One day his master said to him:—­“I am going to travel, and shall be absent eight days.  During that time thou wilt be here alone:  but thou must not go into either of these four rooms; if thou dost, I will kill thee when I return.”  The youth answered that he would not.  When the man had gone away three or four days, the youth could no longer refrain, but went into one of the rooms.  He looked around, but saw nothing except a shelf over the door, with a whip made of briar on it.  “This was well worth forbidding me so strictly from seeing,” thought the youth.  When the eight days had passed the man came home again.  “Thou hast not, I hope, been into any of my rooms,” said he.  “No, I have not,” answered the youth.  “That I shall soon be able to see,” said the man, going into the room the youth had entered.  “But thou hast been in,” said he, “and now thou shalt die.”  The youth cried and entreated to be forgiven, so that he escaped with his life but had a severe beating; when that was over, they were as good friends as before.

Some time after this, the man took another journey.  This time he would be away a fortnight, but first forbade the youth again from going into any of the rooms he had not already been in; but the one he had previously entered he might enter again.  This time all took place just as before, the only difference being that the youth abstained for eight days before he entered the forbidden rooms.  In one apartment he found only a shelf over the door, on which lay a huge stone and a water-bottle.  “This is also something to be in such fear about,” thought the youth again.  When the man came home, he asked whether he had been in any of the rooms.  “No, he had not,” was the answer.  “I shall soon see,” said the man; and when he found that the youth had nevertheless been in, he said, “Now I will no longer spare thee, thou shalt die.”  But the youth cried and implored that his life might be spared, and thus again escaped with a beating; but this time got as much as could be laid on him.  When he had recovered from the effect of this beating he lived as well as ever, and he and the man were as good friends as before.

Some time after this, the man again made a journey, and now he was to be three weeks absent.  He warned the youth anew not to enter the third room; if he did he must at once prepare to die.  At the end of a fortnight, the youth had no longer any command over himself, and stole in; but here he saw nothing save a trap-door in the floor.  He lifted it up and looked through; there stood a large copper kettle, that boiled and boiled, yet he could see no fire under it.  “I should like to know if it is hot,” thought the youth, dipping his finger down into it; but when he drew it up again he found that all his finger was gilt.  He scraped and washed it, but the gilding was not to be removed; so he tied a rag over it, and when the man returned and asked him what was the matter with his finger, he answered he had cut it badly.  But the man, tearing the rag off, at once saw what ailed the finger.  At first he was going to kill the youth, but as he cried and begged again, he merely beat him so that he was obliged to lie in bed for three days.  The man then took a pot down from the wall and rubbed him with what it contained, so that the youth was as well as before.