary method, and whipped and slashed him till the blood run down, but just to as little purpose; the little black thing remained as dumb as the grave, for this species is the most malicious and obstinate of all the underground race.