was unloaded there and thrown on the mountain, and soon
the air was filled with the foulest of smells. They waded ankle-deep in
filth, and their clothes, hands, and faces were covered with it.

"This is like the infernal regions!" said the prisoners.

They dredged and unloaded on the cliff for several years, and ultimately
the cliff disappeared altogether.

And the white snow fell winter after winter on all the corruption and
threw a pure white cover over it.

And when the spring came once again and all the snow had melted, the
evil smell had disappeared, and the mud looked like mould. There was no
more dredging after this spring, and our stone man was sent to work at
the forge and never came near the cliff. Only once, in the autumn, he
went there secretly, and then he saw something wonderful.

The ground was covered with green plants. Ugly sappy plants, it was
true, mostly bur-marigolds, that look like a nettle with brown flowers,
which is ugly because flowers should be white, yellow, blue or red. And
there were true nettles with green blossoms, and burs, sorrel, thistles,
and notch-weed; all the ugliest, burning, stinging, evil-smelling
plants, which nobody likes, and which grow on dust-heaps, waste land,
and mud.

"We cleaned the bottom of the sea, and now we have all the dirt here;
this is all the thanks we get!" said the prisoner.

Then he was transferred to another cliff, where a fort was to be built,
and again he worked in stone; stone, stone, stone!

Then he lost one of his eyes, and sometimes he was flogged. And he
remained a very long time there, so long that the new king died and was
followed by his successor. On coronation day one of the prisoners was
to be released. And it was to be the one who had behaved best during all
the time and had arrived at a clear understanding that he had sinned.
And that was he! But the other prisoners considered that it would be a
wrong towards them, for in their circles a man who repents is considered
a fool, "because he has done what he couldn't help doing."

And so the years passed. Our stone man had grown very old, and because
he was now unable to do hard work, he was sent back to his cliff and set
to sew sacks.

One day the chaplain on his round paused before the stone man, who sat
and sewed.

"Well," said the clergyman, "and are you never to leave this cliff?"

"How would that be possible?" replied the stone man.

"You will go as soon as you come to see th