traveled along, and after a while they came
to a great dark house set all alone in the midst of the wood. The man
showed him in and told him what to do. The lad set to work, and
everything the man told him to do he did so well and willingly that
his master was much pleased with him. After he had done all the tasks
set, his master gave him a good bite of supper and a comfortable bed
to sleep in.

The next day it was the same thing over. The master told the lad what
to do, and the lad did it willingly and well. So it went on for three
days. At the end of that time the man said, "Now I am obliged to go
away on a journey. Until I return you may do as you please and be your
own master. But there is one part of the house you have never seen,
and those are the four cellars down below. Into these you must not go
under any consideration. If you so much as open one of the doors, you
will suffer for it."

"Why should I want to go into the cellars?" asked the lad. "The house
and the yard are good enough for me."

"That is well," answered the master, and then he mounted a great black
steed and rode away.

The lad stayed at home and cleaned and polished and ate and drank. "I
wonder what can be in those cellars that my master does not want me to
see!" thought the lad. "Not that I mean to look, but it does no harm
to wonder about it."

Every hour the lad stayed there in the house alone he grew more
curious about the cellars. At last he could bear it no longer. "I'll
just take a wee peep into one of them," he said. "That can surely do
no harm to any one."

So he opened the cellar door and went down a flight of stone steps
into the first cellar. He looked all about him, and there was nothing
at all there but a switch made of brier lying on a shelf behind the
door. "That is not much for the Master to have made such a fuss
about," said the lad. "I could see as much as that any day without
coming into a cellar for it;" and he went upstairs again and shut the
door behind him.

The next day the master came home, and the first thing he asked was,
"Have you looked into any of the cellars?"

"Why should I do that?" asked the lad. "I have plenty to do upstairs
without poking my nose in where it is not wanted."

"I will just see for myself whether or not you have looked," said the
master.

He opened one of the doors and went down into the first cellar. When
he came back his face was as black as thunder.

"You have disobeyed me and