took and married her; and now he began to look out for a
place to build him a hut upon. His master gave him a place where he
might build his hut, and his wife helped him so much with the building
of it that it seemed to him as if he himself never laid a hand to it.
His hut grew up as quick as thought, and it contained everything that
they wanted. The man could not understand it; he could only walk about
and wonder at it. Wherever he looked there was everything quite spick
and span and ready for use: none in the whole village had a better
house than he.

And so he might have lived in all peace and prosperity to the end of
his days had not his desires outstripped his deserts. He had three
fields of standing corn, and when he came home one day his labourers
said to him, "Thy corn is not gathered in yet, though it is standing
all ripe on its stalks." Now the season was getting on, and for all
the care and labour of his wife, the corn was still standing in the
field. "Why, what's the meaning of this?" thought he. Then in his
anger he cried, "I see how it is. Once a serpent, always a serpent!"
He was quite beside himself all the way home, and was very wrath with
his wife because of the corn.

When he got home he went straight to his chamber to lie down on his
pillow. There was no sign of his wife, but a huge serpent was just
coiling itself round and round and settling down in the middle of the
pillow. Then he called to mind how, once, his wife had said to him,
"Beware, for Heaven's sake, of ever calling me a serpent. I will not
suffer thee to call me by that name, and if thou dost thou shalt lose
thy wife." He called this to mind now, but it was already too late;
what he had said could not be unsaid. Then he reflected what a good
wife he had had, and how she herself had sought him out, and how she
had waited upon him continually and done him boundless good, and yet
he had not been able to refrain his tongue, so that now, maybe, he
would be without a wife for the rest of his days. His heart grew heavy
within him as he thought of all this, and he wept bitterly at the harm
he had done to himself. Then the Serpent said to him, "Weep no more.
What is to be, must be. Is it thy standing corn thou art grieved
about? Go up to thy barn, and there thou wilt find all thy corn lying,
to the very last little grain. Have I not brought it all home and
threshed it for thee, and set everything in order? And now I must
depart to the place wh