“Ho, if you want to try it, I’m willing,” he replied, and twice running he flung the Carter on his back so that the floor cracked.  Then the milker said he would like to try too; to be sure, it was scarcely worth while to try falls with a walking-stick, with legs like pipe-stems and calves like fly-specks.  With his brown hairy arms he grasped Uli as if he would pull him apart like an old rag.  But Uli held his ground and the milker made no headway.  He grew more and more angry, took hold with ever greater venom, spared neither arms nor legs, and butted with his head like an animal, until at last Uli had enough of it, collected all his strength, and gave him such a swing that he flew over the grain-pile into the middle of the floor and fell on the further side; there he lay with all fours in the air, and for a long time did not know where he was.

As if by chance Freneli had brought food for the hogs and had seen Uli’s victory.  In the house she told her godmother that she had seen something that tickled her.  They had wanted to give Uli a beating; he had had to wrestle with them, but he was a match for them all.  He had thrown the hairy milker on his back as if he had never stood up.  She was glad that he could manage them all; then they would be afraid of him and respect him.  But Uli, interrupted in his examination of the calves, seized a flail and merely told the milker that he had no time for the calves today; they would look to them another day.  The cleaning of the grain took more time than usual, and yet they were through quicker and the grain was better cleaned; but they had exerted themselves more, too, and in consequence had felt the cold less.  When Uli told the master how much grain he had obtained, the latter said that they had never done so much this year and yet today they had been threshing the fallen grain.

In the evening, as they sat at table, the master came and said he thought it would be convenient to cut wood now; the horses weren’t needed, the weather was fine, and it seemed to him that the threshing and the wood-cutting could go on together if properly arranged.  The carter said the horses’ hoofs were not sharpened; and another said that they couldn’t go on threshing by sixes, but at most by fours, and would never get done.  Uli said nothing.

Finally, when Joggeli had no further answers to give, and was out-talked by the servants, he said to Uli, “Well, what do you think?”

“If the master orders it’s got to be done,” answered Uli.  “Hans, the carter, and I will bring the wood in, and if the milker helps in the threshing and the others help him with fodder and manure, the threshing won’t suffer.”  “All right, do it so,” said Joggeli, and went out.