Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/300

278 a hue and cry for him over the neighbourhood, and searched the country round; and at last they found him under the fir-tree, more dead than alive.

So when they had got him home, the lad came, and had dressed himself up as a doctor, and said he had come from foreign parts, and knew a cure for all kinds of hurt. And when the man heard that, he was all for having him to doctor him, and the lad said he would not be long in curing him; but he must have him all alone in a room by himself, and no one must be by.

"If you hear him screech and cry out," he said, "you must not mind it; for the more he screeches, the sooner he will be well again."

So when they were alone, he said—

"First of all I must bleed you." And so he threw the man roughly down on a bench, and bound him fast with the thongs; and then out came the cat-o'-nine-tails, and he fell to flogging him as fast as he could. The man screeched and screamed, for his back was sore, and every lash went into the bare flesh; and the lad flogged and flogged as though there were no end to it, and all the while he bawled out—

"This is the lad who sold the pig! this is the lad who sold the pig!"

The old hunks bellowed as though a knife were being stuck into him; but there was not a soul that