,
but an ogre.

'When we lay down to sleep, she spread a red cloth over us, and covered
her daughters with a white one; but I changed the cloths, and when the
ogress came back in the middle of the night, and looked at the cloths,
she mistook her own daughters for my brothers, and killed them one by
one, all but the youngest. Then I woke my brothers, and we all stole
softly from the house, and we rode like the wind to our real uncle.

'And when he saw us, he bade us welcome, and married us to his twelve
daughters, the eldest to the eldest, and so on to me, whose bride was
the youngest of all and also the prettiest. And my brothers were filled
with envy, and left me to drown in a brook, but I was saved by a fish
who showed me how to get out. Now, you are a judge! Who did well, and
who did evil--I or my brothers?'

'Is this story true?' said the father, turning to his sons.

'It is true, my father,' answered they. 'It is even as Halfman has said,
and the girl belongs to him.'

Then the judge embraced Halfman and said to him: 'You have done well, my
son. Take your bride, and may you both live long and happily together!'

At the end of the year Halfman's wife had a son, and not long after she
came one day hastily into the room, and found her husband weeping. 'What
is the matter?' she asked.

'The matter?' said he.

'Yes, why are you weeping?'

'Because,' replied Halfman, 'the baby is not really ours, but belongs to
an ogress.'

'Are you mad?' cried the wife. 'What do you mean by talking like that?'

'I promised,' said Halfman, 'when she undertook to kill my brother and
to give you to me, that the first son we had should be hers.'

'And will she take him from us now?' said the poor woman.

'No, not quite yet,' replied Halfman; 'when he is bigger.'

'And is she to have all our children?' asked she.

'No, only this one,' returned Halfman.

Day by day the boy grew bigger, and one day as he was playing in the
street with the other children, the ogress came by. 'Go to your father,'
she said, 'and repeat this speech to him: "I want my forfeit; when am I
to have it?"'

'All right,' replied the child, but when he went home forgot all about
it. The next day the ogress came again, and asked the boy what answer
the father had given. 'I forgot all about it,' said he.

'Well, put this ring on your finger, and then you won't forget.'

'Very well,' replied the boy, and went home.

The next morning, as he was at brea