He now led them out to a rock in one of the fields, and ordered them to fall to work at blasting, hewing, and dragging stones.  They toiled patiently, and made as if it were only sport to them.

From morning till night their task-master made them labour without ceasing, standing over them constantly to prevent them resting.  Still their obstinacy was inflexible, and at the end of some weeks his pity for them was so great that he was obliged to give over.

He now thought of a new species of punishment for them.  He ordered them to appear before him next morning, each provided with a new whip.  They obeyed, and John commanded them to lash one another, and he stood looking on while they did it, as grim and cruel as an Eastern tyrant.  Still the little people cut and slashed themselves and mocked at John, and refused to comply with his wishes.  This he did for three or four days.

Several other courses did he try, but all in vain.  His temper was too gentle to struggle with their obstinacy, and he commenced to despair of ever accomplishing his dearest wish.  He began now to hate the little people of whom he had before been so fond.  He kept away from their banquets and dances, and associated with none but Elizabeth, and ate and drank quite solitary in his chamber.  In short, he became almost a hermit, and sank into moodiness and melancholy.

While in this temper, as he was taking a solitary walk in the evening, and, to divert his melancholy, was flinging the stones that lay in his path against each other, he happened to break a tolerably large one, and out of it jumped a toad.  The moment John saw the ugly animal he caught him up in ecstasy, and put him in his pocket and ran home, crying—­

“Now I have her!  I have my Elizabeth!  Now you shall get it, you little mischievous rascals!”

On getting home he put the toad into a costly silver casket, as if it was the greatest treasure.

To account for John’s joy, you must know that Klas Starkwolt had often told him that the underground people could not endure any ill smell, and that the sight, or even the smell, of a toad made them faint, and suffer the most dreadful tortures, and that by means of one of those odious animals one could compel them to do anything.  Hence there are no bad smells to be found in the whole glass empire, and a toad is a thing unheard of there.  This toad must certainly have been enclosed in the stone from the creation, as it were, for the sake of John and Elizabeth.

Resolved to try the effect of his toad, John took the casket under his arm and went out, and on the way he met two of the little people in a lonesome place.  The moment he approached they fell to the ground, and whimpered and howled most lamentably as long as he was near them.

Satisfied now of his power, he, the next morning, summoned the fifty principal persons, with their wives and children, to his apartment.  When they came he addressed them, reminding them once again of his kindness and gentleness towards them, and of the good terms on which they had hitherto lived.  He reproached them with their ingratitude in refusing him the only favour he had ever asked of them, but firmly declared that he would not give way to their obstinacy.