'The end is not happy. I will tell it you some day later.'
They were hovering over the pool. A pair of white butterflies fluttered to meet them.
'Whither are you travelling, elves?' they asked.
'To the large wild rose-tree which blooms by yonder mound.'
The rose-bush was already in sight in the distance, with its abundance of pale-yellow sheeny blossoms. The buds were red and the open flowers were dashed with red, as if they remembered the time when they were still buds.
The wild down-rose bloomed in peaceful solitude, and filled the air with its wonderfully sweet odours. They are so fine that the down-elves live on nothing else. The butterflies fluttered about and kissed flower after flower.
'We have come to place a treasure in your charge,' cried Windekind. 'Will you keep it safe for us?'
'Why not--why not?' whispered the rose. 'It is no pain to me to keep awake--and I have no thought of going away unless I am dragged away. And I have sharp thorns.'
Then came the field-mouse--the cousin of the school-mouse--and burrowed quite under the roots of the rose-tree. And there he buried the little key.
'When you want it again you must call me; for you must on no account hurt the rose.'
The rose twined its thorny arms thickly over the entrance and took a solemn oath to guard it faithfully. The butterflies were witnesses.
Next morning Johannes awoke in his own little bed, with Presto, and the clock against the wall. The cord with the key was gone from round his neck.
'Children! children! A summer like this is a terrible infliction!' sighed one of three large stoves which stood side by side to bewail their fate in a garret of the old house. 'For weeks I have not seen one living soul or heard one rational remark. And always that hollow within! It is fearful!'
'I am full of spiders' webs,' said the second. 'And that would never happen in the winter.'
'And I am so dry and dusty that I shall be quite ashamed when, as winter comes on, the Black Man appears again, as the poet says.'
This piece of learning the third stove had of course picked up from Johannes, who had repeated some verses last winter, standing before the hearth.
'You must not speak so disrespectfully of the smith,' said the first stove, who was the eldest. 'It annoys me.'