He then seized the unhappy son of Æsculapius by the nape of the neck, shook him as a cat shakes a mouse, banged him against the trees, knocking one of his eyes out of his head; and finally left him half dead on the ground. After awhile, the poor wretch recovered a little, and crawling away as best he could, got home at last, and took very good care never to go herbalizing on the Giant Mountains again.
Rubezahl’s friendship, you see, was easily forfeited; on the other hand, ’twas as readily secured. A peasant of the district of Reichenberg had for his neighbour a bad, litigious man, who having taken an enmity to him, had persecuted him by means of a villanous lawsuit, until he had stripped him of the little property he had possessed; even his last cow had been taken from him. The poor fellow had now nothing left but a wife and six children, all well nigh reduced to skeletons; a good half of whom, in his despair, he would willingly have given in exchange for his cow. He had still, indeed, a pair of vigorous arms, but without a foot of land these were of no service. It went to his heart to hear the poor children crying for bread, and he with none to give them. “If any one,” said he one day to his miserable wife, “would lend us a hundred dollars, we might establish ourselves on some farm at a distance from our litigious neighbour, and raise our fallen fortunes. Thou hast rich relations on the other side of the mountains; I will go
