“But,” said Gudbrand, “I have not got the goose either.  When I had gone a bit further I gave it in exchange for a cock.”

“Heaven knows,” said his wife, “how you thought all this out so well!  It is just what I should have done myself.  A cock! why it is just the same as if you had bought an eight-day clock, for the cock crows at four o’clock every morning, so we shall be able to get up in good time.  What could we have done with a goose?  I don’t know how to cook it, and I can stuff my pillow with moss.  Run and fetch the cock in, children.”

“But,” said Gudbrand, “I have not got the cock either.  When I had gone a bit further I got hungry, and so I sold the cock for twelve shillings so that I might live.”

“Thank God you did so,” said his wife; “whatever you do you do it just as I should have wished.  What could we have done with a cock?  We are our own masters, and can lie in bed in the morning as late as we please.  Thank Heaven you have come back again safe.  You do everything so well that we can well spare the cock, the goose, the pig, and the cow.”

Then Gudbrand opened the door.

“Have I won the hundred dollars?” said he, and the neighbour was obliged to own that he had.

THE DWARF-SWORD TIRFING.

Suaforlami, the second in descent from Odin, was king over Gardarike (Russia).  One day he rode a-hunting, and sought long after a hart, but could not find one the whole day.  When the sun was setting, he found himself plunged so deep in the forest that he knew not where he was.  On his right hand he saw a hill, and before it he saw two dwarfs.  He drew his sword against them, and cut off their retreat by getting between them and the rock.  They offered him ransom for their lives, and he asked them their names, and they said that one of them was called Dyren and the other Dualin.  Then he knew that they were the most ingenious and the most expert of all the dwarfs, and he therefore demanded that they should make for him a sword, the best that they could form.  Its hilt was to be of gold, and its belt of the same metal.  He moreover commanded that the sword should never miss a blow, should never rust, that it should cut through iron and stone as through a garment, and that it should always be victorious in war and in single combat.  On these conditions he granted the dwarfs their lives.

At the time appointed he came, and the dwarfs appearing, they gave him the sword.  When Dualin stood at the door, he said—­

“This sword shall be the bane of a man every time it is drawn, and with it shall be perpetrated three of the greatest atrocities, and it will also prove thy bane.”

Suaforlami, when he heard that, struck at the dwarf, so that the blade of the sword penetrated the solid rock.  Thus Suaforlami became possessed of this sword, and he called it Tirfing.  He bore it in war and in single combat, and with it he slew the giant Thiasse, whose daughter Fridur he took.