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Meanwhile, the hundred lumberjacks finished cutting
down the trees that had been marked.
They sat down and waited for Dobrogi and the carpenter. Finally, they tired of waiting and they began
to look for their master.
They formed a long human chain as if hunting for wild
game. They searched the whole forest but couldn’t
find them anywhere. Only
much later did they spot Dobrogi; the carpenter, however,
was nowhere in sight. Upon coming closer, they saw Dobrogi was barely
alive. He had been
so thoroughly whipped he could hardly talk but only moaned
in a voice the lumberjacks barely understood.
“That fellow was not really a carpenter!” groaned the
lord. “He was Matthew
Goose, the rogue whose geese I took some years ago!
So long ago that I nearly forgot about it! He said he will return twice more to whip me!”
The lumberjacks wrapped Dobrogi up in a sheet and carried
him home. He was so
terrified he almost lost his mind.
Nor did he ever leave his bed.
He wrote letters to various doctors, asking them to
cure him, but no doctors came. No doctor even recommended a cure for his illness.
A few days later Matthew got wind of Dobrogi’s ill
health, and then an idea struck him.
He dressed up as a learned doctor, hired a carriage,
and had himself driven to Dobrogi’s town.
He put up at a local inn, had a good dinner, drank
wine, and struck up a conversation with the innkeeper.
Posing as a foreigner, he asked:
“So, what’s new in this town?”
“Not much,” replied the innkeeper. “It’s just that Lord Dobrogi is very ill.
If he could only find a doctor to cure him, he would
pay handsomely for it.”
Matthew stroked his false beard and said:
“I can cure him! I
am certain I can!”
The innkeeper, delighted to hear such news, sent word
to Dobrogi that a learned foreign doctor was staying at his
inn who could cure everything.
He told Dobrogi to send for the doctor at once.
Soon a beautiful coach rolled up to the inn and Matthew
got in.
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