“Now, how do you suppose I get that turkey when it is high up on the tree, and I can’t climb to it?”
“I never thought anything about it,” said Bron, “but it is curious, now I do think of it.”
“This is the way I do it. I walk round and round that tree. The silly turkey turns its head round and round to look after me. Pretty soon it gets dizzy, and falls off.”
“I see,” said Bron. “Thank you.”
He went at once to the dwarfs, and told them he had resolved to conquer the giant himself, in single combat.
They tried to dissuade him, and told him he would never come out from that fight alive, and that the colony could not get along without him. It would be better to send word to king Rhine that the task he had assigned the dwarfs was too hard, and that they could not do it.
But Bron said the honor of the kobolds was at stake, and he was resolved to fight Kruge.
The king laughed when Bron made his proposition. He challenged the giant Kruge to single combat. If he succeeded in cutting off the forelock of the giant’s head; Kruge, and all the giants, were to be servants to the kobolds. If he failed to do this, the kobolds were to be servants to the giants.
The giants laughed when they accepted the challenge. And all the Dryads, and Nixies, and Elves, and Sylphs, and Fairies laughed when they heard the news.
In a few days a great concourse of these creatures assembled to witness the sport. The combat took place in a grassy field on the bank of the river. All the giants were there. But the kobolds thought it best not to attend. The gnomes however, crept out of their dark homes, anxious for the fate of their cousins, the kobolds.