After this the frau prepared the evening meal, the Genie assisting very satisfactorily, except that his notions of quantity were rather too liberal; perhaps this was natural in one accustomed to palaces and courts.  When all was on the table, by way of testing his Slave’s obedience Heinrich sat down at the board and carelessly rubbed the candle-snuffer.  The Genie was there in a second!  Not only so, but he fell upon the viands with an ardour and sincerity that were alarming.  In two minutes he had got away with everything on the table.  The rapidity with which that spirit crowded all manner of edibles into his neck was simply shocking!

Having finished his repast he stretched himself before the fire and went to sleep.  Heinrich and Barbara were depressed in spirit; they sat up until nearly morning in silence, waiting for the Genie to vanish for the night; but he did not perceptibly vanish any.  Moreover, he had not vanished next morning; he had risen with the lark, and was preparing breakfast, having made his estimates upon a basis of most immoderate consumption.  To this he soon sat down with the same catholicity of appetite that had distinguished him the previous evening.  Having bolted this preposterous breakfast he arrayed his fat face in a sable scowl, beat his master with a stewpan, stretched himself before the fire, and again addressed himself to sleep.  Over a furtive and clandestine meal in the larder, Heinrich and Barbara confessed themselves thoroughly heart-sick of the Supernatural.

“I told you so,” said he; “depend upon it, patient industry is a thousand per cent. better than this invisible agency.  I will now take the fatal candle-snuffer a mile from here, rub it real hard, fling it aside, and run away.”

But he didn’t.  During the night ten feet of snow had fallen.  It lay all winter too.

Early the next spring there emerged from that cottage by the wayside the unstable framework of a man dragging through seas of melting snow a tottering female of dejected aspect.  Forlorn, crippled, famishing, and discouraged, these melancholy relics held on their way until they came to a cross-roads (all leading to Lagerhaus), where they saw clinging to an upright post the tatter of an old placard.  It read as follows: 

LOST, strayed, or stolen, from Herr Schaackhofer’s Grand Museum, the celebrated Patagonian Giant, Ugolulah.  Height 8 ft. 2 in., elegant figure, handsome, intelligent features, sprightly and vivacious in conversation, of engaging address, temperate in diet, harmless and tractable in disposition.  Answers to the nickname of Fritz Sneddeker.  Any one returning him to Herr Schaackhofer will receive Seven Thalers Reward, and no questions asked.

It was a tempting offer, but they did not go back for the giant.  But he was afterwards discovered sleeping sweetly upon the hearthstone, after a hearty meal of empty barrels and boxes.  Being secured he was found to be too fat for egress by the door.  So the house was pulled down to let him out; and that is how it happens to be in ruins now.