could dream like him! with what pleasure would I dig
round the pan; how slily would I carry it home; not even nay wife should
see me; and then, oh, the pleasure of thrusting one's hand into a heap
of gold up to the elbow!"

Such reflections only served to make the miller unhappy; he discontinued
his former assiduity; he was quite disgusted with small gains, and his
customers began to forsake him. Every day he repeated the wish, and
every night laid himself down in order to dream. Fortune, that was for a
long time unkind, at last, however, seemed to smile upon his distresses,
and indulged him with the wished-for vision. He dreamed that under
a certain part of the foundation of his mill there was concealed a
monstrous pan of gold and diamonds, buried deep in the ground, and
covered with a large flat stone. He rose up, thanked the stars that were
at last pleased to take pity on his sufferings, and concealed his good
luck from every person, as is usual in money dreams, in order to have
the vision repeated the two succeeding nights, by which he should be
certain of its veracity. His wishes in this also were answered; he still
dreamed of the same pan of money, in the very same place.

Now, therefore, it was past a doubt; so, getting up early the third
morning, he repairs alone, with a mattock in his hand, to the mill, and
began to undermine that part of the wall which the vision directed.
The first omen of success that he met was a broken mug; digging still
deeper, he turns up a house tile, quite new and entire. At last, after
much digging, he came to the broad flat stone, but then so large, that
it was beyond one man's strength to remove it. "Here," cried he, in
raptures, to himself, "here it is! under this stone there is room for a
very large pan of diamonds indeed! I must e'en go home to my wife, and
tell her the whole affair, and get her to assist me in turning it up."
Away, therefore, he goes, and acquaints his wife with every circumstance
of their good fortune. Her raptures on this occasion may easily be
imagined; she flew round his neck, and embraced him in an agony of joy:
but those transports, however, did not delay their eagerness to know the
exact sum; returning, therefore, speedily together to the place where
Whang had been digging, there they found--not indeed the expected
treasure, but the mill, their only support, undermined and fallen.

GOLDSMITH.

[Note: