- keeper, and asked him if he had not seen a young boy
and girl pass by that way.
"I have only just warmed up my bath," said the youth, "there's nobody inside it; if thou dost not believe me, thou canst go and look for thyself." The witch thought: "'Tis impossible to get a sensible word out of a fellow of this sort," so she jumped into her pitcher, flew back, and told her sister that she couldn't find them. The other hag asked her whether she had exchanged words with any one on the road. "Yes," replied the younger sister, "there was a bath-house by the roadside, and I asked the owner of it about them; but he was either a fool or deaf, so I took no notice of him."
"'Tis thou who wert the fool," snarled her elder sister. "Didst thou not recognize in him my son, and in the bath-house my daughter-in-law?" Then she called her second sister, and sent her after the fugitives.
The devil's son saw his second aunt flying along in her pitcher. Then he gave his wife a tap and turned her into a spring, but he himself sat down beside it, and began to draw water out of it with a pitcher. The witch went up to him, and asked him whether he had seen a girl and a boy pass by that way.
"There's drinkable water in this spring," replied
