If not--why, then, into the soap you go."

"Done!" said Hans's luck.

"Done!" said Hans.

Then he opened the mouth of the sack, and--puff! went his luck, like
wind out of a bag, and--pop! it slipped into his breeches pocket.

He never saw it again with his mortal eyes, but it stayed near to him, I
can tell you. "Ha! ha! ha!" it laughed in his pocket, "you have made an
ill bargain, Hans, I can tell you!"

"Never mind," said Hans, "I am contented."

Hans Hecklemann did not tarry long in trying the new luck of his old
plough, as you may easily guess. Off he went like the wind and borrowed
Fritz Friedleburg's old gray horse. Then he fastened the horse to the
plough and struck the first furrow. When he had come to the end of
it--pop! up shot a golden noble, as though some one had spun it up from
the ground with his finger and thumb. Hans picked it up, and looked at
it and looked at it as though he would swallow it with his eyes. Then he
seized the handle of the plough and struck another furrow--pop! up went
another golden noble, and Hans gathered it as he had done the other one.
So he went on all of that day, striking furrows and gathering golden
nobles until all of his pockets were as full as they could hold. When it
was too dark to see to plough any more he took Fritz Friedleburg's horse
back home again, and then he went home himself.

All of his neighbors thought that he was crazy, for it was nothing but
plough, plough, plough, morning and noon and night, spring and summer
and autumn. Frost and darkness alone kept him from his labor. His stable
was full of fine horses, and he worked them until they dropped in the
furrows that he was always ploughing.

"Yes; Hans is crazy," they all said; but when Hans heard them talk in
this way he only winked to himself and went on with his ploughing, for
he felt that he knew this from that.

But ill luck danced in his pocket with the golden nobles, and from the
day that he closed his bargain with it he was an unhappy man. He had no
comfort of living, for it was nothing but work, work, work. He was up
and away at his ploughing at the first dawn of day, and he never came
home till night had fallen; so, though he ploughed golden nobles, he did
not turn up happiness in the furrows along with them. After he had eaten
his supper he would sit silently behind the stove, warming his fingers
and thinking of some quicker way of doing his ploughing. For it seemed
to him that the gold-piec