to eat, he said. The youngster thought so too, and he
alone ate what was prepared both for master and servants, and still he
was only half satisfied.

"He is the right sort of man for a labourer, but he is a terrible eater,
to be sure," thought the farmer. "A man like him would eat a poor farmer
out of house and home before anybody knew a word about it," he said. He
had no more work for him; it was best for him to go to the king's
palace.

The youngster set out for the palace, where he got a place at once.
There was plenty of food and plenty of work. He was to be errand boy,
and to help the girls to carry wood and water and do other odd jobs. So
he asked what he was to do first.

"You had better chop some wood in the mean time," they said. Yes, he
commenced to chop and cut wood till the splinters flew about him. It was
not long before he had chopped up everything in the place, both firewood
and timber, both rafters and beams, and when he was ready with it, he
came in and asked what he was to do now.

"You can finish chopping the wood," they said.

"There is no more to chop," he answered.

That could not be possible, thought the overlooker, and had a look into
the wood-shed. But yes, the youngster had chopped up everything; he had
even cut up the timber and planks in the place. This was vexatious, the
overlooker said; and then he told the youngster that he should not taste
food until he had gone into the forest and cut just as much timber as he
had chopped up for firewood.

The youngster went to the smithy and got the smith to help him to make
an axe of five hundredweight of iron, and then he set out for the forest
and began to make a regular clearance, not only of the pine and the
lofty fir trees, but of everything else which was to be found in the
king's forests, and in the neighbours' as well. He did not stop to cut
the branches or the tops off, but he left them lying there as if a
hurricane had blown them down. He put a proper load on the sledge and
put all the horses to it, but they could not even move it; so he took
the horses by the heads to give the sledge a start, but he pulled so
hard that the horses' heads came off. He then turned the horses out of
the shafts and drew the load himself.

When he came to the palace, the king and his overlooker were standing in
the hall to give him a scolding for having destroyed the forest--the
overlooker had been there and seen what he had been doing. But when the
ki