“You gawk!” screamed the old hag. “Come and drive a wedge in the crack so I can get my nose out. Here I have stood for twice a hundred years, and no Christian soul has come to set me free.”
“If you have stood there twice a hundred years you might as well stay a while longer. As for me, I’m expected at the King’s palace, and I have no time to waste driving wedges,” said the lad, and away he went, one foot before the other, leaving the old crone with her nose still in the crack.
When the lad came to the palace, he knocked at the door and told the man who opened it that he had come to see about the place of herdsman. When the man heard this he brought the lad straight to the King, and told him what the lad had come for.
The King listened and nodded his head. Yes, he was in need of a herdsman and would be glad to take the lad into his service, and the wages were just as the youth thought, with a chance of winning the Princess to boot. But there was one part of the bargain that had been left out. If the lad failed to keep the herd together and lost so much as even one small leveret, he was to receive such a beating as would turn him black and blue.
That part of the bargain was not such pleasant hearing as the rest of it. Still the lad had a mind to try for the Princess. So he was taken out to the paddock where the hares were, and a pretty sight it was to see them hopping and frisking about, hundreds and hundreds of them, big and little.
All morning the hares were kept there in the paddock with the new herdsman watching them, and as long as that was the case everything went well. But later on the hares had to be driven out on the hills for a run and a bite of fresh grass, and then the trouble began. The lad could no more keep them together than if they had been sparks from a fire. Away they sped, some one way and some another, into the woods and over the hills,—there was no keeping track of them. The lad shouted and ran and ran and shouted till the sweat poured down his face, but he could not herd them back. By the time evening came he had scarce a score of them to drive home to the palace.
And there on the steps stood the King with a stout rod in his hands, all ready to give the lad a beating. And a good beating it was, I can tell you. When the King had finished with him he could hardly stand. Home he went with only his sore bones for wages.
Then it was the second brother’s turn. He also had a mind to try his hand at keeping the King’s hares, with the chance of winning the Princess for a wife. Off he set along the same road his brother had taken, and after a while he came to the place where the old crone was dancing about with her long, green nose still caught in the crack of a log. He was just as fond of a good laugh as his brother was, and he stood for a while to watch her, for he thought it a merry sight. He laughed and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and the old hag was screaming with rage.
“You gawk! Come and drive a wedge into the crack so that I can get my nose out,” she bawled. “Here I have been for twice a hundred years and no Christian soul has come to set me free.”
“If you have been there that long it will not hurt to stay a bit longer,” said the youth. “I’m no woodsman, and besides that I’m on my way to the King’s palace to win a Princess for a wife.” And away he went, leaving the old woman screaming after him.