Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/44

22 a clearing of stumps on the hillside, and there he saw a white crooked stone.

"Ah! you poor old stone," said the boy; "how white and wan you are! I'll be bound you are frozen to death;" and with that he took off his jacket and laid it on the stone. So when he got home with his billet of wood his mother asked what it all meant that he walked about in wintry weather in his shirt-sleeves. Then he told her how he had seen an old crooked stone which was all white and wan for frost, and how he had given it his jacket.

"What a fool you are!" said his mother; "do you think a stone can freeze? But even if it froze till it shook again, know this—every one is nearest to his own self. It costs quite enough to get clothes to your back, without your going and hanging them on stones in the clearings;" and as she said that, she hunted the boy out of the house to fetch his jacket.

So when he came where the stone stood, lo! it had turned itself and lifted itself up on one side from the ground. "Yes! yes! this is since you got the jacket, poor old thing," said the boy.

But when he looked a little closer at the stone, he saw a money-box, full of bright silver, under it.

"This is stolen money, no doubt," thought the boy; "no one puts money, come by honestly, under a stone away in the wood."

So he took the money-box and bore it down to a tarn hard by and threw the whole hoard into the tarn; but one silver penny-piece floated on the top of the water.

"Ah! ah! that is honest," said the lad; "for what is honest never sinks."