Up rose a cloud of smoke, and on a sudden a little black dwarf was seen making his way through the midst of it. "What do you want with me, soldier?" said he.
"I have no business with you," answered he.
But the dwarf said, "I am bound to serve you in every thing, as lord and master of the blue light."
"Then first of all, be so good as to help me out of this well." No sooner said than done: the dwarf took him by the hand and drew him up, and the blue light of course with him. "Now do me another piece of kindness," said the soldier: "pray let that old lady take my place in the well."
When the dwarf had done this, and lodged the witch safely at the bottom, they began to ransack her treasures; and the soldier made bold to carry off as much of her gold and silver as he well could. Then the dwarf said, "If you should chance at any time to want me, you have nothing to do but to light your pipe at the blue light, and I will soon be with you."
The soldier was not a little pleased at his good luck, and went to the best inn in the first town he came to and ordered some fine clothes to be made and a handsome room to be got ready for him. When all was ready, he called his little man to him and said, "The king sent me away penniless and left me to hunger and want. I have a mind to show him that it is my turn to be master now; so bring me his daughter here this evening, that she may wait upon me and do what I bid her."
"That is rather a dangerous task," said the dwarf. But away he went, took the princess out of her bed, fast asleep as she was, and brought her to the soldier.
Very early in the morning he carried her back; and as soon as she saw her father, she said, "I had a strange dream last night. I thought I was carried away through the air to a soldier's house, and there I waited upon him as his servant." Then the king wondered greatly at such a story; but told her to make a hole in her pocket and fill it with peas, so that if it were really as she said, and the whole was not a dream, the peas might fall out in the streets as she passed through, and leave a clue to tell whither she had been taken. She did so; but the dwarf had heard the king's plot; and when evening came, and the soldier said he must bring him the princess again, he strewed peas over several of the streets, so that the few that fell from her pocket were not known from the others; and the people amused themselves all the next day picking up peas and wondering where so many came from.