and
stopped opposite the priest's house. The priest saw him and
sent out his laborer, saying:

"Go and ask who those people are."

"We? we're travellers; please let us spend the night in
your house," they replied.

"I have merchants paying me a visit," says the priest,
"and even without them there's but little room in the house."

"What are you thinking of, father?" says one of the
merchants. "It's always one's duty to accommodate a traveller,
they won't interfere with us."

"Very well, let them come in."

So they came in, exchanged greetings, and sat down on a
bench in the back corner.

"Don't you know me, father?" presently asks the fair
maiden. "Of a surety I am your own daughter."

Then she told him everything that had happened. They
began to kiss and embrace each other, to pour forth tears of
joy.

"And who is this man?" says the priest.

"That is my betrothed. He brought me back into the white
world; if it hadn't been for him I should have remained down
there for ever!"

After this the fair maiden untied her bundle, and in it were
gold and silver dishes: she had carried them off from the devils.
The merchant looked at them and said:

"Ah! those are my dishes. One day I was feasting with my
guests, and when I got drunk I became angry with my wife. 'To
the devil with you!' I exclaimed, and began flinging from the
table, and beyond the threshold, whatever I could lay my hands
upon. At that moment my dishes disappeared!"

And in reality so had it happened. When the merchant
mentioned the devil's name, the fiend immediately appeared at
the threshold, began seizing the gold and silver wares, and
flinging in their place bits of pottery.

Well, by this accident the youth got himself a capital bride.
And after he had married her he went back to his parents.
They had long ago counted him as lost to them for ever.
And indeed it was no subject for jesting; he had been away
from home three whole years, and yet it seemed to him that
he had not in all spent more than twenty-four hours with the
devils.

[A quaint version of the legend on which this story is
founded is given by Gervase of Tilbury in his "Otia
Imperialia," whence the story passed into the "Gesta
Romanorum" (cap. clxii.) and spread widely over
mediaeval Europe. A certain Catalonian was so much
annoyed one day "by the continu