xpense for his funeral. Both the squire
and his wife thought this a splendid idea, and went about rejoicing at
the thought that now they would get rid of Hans.

But Hans was hard to kill, as we shall see. He slept long next morning,
as he always did, and finally, as he would not waken by himself, the
squire had to go and call him. 'Get up, Hans, you are sleeping too
long,' he cried. Hans woke up and rubbed his eyes. 'That's so,' said
he, 'I shall rise and have my breakfast.' He got up then and dressed
himself, while the breakfast stood waiting for him. When he had finished
the whole of this, he asked what he was to do that day. He was told to
help the other men to clean out the well. That was all right, and he
went out and found the other men waiting for him. To these he said that
they could choose whichever task they liked--either to go down into the
well and fill the buckets while he pulled them up, or pull them up, and
he alone would go down to the bottom of the well. They answered that
they would rather stay above-ground, as there would be no room for so
many of them down in the well.

Hans therefore went down alone, and began to clean out the well, but
the men had arranged how they were to act, and immediately each of them
seized a stone from a heap of huge blocks, and threw them down above
him, thinking to kill him with these. Hans, however, gave no more heed
to this than to shout up to them, to keep the hens away from the well,
for they were scraping gravel down on the top of him.

They then saw that they could not kill him with little stones, but they
had still the big one left. The whole twelve of them set to work with
poles and rollers and rolled the big mill-stone to the brink of the
well. It was with the greatest difficulty that they got it thrown down
there, and now they had no doubt that he had got all that he wanted. But
the stone happened to fall so luckily that his head went right through
the hole in the middle of the mill-stone, so that it sat round his neck
like a priest's collar. At this, Hans would stay down no longer. He came
out of the well, with the mill-stone round his neck, ad went straight to
the squire and complained that the other men were trying to make a
fool of him. He would not be their priest, he said; he had too little
learning for that. Saying this, he bent down his head and shook the
stone off, so that it crushed one of the squire's big toes.

The squire went limping in to his wif