"Very good; he might have leave to do that. And so he got the pipe, and put it into his purse. And the purse he put into his pocket, and buttoned it up tight; and so off he strode to his home. But when he reached the grange, and was going to pull out his pipe, he fared no better than the women folk; he hadn't the pipe any more than they, and there came Osborn Boots driving home the flock of hares, and not a hair was missing.
"The king was both spiteful and wroth, to think that he had fooled them all round, and cheated him out of the pipe as well; and now he said Boots must lose his life, there was no question of it, and the queen said the same: it was best to put such a rogue out of the way red-handed.
"Osborn thought it neither fair nor right, for he had done nothing but what they told him to do; and so he had guarded his back and life as best he might.
"So the king said there was no help for it; but if he could lie the great brewing-vat so full of lies that it ran over, then he might keep his life.
"That was neither a long nor perilous piece of work: he was quite game to do that, said Osborn Boots. So he began to tell how it had all happened from the very first. He told about the old wife and her nose in the log, and then he went on to say, 'Well, but I must lie faster if the vat is to be full.' So he went on to tell of the pipe and how he got it; and of the maid, how she came to him and wanted to buy it for a hundred dollars, and of all the kisses she had to give besides, away there in the wood. Then he told of the princess how she came and kissed him so sweetly for the pipe when no one could see or hear it all away there in the wood. Then he stopped and said, 'I must lie faster if the vat is ever to be full.' So he told of the queen, how close she was about the money and how overflowing she was with her smacks. 'You know I must lie hard to get the vat full,' said Osborn.
"'For my part,' said the queen, 'I think it's pretty full already.'
"'No! no! it isn't,' said the king.
"So he fell to telling how the king came to him, and about the white horse down on the marsh, and how if the king was to have the pipe, he must – 'Yes, your majesty, if the vat is ever to be full I must go on and lie hard,' said Osborn Boots.
"'Hold! hold, lad! It's full to the brim,' roared out the king; 'don't you see how it is foaming over?'
"So both the king and the queen thought it best he should have the princess to wife and half the kingdom. There was no help for it.
"'That was something like a pipe,' said Osborn Boots."
That was the story of Osborn's Pipe, and when Anders stopped we all laughed, and our laughter was re-echoed by the girls, who had listened with the door ajar, and who now showed their smiling faces through the opening, and thanked Anders for telling the story so well. "Your own grandmother couldn't have told it better," said Christine, his fair-haired cousin.
THE HAUNTED MILL, AND THE HONEST PENNY
Next morning we woke to find Anders' words too true; the wind still howled, and the rain still poured, deerstalking was out of the question, nor could the girls stir out of the doors to look after the kine. There we were, all house-bound. What was to be done? After breakfast we smoked, and the girls knitted stockings. Anders, for want of something better to do, cleaned our guns and admired their make and locks. But all this was not much towards killing time on the Fjeld, and we had no books.
At last Edward, who was rather afraid of Anders and his jokes on his sportsmanship, whispered to me,
"Can't you make him tell us some more stories? I'll be bound Osborn's Pipe is not the only tale he has in his scrip."
Not a bad thought, but Anders was one of those free spirits who must be stalked as warily as a reindeer. I felt that if I asked him outright he might betake him to his Norse pride and say he was no story-teller. "If I wanted stories I had better ask some of the old women down in the dales." It was not the first time I had unsealed unwilling lips, and I knew the way.
"That was a good story about Osborn's Pipe, and I owe you one for it, Anders. Come listen to one of mine, and let the lassies listen to it too. It's not long."
"Once on a time, there was a man who had a mill by the side of a force, and in the mill there was a brownie. Whether the man, as is the custom in most places, gave the brownie porridge and ale at Yule to bring grist to the mill, I can't say, but I don't think he did, for every time he turned the water on the mill, the brownie took hold of the spindle and stopped the mill, so that he couldn't grind a sack.
"The man know well enough it was all the brownie's work, and at last one evening, when he went into the mill, he took a pot full of pitch and tar, and lit a fire under it. Well! when he turned the water on the wheel, it went round awhile, but soon after it made a dead stop. So he turned, and twisted, and put his shoulder to the top of the wheel, but it was all no good. By this time the pot of pitch was boiling hot, and then he opened the trap-door which opened on to the ladder that went down into the wheel, and if he didn't see the brownie standing on the steps of the ladder with his jaws all a-gape, and he gaped so wide that his mouth filled up the whole trap-door.
"'Did you ever see such a wide mouth?' said the brownie.
"But the man was handy with his pitch. He caught up the pot and threw it, pitch and all, into the gaping jaws.
"'Did you ever feel such hot pitch?'
"Then the brownie let the wheel go, and yelled and howled frightfully. Since then he has been never known to stop the wheel in that mill, and there they ground in peace."
Yes! Anders had heard a story something like that, only it was about a water kelpy, not a brownie. Brownies, he declared, never did folk much harm, except lazy maids and idle grooms, but kelpies were spiteful, and hated men. Besides, brownies hated water, they couldn't bear to cross a running stream; then how could they live in a mill? No, it was a kelpy, and his grandmother had told him so.
Then, after a pause, he went on, "But I know another story of a mill which was not canny, and I'll tell it if you like."
We were all ears, and Anders began: —
"This story, too, I heard of my grandmother, who knew stories without end, and more, she believed them. This mill was not in these parts, it was somewhere up the country; but wherever it was, north of the Fells, or south of the Fells, it was not canny. No one could grind a grain of corn in it for weeks together, when something came and haunted it. But the worst was that, besides haunting it, the trolls, or whatever they were, took to burning the mill down. Two Whitsun-eves running it had caught fire and burned to the ground.
"Well, the third year, as Whitsuntide was drawing on, the man had a tailor in his house hard by the mill, who was making Sunday clothes for the miller.
"'I wonder, now,' said the man on Whitsun-eve, 'whether the mill will burn down this Whitsuntide, too?'
"'No, it shan't,' said the tailor. 'Why should it? Give me the keys: I'll watch the mill.'
"Well, the man thought that brave, and so, as the evening drew on, he gave the tailor the keys, and showed him into the mill. It was empty, you know, for it was just new-built, and so the tailor sat down in the middle of the floor, and took out his chalk and chalked a great circle round about him, and outside the ring all round he wrote the Lord's Prayer, and when he had done that he wasn't afraid – no, not if Old Nick himself came.
"So at dead of night the door flew open with a bang, and there came in such a swarm of black cats you couldn't count them, they were as thick as ants. They were not long before they had put a big pot on the fireplace and set light under it, and the pot began to boil and bubble and as for the broth, it was for all the world like pitch and tar.
"'Ha! ha!' thought the tailor, 'that's your game, is it!'
"And he had hardly thought this before one of the cats thrust her paw under the pot and tried to upset it.
"'Paws off, pussy,' said the tailor, 'you'll burn your whiskers.'
"'Hark to the tailor, who says "Paws off, pussy," to me,' said the cat to the other cats, and in a trice they all ran away from the fireplace,