"Your poker seems to be an iron one!" said the weaver, after keeping silent for a while, and scratching his back. "My wife bought one at the fair last year; well, hers is not to be compared--does not hurt at all." The triumphant dame, in the meanwhile, set her candle on the floor, opened the sack, and looked into it. But her old eyes, which had so quickly caught sight of the sack, for this time deceived her. "Why, here lies a whole boar!" cried she, clapping her hands with delight. "A boar, a whole boar! dost hear?" said the weaver, giving the kinsman a push. "And thou alone art to blame?" "What's to be done?" muttered the kinsman, shrugging his shoulders. "How, what? why are we standing here quietly? we must have the sack back again! Come!" "Away, away with thee! it is our boar!" cried the weaver, advancing. "Away, away with thee, she devil! it is not thy property," said the kinsman. The old hag once more took up the poker, but at the same moment Choop stepped out of the sack, and stood in the middle of the passage stretching his limbs like a man just awake from a long sleep. The kinsman's wife shrieked in terror, while the others opened their mouths in amazement. "What did she say, then, the old fool--that it was a boar?" "It's not a boar!" said the kinsman, straining his eyes. "Just see, what a man some one has thrown into the sack," said the weaver, stepping back in a fright. "They may say what they will--the evil spirit must have lent his hand to the work; the man could never have gone through a window." "'Tis my kinsman," cried the kinsman, after having looked at Choop. "And who else should it be, then?" said Choop, laughing. "Was it not a capital trick of mine? And you thought of eating me like pork? Well, I'll give you good news: there is something lying at the bottom of the sack; if it be not a boar, it must be a sucking-pig, or something of the sort. All the time there was something moving under me." The weaver and the kinsman rushed to the sack, the wife caught hold of it on the other side, and the fight would have been renewed, had not the clerk, who saw no escape left, crept out of the sack. The kinsman's wife, quite stupified, let go the clerk's leg, which she had taken hold of, in order to drag him out of the sack. "There's another one!" cried the weaver with terror; "the devil knows what happens now in the world--it's enough to send one mad. No more sausages or loaves--men are thrown into the sacks." "'Tis the devil!" muttered Choop, more astonished than any one. "Well now, Solokha!--and to put the clerk in a sack too! That is why I saw her room all full of sacks. Now, I have it: she has got two men in each of them; and I thought that I was the only one. Well now, Solokha!"