* * * * *

“THE EARTH DRAWS”

[Illustration:  “THE EARTH DRAWS.”]

“THE EARTH DRAWS”

There was once a young salesman at the storekeeper’s at Soervaag.

He was fair, with curly hair, shrewd blue eyes, and so smart, and obliging, and handsome, that all the girls in the town got themselves sent on errands, and made pilgrimages to the shop on purpose to see him.  Moreover, he was so smart and skilful in everything he put his hand to, that the storekeeper never would part with him.

Now it happened one day that he went out to a fishing station for his principal.

The current was dead against him, so he rode close in shore.

All at once he saw a little ring in the rocky wall a little above high-water mark.  He thought it was the sort of ring which is used for fastening boats to, so he fancied it wouldn’t do any harm to rest a bit and lay to ashore, and have a snack of something, for he had been pulling at the oars from early morn.

But when he took hold of the ring to run his boatline through it, it fitted round his finger so tightly that he had to tug at it.  He tugged, and out of the mountain side with a rush came a large drawer.  It was brimful of silk neckerchiefs and women’s frippery.

He was amazed, and began pondering the matter over.

Then he saw what looked like rusty flakes of iron in rows right over the whole mountain side, exactly resembling the slit of his own drawer.

He had now got the ring on his finger, and must needs try if it would open the other slits also.  And out he drew drawer after drawer full of gold bracelets and silver bracelets, glass pearls, brooches and rings, bracelets and laced caps, yarn, night-caps and woollen drawers, coffee, sugar, groats, tobacco pipes, buttons, hooks and eyes, knives, axes, and scythes.

He drew out drawer after drawer; there was no end to the display they made.

But all round about him he heard, as it were, the humming of a crowd and the tramp of sea-boots.  There was a hubbub, as if they were rolling hogsheads over a bridge and hoisting sails against the wind, and out from the sea sounded the stroke of oars and the bumping of boats putting ashore.

Then he began to have an inkling that he had laid to his boat at a mooring-ring belonging to the underground folk, and had lit right upon their landing-place where they deposited their wares.

He stood there looking into a drawer of meerschaum pipes.  They were finer than any he had thought it possible to find in the whole world.

Then he felt, as it were, the blow of a heavy hand which tried to thrust him aside; but, at the same time, some one laughed so merrily close by.  The same instant he saw a young woman in the fore-part of his boat.  She was leaning, with broad shoulders and hairy arms, over a meal-sack.  Her eyes laughed and shot forth sparks as from a smithy in the dark, but her face was oddly pale.