“Never mind!⁠—your young man saw her, and if he understood how to manage the work, surely you, as the craftsman, understand! Set to work quickly, unless you want to taste worse of me and be birched.”

So the smith had no choice but to transform the master. So he quietly asked the coachman what his man had done with the lady, and thought: “Well, I don’t mind! I will do the same; it may come out to the same tune, or it may not. I must look out for myself.”

So he stripped the lord to his skin, clutched his legs up with nippers, threw him into the forge, began to blow up the bellows, and burned him to ashes. Afterwards he threw the bones⁠—hurled them all into the milk, and began watching would a young master emerge from the bath. And he waited one hour, and another hour, and nothing happened, looked at the little tub⁠—all the little bones were floating about all burned to pieces.