When the robber folk and the lay brother had groped their way back to the cave, they missed Abbot Hans.  They took brands with them and went out to search for him.  They found him dead upon the coverlet of snow.

Then the lay brother began weeping and lamenting, for he understood that it was he who had killed Abbot Hans because he had dashed from him the cup of happiness which he had been thirsting to drain to its last drop.

When Abbot Hans had been carried down to Oevid, those who took charge of the dead saw that he held his right hand locked tight around something which he must have grasped at the moment of death.  When they finally got his hand open, they found that the thing which he had held in such an iron grip was a pair of white root bulbs, which he had torn from among the moss and leaves.

When the lay brother who had accompanied Abbot Hans saw the bulbs, he took them and planted them in Abbot Hans’ herb garden.

He guarded them the whole year to see if any flower would spring from them.  But in vain he waited through the spring, the summer, and the autumn.  Finally, when winter had set in and all the leaves, and the flowers were dead, he ceased caring for them.

But when Christmas Eve came again, he was so strongly reminded of Abbot Hans that he wandered out into the garden to think of him.  And look! as he came to the spot where he had planted the bare root bulbs, he saw that from them had sprung flourishing green stalks, which bore beautiful flowers with silver white leaves.

He called out all the monks at Oevid, and when they saw that this plant bloomed on Christmas Eve, when all the other growths were as if dead, they understood that this flower had in truth been plucked by Abbot Hans from the Christmas garden in Goeinge forest.  Then the lay brother asked the monks if he might take a few blossoms to Bishop Absalon.

And when he appeared before Bishop Absalon, he gave him the flowers and said:  “Abbot Hans sends you these.  They are the flowers he promised to pick for you from the garden in Goeinge forest.”

When Bishop Absalon beheld the flowers, which had sprung from the earth in darkest winter, and heard the words, he turned as pale as if he had met a ghost.  He sat in silence a moment; thereupon he said, “Abbot Hans has faithfully kept his word and I shall also keep mine.”  And he ordered that a letter of ransom be drawn up for the wild robber who was outlawed and had been forced to live in the forest ever since his youth.

He handed the letter to the lay brother, who departed at once for the Robbers’ Cave.  When he stepped in there on Christmas Day, the robber came toward him with axe uplifted.  “I’d like to hack you monks into bits, as many as you are!” said he.  “It must be your fault that Goeinge forest did not last night dress itself in Christmas bloom.”

“The fault is mine alone,” said the lay brother, “and I will gladly die for it; but first I must deliver a message from Abbot Hans.”  And he drew forth the Bishop’s letter and told the man that he was free.  “Hereafter you and your children shall play in the Christmas straw and celebrate your Christmas among people, just as Abbot Hans wished to have it,” said he.