Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/229

Rh officer. "Don't make a fuss. Here you have ten dollars, keep your peace and take him away. I only gave him a blow that made him swoon."

Well! she was glad enough. "Money brings money," she thought; "with fair words and money, one can go far in a day, and one need never care for food with a purse full of pence." So she took our clerk on her back again, and strode off to the nearest farm, and there she put him athwart the brink of the well. When our Mary got home she said she had borne him off to the wood, and buried him far far away in a side dale.

"Thank Heaven," said the goody. "Now we are well quit of him, you shall have all I promised, and more besides. Be sure of that."

So there lay our clerk as though he were peering down into the well, till at dawn of day the ploughboy came running up to draw water.

"Why are you lying there, and what are you gazing at? Out of the way. I want some water," said the lad.

No! he neither stirred hand nor foot. Then the lad let drive at him, so that it went plump, and there lay our clerk in the well. Then he must have help to get him out, but there was no help for it till the hind came with a boat-hook and dragged him out.

"Why! it's our parish clerk!" they all bawled out, and they all thought he had eaten and drank so much at some feast, that he had fallen asleep by the well-side.

But when the master of the house came and saw our clerk, and heard how it had all happened, he said—