half laughable and half horrible, the while he held up the gold piece, crying at each leap of his, 'False gold! false coin! false coin! false gold!' And these words he uttered in such sort, with so hollow a sound from out his breast, that one might well conceive that after each shriek he would fall dead to the ground.
"Moreover his hideous red tongue lolled out of his mouth. And for my part, I stopped in doubt and said, 'What meaneth this screaming? Take another gold piece or yet another; but quit my side.' Once more he began his strange mockery of courtesy and snarled: 'Not gold, not gold, young sir,' quoth he, 'enough and to spare of that trash have I myself, as forthwith I will show you.' Thereupon of a sudden it appeared to me as if the solid ground were as transparent as green glass, and the smooth earth were a round ball, wherein a multitude of goblins made sport with silver and gold. Heads up and heads down they rolled hither and thither, pelting one another in jest with the precious ore and blowing gold dust in perverse sport into one another's eyes. My horrible comrade stood partly on the ground and partly within it; at times he bade the others reach him up handfuls of gold: then with harsh laugh, having shown them to me, he would fling them down clattering into the bottomless abyss. Thereupon he minded to show the piece of gold I had given him to the goblins below and they laughed themselves half dead over it
