“I must remember this moment,” he said to himself. “Whatever happens to me henceforth, I must remember this moment, and be grateful to the gods!”

Just as he opened the iron gate and glanced at the two or three newly-budded plants that were coming out in his little patch of garden, the owner of the pigsty, a ruffianly curmudgeon who earned his living in more than one disreputable way, took it into his head to pour out a great bucket of swill into the pig-trough, an action that caused so ear-piercing a volley of bestial shrieks, that Wolf stopped aghast, his heart almost ceasing to beat, and, turning his head, threw an agitated glance toward that sinister little erection of tarred boardings.

His first idea was that one of the animals was being slaughtered; but the sound of voracious gobbling which now reached his ears reassured him.

“He’s only feeding them,” he said to himself, and entered the house. In the kitchen he found Gerda already beginning her bowl of porridge.