Shortly after this Snow-white and Rose-red went out to get a dish of fish.  As they approached the stream they saw something which looked like an enormous grasshopper springing toward the water as if it were going to jump in.  They ran forward and recognized their old friend the dwarf.  “Where are you going to?” asked Rose-red; “you’re surely not going to jump into the water?” “I’m not such a fool,” screamed the dwarf.  “Don’t you see that cursed fish is trying to drag me in?” The little man had been sitting on the bank fishing, when unfortunately the wind had entangled his beard in the line; and when immediately afterward a big fish bit, the feeble little creature had no strength to pull it out; the fish had the upper fin, and dragged the dwarf toward him.  He clung on with all his might to every rush and blade of grass, but it didn’t help him much; he had to follow every movement of the fish, and was in great danger of being drawn into the water.  The girls came up just at the right moment, held him firm, and did all they could to disentangle his beard from the line; but in vain, beard and line were in a hopeless muddle.  Nothing remained but to produce the scissors and cut the beard, by which a small part of it was sacrificed.

When the dwarf perceived what they were about he yelled to them:  “Do you call that manners, you toad-stools! to disfigure a fellow’s face?  It wasn’t enough that you shortened my beard before, but you must now needs cut off the best bit of it.  I can’t appear like this before my own people.  I wish you’d been in Jericho first.”  Then he fetched a sack of pearls that lay among the rushes, and without saying another word he dragged it away and disappeared behind a stone.

It happened that soon after this the mother sent the two girls to the town to buy needles, thread, laces, and ribbons.  Their road led over a heath where huge boulders of rock lay scattered here and there.  While trudging along they saw a big bird hovering in the air, circling slowly above them, but always descending lower, till at last it settled on a rock not far from them.  Immediately afterward they heard a sharp, piercing cry.  They ran forward, and saw with horror that the eagle had pounced on their old friend the dwarf, and was about to carry him off.  The tender-hearted children seized hold of the little man, and struggled so long with the bird that at last he let go his prey.  When the dwarf had recovered from the first shock he screamed in his screeching voice:  “Couldn’t you have treated me more carefully?  You have torn my thin little coat all to shreds, useless, awkward hussies that you are!” Then he took a bag of precious stones and vanished under the rocks into his cave.  The girls were accustomed to his ingratitude, and went on their way and did their business in town.  On their way home, as they were again passing the heath, they surprised the dwarf pouring out his precious stones on an open space, for he had thought no one