"'No! no! it isn't,' said the king.
"So he fell to telling how the king came to him, and about the white horse down on the marsh, and how if the king was to have the pipe, he must—'Yes, your majesty, if the vat is ever to be full I must go on and lie hard,' said Osborn Boots.
"'Hold! hold, lad! It's full to the brim,' roared out the king; 'don't you see how it is foaming over?'
"So both the king and the queen thought it best he should have the princess to wife and half the kingdom. There was no help for it.
"'That was something like a pipe,' said Osborn Boots."
That was the story of Osborn's Pipe, and when Anders stopped we all laughed, and our laughter was re-echoed by the girls, who had listened with the door ajar, and who now showed their smiling faces through the opening, and thanked Anders for telling the story so well. "Your own grandmother couldn't have told it better," said Christine, his fair-haired cousin.
THE HAUNTED MILL, AND THE HONEST PENNY.
Next morning we woke to find Anders' words too true; the wind still howled, and the rain still poured, deerstalking was out of the question, nor could the girls stir out of the doors to look after the kine. There we were, all house-bound. What was to be done? After breakfast we smoked, and the girls knitted stockings. Anders, for want of something better to do, cleaned our guns and admired their make and locks. But all this was not much towards killing time on the Fjeld, and we had no books.