The Carter had to leave his wagon standing, and he went home full of rage and fury.
‘Ah!’ he said to his wife, ‘what misfortunes I have had to-day; the wine has all run out of the casks, and my three horses are dead.’
‘Alas! husband,’ she answered, ‘whatever kind of evil bird is this which has come into our house. He has assembled all the birds in the world, and they have settled on our maize and they are eating it clean up.’
He went up into the loft, where thousands and thousands of birds were sitting on the floor. They had eaten up all the maize, and the Sparrow sat in the middle of them.
Then the Carter cried out, ‘Alas, poor man that I am!’
‘Not poor enough,’ answered the Sparrow, ‘Carter, it will cost you your life yet’; and he flew away.
Now the Carter, having lost all that he possessed, went downstairs and sat down beside the stove, very angry and ill-tempered. But the Sparrow sat outside the window and cried, ‘Carter, it will cost you your life.’
The Carter seized his chopper and threw it at the Sparrow, but it only smashed the window and did not hit the bird.
Then the Sparrow hopped in and perched on the stove, and cried, ‘Carter, it will cost you your life.’
The Carter, mad, and blind with rage, smashed the stove to atoms, but the Sparrow fluttered hither and thither till all the furniture,—the little looking-glass, the bench, the table,—and at last the very walls of his house were destroyed, but without ever hitting the Sparrow. At last he caught it in his hand.
‘Then,’ said his wife, ‘shall I kill it?’
‘No,’ he cried; ‘that would be too good for it; it shall die a much worse death. I will swallow it.’ And he took it and gulped it down whole.
But the bird began to flutter about in his inside, and at last fluttered up into the man’s mouth. He stretched out his head and cried, ‘Carter, it will cost you your life yet.’
