"He is the lord of this forest," answered the old man, "and for one of your age not to have heard of him tells me that your home lies on the other side of the Pine-grove, or even farther off. But I will relate to you what I know of Dutch Michael, and what people say of him. About a hundred years ago, at least, so my grandfather told me, there were no more honourable people than the Black-Foresters in the whole world. But now that money is so plentiful, dishonesty and evil are everywhere. Our young lads dance and riot on the Sabbath, and swear terribly. But formerly it was quite otherwise, and, though he himself were to look through the window at this moment, I say, as I have said time and again, that Dutch Michael is to blame for all the mischief. Well--one hundred or more years ago, there lived a rich timber merchant who had a very large business; he traded far away down the Rhine, and his affairs prospered, for he was a good Christian. One evening there came to his door a man, the like of whom he had never cast eyes upon. He was dressed as one of our young Black-Foresters, but was a good head taller than any of them; indeed, one could hardly have believed that there was such a giant in existence. The fellow asked the merchant for work, and the latter, seeing how strong and capable of doing heavy work he looked, was ready to engage him at a fair wage. So the matter was agreed upon. Michael turned out to be a workman such as that merchant had never yet employed. He was equal to three men at felling trees, and where it took six men to carry one end of a trunk, he could manage the other end all by himself. But after six months at tree-felling, he went one day to his master, and demanded of him: 'I have been hewing wood long enough in this place, and I would like to know where the felled trunks go; how would it be if you were to let me go for a time on one of your rafts?'" The timber merchant replied: "I won't stand in your way, Michael, if you want to see a bit of the world. It's true that I am in sore need of strong fellows like yourself for the tree-felling, while on the rafts it is more a question of skill. For this once, however, you may go!" And thus it was; the raft upon which he was to go was in eight parts, the last part being composed of enormous roof-beams. But what happened? The night before starting, this huge fellow brought down to the water yet another eight beams, bigger and longer than any that had ever been seen, so much so that everybody was amazed. And no one knows to this day where he had felled them. The merchant chuckled to himself when he calculated the price these beams would fetch. But Michael said: "These are for me to travel upon, for I could not make any headway on those little splinters."