Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/39



NCE on a time there was a mill; this mill was not in these parts, it was somewhere up the country; but wherever it was, north of the Fells or south of the Fells, it was not canny. No one could grind a grain of corn in it for weeks together, when something came and haunted it. But the worst was that, besides haunting it, the trolls, or whatever they were, took to burning the mill down. Two Whitsun-eves running it had caught fire and burned to the ground.

Well, the third year, as Whitsuntide was drawing on, the man had a tailor in his house hard by the mill, who was making Sunday-clothes for the miller.

"I wonder, now," said the man on Whitsun-eve, "whether the mill will burn down this Whitsuntide, too?"

"No, it shan't," said the tailor. "Why should it? Give me the keys: I'll watch the mill."

Well, the man thought that brave, and so, as the evening drew on, he gave the tailor the keys, and showed him into the mill. It was empty, you know, for it was just new-built, and so the tailor sat down in the middle of the floor, and took out his chalk and chalked a great circle round about him, and outside