and left something over. Then they laid
themselves down on the hard floor, one on each side the table, while the
old woman crept cautiously up the ladder to her couch above the stove.

"Poor wretch that I am! if I had ever expected to find myself in such a
position, I would rather have drowned myself in the lake or thrown
myself over a precipice. I could not sleep a wink all night, and when
the old woman opened the door in the morning I crept behind her, and
fled through two woods till I reached the third, where you found me."

This was the poor man's story, and the Kalevide laughed heartily at the
recital.

[Footnote 60: This is a well-known Mongol characteristic; and it is
rather oddly attributed by Arabic writers to the Jinn. "Two of them
appeared in the form and aspect of the Jarm, each with one eye slit
endlong, and jutting horns and projecting tusks."--Story of
Tohfat-el-Kulub (_Thousand and One Nights_, Breslau edition).]

CANTO XII

THE FIGHT WITH THE SORCERER'S SONS

As the Kalevide proceeded on his way, carrying his heavy load of planks,
the sorcerer's three sons rushed upon him from an ambush close to a high
waterfall which foams over steep rocks. He had been walking quietly
along, and the man in his wallet had fallen comfortably asleep. The
villains sprang upon the hero from behind, armed with slender young
birch-trees and dry pine-trunks. Two of them carried long whips, the
handle formed of strong beech-wood, and the lash armed with a great
millstone, with which they belaboured the hero unmercifully. He had just
armed himself with a huge club, in case he should be assaulted in
passing through the wood. It was a great pine-trunk from which he had
broken the crown. It was five-and-thirty ells long, and two feet thick
at the thick end, and with this he could defend himself as with a
sword.

The Kalevide tried at first to remonstrate with his assailants, but as
they continued to annoy him he rushed upon them with his club. The pine
club was soon splintered, the fragments flying in all directions, and
then the Kalevide defended himself with the planks which he was
carrying, and at every blow he smashed one on the backs of his enemies.
Presently his load was nearly exhausted, and the sorcerer's sons, hoping
now for an easy victory, pressed him more hardly, when suddenly he heard
a little voice crying from the bushes, "Dear son of Kalev, strike them
with the edges!"[61] The hero at once took the h