Grandmother was rather worried, but Kasperl and Seppel stuck to their guns. They were going to catch the robber Hotzenplotz and get Grandmother’s coffee mill back. The only drawback was that they didn’t know where to find the robber’s den.

“We’ll soon find out!” said Kasperl. They spent Sunday morning thinking. Then all of a sudden Kasperl began to laugh.

“What’s the joke?” asked Seppel.

“Well, now I know what to do.”

“What?”

“You’ll soon see.”

Kasperl and Seppel found an empty crate in Grandmother’s cellar. It had once held potatoes. They carried it into the garden. Then they shovelled fine white sand into it.

“Now what?”

“Now we’ll put the lid on.”

They put the lid on the crate, and Kasperl fetched a dozen nails and a hammer.

“There—nail it down, Seppel. As hard as you can.”

Seppel nodded and set to work. With the very first stroke of the hammer he hit his thumb. Bother! How it hurt! However, he clenched his teeth and went on hammering bravely, like an expert nailer-down-of-potato-crate-lids.

Meanwhile, Kasperl was getting the big paintbrush from the attic and mixing a pot of red paint. When he came back with the paintpot and the brush, Seppel had just hit his thumb for the fifty-seventh time. But the lid was firmly nailed down.

“Now, watch this!” said Kasperl.

He loaded the brush with red paint, and, much to Seppel’s astonishment, wrote on the potato crate, in huge bright letters:

What could it mean? Seppel racked his brains, but he could not make head or tail of it.

“Do you know what?” said Kasperl. “You could be making yourself useful by fetching the handcart from the shed, instead of just standing there sucking your thumb.”

Seppel went off to the shed and wheeled out the handcart. Then he had to help Kasperl lift the crate. It was hard work; they were puffing and blowing like grampuses.

“Oh dear!” groaned Seppel. “And on a Sunday, too!”

As if things weren’t bad enough already! There was no plum pie and whipped cream in Grandmother’s house today—Grandmother was too sad about her coffee mill to make plum pie. Now they had to work like slaves too.

In the end they did it.

“Now what?” asked Seppel.

“Now for the important part.”

Kasperl took a gimlet out of his pocket and bored a little hole in the bottom of the crate. When he removed the gimlet, sand trickled out of the hole.

“There,” said Kasperl with satisfaction. “That should do the trick.”

Then he sharpened a matchstick with his penknife and stopped up the hole he had just bored.

Seppel had been watching, shaking his head in bewilderment.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I just don’t see the point of that.”

“Don’t you?” said Kasperl, laughing. “It’s quite simple. Tomorrow morning the two of us will wheel the crate out into the woods on the handcart. Hotzenplotz will be lying in wait. When he sees us coming he’ll read the words on our crate and he’ll think there’s gold inside.”

“Oho,” said Seppel. “Then what?”

“Well, then he’ll want to have the crate, of course. We’ll let him jump out at us, and then we’ll run away. Hotzenplotz will pounce on the crate and take it—well . . . where do you think he’ll take it?”

“How should I know, Kasperl? I’m not the robber Hotzenplotz.”

“Why, it’s easy, Seppel! He’ll take it to his den. But on the way the sand will be trickling out of the hole in the crate. So there’ll be a little trail of sand going through the wood. If we want to find the robber’s den we only have to follow the trail and it will lead us straight to him. What do you think of that?”

“Wonderful,” said Seppel. “What a good idea. But don’t forget to take out the matchstick before we run away.”

“Don’t worry!” said Kasperl. “I shall remember all right.”

And he made a big knot in his handkerchief.