Elijah the Prophet and Nicholas.[444]
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ralston, William Ralston Shedden
As he drove past the inn a young merchant saw him, and cried—
“What are you doing, you infidel!”
The moujik explained that as he could not get his money back from a man who was in his debt, he was proceeding against a surety; whereupon the merchant paid the debt, and thereby ransomed the picture, which he hung up in a place of honor, and kept a lamp burning before it. Soon afterwards an old man offered his services to the merchant, who appointed him his manager; and from that time all things went well with the merchant.
But after a while a misfortune befell the land in which he lived, for “an evil witch enchanted the king’s daughter, who lay dead all day long, but at night got up and ate people.” So she was shut up in a coffin and placed in a church, and her hand, with half the kingdom as her dowry, was offered to any one who could disenchant her. The merchant, in accordance with his old manager’s instructions, undertook the task, and after a series of adventures succeeded in accomplishing it. The last words of one of the narrators of the story are, “Now this old one was no mere man. He was Nicholas himself, the saint of God.”[453]
With one more legend about this favorite saint, I will conclude this section of the present chapter. In some of its incidents it closely resembles the story of “The Smith and the Demon,” which was quoted in the first chapter.