Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/205

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THE OLD DAME AND HER HEN.
19

goat, and in a trice her sister came to life again. Then the girl stuffed her into a sack, laid a little food over her, and as soon as the Man o' the Hill came home, she said to him—

"Dear friend! Now do go home to my mother with a morsel of food again; poor thing! she's both hungry and thirsty I'll be bound; and besides that, she's all alone in the world. But you must mind and not look into the sack."

Well! he said he would carry the sack; and he said, too, that he would not look into it; but when he had gone a little way, he thought the sack got awfully heavy; and when he had gone a bit farther he said to himself—

"Come what will, I must see what's inside this sack, for however sharp her eyes may be, she can't see me all this way off."

But just as he was about to untie the sack, the girl who sat inside the sack called out—

"I see what you're at!
I see what you're at!"

"The deuce you do!" said the ogre; "then you must have plaguy sharp eyes;" for he thought all the while it was the girl inside the hill who was speaking. So he didn't care so much as to peep into the sack again, but carried it straight to her mother as fast as he could, and when he got to the cottage door he threw it in through the door, and bawled out—

"Here you have meat and drink from your daughter; she wants for nothing."

Now, when the girl had been in the hill a while longer,