those insects
which resemble tree-twigs. One can go by them twenty times before
one sees that it is a soft animal body one has taken for hard wood.

But Jofrid could no longer be mistaken. It was the old King Atle
himself sitting there. She stood in the doorway, shaded her eyes
with her hand, and looked right into his stony face. He had very
small, oblique eyes under a dome-like brow, a broad nose and a long
beard. And he was alive, that man of stone. He smiled and winked at
her. She was afraid, and what terrified her most of all were his
thick, muscular arms and hairy hands. The longer she looked at him
the broader grew his smile, and at last he lifted one of his mighty
arms to beckon her to him. Then Jofrid took flight towards home.

But when Toenne came home and saw the housc adorned with starry
weavings, he found courage to send a friend to Jofrid's father. The
latter asked Jofrid what she thought about it and she gave her
consent. She was well pleased with the way it had turned out, even
if she had been half forced to give her hand. She could not say no
to the man, to whose house she had already carried her dower. Still
she looked first to see that old King Atle had again become a pile
of stones.

***

Toenne and Jofrid lived happily for many years. They earned a good
reputation. "They are good," people said. "See how they stand by
one another, see how they work together, see how one cannot live
apart from the other!"

Toenne grew stronger, more enduring and less heavy-witted every day.
Jofrid seemed to have made a whole man of him. Almost always he let
her rule, but he also understood how to carry out his own will with
tenacious obstinacy.

Jests and merriment followed Jofrid wherever she went. Her clothes
became more vivid the older she grew. Her whole face was bright
red. But in Toenne's eyes she was beautiful.

They were not so poor as many others of their class. They ate
butter with their porridge and mixed neither bran nor bark in their
bread. Myrtle ale foamed in their tankards. Their flocks of sheep
and goats increased so quickly that they could allow themselves
meat.

Toenne once worked for a peasant in the valley. The latter, who saw
how he and his wife worked together with great gaiety, thought like
many another: "See, these are good people."

The peasant had lately lost his wife, and she had left behind her a
child six months old. He asked Toenne and Jofrid to take his son as
a foster-chil