Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/71

Rh they sent out a man to ask if he were coming against them.

"Bide a bit, till I have had my dinner," said Grumblegizzard, as he threw himself down on the road, and fell to eating behind his great scrip.

But they couldn't wait, and began to shoot at him at once, so that it rained and hailed rifle bullets.

"These bilberries I don't mind a bit," said Grumblegizzard, and fell to eating harder than ever.

Neither lead nor iron could touch him, and before him was his scrip, like a wall, and kept off the fire.

So they took to throwing shells at him, and to fire cannons at him; and he just grinned a little every time they hit him.

"Ah! ah! it's all no good," he said. But just then he got a bombshell right down his throat.

"Fie!" he said, and spat it out again; and then came a chain-shot and made its way into his butter-box, and another took the bit he was just going to eat from between his fingers. Then he got angry, and rose up, and took his club, and dashed it on the ground, and asked if they were going to snatch the bread out of his mouth with their bilberries, which they puffed out of big peashooters. Then he gave a few more strokes, till the rocks and hills shook, and the enemy flew into the air like chaff, and so the war was over.

When Grumblegizzard got home again and wanted more work, the king was in a sad way, for he thought he should have been rid of him that time, and now he could think of nothing but to send him to hell.

"You must be off to Old Nick, and ask for my land-tax."