went to the Huthneth Mountains and bargained there all night with the
chiefs of the gnomes.

When I came to the ancient tavern and entered the low-roofed room,
bringing the hoard of the gnomes in a bottle of hammered iron, my man
had not yet arrived. The sailors laughed at my old iron bottle, but I
sat down and waited; had I opened it then they would have wept and
sung. I was well content to wait, for I knew my man had the story, and
it was such a one as had profoundly stirred the incredulity of the
faithless.

He entered and greeted me, and sat down and called for brandy. He was
a hard man to turn from his purpose, and, uncorking my iron bottle, I
sought to dissuade him from brandy for fear that when the brandy, bit
his throat he should refuse to leave it for any other wine. He lifted
his head and said deep and dreadful things of any man that should dare
to speak against brandy.

I swore that I said nothing against brandy but added that it was often
given to children, while Gorgondy was only drunk by men of such
depravity that they had abandoned sin because all the usual vices had
come to seem genteel. When he asked if Gorgondy was a bad wine to
drink I said that it was so bad that if a man sipped it that was the
one touch that made damnation certain. Then he asked me what I had in
the iron bottle, and I said it was Gorgondy; and then he shouted for
the largest tumbler in that ill-lit ancient tavern, and stood up and
shook his fist at me when it came, and swore, and told me to fill it
with the wine that I got on that bitter night from the treasure house
of the gnomes.