The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck.  Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers, were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small, dull eyes, which were always half shut, so that you couldn’t see into them, and always fancied they saw very far into you.  They lived by farming the Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were.  They killed everything that did not pay for its eating.  They shot the blackbirds, because they pecked the fruit; and killed the hedgehogs, lest they should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen; and smothered the cicadas, which used to sing all summer in the lime-trees.  They worked their servants without any wages, till they would not work any more, and then quarrelled with them, and turned them out of doors without paying them.  It would have been very odd, if with such a farm, and such a system of farming, they hadn’t got very rich; and very rich they did get.  They generally contrived to keep their corn by them till it was very dear, and then sell it for twice its value; they had heaps of gold lying about on their floors, yet it was never known that they had given so much as a penny or a crust in charity; they never went to mass; grumbled perpetually at paying tithes; and were, in a word, of so cruel and grinding a temper, as to receive from all those with whom they had any dealings the nickname of the “Black Brothers.”

The youngest brother, Gluck, was as completely opposed, in both appearance and character, to his seniors as could possibly be imagined or desired.  He was not above twelve years old, fair, blue-eyed, and kind in temper to every living thing.  He did not, of course, agree particularly well with his brothers, or, rather, they did not agree with him.  He was usually appointed to the honourable office of turnspit, when there was anything to roast, which was not often; for, to do the brothers justice, they were hardly less sparing upon themselves than upon other people.  At other times he used to clean the shoes, floors, and sometimes the plates, occasionally getting what was left on them, by way of encouragement, and a wholesome quantity of dry blows, by way of education.

Things went on in this manner for a long time.  At last came a very wet summer, and everything went wrong in the country around.  The hay had hardly been got in, when the hay-stacks were floated bodily down to the sea by an inundation; the vines were cut to pieces with the hail; the corn was all killed by a black blight; only in the Treasure Valley, as usual, all was safe.  As it had rain when there was rain nowhere else, so it had sun when there was sun nowhere else.  Everybody came to buy corn at the farm, and went away pouring maledictions on the Black Brothers.  They asked what they liked, and got it, except from the poor, who could only beg, and several of whom were starved at their very door, without the slightest regard or notice.