Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/176

154 had gone into the church, unbeknown to anybody, and sawed the props of the pulpit all but in two, so that it would only just hang together if one went up into it very carefully. So when the people were gathered together and he was to preach before the bishop, he crept up into the pulpit and began to expound as he was wont; and when he had gone on awhile, he got more in earnest, threw his arms about and bawled out—

"If there be any here who is wicked or given to ill deeds, it were better he left this place; for this very day there shall be a fall, such as hath not been seen since the world began."

With that he struck the reading-desk like thunder, and lo! the desk and the priest and the whole pulpit tumbled down on the floor of the church with such a crash, that the whole congregation ran out of church as if doomsday were at their heels.

But then the bishop told the fault-finders he was amazed that they dared to complain of a priest who had such gifts in the pulpit, and so much wisdom that he could foresee things about to happen. For his part, he thought he ought to be a dean at least, and it was not long either before he was a dean. So there was no help for it; they had to put up with him.

Now it so happened that the king and queen had no children; but when the king heard that perhaps there was one coming, he was eager to know if it would be an heir to his crown and realm, or if it would only be a princess. So all the wise men in the land were gathered to the palace, that they might say beforehand what it would be. But when there was not a man of them that could say that, both the king and the bishop