What could áczKúthe poor, empty-bellied fool do then? Why he went to the wayside spring and asked again: “I want my lebleb, I want my lebleb!” And he asked and asked so long that at last the Jinn popped up his head again out of the spring and inquired what was the matter. “I want my lebleb, I want my lebleb!” cried the fool.--“But where’s thy little table?”--“They stole it.”
The big-lipped Jinn again popped down, and when he rose out of the spring again he had a little mill in his hand. This he gave to the fool and said to him: “Grind it to the right and gold will flow out of it, grind it to the left and it will give thee silver.” So the youth took the mill home and ground it first to the right and then to the left, and huge treasures of gold and silver lay heaped about him on the floor. So he grew such a rich man that his equal was not to be found in the village, nay, nor in the town either.
But no sooner had the people of the village got to know all about the little mill than they laid their heads together and schemed and schemed till the mill also disappeared[8] one fine morning from Mehmed’s cottage. Then Mehmed ran off to the spring once more and cried: “I want my lebleb, I want my lebleb!”
“But where is thy little table? Where is thy little mill?” asked the big-lipped Jinn.
“They have stolen them both from me,” lamented the witless one, and he wept bitterly.
Again the Jinn bobbed down, and this time he brought up two sticks with him. He gave them to the fool, and impressed upon him very strongly on no account to say: “Strike, strike, my little sticks!”
Mehmed took the sticks, and first he turned them to the right and then to the left, but could make nothing of them. Then he thought he would just try the effect of saying: “Strike, strike, my little sticks!” and no sooner were the words out of his mouth than the sticks fell upon him unmercifully, and belaboured him on every part of the body that can feel--the head, the foot, the arm, the back--till he was nothing but one big ache. “Stop, stop, my little sticks!” cried he, and lo! the two sticks were still. Then, for all his aches and pains, Mehmed rejoiced greatly that he had found out the mystery.
He had no sooner got home with the two sticks than he called together all the villagers, but said not a word about what he meant to do. In less than a couple of hours everybody had assembled there, and awaited the new show with great curiosity. Then Mehmed came with his two sticks and cried: “Strike, strike, my little sticks, strike, strike!” whereupon the two sticks gave the whole lot of them such a rub-a-dub-dubbing that it was as much as they could do to howl for mercy. “Now,” said Mehmed, who was getting his wits back again, “I’ll have no mercy till you have given back to me my little table and my little mill.”