Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/267

Rh was the lad who wished to talk to her; and then she begged leave of the hill-ogre to go out.

When she came out the lad was himself again, and so he told her she must ask the hill-ogre whether she would never get away and go home to her father. Then he turned himself into an ant and sat on her foot, and so the princess went into the house again, and fell to combing the hill-ogre's hair.

So when she had done this awhile she fell a-thinking.

"You're forgetting to comb me," said the hill-ogre. "What is it you're thinking of?"

"Oh, I am doubting whether I shall ever get away from this place, and home to my father's grange," said the princess.

"Nay, nay, that you'll never do," said the hill-ogre; "not unless you can find the grain of sand which lies under the ninth tongue of the ninth head of the dragon to which your father paid tax; but that no one will ever find; for if that grain of sand came over the rock, all the hill-ogres would burst, and the rock itself would become a gilded palace, and the lake green meadows."

As soon as the lad heard that, he crept out through the keyholes, and through the crack in the rock, till he got outside. Then he turned himself into a falcon, and flew whither the dragon lay. Then he hunted till he found the grain of sand under the ninth tongue of the ninth head, and flew off with it; but when he came to the lake he got tired, so tired that he had to sink down and perch on a stone by the strand. And just as he sat there he dozed and nodded for the twinkling of an eye; and meantime the grain of sand