Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/294

272 red-hot. Then he peeped through his key-ring, and saw where the Troll was just as well underground as above it, and then he drove the bar down through the ground, and into the Troll's back-bone; and all I can say is, there was a smell of burnt horn fifteen miles around.



"Haw! haw!" bellowed out the Troll, "let me out," and in a trice he came tearing up through the hole, and all his back was burnt and singed up to the nape of his neck.

But Boots was not slow, for he caught the Troll and laid him on a stake that had thyme twisted round it, and there he had to lie till he told him where he had got eyes from after those had been hacked out with the hemp-comb.

"If you must know," said the Troll, "I stole a turnip, and rubbed it well over with ointment, and then I cut it to the sizes I needed, and nailed them in tight with tenpenny nails, and better eyes I hope no Christian man will ever have."

Then the king came with the two princesses, and