An Evening in the Squire's Kitchen. 259 huldre was there, for once when he was going to town-— it was in the spring just as the snow was melting away on the roads—and had got as far as Skjællebæk and had watered his horses, he met a herd of red cows, so big and fat that it was a pleasure to look at them, and after them came several cartloads of tubs and buckets and all sorts of things, with fine fat horses for the carts ; but in front wer* a fine lassie with a snow-white milking pail in her hand. " ' But where are you going to, this time of the year ? ' asked the Rogli man, surprised. " ' Oh, wc are going to the Rogli pastures in Ullensaker/ answered she who went in front ; • there is plenty of grass there.' " He thought it was rather strange that they were going to graze on his pastures, but no one else but he either saw or heard any thing of them. He asked several whom he met on the road. but no one had seen any cattle. " At home on his farm several strange things happened too, some times. If he did any work after sunset it was always destroyed during the night, and at last he had to give up working after the sun had set. " But now I must tell you about that time I told you they did him a good turn. One autumn he was walking about in his fields, feeling if his crop of barley was dry ; it was very late in the autumn and he thought it wasn't quite dry enough to cart it in yet, but then he heard a voice over in a hill saying quite plainly : ' You had better cart in your crops ! To-morrow it '11 be snowing ! ' And he began carting as fast as he could, and carted till long past midnight, till he got his crop in ; but the next morning the snow lay shoe-deep in the fields." 14 But it is not always that the fairies are so good," said one of the boys. " What about the huldre who stole the wedding fare at Eldstad, and left her cup behind her ? " " Yes, Fil tell you all about that," said the smith, who eagerly took this hint to begin a new story. " There was once a wedding at Eldstad in Ullensaker, but as they hadn't any oven on the farm, they had to send the joints to the neighbouring farm. where they had an oven, to get them s2
