“My son,” said the widow woman, “has just been to the garden, and has brought home from there the fruit of happiness. Many a day did we search, but never could we find how to enter into the garden, until, the other day, an angel came and showed the way to my son, and he was able not only to gather of the fruit for himself, but to bring an apple for me also.” Then the poor travelling servant began to thump his head. He saw well enough through the millstone now, and that he, too, might have had one of the fruit if he had but held his tongue a little longer. Yes, he saw what a fool he had made of himself, when he learned that it was an angel with whom he had been travelling the five days gone. But, then, we are all of us like the servant for the matter of that; I, too, have travelled with an angel many a day, I dare say, and never knew it. That night the servant lodged with the widow and her son, and the next day he started back home again upon the way he had travelled before. By evening he had reached the place where the house of the poor couple stood--the house that he had seen the angel set fire to. There he beheld masons and carpenters hard at work hacking and hewing, and building a fine new house. And there he saw the poor man himself standing by giving them orders. “How is this,” said the travelling servant; “I thought that your house was burned down?” “So it was, and that is how I came to be rich now,” said the one-time poor man. “I and my wife had lived in our old house for many a long day, and never knew that a great treasure of silver and gold was hidden beneath it, until a few days ago there came an angel and burned it down over our heads, and in the morning we found the treasure. So now we are rich for as long as we may live.” The next morning the poor servant jogged along on his homeward way more sad and downcast than ever, and by evening he had come to the robbers’ den in the thick woods, and there the old woman came running to the door to meet him. “Come in!” cried she; “come in and welcome! The robbers are all dead and gone now, and I use the treasure that they left behind to entertain poor travellers like yourself. The other day there came an angel hither, and with him he brought the ring of discord that breeds spite and rage and quarrelling. He gave it to the captain of the band, and after he had gone the robbers fought for it with one another until they were all killed. So now the world is rid of them, and travellers can come and go as they please.”