And he said to Michael: "What is this that you have done, dear heart? You have done for me now. The gentleman bespoke boots, and what have you stitched together?"
Scarcely had Simon begun to take Michael to task about the boots when there was a fumbling at the door-latch, and someone knocked. They looked out of the window; someone on horseback was there who had just tied up his horse. They opened the door, and in came the selfsame lad who had been with the gentleman.
"Good health to you!"
"Good health! What's amiss?"
"My mistress has sent me about the boots."
"About the boots?"
"Yes, about the boots. Master needs no more boots. My master will command no more. He's dead!"
"Go along with you!"
"He didn't even get home alive. He died in the sledge. When the sledge got to the house and we went to help him out, there he was like a lump, all of a heap and stiff frozen, lying there dead. It was as much as we could do to tear him from the sledge. Our mistress too has sent to say: 'Pray tell the cobbler what has happened, and say that as boots are not now requisite for master, would he make a pair of bosoviki for the dead body out of the stuff that was left.' I am to wait till they are stitched together, and I am to take the bosoviki back with me—so I have come."
Michael took from the table the clippings of the
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