The year after, it was Cinderlad’s turn, but when he made ready to go the others laughed at him, and mocked him.  “Well, you are just the right one to watch the hay, you who have never learned anything but how to sit among the ashes and bake yourself!” said they.  Cinderlad, however, did not trouble himself about what they said, but when evening drew near rambled away to the outlying field.  When he got there he went into the barn and lay down, but in about an hour’s time the rumbling and creaking began, and it was frightful to hear it.  “Well, if it gets no worse than that, I can manage to stand it,” thought Cinderlad.  In a little time the creaking began again, and the earth quaked so that all the hay flew about the boy.  “Oh! if it gets no worse than that I can manage to stand it,” thought Cinderlad.  But then came a third rumbling, and a third earthquake, so violent that the boy thought the walls and roof had fallen down, but when that was over everything suddenly grew as still as death around him.  “I am pretty sure that it will come again,” thought Cinderlad; but no, it did not.  Everything was quiet, and everything stayed quiet, and when he had lain still a short time he heard something that sounded as if a horse were standing chewing just outside the barn door.  He stole away to the door, which was ajar, to see what was there, and a horse was standing eating.  It was so big, and fat, and fine a horse that Cinderlad had never seen one like it before, and a saddle and bridle lay upon it, and a complete suit of armor for a knight, and everything was of copper, and so bright that it shone again.  “Ha, ha! it is thou who eatest up our hay then,” thought the boy; “but I will stop that.”  So he made haste, and took out his steel for striking fire, and threw it over the horse, and then it had no power to stir from the spot, and became so tame that the boy could do what he liked with it.  So he mounted it and rode away to a place which no one knew of but himself, and there he tied it up.  When he went home again his brothers laughed and asked how he had got on.

“You didn’t lie long in the barn, if even you have been so far as the field!” said they.

“I lay in the barn till the sun rose, but I saw nothing and heard nothing, not I,” said the boy.  “God knows what there was to make you two so frightened.”

“Well, we shall soon see whether you have watched the meadow or not,” answered the brothers, but when they got there the grass was all standing just as long and as thick as it had been the night before.

The next St. John’s eve it was the same thing, once again:  neither of the two brothers dared to go to the outlying field to watch the crop, but Cinderlad went, and everything happened exactly the same as on the previous St. John’s eve:  first there was a rumbling and an earthquake, and then there was another, and then a third:  but all three earthquakes were much, very much more violent than they had been the year before.  Then everything