Just then Nils crept around behind the baron, who soon felt something soft, like a fine skull-cap, pressed on his head, and before he had time to resent the liberty, he started in terror at the sight of the little creature that he saw sitting on the arm of his chair. He sprang up with an exclamation of fright, and pushed the chair back so violently that it was almost upset upon the floor. The gnome dexterously leaped down and stood staring back at the baron for an instant; then, with a spring, he snatched a potato and half a loaf of bread, and disappeared. In his haste, the baron ran against Nils, the under-groom, who (now without a cap) was standing with a smiling countenance calmly surveying all the confusion about him.
“Now, was I right, your lordship?” he asked, with a respectful bow. “Did you find the victuals very filling?”
The baron, who was yet too frightened to answer, stood gazing toward a window-pane, which suddenly and noiselessly broke, and through which the whole procession of gnomes, huddled together in flight, tumbled headlong into the snow-bank without.
“And what shall we do, Nils,” said the baron, the next day, when he had recovered from his shock, “to prevent the return of the unbidden guests?”
“Stop ringing the great bell,” answered Nils. “It is that which invites the gnomes.”
And since that day the dinner-bell has never been rung at Halthorp.
But one day, late in the winter, Nils the groom, as he was splitting wood on the mountain-side, heard a plaintively tinkling voice within, singing:
“Hunger and sorrow each new day is bringing,
Since Halthorp bell has ceased its ringing.”