Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/275

Rh know, that I am telling. Sit still. The least you can do is to hear my dream out." Then she went on—

"When I went on into the next bedroom the bird began to scream out as loudly as before the same words—'Pretty maiden! pretty maiden! be bold, but not too bold.' And there lay many dead bodies and skeletons of slain folk."

"No, no," said her sweetheart, "there's nothing like that in my house," and again he tried to run out.

"Sit still, I say," she said; "it is nothing else than a dream, and you may very well hear it out. I, too, thought it dreadful, and ran back again, but I had not got farther than the next room where all these pails of blood stood, when the bird screeched out that I must jump under the bed and hide, for now He was coming; and so he came, and with him he had a girl who was so lovely, I thought I had never seen her like before. She prayed and begged so prettily that he would spare her life. But he did not care a pin for all her tears and prayers; he tore off her clothes, and took all she had, and he neither spared her life nor aught else; but on her left hand she had a ring, which he could not tear off, so he hacked off her finger, and it rolled away under the bed to me."

"Indeed, my love," said her sweetheart, "there's nothing like that in my house."

"Yes, it was in your house," she said, "and here is the finger and the ring, and you are the man who hacked it off."

So they laid hands on him, and put him to death, and burnt both his body and his house in the wood.