“Michael was the man’s name, and such a workman his master had never had before. When it came to hewing trees, he was worth three other men, and when the timber had to be carried away, though there were six men at the end of a trunk he would take the other end by himself and make no labour of it at all. “At the end of half a year he came to his master and said he was tired of felling timber and would like to go with the rafts and see the places the timber went to.” “‘Well,’ said his master, ‘I will not stand in your way. It is true that you are more useful to me as a wood-cutter, for strong men are needed for such hard work, whereas one has need of skill and dexterity rather than strength upon a raft. However, this once you shall go.’ “And so it came to pass, and he was to set out with a raft consisting of eight portions, all being connected. But on the evening before they were to start Michael brought down to the river’s edge eight more huge trees, the biggest and longest that had ever been seen, and each one he carried upon his shoulder as easily as though it had been his raft-pole. To this day no one knows where they had been felled. “The timber merchant’s heart rejoiced, for he reckoned this timber would fetch a vast sum; but Michael only said--‘They are for a raft for myself. I could not very well manage on the other little rafts.’ “His master offered him a pair of raftsmen’s boots, in return for the service he had done him, but Michael thrust them aside and produced a pair such as never were seen before. My grandfather assured me they must have weighed a hundred pounds at least and were five or six feet high. “The raft set out and, just as he had astonished the wood-cutters, now he made the raftsmen open their eyes. “They had believed, when they saw the huge additional portion Michael had attached to the raft, that it would travel much slower on that account. But not so, as soon as it reached the Neckar it darted ahead like an arrow. When they came to a sharp bend in the river, whereas the raftsmen would formerly have had some trouble to keep the raft in the middle of the stream, and not to run it aground, now, Michael just sprang into the water and with one mighty push turned the raft either to left or right until the danger was past. “When they came to a straight stretch he would run along the different portions of the raft until he came to the front one, and then, bidding all the men put by their poles he would stick his own enormous pole into the gravelly river-bed and send the raft rushing forward at such a pace that trees, country, villages, all seemed flying past. And so it came about that they reached Cologne in less than half the time it usually took. Here the raftsmen had been wont to sell all their timber; but Michael now dissuaded them from doing this.