Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/599

 Rh So they made merry, and crammed themselves with bannocks and butter, and had a drop of brandy into the bargain.

"I'll go off to Tom Totherhouse with a snack—shan't I, mother?" said the lad. "He's had nothing between meals, I'll be bound."

"Ah! do; there's a good fellow," said the Goody, who all at once got as mild as milk.

As he went along the lad broke a bannock to bits, and dropped the crumbs here and there as he walked. But when he got to Tom Totherhouse he said,—

"Now, just you take care, for our old cock has found out that you come too often to see our Goody. He won't stand it any longer, and has sworn to drive his axe into you as soon as ever he can set eyes on you."

As for Tom, he was so frightened he scarce knew which way to turn, and the lad went back again to his master.

"There's something wrong," he said, "with Tom's plough, and he begs you to be so good as to take your axe, and go and see if you can't set it right."

Yes, the man set off with his axe, but Tom Totherhouse had scarce caught sight of him, before he took to his heels as fast as he could. The man turned and twisted the plough round and round, and looked at it on every side, and when he couldn't see anything wrong with it he went off home again; but on the way he picked up the bits of broken bannock which the lad had let fall. His old dame stood in the meadow and looked at him as he did this for a while, and wondered and wondered what it could be her husband was gathering up.

"Oh, I know," said the lad, "master's picking up stones,