: Two poor sisters hear a story about the dwarves living in the mountain and their wealth. They decide to get rich and at night go to the stream flowing from the mountain, where one of the sisters is captured forever by the dwarves.

Village girls were returning from a spring with jugs full of water. On the church porch they saw the ninety-year-old grandfather Gregorio.

This was the oldest man in the village. As a child, Gregorio was a shepherd, then a soldier, and for the rest of his life he worked on the land inherited from his parents. No one but Grandfather Gregorio could better tell a fairy tale or a terrible story.

The girls surrounded the old man and asked him to tell them a story. Instead, Gregorio noticed that they spend all day at the source, flirting with the guys, and return home too late, but to be at this stream at night is very dangerous.

In winter, wolves descend from the Monkai Mountain, at the foot of which there is a village, but wild animals are far from the most dangerous creatures. Evil spirits, gnomes living in the bowels of the mountain are much worse than wolves. At night, they go down to the stream, splash in its waters, swing on the branches of trees and push down avalanches.Dwarves are able to master the hearts of people, seducing them with unheard of wealth stored in their underground caves.

Grandfather Gregorio told the girls a story about a shepherd who went to look for a sheep that had fallen off the herd and found a cave leading deep into the Monkai Mountain. He fell into the magnificent and at the same time terrible palace of the Dwarves and saw their treasures. The shepherd wandered around the dwarven halls for a long time, until he came to the source of a stream flowing there - a magnificent fountain that was beating from the ground. Unprecedented herbs grew near him and creatures frolic, constantly changing their appearance. These were the gnomes.

They ran and climbed the walls under the guise of… ... ›ugly dwarfs, crawled and wriggled in the form of reptiles and danced with blue lights on the water, counting and guarding their countless treasures.

The Dwarves knew where the treasures were hidden, buried by greedy merchants, robbers and the Moors who fled from Spain. All treasures lost by people accumulated in the caves of the gnomes, which could bypass the whole world through the underpasses.

Blinded by the sight of countless riches, the shepherd almost decided to take one of the gems that would make him a powerful person. At this moment, a miracle happened: in the depths of the mountain the shepherd heard the ringing of the bell of the monastery of Our Lady of Monk. “He crouched to the ground, calling on the Mother of God,” and suddenly found himself on the road leading to the village, as if he woke from a deep sleep.

Since then, the shepherd became not like himself and did not live long, because he penetrated the secrets of the dwarves and told people about them.Residents of the village understood why they sometimes find fine golden sand in their spring, spurting from the mountain, and at night a whisper of evil spirits is heard in its murmur.

The girls left the old man a little scared, but then laughed at their gullibility. Only two of them believed in the story of Grandfather Gregorio. These were the sisters of Marta and Magdalen, orphans who lived out of mercy with a distant relative who humiliated them in every possible way.

Despite the hard life that was supposed to unite them, between the sisters "there was enmity and antipathy," because their characters and even their appearance were opposite.

Twenty-year-old Martha, tall, lean, black-eyed, and black-haired, was arrogant, harsh, and rampant. She could neither laugh nor cry and was guided only by her desires. Sixteen-year-old Magdalena, small, chubby, blue-eyed and fair-haired, was kind, gentle and sensitive. Even the sisters endured their bitter share in different ways: Martha closed herself and kept an arrogant silence, and Magdalena often cried alone, not finding support from her sister.

It so happened that the girls fell in love with one and the same person, who was immeasurably higher than them in wealth and social status. The sisters guessed “without words and explanations a secret secret that everyone would like to hide at the bottom of their souls”, and became rivals.

Not far from the village, on a hill, stood a dilapidated castle. The old village women told a legend about how a shepherd, “a native of these places”, once came to the king impoverished due to the war. She brought him a precious treasure and led his army through the underpasses under the Monkai Mountain.

Once in the rear of his enemies, the king defeated them and consolidated his power with the help of a treasure. The king gave the cowgirl “all his frontier possessions”, ordered to guard the borders of his state, married the noble knight to the girl and settled her in a castle near Monkai Mountain.

The story of Grandfather Gregorio and the legend of the king and the shepherdess "again awakened the dreams of the sisters in love." They dreamed of getting rich and becoming equal to their beloved. Once during the day, the sisters did not go to get water, but at night they slipped out of the house secretly from each other and went to the stream.

Sitting at the stream, the girls listened to the murmur of water and the whisper of the wind. Soon they plunged into a “strange, enthusiastic state” and began to distinguish words in the noise of wind and water.

The stream told about the secrets of the underworld, about the innumerable wealth stored there, promised to give unheard of power, and after death to take a soul into its waters and give "other bliss." Martha eagerly listened to the creek song.

The wind, born from the flapping of the wings of angels, spoke about the bright skies and promised to raise the bright spirit of one of the girls there.

I will give you the treasures of heaven
I will dispel both grief and fear -
And in the raptures of the lands of the unknown
You will drown, as in marvelous waves ...

Magdalena liked the song of the wind so much that she unwittingly followed him away from the source. Martha stayed by the stream. Suddenly, the songs of wind and water fell silent, and a "luminous dwarf, like a blue wandering light" appeared at the source. It was a gnome. He jumped, spun, grimaced, played in the water, and Martha watched him without taking her eyes off. When the dwarf ran up the hill, the girl rushed after him.

Magdalena returned home "pale as death, in deep horror", and Martha disappeared without a trace, only at the stream found her broken jug. Since then, village girls were afraid to stay at the source until the evening. They assured that after sunset in the murmur of water you can hear the sobs of the unfortunate Martha, who was captured by evil spirits.