Whilst Jakob laughed at Josef’s phantoms, he could not help telling us in his turn a tale which he considered much more noteworthy:  “There was no denying that one winter’s night a huntsman, losing himself in the deep snow, took refuge in a forsaken senner-hut.  Content to suffer hunger if only thus sheltered for the night, he was shortly surprised by the entrance of a black man, who not only welcomed him to the hut, but proposed cooking him some supper; an offer most thankfully accepted.  Upon this, the black man lighted a fire, suddenly produced a frying-pan, which had been invisible before, and began cooking strauben and cream pancakes from equally hidden stores.  When supper was ready the huntsman begged the good-natured black cook to sit down and eat with him; and a very hearty meal he seemed to make, although, to the surprise of the huntsman, the food turned as black as a cinder before it entered his mouth.  Both men lay down to rest; and after a comfortable sleep the hunter, rising up to go, thanked the black man for his kind hospitality, adding, ‘May God reward you!’ ‘Oh,’ replied the other, uttering a great sigh of relief, ’may God in His mercy equally reward you for those words!  When I walked on the earth I laughed at religion:  I was therefore sent back in the spirit to toil until some mortal should thank me in God’s name for what I had done for him.  This you have done, and now I am free;’ and so saying he vanished.”

“Yes,” said Moidel, “these tales are as true as the gospel.  You know Nanni, the maid who sings so sweetly?  Her father some years since went on a pilgrimage with two other peasants to Maria Zell.  Arriving late one night at a solitary farm-house, they rapped at the door, requesting a lodging.  The bauer, however, excused himself:  it was from no evil intention, he said, but he could not take strangers in.  The three wanderers pleaded how ill would be their condition if left in the fields all night.  Still the bauer made no other reply, until, on their pressing him, he finally declared, half in anger, that they must themselves be responsible for their night’s rest.  He wished to treat them well, but could offer them no better bed than the top of the oven in the stube.  This offer they willingly accepted, but hardly had they lain down when a peasant-woman entered with a pail of water and brushes.  In spite of their entreaties, she scrubbed and scrubbed away all night, and hardly had she finished when, the work not pleasing her, she began scrubbing the floor and woodwork over again.  Thus the cleaning lasted the livelong night, until in the early morning the maid-servant entered and the woman disappeared; the floor and walls being, to their astonishment, as dry and dusty as the evening before.  Whereupon they spoke to the bauer of their troublesome visitor.  ‘Do not accuse me,’ he replied ’of inhospitality:  this is a strange matter, from which I would fain have kept you.  Intolerable as it has been to you, it is still worse for me, knowing that the woman who thus scrubs, and with so much din, is my poor dead wife.  Her brain, when she was alive, was quite turned about cleaning.  She could not even go to church with me and the neighbors, but must stay at home and clean.  So, being a bad manager, and not washing her soul white, she seems unfit for heaven, and must needs come here every night to continue her work.  Even masses don’t seem to help her.’”