Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/190



NCE on a time there was a priest who was such a bully that he bawled out, ever so far off, whenever he met any one driving on the king's highway—

"Out of the way! out of the way! Here comes the priest!"

One day when he was driving along and behaving so, he met the king himself.

"Out of the way! out of the way!" he bawled a long way off. But the king drove on and kept his own; so that time it was the priest who had to turn his horse aside, and when the king came alongside him, he said, "To-morrow you shall come to me to the palace, and if you can't answer three questions which I will set you, you shall lose hood and gown for your pride's sake."

This was something else than the priest was wont to hear. He could bawl and bully, shout, and behave worse than badly. All he could do, but question and answer was out of his power. So he set off to the clerk, who was said to be better in a gown than the priest himself, and told him he had no mind to go to the king.