“Follow your nose, and make out the place with your own wit,” said the hag.
Coldfeet drove the cows home in the evening, and said to his master, “The giants will never harm you again; all their heads are in the muddy gaps from this to the end of the pasture, and there are good roads now for your cattle. I have been with you only five days, but another would not do my work in a day and a year; pay me my wages. You’ll never have trouble again in finding men to mind cattle.”
The man paid Coldfeet his wages, gave him a good suit of clothes for the journey, and his blessing.
Away went Coldfeet now on the long road, and by my word it was a strange road to him. He went across high hills and low dales, passing each night where he found it, till the evening of the third day, when he came to a house where a little old man was living. The old man had lived in that house without leaving it for seven hundred years, and had not seen a living soul in that time.
Coldfeet gave good health to the old man, and received a hundred thousand welcomes in return.
“Will you give me a night’s lodging?” asked Coldfeet.
“I will indeed,” said the old man, “and is it any harm to ask, where are you going?”
“What harm in a plain question? I am going to Lonesome Island if I can find it.”
“You will travel to-morrow, and if you are loose and lively on the road you’ll come at night to a house, and inside in it an old man like myself, only older. He will give you lodgings, and tell where to go the day after.”
Coldfeet rose very early next morning, ate his breakfast, asked aid of God, and if he didn’t he let it alone. He left good health with the old man, and received his blessing. Away with him then over high hills and low dales, and if any one wished to see a great walker Coldfeet was the man to look at. He overtook the hare in the wind that was before him, and the hare in the wind behind could not overtake him; he went at that gait without halt or rest till he came in the heel of the evening to a small house, and went in. Inside in the house was a little old man sitting by the fire.