“Let it alone,” said the woman crossly. “For all we know, there may be some magic about it. Indeed, I am almost sure there is, for I don’t like the looks of it.”
The lad begged and pleaded to be allowed to pick it up, but the old woman would not hear to it, and so in the end he was obliged to go on without it. But all the same, as they trudged along, he kept thinking and thinking about the belt, and the farther they went the more he wished he had it.
After a while they came to where the road led through a forest, and the lad made some excuse to step aside for a moment. He slipped along from one tree to another until he was out of his mother’s sight; and then he ran back to where the blue belt was lying. He picked it up and buckled it around him under his shirt where it could not be seen.
No sooner had he done this, than he felt as though the strength of ten men had passed into him. It seemed to him as though he could tear up trees by the roots if he chose, or carry a mountain on his shoulders and think nothing of it.
When he came back, his mother was in a fine rage. “I ought to beat you for keeping me waiting all this time,” she cried, “and I would do it, too, if I were not so tired. Wherever we’re to sleep I’m sure I don’t know, for it’s too late now to get on to the next village.”
The boy answered nothing, but he trudged along at his mother’s side, and all the while he was feeling stronger and stronger.
After a while the old woman said she was tired, and she would have to sit down and rest a bit.
The lad asked leave to go to the top of a cliff close by, so as to look about and see whether he could not see a house somewhere near.
“Go if you choose,” said his mother, “but if you stay away as you did before, I’ll give you a good beating when you get back, however tired I am.”
The lad ran quickly to the top of the cliff and looked about him, and there, sure enough, off toward the North, he saw the light of a house, and it was not so very far away, either.