Legends From River and Mountain by Carmen Sylva

Many years ago there lived in the little town of Stolberg, which is the / centre of a mining district in the Hartz Mountains, a certain Joseph / Kerst, who was the overseer of one of the neighbouring mines. He had / begun work there as a boy, and had no thought or care but for the / treasures that were to be found in those dusky depths, so that he had / come, early in life, to enjoy a position of trust, and a certain degree / of wealth. This, however, was not enough to satisfy him; his great / ambition was to discover a fresh vein of silver, that should be his / alone, and make him the richest of men; and to this end he would wander / night and day about the mountains, and through the disused pits, pick / in hand, seeking for a spot that seemed to promise what he desired.

Now, with the wealth which was his already, he might easily have kept / a wife, and, indeed, many a girl in the town was on the look-out for / overseer Joseph, and would gladly have become the mistress of the / comfortable old house on the market-place. At last he did seem to / have made his choice, and a good choice too; for he often spent his / spare hours with the watchmaker's daughter Anna, who was the sweetest, / gentlest girl in the world, and plainly did not want him for his money, / for it was easy to see she worshipped the ground he trod on. If the / truth were known, she often wept in secret over his craze for silver, / and his dangerous midnight excursions into the heart of the mountains; / but the poor, loving creature fancied that when once he had "given her / the ring," which he promised soon to do, she could persuade him to turn / his mind to other things.