"I beg your pardon, most humbly," began Hal, as he let the bloody head fall; "I did not mean any harm."
"Rumble, bang-whang!" bellowed the thunder.
Hal fell on his knees and recited most devoutly, "Now I lay me down," etc.
"Roll on! roll on! I say," and the giant seized poor Hal by the collar and set him on his feet.
He now selected a large ball, and poising it carefully in his hand, ran a few steps, and sent it whirling right in among the nine-pins; but what was his astonishment to behold them jump lightly aside, and permit the ball to pass in an avenue directly through the middle of the alley. Hal shuddered. The second and third ball met with no better success. Odin—for Hal said it was certainly he, as he had Mimir's head along—now grasped a ball and rolled it with all his might; but long before it reached the nine-pins, they had, every one of them, tumbled down, and lay sprawling on the alley.
"Two spares!" said the giant, as he grinned most gleefully at poor Hal. "Get up!" and up the pins all stood instantly. Taking another ball, he hurled it down the alley, and the same result followed. "Two more spares!" and Odin shook his gigantic sides with laughter.
"I give up the game," whined out Hal.
"Then you lose double," rejoined Odin.
Hal readily consented to pay two ounces, for he imagined, by yielding at once, he would so much the sooner get rid of his grim companion. As he said so, Odin pulled a pair of scales out of his coat pocket, made proportionably to his own size. He poised them upon a beam in the alley, and drew forth what he denominated two ounces, and put them in one scale. Each ounce was about the size of a twenty-eight pound weight, and was quite as heavy.
"Ha! ha! ha!! Ha! ha! ha!!! Ha! ha! ha!!!!" shouted the giant, as he grasped the gasping and terrified gambler. He soon rolled up his sleeves, and bound his arm with a pocket handkerchief. Next he drew forth a lancet as long as a sword, and drove the point into the biggest vein he could discover. Hal screamed and fainted. When he returned to consciousness, the sun was shining brightly in at the window, and the sweet rumbling of the balls assured him that he still lay where the giant left him. On rising to his feet he perceived that a large coagulum of blood had collected where his head rested all night, and that he could scarcely walk from the effects of his exhaustion. He returned immediately home and told his wife all that had occurred; and though, like some of the neighbors, she distrusted the tale, yet she never intimated her doubts to Black Hal himself. The alley-keeper assured me in a whisper, one day, that upon the very night fixed on by Hal for the adventure, he was beastly drunk, and had been engaged in a fight with one of his boon companions, who gave him a black eye and a bloody nose. But the alley-keeper was always jealous of Black Hal's superiority in story telling; besides, he often drank too much himself, and I suspect he originated the report he related to me in a fit of wounded pride, or drunken braggadocio. One thing is certain, he never ventured to repeat the story in the presence of Black Hal himself.