Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/103

Rh "Perhaps it is too much to look for that you should give me back my golden ball, which I gave you to keep yesterday?"

"Is it?" said the lad. "You shall soon have it. Here it is, safe enough; "and as he said that he threw it down on the board so hard, that it shook again; and as for the king, he gave a jump high up into the air.

The princess got as pale as a corpse, but she soon came to herself again, and said, in a sweet, small voice—

"Well done! well done!" Now he had only one more trial left, and it was this:

"If you are so clever as to bring me what I am now thinking of by dinner-time to-morrow, you shall win me, and have me to wife."

That was what she said.

The lad felt like one doomed to death, for he thought it quite impossible to know what she was thinking about, and still harder to bring it to her; and so, when he went up to his bedroom, it was hard work to comfort him at all. His companion told him to be easy, he would see if he could not get the right end of the stick this time too, as he had done twice before. So the lad at last took heart, and lay down to sleep.

Meanwhile, the companion went to the smith and got twenty-four pounds of iron welded on to his sword; and, when that was done, he went down to the stable and let fly at the Billygoat between the horns with such a blow, that he went right head over heels against the wall.

"When rides the princess to her lover to-night?" he asked.