"You seem to have bought a good deal with the gold," he said, looking
at the merchant's house. "We'll see how far it will go." And every day
he rode the rich merchant to the tavern, and made him drink up all his
money, and his house, his clothes, his horses and carts and
sledges--everything he had--until he was as poor as his brother had
been in the beginning.

The merchant thought and thought, and puzzled his brain to find a way
to get rid of him. And at last one night, when Misery had groaned
himself to sleep, the merchant went out into the yard and took a big
cart wheel and made two stout wedges of wood, just big enough to fit
into the hub of the wheel. He drove one wedge firmly in at one end of
the hub, and left the wheel in the yard with the other wedge, and a
big hammer lying handy close to it.

In the morning Misery wakes as usual, and cries out to be taken to the
tavern.

"We've sold everything I've got," says the merchant.

"Well, what are you going to do to amuse me?" says Misery.

"Let's play hide-and-seek in the yard," says the merchant.

"Right," says Misery; "but you'll never find me, for I can make myself
so small I can hide in a mouse-hole in the floor."

"We'll see," says the merchant.

The merchant hid first, and Misery found him at once.