Every so often, a person dares to risk everything in the ultimate gamble, promising their soul to the Devil. The trickiest of those cases become legends. This is one of those cases: the story of the player from Petrer.
A long time ago, in this town of the Valencian Country, there lived a farmer who lost all his money playing cards. He was left with only his house and one carob tree. The little food he had, he got from gleaning (the practise in traditional laws where what's not picked from fields by their owners can be picked by anyone in need) or the carobs, because he was too proud to ask for help. One day, when he only had one handful of carobs to eat, he let out a desperate cry: "I'd give the Devil a handful of these!".
Suddenly, a man wearing very elegant clothes appeared next to him and asked "You would give it to him or you would sell it to him? Nobody gives anything for free, so we should negotiate a price." The farmer, who immediately recognised he was speaking to the Devil, decided to take a chance. They reached the agreement that the Devil would give him 10 years that would be the equivalent of a 100 years of natural good luck and, in return, after these 10 years the Devil would come and take his soul. The Devil, in his proud fake kindness, asked him one last question: "What time of the year would you like me to come take you?". The farmer glanced at his carob tree and answered: "Around this time of the year, when the carob trees are already harvested and there's no carobs left." The Devil agreed, left a bag of coins, and left.
And thus the agreement became true. The farmer played that money and became rich. He won every game and invested the money in fields, farm animals, and houses. 10 years later, on the night after he had harvested the carobs, the Devil appeared again. He said "I come to take your soul, as we had agreed", and the farmer answered "It's not the time yet". The Devil replied "Of course it is, you have already picked the carobs", so the farmer proposed that they go verify it. They went out to the carob fields, where the farmer pointed at the little green carobs and added "We have harvested this year's carobs, but these things that look like tiny broad beans are carobs, that will grow to be brown and thick. The thick one now has been you, Sir Devil, for not knowing that carob sprouts start to grow before the previous year's carobs are ready to harvest."
The Devil became a fury and turned to all kinds of terrifying shapes to scare the farmer but, after all, the Devil is bound by his word, so he had to accept that the time to take the farmer's soul would never come, and left.
