about, there would be quite another dance than hanging about the house all day doing nothing. Well, there was no help for it, Peter would try it, and go he must; so he took his bag on his back and trudged down the hill. When he had gone a good long distance, he met an old woman, who stood fixed with her nose in a big block, and when he saw how she pulled and tugged to get loose he began laughing with all his might.
"Don't stand there and grin," said the woman, "but come and help an old woman; I was going to chop up a little wood and then I got my nose stuck in this block, and so I have been standing and tugging and pulling away, and never tasted a mouthful for a hundred years," she said.
But Peter only laughed more and more; he thought it was great fun, and said, that since she had been standing thus a hundred years, she might hold out for another hundred years.
When he came to the king's palace, he got the place to look after the hares at once. It was not a bad place to serve in there; he was to have good food and good wages, and the princess in the bargain; but if only one of the king's hares was lost, they were to cut three red stripes out of his back, and throw him into the snake-pit.
As long as Peter was in the fields near the palace, he managed to keep all the hares in one flock, but as the day wore on and the hares came into the wood, they began to scamper and fly about the hills in all directions. Peter ran after them as fast as his legs would carry him, but at last he had only one of the hares left, and when this was gone, he was very near burst with running. And so he saw no more of the hares.
Towards evening he began strolling homewards; when he came to the gate, he stopped there gaping and staring about for them, but no hares came. When he came into the palace yard in the evening the king was waiting for him with his knife ready, and cut three red stripes out of his back, put pepper and salt into them, and cast him into the snake-pit.
After some time Paul wanted to go to the king's palace and watch the king's hares. His father told him what he had said to
