Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/229

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
HACON GRIZZLEBEARD.
43

and how I shall ever get food for you I can't tell, for it's just as much as I can do to get food for myself."

"Oh yes! it's all the same to me how you get it, or whether you get it at all," she said; "only let me be with you, for if I stay here any longer, my father will be sure to take my life."

So she got leave to be with the beggar, as she called him, and they walked a long, long way, though she was but a poor hand at tramping. When she passed out of her father's land into another, she asked whose it was?

"Oh! this is Hacon Grizzlebeard's, if you must know," said he.

"Indeed!" said the Princess; "I might have married him if I chose, and then I should not have had to walk about like a beggar's wife."

So, whenever they came to grand castles, and woods, and parks, and she asked whose they were? the beggar's answer was still the same: "Oh! they are Hacon Grizzlebeard's." And the Princess was in a sad way that she had not chosen the man who had such broad lands. Last of all they came to a palace, where he said he was known, and where he thought he could get her work, so that they might have something to live on; so he built up a cabin by the wood-side for them to dwell in; and every day he went to the king's palace, as he said, to hew wood and draw water for the cook, and when he came back he brought a few scraps of meat; but they did not go very far.

One day, when he came home from the palace, he said—

"To-morrow I will stay at home and look after the baby, but you must get ready to go to the palace, do you