But Thule, in spite of his trembling, could not forget his good mother’s counsel:—
“Your words, my boy, let them be truth, and nothing but truth, though a sword should be swinging over your head.”
Then, as soon as his voice returned to him, he confessed that the tree he had removed was really just such an one as the men described, and begged for mercy, because, as he said, he had committed the sin ignorantly, not knowing the mandate of the terrible giant.
But the men bade Thule lead them to his mother’s house, and point out his stolen treasure; declaring that they could show no mercy; for, when Loki had made a decree, no man should alter it by one jot or one tittle.
“Oh!” thought the unfortunate boy, wringing his hands, and trembling till the woollen tassel on his cap danced a gallopade, “oh, if the cruel night-elf, who led me into this mischief, would only come forward now, and help me out of it! But, alas, it is of no avail to invoke him; for it is now broad daylight, and the sun would strike him into a stone image in a twinkling.”
When Thule, followed by the messengers of Loki, had reached the door of his cottage, he found his gray-haired mother sprinkling the roots of the beautiful alder, and fondling its leaves with innocent pleasure. At sight of the armed men, she started back in affright.
“It is indeed the giant’s tree,” said the men to Thule. “Pluck it up, and follow us with it to Loki’s castle on the mountain.”
“To Loki’s castle!” shrieked the wretched mother. “Then he must pass a frightful wilderness, be assailed by the frost-giants; and, if there be any breath left in him, Loki will dash it out at a glance! Have mercy on a poor old mother, O good soldiers!”
The unhappy boy touched the tree, and it came out of the ground of its own free will; and, in a trice, stood on its feet, shook out its branches into arms, and in another moment was no longer a tree, but a child, with a beauty as dazzling as sunshine.
“Unfortunate men!” said she, in a voice whose angriest tones were sweeter than the music of an Æolian harp, “unfortunate are you in being the servants of Loki! Go, tell your cruel master that the schemes he has plotted against me and mine have all failed: my enchantment is over forever. Yonder boy,” said she, pointing to little Thule, “has saved me. I was, and still remain, an elf of light, as playful and harmless as sunshine. The merciless Loki, enraged at the love I bear the children of men, changed me to a little alder-tree, which is the emblem of girlhood. But he had no power to keep me in that form forever. He was obliged to make a condition, and he made the hardest one that his artful mind could invent: ‘Since you love mortals so dearly,’ said he, ‘no one but a mortal shall free you from your imprisonment. You shall remain a tree till a good child shall touch you,—a child who is generous enough to SHARE HIS LAST LOAF WITH A STRANGER, honest enough to GIVE BACK A REWARD FOR HIS HONESTY, brave enough to SPEAK THE TRUTH WHEN A LIE WOULD HAVE SAVED HIS LIFE. Long shall you wait for such a deliverer!’