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Rh "But these promises are strange things sometimes,—if you keep a promise to Christmas you are pretty sure to break it before next Michaelmas. The year after I made a trip to Christiania late in the autumn,—the roads were in a fearful bad condition and it was already very late in the afternoon before I left town, but I wanted to get home that night. I was on horseback and took the road by Bokstad, which is the shortest, as you know,—to Ausfjerdingen I mean. The weather was wet and ugly, and it was beginning to grow dark when I started. But when I came over the bridge by Heggelie I saw a man coming towards me,—he wasn't very tall, but terribly big; he was as broad as a barn-door across his shoulders, and his hands were nearly a foot across the knuckles. He carried a leather bag in one hand, and seemed to be talking to himself. When I came nearer to him, his eyes glistened like burning cinders, and they were as big as saucers. His hair stood out like bristles, and his beard was no better; I thought he was a terrible, ugly brute, and I prayed for myself the little I could, and just as I came to the end, down he sank,—in the ground I mean.

"I rode on, humming an old psalm, but suddenly I met him again coming down a hill; his eyes and his hair and beard too sparkled with fire this time. I began praying again, and had no sooner finished than he was gone. But I had scarcely ridden a mile, before I met him once more as I was crossing a small bridge. His eyes flashed like lightning and sparks flew out of his hair and beard, and so he shook his bag, till you could see blue and yellow and red tongues of fire shooting out of it. But then I lost my temper right out, and instead of praying I swore at him, and he vanished on the spot. But as I rode on, I began to be afraid that I should meet this brute again, so when I came to Lövlie I knocked at the door, and asked for lodgings till daylight, but do you think they would let me in? No. I could travel by day, like other folks, they said, and then I needn't ask for lodgings!—So I guessed the old brute had been there before me and frightened them, and I had to set out again. But then I started another old psalm, till the mountains rang with it, and I came at last safe to Stubdale, where I got lodgings—but it was almost morning then."