Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/128

106 "It ought to be a good sum," said Peik, "for there wasn't a coach ready to start for Paradise every day."

So the man said he would give all he had; and so he knocked out the head of the cask and crept into it instead of Peik.

"A happy journey!" said the King when he came to roll him down; "now you'll go faster to the firth than if you were in a sledge with reindeer; and now it's all over with you and your fooling rods."

Before the cask was half-way down the fell, there wasn't a whole stave of it left, nor a limb of him who was inside. But when the King came back to the Grange, Peik was there before him, and sat in the courtyard playing on the Jew's harp.

"What! you sitting here, you, Peik?"

"Yes! here I sit, sure enough; where else should I sit?" said Peik. "Maybe I can get house-room here for all my horses and sheep and money."

"But whither was it that I rolled you that you got all this wealth?" asked the King.

"Oh, you rolled me into the firth," said Peik, "and when I got to the bottom there was more than enough and to spare, both of horses and sheep and of gold and silver. The cattle went about in great flocks, and the gold and silver lay in large heaps as big as houses."

"What will you take to roll me down the same way?" asked the King.

"Oh," said Peik, "it costs little or nothing to do it. Besides, you took nothing from me, and so I'll take nothing from you either."

So he stuffed the King into a cask and rolled him over, and when he had given him a ride down to