“Six hundred years! You lie, you rascal, and you deserve to be whipped for it.”
“Oh! do not strike me,” pleaded the Pigmy, continuing to cry. “I have had enough of blows already to-day.”
“Who have you received them from?” asked the peasant.
“From my father.”
“What capers did you cut up that you were thus punished?”
“Oh, I was set to watch my old grandfather and [[88]]when I chanced to turn my back he fell and hurt himself upon the floor.”
The peasant then understood what character of person he had met, and grasping his dirk he prepared to defend himself. But instantly he heard an awful crash in the mountain, and the pigmy had vanished. [[89]]
The Freebooter’s Grave.[1]
During the bloody war under Charles XII. with Denmark, a number of freebooters had gone from Skåne into Halland, and marked their way, as usual, with plundering and murder. A number, after the parsonage and other houses in Hishult had been ransacked, went back to Skåne; the rest continued their course to the north.