Well, one morning Christine started off to the hills with her flock of geese, and in her hands she carried her knitting, at which she worked to save time. So she went along the dusty road until, by-and-by, she came to a place where a bridge crossed the brook, and what should she see there but a little red cap, with a silver bell at the point of it, hanging from the alder branch. It was such a nice, pretty little red cap that Christine thought that she would take it home with her, for she had never seen the like of it in all of her life before.
So she put it in her pocket, and then off she went with her geese again. But she had hardly gone two-score of paces when she heard a voice calling her, "Christine! Christine!"
She looked, and who should she see but a queer little gray man, with a great head as big as a cabbage and little legs as thin as young radishes.
"What do you want?" said Christine, when the little man had come to where she was.
Oh, the little man only wanted his cap again, for
without it he could not go back home into the hill—that was where he belonged.
But how did the cap come to be hanging from the bush? Yes, Christine would like to know that before she gave it back again.
"The little man asks far his cap."