Shortly after the hole was finished, everyone in the forest was looking for long grass to fill the hole. The upper layer covered it with short grass and scattered some grass around the hole so it didn't seem as conspicuous. The next evening, the villagers hid in their houses and turned off the lights and waited inside, while one of the farmers stood outside and, if possible, unobtrusively skimped on a cart.
Around midnight, the Headless Rider appeared with his horse in the village. He saw the seemingly single peasant scooping his hay and rode towards him. He was about to swing his axe, and while he was doing so, he overlooked the slightly more scattered grass near the farmer – and thus fell into the trap. He clumsily slumped into the prefabricated hole together with his horse and now lay there helplessly inside, together with his horse, which swayed in panic as the rider's axe was stuck in its back.
When the villagers heard this, they all stormed out of the houses to surround the hole. They saw the Headless Rider, and when he noticed all the villagers around him, he cursed: “Gaaah! You stupid villagers caught me! I can't do much down here. I give up.” The villagers took his axe away from him. Now they only needed a just punishment for the rider.
One of the villagers shouted: “We should tie him to a rope and hang him! He tried to kill us all and plagued us for a long time. So we should kill him and let him suffer for a long time!” The other villagers agreed with him. So they tied a thick rope to a branch of a large tree that stood in the village garden. The villagers took the Headless Rider out of the hole and dragged him to the rope. As they were about to hang the rope around his neck, they noticed that something didn't fit in their plan to hang the Headless Rider. Then the Headless Rider cried out: “You stupid mortals, I have no head at all! Why are you trying to hang me?”
