Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/141

Rh man's meat; he was so hungry, he couldn't bear it any longer.

"See, yonder comes one who looks as if he was sent to be a judge between us," said the man, as he pointed to Reynard the fox, who came stealing between the stones of the heap.

"All good things are three," said the man; "let me ask him, too, and if he gives doom like the others, eat me up on the spot."

"Very well," said the Dragon. He, too, had heard that all good things were three, and so it should be a bargain. So the man talked to the fox as he had talked to the others.

"Yes, yes," said Reynard, "I see how it all is;" but as he said this he took the man a little on one side.

"What will you give me if I free you from the Dragon?" he whispered into the man's ear.

"You shall be free to come to my house, and to be lord and master over my hens and geese every Thursday night," said the man.

"Well, my dear Dragon," said Reynard, "this is a very hard nut to crack. I can't get it into my head how you, who are so big and mighty a beast, could find room to lie under yon stone."

"Can't you?" said the Dragon; "well, I lay under the hill-side, and sunned myself, and down came a landslip, and hurled the stone over me."

"All very likely, I dare say," said Reynard; "but still I can't understand it, and what's more I won't believe it till I see it."

So the man said they had better prove it, and the