house has never leaked to this blessed day.
"As soon as mass was over Frau Martha told the priest what had
happened, and he said it was not Pelz-Nickel, but, without doubt, St.
Castor or St. Florian. Then she went to the market and told Frau
Bridget all about it; and Frau Bridget said, that, two nights before,
Hans Claus, the cooper, had heard a great pounding in his shop, and in
the morning found new hoops on all his old hogsheads; and that a man
with a lantern and a ladder had been seen riding out of town at
midnight on a donkey, and that the same night the old windmill, at
Kloster St. Thomas, had been mended up, and the old gate of the
churchyard at Feldkirche made as good as new, though nobody knew how
the man got across the river. Then Frau Martha went down to the
Rheinkrahn and told all thesestories over again; and the old ferryman
of Fahr said he could tell something about it; for, the very night that
the churchyard-gate was mended, he was lying awake in his bed, because
he could not sleep, and he heard a loud knocking at the door, and
somebody calling to him to get up and set him over the river. And when
he got up, he saw a man down by the river with a lantern and a ladder;
but as he was going down to him, the man blew out the light, and it was
so dark he could not see who he was; and his boat was old and leaky,
and he was afraid to set him over in the dark; but the man said he must
be in Andernach that night; and so he set him over. And after they had
crossed the river, he watched the man, till he came to an image of the
Holy Virgin, and saw him put the ladder against the wall, and go up and
light his lamp, and then walk along the street. And in the morning he
found his old boat all caulked, and tight, and painted red, and he
could not for his blessed life tell who did it, unless it werethe man
with the lantern. Dear soul! how strange it was!
"And so it went on for some time; and, whenever the man with the
lantern had been seen walking through the street at night, so sure as
the morning came, some work had been done for the sake of some good
soul; and everybody knew he did it; and yet nobody could find out who
he was, nor where he lived;--for, whenever they came near him, he blew
out his light, and turned down another street, and, if they followed
him, he suddenly disappeared, nobody could tell how. And some said it
was Rübezahl; and some, Pelz-Nickel; and some, St.
Anthony-on-the-Health.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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