"Oh-h-h—I happened to—to—to sell it for a cake!"
As soon as he had uttered the word, he understood what it was to sell the goat for a cake; he had not thought of it before. His mother said,—
"What do you suppose the little goat thinks of you, when you could sell him for a cake?"
And the boy thought about it, and felt sure that he could never again be happy in this world, and not even in heaven, he thought afterwards. He felt so sorry, that he promised himself never again to do anything wrong, never to cut the thread on the spinning-wheel, nor let the goats out, nor go down to the sea alone. He fell asleep where he lay, and dreamed about the goat, that it had gone to Heaven; our Lord sat there with a great beard as in the catechism, and the goat stood eating the leaves off a shining tree; but Oeyvind sat alone on the roof, and could not come up.
Suddenly there came something wet close up to his ear, and he started up. "Bay-ay-ay!" it said; and it was the goat, who had come back again.
"What! have you got back?" He jumped up, took it by the two fore-legs, and danced with it as if it were a brother; he pulled its beard, and he was just going in to his mother with it, when he heard some one behind him, and, looking, saw the girl sitting on the greensward by his side. Now he understood it all, and let go the goat.
"Is it you, who have come with it?"
She sat, tearing the grass up with her hands, and said,—
"They would not let me keep it; grandfather is sitting up there, waiting."
While the boy stood looking at her, he heard a sharp voice from the road above call out, "Now!"