cask in a basket, which he took on his back, and walked with slow and tottering steps to the count’s castle. It was already dark when he arrived. He sat down on a stone in the court-yard and began to cough, like an asthmatic old woman, and to rub his hands as if he were cold. In front of the door of the stable some soldiers were lying round a fire; one of them observed the woman, and called out to her: “Come nearer, old mother, and warm yourself beside us. After all, you have no bed for the night, and must take one where you can find it.” The old woman tottered up to them, begged them to lift the basket from her back, and sat down beside them at the fire. “What have you got in your little cask, old hag?” asked one. “A good mouthful of wine,” she answered. “I live by trade, for money and fair words I am quite ready to let you have a glass.” “Let us have it here, then,” said the soldier, and when he had tasted one glass he said: “When wine is good, I like another glass,” and had another poured out for himself, and the rest followed his example. “Hallo, comrades,” cried one of them to those who were in the stable, “here is an old girl who has wine that is as old as herself; take a draught, it will warm your stomachs far better than our fire.” The old woman carried her cask into the stable. One of the soldiers had seated himself on the saddled riding-horse, another held its bridle in his hand, a third had laid hold of its tail. She poured out as much as they wanted until the spring ran dry. It was not long before the bridle fell from the hand of the one, and he fell down and began to snore, the other left hold of the tail, lay down and snored still louder. The one who was sitting in the saddle, did remain sitting, but bent his head almost down to the horse’s neck, and slept and blew with his mouth like the bellows of a forge. The soldiers outside had already been asleep for a long time, and were lying on the ground motionless, as if dead. When the master-thief saw that he had succeeded, he gave the first a rope in his hand instead of the bridle, and the other who had been holding the tail, a wisp of straw, but what was he to do with the one who was sitting on the horse’s back? He did not want to throw him down, for he might have awakened and have uttered a cry. He had a good idea, he unbuckled the girths of the saddle, tied a couple of ropes which were hanging to a ring on the wall fast to the saddle, and drew the sleeping rider up into the air on it, then he twisted the rope round the posts, and made it fast. He soon unloosed the horse from the chain, but if he had ridden over the stony pavement of the yard they would have heard the noise in the castle. So he wrapped the horse’s hoofs in old rags, led him carefully out, leapt upon him, and galloped off.
When day broke, the master galloped to the castle on the stolen horse. The count had just got up, and was looking out of the window. “Good morning, Sir Count,” he cried to him, “here is the horse, which I have got safely out of the stable! Just look, how beautifully your soldiers are lying there sleeping; and if you will but go into the stable, you will see how comfortable your watchers have made it for themselves.” The count could not help laughing. Then he said: “For once you have succeeded, but things won’t go so well the second time, and I warn you that if you come before me as a thief, I will handle you as I would a thief.”
When the countess went to bed that night, she closed her hand with the wedding-ring tightly together, and the count said: “All the doors are locked and bolted, I will keep awake and wait for the thief, but if he gets in by the window, I will shoot him.” The master-thief, however, went in the dark to the gallows, cut a poor sinner who was hanging there down from the halter, and carried him on his back to the castle. Then he set a ladder up to the bedroom, put the dead body on his shoulders, and began to climb up. When he had got so high that the head of the dead man showed at the window, the count, who was watching in his bed, fired a pistol at him,