In three quarters of a year the Queen of Lonesome Island had a son, the finest child that sun or moon could shine on, and he grew in the way that what of him didn’t grow in the day grew in the night following, and what didn’t grow that night grew the next day, and when he was two years old he was very large entirely.
The queen was grieving always for the loaf and the bottle, and there was no light in her chamber from the day the sword was gone. All at once she thought, “The father of the boy took the three things. I will never sleep two nights in the one house till I find him.”
Away she went then with the boy,—went over the sea, went through the land where wind never blows and where cock never crows, came to the house of the oldest old man, stopped one night there, then stopped with the middle and the youngest old man. Where should she go next night but to the woman who stole the loaf from Coldfeet. When the queen sat down to supper the woman brought the loaf, cut slice after slice; the loaf was no smaller.
“Where did you get that loaf?” asked the queen.
“I baked it myself.”
“That is my loaf,” thought the queen.
The following evening she came to a house and found lodgings. At supper the woman poured water from a bottle, but the bottle was full always.
“Where did you get that bottle?”
“It was left to us,” said the woman; “my grandfather had it.”