“We will, indeed,” said the woman, “but we have no water to cook supper for you; the water is far away entirely, and no one to go for it.”
“I have water here in plenty,” said Coldfeet, putting his bottle on the table.
The woman took the bottle, poured water from it, filled one pot and then another, filled every vessel in the kitchen, and not a drop less in the bottle. What wonder, when no man or woman ever born could drain the bottle in a lifetime.
Said the woman to her husband that night, “If we had the bottle, we needn’t be killing ourselves running for water.”
“We need not,” said the man.
What did the woman do in the night, when Coldfeet was asleep, but take a bottle, fill it with water from one of the pots, and put that false bottle in place of the true one. Away went Coldfeet next morning, without knowledge of the harm done, and that day he travelled in the way that when he fell in running he had not time to rise, but rolled on till the speed that was under him brought him to his feet again. At sunset he was in sight of a house, and at dusk he was in it.
Coldfeet found welcome in the house, with food and lodgings.
“It is great darkness we are in,” said the man to Coldfeet; “we have neither oil nor rushes.”
“I can give you light,” said Coldfeet, and he unsheathed the sword from Lonesome Island; it was clear inside the house as on a hilltop in sunlight.