the pot from the
hook, tied a rope to the handle, let it down the well, with the cabbage
still in it, and when it was filled carried it back to the house, and
hung it over the fire.

Soon afterward the dairy maid went to draw some water for dinner. She
could not find the bucket; so she let down a milk pail instead; but
when she came to taste the water, she tasted also the flavor of the
cabbage, and ran to her mistress, calling out, "Why, mistress, who has
been meddling with our fine well? It had once the best water in the
neighborhood, but now the flavor is precisely that of a greasy, horrible
cabbage!"

"Nonsense!" cried Silly Catharine, with an air of contempt; "it is all
your fancy. Don't tell me that water can taste of cabbages!" Her heart
beat with affright, however, and as soon as the servant maid had left
the room, she ran in great terror to the wine cellar. "What the servant
said must have been true," thought she; "and Wise Peter will never
forgive me when he finds out that I have spoilt the well. I will,
therefore, pour some wine into the water, to take away the taste of the
cabbages." So saying, she seized one of the wine barrels, and in the
strength of terror she managed, with great difficulty, to push it up the
cellar stairs, and roll it through the kitchen out to the well. Then she
removed the spile and tilted the cask forward; when out streamed at
least thirty gallons of the finest Tokay down the well!

Having done this, Silly Catharine hid the barrel away with great
precipitation; and, determined to leave nothing else undone, she called
the reapers and bid them go directly to the large field and reap the
wheat. Then she went back, and began eating her dinner, saying, "Thank
heaven, I have a good dinner to sit down to, at least; there are always
cabbages enough!"

Meanwhile, the reapers made ready to go a-field; and before they went,
one of them drew a bucket of water to carry with them. But no sooner had
they tasted the water, than they cried out, "'Tis wine! the finest
wine!" and scarcely able to believe their senses, they drew up bucket
after bucket of this new liquor, drank till they became drunk, and then
tumbled senseless among the wheat; for it happened that the well was
very low, and what they drew was nearly all wine. While they lay there,
a violent hail storm came on, and in an hour's time the whole of the
wheat was beaten to the ground, drenched, crushed, and ruined.

Unconscious of this