The man from Ringerige got a whole cart-load of clothes and a box full of bright silver money, with meat and drink, as much as he wanted.  When he had got all he wished, he got into the cart, and once more set out.

“That is the third,” said he to himself.

Now the woman’s third husband was ploughing in a field, and when he saw a man he did not know come out of his yard with his horse and cart, he went home and asked his wife, who it was that was going off with the black horse.

“Oh,” said the woman, “that is a man from Himmerige (Heaven).  He told me that things went so miserably with my second Peter, my poor husband, that he had to go begging from house to house and had no money or clothes.  I have therefore sent him the old clothes he left behind, and the old money box with the money in it.”

The man saw how matters were, so he saddled a horse and went out of the yard at full speed.  It was not long before he came up to the man who sat and drove the cart.  When the other saw him he drove the horse and cart into a wood, pulled a handful of hair out of the horse’s tail, and ran up a little hill, where he tied the hair fast to a birch-tree.  Then he lay down under the tree and began to look and stare at the sky.

“Well, well,” said he, as if talking to himself, when Peter the third came near.  “Well! never before have I seen anything to match it.”

Peter stood still for a time and looked at him, and wondered what was come to him.  At last he said—­

“Why do you lie there and stare so?”

“I never saw anything like it,” said the other.  “A man has gone up to heaven on a black horse.  Here in the birch-tree is some of the horse’s tail hanging, and there in the sky you may see the black horse.”

Peter stared first at the man and then at the sky, and said—­

“For my part, I see nothing but some hair out of a horse’s tail in the birch-tree.”

“Yes,” said the other, “you cannot see it where you stand, but come here and lie down, and look up, and take care not to take your eyes off the sky.”

Peter the third lay down and stared up at the sky till the tears ran from his eyes.  The man from Ringerige took his horse, mounted it, and galloped away with it and the horse and cart.  When he heard the noise on the road, Peter the third sprang up, but when he found the man had gone off with his horse he was so astonished that he did not think of going after him till it was too late.

He was very down-faced when he went home to his wife, and when she asked him what he had done with the horse, he said—­

“I gave it to Peter the second, for I didn’t think it was right he should sit in a cart and jolt about from house to house in Himmerige.  Now then he can sell the cart, and buy himself a coach, and drive about.”

“Heaven bless you for that,” said the woman.  “I never thought you were so kind-hearted a man.”