‘In this way,’ said he, ’I make sure that the cow will keep quiet, and that nothing bad can happen to her.’

He now filled the kettle, dropped into it a good ‘lump’ of lard, the necessary vegetables and condiments, placed it on the well-piled fagots, struck fire with flint and steel, and was applying the match to the wood, blowing it well the while, when, all at once, crish—­crash! away goes the cow, slipping down over the roof, and dragging our good man, with one leg in the air and head downwards, clear up the chimney.  What would have become of him, no one could tell, had not a thick bar of iron arrested his upward flight.  And now there they are, both together, dangling in the air, the cow outside and Peter within; both, too, uttering the most frightful cries of distress.

As good luck would have it, the wife was just as impatient as her husband, and, when she had waited just three seconds to see whether Peter would bring her porridge at the stated time, she darted off for the house as though it were on fire.  When she saw the cow swinging between heaven and earth, she drew her sickle and cut the rope, greatly to the delight of the poor brute, who now found herself safe again, on the only sort of floor she liked.  It was a chance no less fortunate for Peter, who was not accustomed to gazing at the sky with his feet in the air.  But he fell smack into the kettle, head foremost.  It had been decreed, however, that all should come out right with him, that day; the fire had died out, the water was cold, and the kettle awry, so that he got off with nothing worse than a scratched forehead, a peeled nose, and two well scraped cheeks, and, thank Heaven! nothing was broken but the saucepan.

When his better half entered the kitchen, she found Master Graybeard looking very sheepish and bloody.

‘Well! well!’ said she, planting her arms akimbo and her two fists on her haunches:  ’who’s the best housekeeper, pray?  I have mowed and reaped, and here I am as good as I was yesterday, while you, you, Mister Cook, Mister Stay-at-home, Mr. Nurse, where is the butter, where’s the sow, where’s the cow, and where’s our dinner?  If our little one’s alive yet, no thanks to you.  Poor little fellow!—­what would become of it without kind and careful mamma?’

Whereupon, Mrs. Peter begins to snivel and sob.  Indeed, she has need to, for is not sensibility woman’s field of triumph, and are not tears the triumph of sensibility?

Peter bore the storm in silence, and did well, for resignation is the virtue of great souls!

PART V.

There, you have my story exactly as it is related, on winter evenings, to impress ideas of wisdom on the minds of the young Norwegians.  Between the wife of Gudbrand and the wife of Peter the Graybeard they must choose, at their own risk and peril.