In the days when strange things used to happen in the world, and the devil himself used sometimes to walk about in it in a bare-faced fashion, he came to a very small town where he resolved to stay a while to play some of his tricks.
The little men began to stitch, to pierce, and to hammer so cleverly and quickly with their little fingers that the shoemaker's eyes could scarcely follow them, so full of wonder was he.
Then, all of a sudden, the gates swung back with a terrible clang, and there issued as strange a procession as Tom’s, or indeed mortal’s, eyes ever set on.