Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/512

 326 So the King called out in a louder voice, but the lad was so deep in his prayers he couldn't hear him this time either.

"!" roared out the King; "it's I, the King, who want to come in."

Well, up jumped the lad and ran to the door, and unlocked it, but in his hurry he forgot to hide the picture.

But when the King came in and saw the picture, he stood there as if he were fettered, and couldn't stir from the spot, so lovely he thought the picture.

"So lovely a woman there isn't in all the wide world," said the King.

But the lad told him she was his sister whom he had drawn, and if she wasn't prettier than that, at least she wasn't uglier.

"Well, if she's so lovely," said the King, "I'll have her for my queen;" and then he ordered the lad to set off home that minute, and not be long on the road either. So the lad promised to make as much haste as he could, and started off from the King's palace.

When the brother came home to fetch his sister, the stepmother and stepsister said they must go too. So they all set out, and the good lassie had a casket in which she kept her gold, and a little dog, whose name was "Little Flo;" those two things were all her mother left her. And when they had gone a while, they came to a lake which they had to cross; so the brother sat down at the helm, and the stepmother and the two girls sat in the bow foreward, and so they sailed a long, long way.

At last they caught sight of land.

"There," said the brother, "where you see the white strand yonder, there's where we're to land;" and as he said this he pointed across the water.