“Give them to me,” said the hag.
“If I was bound to bring the three things,” said Coldfeet, “I was not bound to give them to you; I will keep them.”
“Give them here!” screamed the hag, raising her nails to rush at him.
With that Coldfeet drew the sword of light, and sent her head spinning through the sky in the way that ’tis not known in what part of the world it fell or did it fall in any place. He burned her body then, scattered the ashes, and went his way farther.
“I will go to my mother first of all,” thought he, and he travelled till evening. When his feet struck small stones on the road, the stones never stopped till they knocked wool off the spinning-wheels of old hags in the Eastern World. In the evening he came to a house and asked lodgings.
“I will give you lodgings, and welcome,” said the man of the house; “but I have no food for you.”
“I have enough for us both,” said Coldfeet, “and for twenty more if they were in it;” and he put the loaf on the table.
The man called his whole family. All had their fill, and left the loaf as large as it was before supper. The woman of the house made a loaf in the night like the one they had eaten from, and while Coldfeet was sleeping took his bread and left her own in the place of it. Away went Coldfeet next morning with the wrong loaf, and if he travelled differently from the day before it was because he travelled faster. In the evening he came to a house, and asked would they give him a night’s lodging.