Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/298

 112 either into Hell or Heaven, and to try at once, rather than to put it off any longer, so that he might know how things really stood. Then he threw his sledge-hammer over his shoulder and set off; and when he had gone a good bit of the way, he came to a place where two roads met, and where the path to the kingdom of Heaven parts from the path that leads to Hell, and here he overtook a tailor, who was pelting along with his goose in his hand.

"Good day," said the Smith; "whither are you off to?"

"To the kingdom of Heaven," said the Tailor, "if I can only get into it;—but whither are you going yourself?"

"Oh, our ways don't run together," said the Smith; "for I have made up my mind to try first in Hell, as the Devil and I know something of one another from old times."

So they bade one another "Good-bye," and each went his way; but the Smith was a stout strong man, and got over the ground far faster than the tailor, and so it wasn't long before he stood at the gates of Hell. Then he called the watch, and bade him go and tell the Devil there was some one outside who wished to speak a word with him.

"Go out," said the Devil to the watch, "and ask him who he is?" So that when the watch came and told him that, the Smith answered,—

"Go and greet the Devil in my name, and say it is the Smith who owns the purse he wots offwots of [sic]; and beg him prettily to let me in at once, for I worked at my forge till noon, and I have had a long walk since."

But when the Devil heard who it was he charged the watch to go back and lock up all the nine locks on the gates of Hell.

"And, besides," he said, "you may as well put on a