“Now you’d better come home with me, for my house is nearer than yours.”
So the lad was willing enough; and when they reached the Troll’s house,
the Troll was to make up the fire, while the lad went to fetch water for
their porridge, and there stood two iron pails so big and heavy, that he
couldn’t so much as lift them from the ground.
“Pooh!” said the lad, “it isn’t worth while to touch these
finger-basins. I’ll just go and fetch the spring itself.”
“Nay, nay, dear friend!” said the Troll; “I can’t afford to lose my
spring; just you make up the fire, and I’ll go and fetch the water.”
So when he came back with the water, they set to and boiled up a great
pot of porridge.
“It’s all the same to me,” said the lad; “but if you’re of my mind,
we’ll eat a match!”
“With all my heart,” said the Troll, for he thought he could surely hold
his own in eating. So they sat down; but the lad took his scrip unawares
to the Troll, and hung it before him, and so he spooned more into the
scrip than he ate himself; and when the scrip was full, he took up his
knife and made a slit in the scrip. The Troll looked on all the while,
but said never a word. So when they had eaten a good bit longer, the
Troll laid down his spoon, saying, “Nay! but I can’t eat a morsel more.”
“But you shall eat,” said the youth; “I’m only half done; why don’t you
do as I did, and cut a hole in your paunch? You’ll be able to eat then
as much as you please.”
“But doesn’t it hurt one cruelly?” asked the Troll.
“Oh,” said the youth, “nothing to speak of.”
So the Troll did as the lad said, and then you must know very well that
he lost his life; but the lad took all the silver and gold that he found
in the hill-side, and went home with it, and you may fancy it went a
great way to pay off the debt.
------------------------------------------------------------------------