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So the gnome carried away all the sacks of gold before the rat-catcher's eyes; and when he had them safe underground, then at last he let the old man go. Then he called Jasome' to follow him, and she went down willingly into the black earth.
This was for an advertisement of the business. He now caught rats for the fun of it, and the show of it, but also to get money by it; for, though he was so rich, ratting and money-grubbing had become a second nature to him: unless he were at one or the other, he could not be happy. Far below, in the house of the gnome, Jasome' sat and cried.
Now one day after this, as Jasome' sat alone in the sunshine and cried, the little old gnome stood before her, and said, "Well, Jasome', have you married the king's son?" "Alas!" cried Jasome', "you have so changed me: I am no longer human! Yet he loves me, and, but for that, he would marry me." "Dear me!" said the gnome. "If that is all, I can take the gold off you again: why, I said so!"
"I have to train you," said the gnome, "to be fit for a king's bride!" But Jasome', though she thanked him, only cried to be let out. In front of the rat-catcher's house rose a little spring of salt water with gold dust in it, that gilded the basin where it sprang.
"For now," said he, "you are so compounded of gold that only the gnomes could rub it off you." So this time, when Jasome' came up once more to the light of day, she did not go back again to her cruel father, but went and sat by the roadside, and played with the sunbeams, and wondered when the king's son would come and marry her.
When the sound of the great bells ringing for Easter came down to her, the gnome said: "To-day I cannot bind you; it is the great rising day for all Christians. If you wish, you may go up, and ask your father now to release you." So Jasome' kissed the gnome, and went up the track of her own tears, that brought her to her father's door.
Jasome' entreated him, by all his former kindness, to do so for her now. "Yes," said the gnome, "but a bargain is a bargain. Now is the time for me to get back my bags of gold. Do you go to your father, and let him know that the king's son is willing to marry you if he restores to me my treasure that he took from me; for that is what it comes to."
Up jumped Jasome', and ran to the rat-catcher's house. "Oh, father," she cried, "now you can undo all your cruelty to me; for now, if you will give back the gnome his gold, he will give my own face back to me, and I shall marry the king's son!" But the rat-catcher was filled with admiration at the sight of her, and would not believe a word she said.
Then the father called his daughter, whose name was Jasome', and bade her follow the gnome down into the heart of the earth. It was all in vain that Jasome' begged and implored; the rat-catcher was bent on having her married to the king's son. So he pushed, and the gnome pulled, and down she went; and the earth closed after her.
"I have given you your dowry," he answered; "three years I had to do without you to get it. Take it away, and get married, and leave me the peace and plenty I have so hardly earned!" Jasome' went back and told the gnome. "Really," said he, "I must show this rat-catcher that there are other sorts of traps, and that it isn't only rats and gnomes that get caught in them!
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