“Johan, my dear boy, is that you?” shouted the farmer. “Come down.”
“I can not,” answered Johan, with husky, unnatural voice.
Hereupon the farmer threw his cap to Johan, which the latter picked up and put on his head.
“Come down,” cried the farmer, “before the Trolls come. In the name of the saints, come down.”
“I can’t,” said Johan again.
Then the farmer threw his clothes up, garment after garment, and when Johan had clothed himself in them he received power enough that he was able to crawl down the cliff. His master took him by the [[68]]hand, and without looking back they hastened home, the farmer repeating:
“Pshaw! you cunning black Trolls! As a stone, I’ll quiet your wicked tongues that they may neither evil think nor speak or do ought against me.”
They arrived home, the one dressed the other naked. The traveler was obliged to procure another horse, for in the house of the farmer the joy was so great that none there had a thought of driving him. Johan was never again the same man as before, but remained gloomy and rarely spoke.
His master asked him many times what his occupation was in the mountain, but upon this subject he was silent. It happened that Johan was taken sick and called for a confessor, to whom, when he confessed his sins, he related also his experience in the mountain. His chief employment, he said, had been to steal food for the Trolls. For this purpose the Trolls put a red hat upon him, when he could, in a very short time, fly to Jönköping through locked doors and into the merchants’ stores, where he took corn, salt, fish and whatever he wished. From the Troll cap he received such power that he could take a sack of rye under each arm and a barrel of fish upon his back, and fly as lightly through the air as with no burden whatever.
“It was wrong of me and hard on the merchants,” said Johan, “but it was the fault of the Trolls. If there were no Trolls in the world the merchants would become rich, but now they must pay tribute, and so are kept on the verge of bankruptcy.” And Johan was done. [[69]]