Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/264

242 "Oh!" said the princess, "there is some one here."

But in a trice the lad became an ant, crept into the cage, and turned himself into a falcon. The king could see nothing for her to be afraid of; so he said to the princess it must have been the nightmare riding her. But he was hardly out of the door before it was the same story over again. The lad crept out of the cage as an ant, and then became his own self, and sat down by the bedside of the princess.

Then she screamed loud, and the king came again to see what was the matter.

"There is some one here," screamed the princess. But the lad crept into the cage again, and sat perched up there like a falcon. The king looked and hunted high and low; and when he could see nothing, he got cross that his rest was broken, and said it was all a trick of the princess.

"If you scream like that again," he said, "you shall soon know that your father is the king."

But for all that, the king's back was scarcely turned before the lad was by the princess's side again. This time she did not scream, although she was so afraid she did not know which way to turn.

So the lad asked why she was so afraid.

Didn't he know? She was promised to a hill-ogre, and the very first time she came under bare sky he was to come and take her; and so when the lad came she thought it was the hill-ogre. And besides, every Thursday morning came a messenger from the hill-ogre, and that was a dragon, to whom the king had to give nine fat pigs every time he came; and that was why he had given it out that the man who could