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290 for a morsel of meat. She was so old and feeble that her nose and mouth met, and she nodded with her head, and could only walk with a stick. As for meat, she had not had, she said, a morsel in her mouth these hundred years. But the lads only laughed at her, and ate on, and told her as she had lived so long on nothing, she might very well hold out the rest of her life, even though she did not eat up their scanty fare, for they had little to eat, and nothing to spare.

So when they had eaten their fill and could eat no more, and were quite rested, they went on their way again, and, sooner or later, they came to the king's grange, and there they each of them got a place.

A while after they had started from home, Boots gathered together the crumbs which his brothers had thrown on one side, and put them into his little script, and he took with him the old gun which had no lock, for he thought it might be some good on the way; and so he set off. So when he had wandered some days, he, too, came into the big wood through which his brothers had passed; and as he got tired and hungry, he sat down under a tree that he might rest and eat; but he had his eyes about him for all that; and as he opened his script, he saw a picture hanging on a tree, and on it was painted the likeness of a young girl or princess, whom he thought so lovely he couldn't keep his eyes off her. So he forgot both food and script, and took down the painting and lay and stared at it. Just then came up the old hag out of the hillock, who hobbled along with her stick, whose nose and mouth met, and whose head nodded. Then she begged for a little food, for she hadn't had a morsel of bread in