As he sat there in the night, the door opened and in came Great Claus with his ax. He knew where Little Claus's bed stood, and he went straight to it and hit the dead grandmother a blow on the forehead, thinking it was Little Claus.
"Just see if you'll make a fool of me again," said he, and then he went home.
"What a bad, wicked man he is!" said Little Claus. "He was going to kill me. What a good thing that poor grandmother was dead already! He would have taken her life."
He now dressed his grandmother in her best Sunday clothes, borrowed a horse of his neighbor, harnessed it to a cart, and set his grandmother on the back seat, so that she could not fall when the cart moved. Then he started off through the woods. When the sun rose, he was just outside a big inn, and he drew up his horse and went in to get something to eat.
The landlord was a very rich man and a very good man, but he was hot-tempered, as if he were made of pepper and snuff. "Good morning!" said he to Little Claus; "you have your best clothes on very early this morning."
"Yes," said Little Claus, "I'm going to town with my old grandmother. She's sitting out there in the cart; I can't get her to come in. Won't you take her out a glass of beer? You'll have to shout at her, she's very hard of hearing."
"Yes, that I'll do," said the host, and he poured a glass and went out with it to the dead grandmother, who had been placed upright in the cart.
"Here is a glass of beer your son has sent," said the landlord but she sat quite still and said not a word.
"Don't you hear?" cried he as loud as he could. "Here is a glass of beer from your son."
But the dead woman replied not a word, and at last he became quite angry and threw the beer in her face—and at that moment she fell backwards out of the cart, for she was only set upright and not bound fast.