The Witch. 305 " |oramo !—Why, that's in Lesje i Bless me, are you going such a long way ?" rt Yes, it is a long way off ! I was bred and born there/' said Gubjor; ** I have travelled much, but gathered Uttle, since I was there. It was better times for Gubjor then," she added with a sigh, as she sat down on the settle. " But in Joramo there was once a changeling," she continued, as some legend from olden times came into her mmd on recalling some of the memories of her childhood. " My aunt's great grandmother who lived at Joramo had a change ling. I never saw it, for both she and the child was gone long before I was born, but my mother often spoke about it. The child looked like an old man with a weather-beaten face, — his eyes were as red as fire, and glowed like an owl's eyes in the dark. He had a head as long as a horse's head and as round as a cabbage ; the legs were as thin as a sheep's, and his body looked like last year's dried mutton. He was always crying and howling, and if he got hold of anything, he threw it right into his mother's face. He was always hungry, like the parish dog, — everything he saw he must have, and he very nearly ate them out of house and home. The older he grew, the worse he grew, and there was no end to his howling and wailing. They could never make him speak a word, although he was old enough, — in short, he was a perfect worry night and day. They tried for advice here and there and everywhere, and the poor woman was told to try this and that and everything. She hadn't the heart to thrash him till she was sure he really was a changeling, but then somebody told her how she could find it out. — She was to say that the king was coming, and then she was to make a big fire on the hearth and break an egg in two. Half of the shell she was to put over the fire, and then a long pole do,wn the chimney into the shell. — Well, she did that ; but when the change ling saw this, he sat upright in the cradle and stared at it. The woman went out of the room, but peeped in through the keyhole. He then crept out of the cradle on his hands, but his legs stuck in the cradle, and he stretched himself out, till he was so long that he reached right across the floor to the hearth. " ' Well, well,' he said, ' I am now as old as seven generations of x
