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About the cave a hundred little creatures, smaller still than he, were
busied in a hundred ways. Some ran to and fro with long ladles,
wherewith they stirred and tasted kettles of smoking broth; others
shredded crisp salads, and sliced fresh vegetables for the pottage;
some, with ready hands, spread a table with flowered damask, golden
plate, and crystal goblets; three tugged and strained at turning a huge
spit before a fire at the end of the cavern, while a dozen more watched
the simmering of pots and pipkins, seething on the coals; and full a
score moulded curious confections, adorned vast pastries, heaped fruits
upon baskets of carved ice, or brewed steaming potions in great silver
pitchers, whose breath of tropic fragrance curled upward in light clouds
to the sparkling roof above; while the red flashes of the blaze on the
hearth lighted up their swarthy little figures and merry faces, and cast
grotesque, mocking shadows against the sides of the cave.

As Meister Hans hopped gravely past all this toward the chair of the
Dwarf-king, making profound reverences all the way, the little monarch
stretched out his sceptre, which was a tall bulrush of gold, and touched
the jackdaw on the head, whereat, to Mihal's great wonder, his old
friend turned suddenly into just such another little old woman as the
one who had brought them in.

After another low reverence to the king, she turned to Mihal and made
him aware, by a long speech, that she had been turned into a jackdaw for
twenty years, because she had once presumed to say that gold was not so
yellow as buttercups, or so bright as sunshine,--a statement altogether
against the belief and laws of the dwarf; but now her punishment was
over, and, knowing that she would never go back to the earth again,
because she had lived there long enough to know better, and had learned
that gold was the best of all things, she had resolved to bring little
Mihal with her, (for she loved him almost as much as gold, and quite as
well as silver, he was such a good boy), and persuade her master to
grant him one wish before he left the cavern.

The king readily consented to do this, but ordered that the boy and his
friendly guide should take their places at the table and be served with
supper first, for well he knew that a hungry child's first wish must be
for food.

The king had scarce given this order before a quick pair of hands
stripped a tender sucking-pig from the spit, anothe