When the man heard that he was very angry, and declared he would leave her, and never come back again until he had found three women as big fools as his wife.

So he set off, and when he had gone a little way he saw a woman who ran in and out of a newly built wood hut with an empty sieve.  Every time she ran in she threw her apron over the sieve, as if she had something in it.

“Why do you do that, mother?” asked he.

“Why, I am only carrying in a little sun,” said she, “but I don’t understand how it is, when I am outside I get the sunshine in the sieve, but when I get in I have somehow lost it.  When I was in my old hut I had plenty of sunshine, though I never carried it in.  I wish I knew some one who would give me sunshine.  I would give him three hundred dollars.”

“Have you an axe?” asked the man.  “If so I will get you sunshine.”

She gave him an axe and he cut some windows in the hut, for the carpenter had forgotten them.  Then the sun shone in, and the woman gave him three hundred dollars.

“That’s one,” said the man, and he set out once more.

Some time after he came to a house in which he heard a terrible noise and bellowing.  He went in and saw a woman who was beating her husband across the head with a stick with all her might.  Over the man’s head there was a shirt in which there was no hole for his head to go through.

“Mother,” said he, “will you kill your husband?”

“No,” said she, “I only want a hole for his head in the shirt.”

The man called out and, struggling, cried—­

“Heaven preserve and comfort all such as have new shirts!  If any one would only teach my wife some new way to make a head-hole in them I would gladly give him three hundred dollars.”

“That shall soon be done.  Give me a pair of scissors,” said the other.

The woman gave him the scissors, and he cut a hole in the shirt for the man’s head to go through, and took the three hundred dollars.

“That is number two,” said he to himself.

After some time he came to a farm-house, where he thought he would rest a while.  When he went in the woman said—­

“Where do you come from, father?”

“I am from Ringerige (Paradise),” said he.

“Ah! dear, dear!  Are you from Himmerige (Heaven)?” said she.  “Then you will know my second husband, Peter; happy may he be!”

The woman had had three husbands.  The first and third had been bad and had used her ill, but the second had used her well, so she counted him as safe.

“Yes,” said the man, “I know him well.”

“How does he get on there?” asked the woman.

“Only pretty well,” said the man.  “He goes about begging from one house to another, and has but little food, or clothes on his back.  As to money he has nothing.”

“Heaven have mercy on him!” cried the woman.  “He ought not to go about in such a miserable state when he left so much behind.  There is a cupboard full of clothes which belonged to him, and there is a big box full of money, too.  If you will take the things with you, you can have a horse and cart to carry them.  He can keep the horse, and he can sit in the cart as he goes from house to house, for so he ought to go.”