So he told them bluntly that he had come hither for his drumsticks, and not to woo maidens, and he would thank them to let him have his property.

“But have a look about you a bit first, young man,” said the old fellow, and he pointed with his stick.

And all at once the drummer saw large dun cows grazing all along the mountain pastures, and the cow-bells rang out their merry peals.  Buckets and vats of the brightest copper shone all about, and never had he seen such shapely and nicely dressed milkmaids.  There must needs be great wealth here.

“Perchance thou dost think ’tis but a beggarly inheritance I have here in the Blue Mountains,” said she, and sitting down on a haycock, she began chatting with him.  “But we’ve four such saetar[2] as this, and what I inherit from my mother is twelve times as large.”

But the drummer had seen what he had seen.  They were rather too anxious to settle the property upon him, thought he.  So he declared that in so serious a matter he must crave a little time for consideration.

Then the lass began to cry and take on, and asked him if he meant to befool a poor innocent, ignorant, young thing, and pursue her and drive her out of her very wits.  She had put all her hope and trust in him, she said, and with that she fell a-howling.

She sat there quite inconsolable, and rocked herself to and fro with all her hair over her eyes, till at last the drummer began to feel quite sorry for her and almost angry with himself.  She was certainly most simple-minded and confiding.

All at once she twisted round and threw herself petulantly down from the haycock.  Her eyes spied all about, and seemed quite tiny and piercing as she looked up at him, and laughed and jested.

He started back.  It was exactly as if he again saw the snake beneath the birch tree down there when it trundled away.

And now he wanted to be off as quickly as possible; he cared no longer about being civil.

Then she reared up with a hissing sound.  She quite forgot herself, and a long tail hung down and whisked about from behind her kirtle.

He shouldn’t escape her in that way, she shrieked.  He should first of all have a taste of public penance and public opinion from parish to parish.  And then she called her father.

Then the drummer felt a grip on his jacket, and he was lifted right off his legs.

He was chucked into an empty cow-house, and the door was shut behind him.

There he stood and had nothing to look at but an old billy-goat through a crack in the door, who had odd, yellow eyes, and was very much like the old fellow, and a sunbeam through a little hole, which sunbeam crept higher and higher up the blank stable wall till late in the evening, when it went out altogether.

But towards night a voice outside said softly, “Swain! swain!” and in the moonlight he saw a shadow cross the little hole.