As Jean left the wood, a strong man’s voice called after him, “Hallo,
comrade, where are you travelling?”
“Into the wide world,” he replied; “I am only a poor lad, I have neither
father nor mother, but God will help me.”
“I am going into the wide world also,” replied the stranger; “shall we
keep each other company?”
“With all my heart,” he said, and so they went on together. Soon they
began to like each other very much, for they were both good; but Jean
found out that the stranger was much more clever than himself. He had
travelled all over the world, and could describe almost everything. The sun
was high in the heavens when they seated themselves under a large tree to
eat their breakfast, and at the same moment an old woman came towards
them. She was very old and almost bent double. She leaned upon a stick and
carried on her back a bundle of firewood, which she had collected in the
forest; her apron was tied round it, and Jean saw three great stems of fern
and some willow twigs peeping out. just as she came close up to them, her
foot slipped and she fell to the ground screaming loudly; poor old woman,
she had broken her leg! Jean proposed directly that they should carry the
old woman home to her cottage; but the stranger opened his knapsack and
took out a box, in which he said he had a salve that would quickly make her
leg well and strong again, so that she would be able to walk home herself,
as if her leg had never been broken. And all that he would ask in return was
the three fern stems which she carried in her apron.
“That is rather too high a price,” said the old woman, nodding her head
quite strangely. She did not seem at all inclined to part with the fern stems.
However, it was not very agreeable to lie there with a broken leg, so she
gave them to him; and such was the power of the ointment, that no sooner
had he rubbed her leg with it than the old mother rose up and walked even
better than she had done before. But then this wonderful ointment could not
be bought at a chemist’s.
