“This will do for me,” said he.
So it was settled that he should sleep in the cradle and his mother in the bed, though it was so enormous that she shook and shivered at the very thought of getting into it, and if she had had her choice, she would have stayed all night in the corner.
After they were all settled, the lad thought to himself, “I’d best stay awake and listen how things go on through the night, for there’s no knowing what this Troll may intend to do to us before morning.” But he lay there very quiet and kept his eyes shut, and now and then he snored a bit, so the Troll thought he was asleep.
Presently the Troll began to talk to the woman. “Do you think that lad of yours is asleep?” he asked of her.
“He must be from the way he’s snoring,” she answered.
“Then, listen,” said the Troll. “It has come into my head that you and I could live here very happily together if we could only get rid of him, for to tell you the truth I have no liking for the way he goes about things.”
“I’m sure I don’t know how you can do anything with him,” said the woman, “for he seems to have grown very strong all of a sudden.”
Oh, the Troll had a plan that would do for the lad. The next morning he would ask the woman and her son to stay there with him for a day or so, and she was to agree. Then sometime in the morning he would take the lad out to the quarry with him to get out some cornerstones, and once there, it would be easy enough in one way or another to send him down to the bottom of the quarry, and then roll a rock down on him and crush him.
To this plan the woman consented, and all the while they talked the boy lay there and listened, though he breathed with his mouth open as though he were still sleeping.
The next day the woman got up early and cooked breakfast for them, and after they had all eaten, the Troll said, wouldn’t she stay there and keep house for him for a day or so.