She carried him down, and then hurried with loud protestations to the youth’s father.  “Your son has been the cause of a pretty misfortune,” she cried; “he threw my husband downstairs so that he broke his leg.  Take the good-for-nothing wretch out of our house.”  The father was horrified, hurried to the youth, and gave him a scolding.

“What unholy pranks are these?  The evil one must have put them into your head.”  “Father,” he replied, “only listen to me; I am quite guiltless.  He stood there in the night, like one who meant harm.  I didn’t know who it was, and warned him three times to speak or begone.”  “Oh!” groaned the father, “you’ll bring me nothing but misfortune; get out of my sight, I won’t have anything more to do with you.”  “Yes, father, willingly; only wait till daylight, then I’ll set out and learn to shudder, and in that way I shall be master of an art which will gain me a living.”  “Learn what you will,” said the father, “it’s all one to me.  Here are fifty dollars for you, set forth into the wide world with them; but see you tell no one where you come from or who your father is, for I am ashamed of you.”  “Yes, father, whatever you wish; and if that’s all you ask, I can easily keep it in mind.”

When day broke the youth put the fifty dollars into his pocket, set out on the hard high road, and kept muttering to himself:  “If I could only shudder! if I could only shudder!” Just at this moment a man came by who heard the youth speaking to himself, and when they had gone on a bit and were in sight of the gallows the man said to him:  “Look! there is the tree where seven people have been hanged, and are now learning to fly; sit down under it and wait till nightfall, and then you’ll pretty soon learn to shudder.”  “If that’s all I have to do,” answered the youth, “it’s easily done; but if I learn to shudder so quickly, then you shall have my fifty dollars.  Just come back to me to-morrow morning early.”  Then the youth went to the gallows-tree and sat down underneath it, and waited for the evening; and because he felt cold he lit himself a fire.  But at midnight it got so chill that in spite of the fire he couldn’t keep warm.  And as the wind blew the corpses one against the other, tossing them to and fro, he thought to himself:  “If you are perishing down here by the fire, how those poor things up there must be shaking and shivering!” And because he had a tender heart, he put up a ladder, which he climbed unhooked one body after the other, and took down all the seven.  Then he stirred the fire, blew it up, and placed them all round in a circle, that they might warm themselves.  But they sat there and did not move, and the fire caught their clothes.  Then he spoke:  “Take care, or I’ll hang you up again.”  But the dead men did not hear and let their rags go on burning.  Then he got angry, and said:  “If you aren’t careful yourselves, then I can’t help you, and I don’t mean to burn with you”; and he hung them up again in