“Therefore,” said he, “for the last time, think for a minute, and if you then say ‘No,’ you shall feel that pain which is to you and your children the most terrible of all pains.”

They did not take long to deliberate, but unanimously replied “No”; and they thought to themselves, “What new scheme has the youth hit on with which he thinks to frighten wise ones like us?” and they smiled as they said “No.”  Their smiling enraged John above all, and he ran back a few hundred paces to where he had laid the casket with the toad under a bush.

He was hardly come within a few hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe, as if suffering the most excruciating pain.  They stretched out their hands, and cried—­

“Have mercy, have mercy!  We feel you have a toad, and there is no escape for us.  Take the odious beast away, and we will do all you require.”

He let them kick a few seconds longer, and then took the toad away.  They then stood up and felt no more pain.  John let all depart but the six chief persons, to whom he said—­

“This night, between twelve and one, Elizabeth and I will depart.  Load then for me three waggons with gold and silver and precious stones.  I might, you know, take all that is in the hill, and you deserve it; but I will be merciful.  Further, you must put all the furniture of my chamber in two waggons, and get ready for me the handsomest travelling carriage that is in the hill, with six black horses.  Moreover, you must set at liberty all the servants who have been so long here that on earth they would be twenty years old and upwards; and you must give them as much silver and gold as will make them rich for life, and make a law that no one shall be detained here longer than his twentieth year.”

The six took the oath, and went away quite melancholy; and John buried his toad deep in the ground.  The little people laboured hard, and prepared everything.  At midnight everything was out of the hill; and John and Elizabeth got into the silver tun, and were drawn up.

It was then one o’clock, and it was midsummer, the very time that, twelve years before, John had gone down into the hill.  Music sounded around them, and they saw the glass hill open, and the rays of the light of heaven shine on them after so many years.  And when they got out, they saw the first streaks of dawn already in the east.  Crowds of the underground people were around them, busied about the waggons.  John bid them a last farewell, waved his brown cap three times in the air, and then flung it among them.  At the same moment he ceased to see them.  He beheld nothing but a green hill, and the well-known bushes and fields, and heard the town-clock of Rambin strike two.  When all was still, save a few larks, who were tuning their morning songs, they all fell on their knees and worshipped God, resolving henceforth to live a pious and a Christian life.