ll your
master some gentlemen are here who wish to speak to him. Go as fast as
you can.' And she opened the door and let the dog out.

'You can really trust the dog to call your husband?' asked the robbers.

'Dear me, yes! He understands everything, and will always carry any
message I give him.'

By-and-bye the shoemaker came in and said, 'Good morning, gentlemen; the
dog tells me you wish to speak to me.'

'Yes, we do,' replied the robber; 'we have come to speak to you about
that guitar. It is your fault that we have murdered all our wives; and,
though we played as you told us, none of them ever came back to life.'

'You could not have played properly,' said the shoemaker. 'It was your
own fault.'

'Well, we will forget all about it,' answered the robbers, 'if you will
only sell us your dog.'

'Oh, that is impossible! I should never get on without him.'

But the robbers offered him forty gold pieces, and at last he agreed to
let them have the dog.

So they departed, taking the dog with them, and when they got back to
their cave the captain declared that it was his right to have the first
trial.

He then called his daughter, and said to her, 'I am going to the inn; if
anybody wants me, loose the dog, and send him to call me.'

About an hour after some one arrived on business, and the girl untied
the dog and said, 'Go to the inn and call my father!' The dog bounded
off, but ran straight to the shoemaker.

When the robber got home and found no dog he thought 'He must have gone
back to his old master,' and, though night had already fallen, he went
off after him.

'Master Joseph, is the dog here?' asked he.

'Ah! yes, the poor beast is so fond of me! You must give him time to get
accustomed to new ways.'

So the captain brought the dog back, and the following morning handed
him over to another of the band, just saying that the animal really
could do what the shoemaker had said.

The second robber carefully kept his own counsel, and fetched the dog
secretly back from the shoemaker, and so on through the whole band. At
length, when everybody had suffered, they met and told the whole story,
and next day they all marched off in fury to the man who had made game
of them. After reproaching him with having deceived them, they tied him
up in a sack, and told him they were going to throw him into the sea.
The shoemaker lay quite still, and let them do as they would.

They went on till they came to a church, and