"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."
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."