Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/310

288 "Yes, yes," said the other; "it was just a nice light, and a pleasant company. Such manners I never saw in all my life. But then you know we can't pick and choose in this wicked world, and an unbidden guest gets bad treatment. As soon as I got inside the door, the shoemaker let fly at me with his last, so that I fell head foremost into the stithy fire; and there sat two smiths, who blew the bellows and made the sparks fly, and beat and punched me with red-hot tongs and pincers, so that they tore whole pieces out of my body. As for the hunter, he went scrambling about looking for his gun, and it was good luck he did not find it. And all the while there was another who sat up under the roof, and slapped his arms, and sang out, 'Put a hook into him and drag him hither, drag him hither.' That was what he screamed, and if he had only got hold of me, I should never have come out alive."