Now the man heard this and it pleased him and he laughed aloud half sheepishly, and then he remembered himself and said, “And why should I not for once have a new robe for myself? There is nothing ahead but one after another of these young ones, and am I forever to wear my old rags?” And he stooped swiftly and fingered the good stuff in his fingers and while he looked at it the old mother was excited by the thought and she cried, “It is a very fair piece, my son, and if you must have a robe then this is as pretty a blue robe as ever I did see, and I remember once your father had such a robe--was it when we were wed? But no, I was wed in winter, yes, in winter, for I sneezed so at the wedding and the men laughed to see a bride sneezing so--” But the man asked suddenly and roughly, “How much will it be for a robe?” Now when the pedlar said the price, at that moment the mother came forth with the money in her hand counted and exact to the last penny and she cried out alarmed, “We can spend no more!” At that cry of hers some desire hardened in the man and he said wilfully, “But I will have myself a robe cut from this piece and I like it very well so that I will have it for the once! There are those three silver pieces I know we have.” Now those three coins were of good value and coins the mother had brought with her when she came to be wed, and her own mother had handed them to her for her own when she left her home. They were her precious possession and she had never found the hour when she could spend them. Even when she had bought the coffin for the old mother when they thought her dying, she had pinched and borrowed and would not spend her own, and often the thought of those three silver pieces was in her mind for safe riches, and they were there if ever times grew too hard, some war or hardship that might come at any hour and lose them the fruits of their land. With those three coins in the wall she knew they could not starve for a while. So now she cried, “That silver we cannot spend!” But the man leaped up as swift as a swallow and darted past her in a fury and he went to that cranny and searched in it and seized the silver. Yet the woman was after him, too, and she caught him and held him and hung to him as he ran. But she was not quick enough and never quick enough for his litheness. He threw her aside so that she fell upon the earthen floor, and the child still in her arms, and he ran out shouting as he ran, “Cut me off twelve feet of it and the foot and more to spare that is the custom!”