into an empty cow-house, and the door was shut behind
him.

There he stood and had nothing to look at but an old billy-goat through
a crack in the door, who had odd, yellow eyes, and was very much like
the old fellow, and a sunbeam through a little hole, which sunbeam crept
higher and higher up the blank stable wall till late in the evening,
when it went out altogether.

But towards night a voice outside said softly, "Swain! swain!" and in
the moonlight he saw a shadow cross the little hole.

"Hist! hist! the old man is sleeping at the other side of the wall," it
sounded.

He knew by the voice that it was she, the golden-red one, who had
behaved so prettily and been so bashful the moment he had come upon the
scene.

"Thou need'st but say that thou dost know that serpent-eye has had a
lover before, or they wouldn't be in such a hurry to get her off their
hands with a dowry. Thou must know that the homestead westwards in the
Blue Mountains is mine. And answer the old man that it was me, Brandi,
that thou didst run after all the time. Hist! hist! here comes the old
man," she whispered, and whisked away.

But a shadow again fell across the little hole in the moonlight, and the
duck-necked one stuck her head in and peeped at him.

"Swain, swain, art thou awake?"

"That serpent-eye will make thee the laughingstock of the neighbourhood.
She's spiteful, and she stings. But the homestead westward in the Blue
Mountains is mine, and when I play there the gates beneath the high
mountains fly open, and through them lies the road to the nameless
powers of nature. Do but say that 'twas me, Randi, thou wert running
after, because she plays so prettily on the _Langelijk_.--"Hist, hist!
the old man is stirring about by the wall!"--she beckoned to him and was
gone.

A little afterwards nearly every bit of the hole was darkened, and he
recognised the Black one by her voice.

"Swain, swain!" she hissed.

"I had to bind up my kirtle to-day behind," said she, "so we couldn't go
dancing the _Halling-fling_[3] together on the green sward. But the
homestead in the Blue Mountains is my lawful property, and tell the old
man that it was madcap Gyri thou wast running after to-day, because thou
art so madly fond of dancing jigs and _hallings_."

Then she clapped her hands aloud, and straightway was full of fear lest
she should have awakened the old man.

And she was gone.

But the lad sat inside there, and thought it all over, and