They shook him and shouted at him, but he would not open his eyes; he only grumbled at them and told them to be gone.
“I shall have done my work and reached home long before you,” he said.
So he stayed in bed for another two hours, then arose, and after eating a hearty breakfast he started with his cart and horses for the wood.
There was a narrow pathway through which he had to pass just before entering the wood, and after he had led his horses through this he went back and built up a barrier of brambles and furze and branches so thick that no horse could possibly force its way through.
Then he drove on and met his fellow-servants just leaving the wood on their way home.
“Drive on, my friends,” he said, “and I will be home before you even now.”
Then he pulled up a giant elm by its roots just on the border of the woods, and laying it on his cart, he turned and quickly overtook the others.
There they were, staring helplessly at the great barricade which barred their path, just as he had expected to find them.
“Ha, ha!” he chuckled, “you might just as well have slept an hour or two longer, for I told you you would not get home before me.”
Then, shouldering the tree, the horse and the cart, he pushed a way through the barrier as easily as if he had been carrying a bag of feathers.