terwards began flooding the whole
kitchen.

The man fiddled and fumbled and tried to stop the quern, but however
much he twisted and fingered it, the quern went on grinding, and in a
little while the broth reached so high that the man was very near
drowning. He then pulled open the parlor door, but it was not long
before the quern had filled the parlor also, and it was just in the very
nick of time that the man put his hand down into the broth and got hold
of the latch, and when he had got the door open, he was soon out of the
parlor, you may be sure. He rushed out, and the herrings and the broth
came pouring out after him, like a stream, down the fields and meadows.

The wife, who was out haymaking, now thought it took too long a time to
get the breakfast ready.

"If my husband doesn't call us soon, we must go home whether or no: I
don't suppose he knows much about making broth, so I must go and help
him," said the wife to the haymakers.

They began walking homewards, but when they had got a bit up the hill
they met the stream of broth with the herrings tossing about in it and
the man himself running in front of it all.

"I wish all of you had a hundred stomachs each!" shouted the man; "but
take care you don't get drowned." And he rushed past them as if the Evil
One was at his heels, down to where his brother lived. He asked him for
heaven's sake to take back the quern, and that at once. "If it goes on
grinding another hour the whole parish will perish in broth and
herrings," he said. But the brother would not take it back on any
account before his brother had paid him three hundred dollars more, and
this he had to do. The poor brother now had plenty of money, and before
long he bought a farm much grander than the one on which his rich
brother lived, and with the quern he ground so much gold that he covered
the farmstead with gold plates and, as it lay close to the shore, it
glittered and shone far out at sea. All those who sailed past wanted to
call and visit the rich man in the golden house, and everybody wanted to
see the wonderful quern, for its fame had spread both far and wide, and
there was no one who had not heard it spoken of.

After a long while there came a skipper who wanted to see the quern; he
asked if it could grind salt. Yes, that it could, said he who owned it;
and when the skipper heard this he wanted the quern by hook or by crook,
cost what it might, for if he had it he thought he need not sail