Then he asked for the little girl in marriage, and the old man told him not to be making fun of the little girl, she was not fit for him. He would get a lady.
“I will not do that,” said he, “you must give her to me to marry.”
“Well, I must see the little girl; she will know what she will do.”
He went to his daughter and told her what the gentleman said, and the little girl answered her father, and said to him,—
“I will marry him, but he must give me a writing under his hand that on the day when he puts me away he must give me my choice of all that’s in his house, to take away three loads with me.”
And he said he would give her that, and she got it in his handwriting and signed by the lawyer.
Then the little girl came and lived in his house with him until she had two children.
At that time there was a dispute in the village between two men, one of whom had a horse, and the other a mare and a foal, and the three beasts used to be together. And the man who owned the horse said that the foal belonged to the horse; and the man of the mare, said no, that the foal was his; and the man who owned the horse put law on the man who owned the mare, and they left it to arbitration; and the man who was brought in to decide was the gentleman, who said he would settle it between them. And this is the judgment he gave, “He would put the three beasts into an empty house, and he would open two doors, and which ever of the two the foal followed, she should be with that one.” And he (did so) and opened the doors, and struck each beast, and prodded the horse; and the horse went out first and the foal followed him. Then the foal was given to the man who owned the horse.
All was well till there came some gentlemen to the house. They went out hunting. And when they were a while gone the woman took a fishing-rod, and she went fishing in the lake, and she was catching white trout until she saw the company coming, and she turned her back to the lake, and she began casting her line on the dry land. When her husband saw that, he went towards her, away from the other people, and he came and said it was a great wonder she should be casting her line on the dry ground and the lake on the other side of her; and she said it was a great wonder that a horse without milk should have a foal. That made him very angry, and he said on the spot,—