Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/323

Rh sword that hung behind the door. No, he could not brandish it—he could not so much as even lift it.

"Ah!" said the princess, "if you can't do that, you must take a drink of that flask yonder, that hangs by the side of the sword, for that's what the Troll does when he goes out to use it."



So Boots took two or three drinks, and then he could brandish the sword as though it were a rolling-pin.

Just then came the Troll, so that the wind sung after him.

"Hu!" he screeched out, "what a smell of Christian blood there is in here."

"I know there is," said Boots, "but you needn't blow and snort so at it; you shan't suffer long from that smell," and in a trice he cut off all his heads.

The princess was so glad, just as if she had got something so good; but in a little while she got heavy-hearted, for she pined for her sister, who had been stolen by a Troll with six heads, and lived in a golden castle three hundred miles on this side of the world's end. Boots thought that was not so very bad, for he could go and fetch both the princess and the castle;