Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/218

196 enough for them, for, after all, a parish clerk stands a little higher than a farmer.

Now it fell out there was a rich young lass who had married our clerk's next-door neighbour. There he crept in and out, and soon got good friends with the husband, and better friends still with his wife. When the husband was at home all went well between them, but as soon as he was away at the mill, or in the wood, or at floating timber, or at a meeting, the goody sent word to the clerk, and then they two spent the day in revelling and mirth. There was no one who found this out, before the ploughboy got wind of it, and he thought he would just speak of it to his master; but, somehow or other, he couldn't find a fitting time till one day when they were together in the outfield gathering leaves for litter. There they chatted this and that about lasses and wives, and the master thought he had made a lucky hit in marrying such a rich and pretty wife, and he said as much outright.

"Thank God, she is both good and clever."

"Aye, aye," said the lad; "every man is welcome to believe what he likes, but if you knew her as well as I do, you wouldn't say such words at random. Pretty women are like wind in warm summer weather.

"What's that you say?" said the man.

"I have long thought I would tell you that there's a black bull that walks hoof to hoof and horn to horn with that milk-white cow in your mead, master—that's what I wanted to say."