“Yes, call again to-morrow is always the cry,” he said; but he was not going to be made a fool of, he told her.  He was there, and there he would remain till he got the ground-rent.  He had plenty of time to wait.  But when he had finished all the food in his bag, the time hung heavy on his hands, and then he asked the old lady for the ground-rent again.  She had better pay it now, he said.

“No, she was going to do nothing of the sort,” she said.  Her words were as firm as the old fir tree just outside the gates, which was so big that fifteen men could scarcely span it.

But the youngster climbed right up in the top of it and twisted and turned it as if it was a willow, and then he asked her if she was going to pay the ground-rent now.

Yes, she dared not do anything else, and scraped together as much money as he thought he could carry in his bag.  He then set out for home with the ground-rent, but as soon as he was gone the devil came home.  When he heard that the youngster had gone off with his bag full of money, he first of all gave his mother a hiding, and then he started after him, thinking he would soon overtake him.

He soon came up to him, for he had nothing to carry, and now and then he used his wings; but the youngster had, of course, to keep to the ground with his heavy bag.  Just as the devil was at his heels, he began to jump and run as fast as he could.  He kept his club behind him to keep the devil off, and thus they went along, the youngster holding the handle and the devil trying to catch hold of the other end of it, till they came to a deep valley.  There the youngster made a jump across from the top of one hill to the other, and the devil was in such a hurry to follow him that he ran his head against the club and fell down into the valley and broke his leg, and there he lay.

“There is the ground-rent,” said the youngster when he came to the palace, and threw the bag with the money to the king with such a crash that you could hear it all over the hall.

The king thanked him, and appeared to be well pleased, and promised him good pay and leave of absence if he wished it, but the youngster wanted only more work.

“What shall I do now?” he said.

As soon as the king had had time to consider, he told him that he must go to the hill-troll, who had taken his grandfather’s sword.  The troll had a castle by the sea, where no one dared to go.

The youngster put some cartloads of food into his bag and set out again.  He travelled both long and far, over woods and hills and wild moors, till he came to the big mountains where the troll, who had taken the sword of the king’s grandfather, was living.

But the troll seldom came out in the open air, and the mountain was well closed, so the youngster was not man enough to get inside.

So he joined a gang of quarrymen who were living at a farm on top of the hill, and who were quarrying stones in the hills about there.  They had never had such help before, for he broke and hammered away at the rocks till the mountain cracked, and big stones of the size of a house rolled down the hill.  But when he rested to get his dinner, for which he was going to have one of the cartloads in his bag, he found it was all eaten up.