"So after a long time the wolf came out.
"'Well!' said the one who waited for him outside, 'neighbourhood makes brotherhood. You must have come into a perfect paradise on bare earth, since you stayed so long. But what became of the light, for you have neither pipe nor smoke.'
"'Yes, yes!' said the other; 'it was just a nice light and a pleasant company. Such manners I never saw in all my life. But then you know we can't pick and choose in this wicked world, and an unbidden guest gets bad treatment. As soon as I got inside the door, the shoe-maker let fly at me with his last, so that I fell head foremost into the stithy fire; and there sat two smiths who blew the bellows and made the sparks fly, and beat and punched me with red hot tongs and pincers, so that they tore whole pieces out of my body. As for the hunter he went scrambling about looking for his gun, and it was good luck he did not find it. And all the while there was another who sat up under the roof, and slapped his arms and sang out,
"'Put a hook into him, and drag him hither, drag him hither.' That was what he screamed, and if he had only got hold of me, I should never have come out alive."
THE GOLDEN PALACE THAT HUNG IN THE AIR.
"Once on a time there was a poor man who had three sons. When he died the two eldest were to go out into the world to try their luck; but as for the youngest they would not have him at any price.
"'As for you,' they said, 'you are fit for nothing but to sit and hold fir tapers, and grub in the ashes and blow up the embers. That's what you are fit for.'
"'Well, well,' said Boots, 'then I must e'en go alone by myself: at any rate I shan't fall out with my company.'
"So the two went their way, and when they had travelled some days they came to a great wood. There they sat down to rest, and were just going to take out a meal from their knapsack, for they were both tired and hungry. So as they sat there up came an old hag out of a hillock, and begged for a morsel of meat. She was so old and feeble that her nose and mouth met, and she nodded with her head, and could only walk with a stick. As for meat she had not had, she said, a morsel in her mouth these hundred years. But the lads only laughed at her, and ate on and told her as she had lived so long on nothing, she might very well hold out the rest of her life, even though she did not eat up their scanty fare, for they had little to eat and nothing to spare.