"Well," said the North Wind; "I've nothing else to give you but that old
stick in the corner yonder; but it's a stick of that kind that if you
say:

"'Stick, stick! lay on!' it lays on till you say:

"'Stick, stick! now stop!'"

So, as the way was long, the lad turned in this night too to the
landlord; but as he could pretty well guess how things stood as to the
cloth and the ram, he lay down at once on the bench and began to snore,
as if he were asleep.

Now the landlord, who easily saw that the stick must be worth something,
hunted up one which was like it, and when he heard the lad snore, was
going to change the two, but just as the landlord was about to take it
the lad bawled out:

"Stick, stick! lay on!"

So the stick began to beat the landlord, till he jumped over chairs, and
tables, and benches, and yelled and roared:

"Oh my! oh my! bid the stick be still, else it will beat me to death,
and you shall have back both your cloth and your ram."

When the lad thought the landlord had got enough, he said:

"Stick, stick! now stop!"

Then he took the cloth and put it into his pocket, and went home with
his stick in his hand, leading the ram by a cord round its horns; and so
he got his rights for the meal he had lost.

IV

THE LAD AND THE DEIL

Once on a time there was a lad who was walking along a road cracking
nuts, so he found one that was worm-eaten, and just at that very moment
he met the Deil.

"Is it true, now," said the lad, "what they say, that the Deil can make
himself as small as he chooses, and thrust himself on through a
pinhole?"

"Yes, it is," said the Deil.

"Oh! it is, is it? then let me see you do it, and just creep into this
nut," said the lad.

So the Deil did it.

Now, when he had crept well into it through the worm's hole, the lad
stopped it up with a pin.

"Now, I've got you safe," he said, and put the nut into his pocket.

So when he had walked on a bit, he came to a smithy, and he turned in
and asked the smith if he'd be good enough to crack that nut for him.

"Ay, that'll be an easy job," said the smith, and took his smallest
hammer, laid the nut on the anvil, and gave it a blow, but it wouldn't
break.

So he took another hammer a little bigger, but that wasn't heavy enough
either.

Then he took one bigger still, but it was still the same story; and so
the smith got wroth, and grasped his great sledge-hammer.

"Now, I'll crack you to bits," he said,