ting out on
their excursion. Thus the whole company consisted of five ladies and two
gentlemen.

"The cows are not in the field over which we must go, are they?" asked
Eva.

"No, my good girl!" returned Sophie; "you may be quite easy! Besides, we
have two gentlemen with us."

"Yes; but they would not be able to protect us from the unruly
bullocks!" said Louise. "But we have nothing to fear. Where we are
going the cows do not go until after they are milked. I am no heroine!
Besides, it is not long since one bullock nearly gored the cowherd to
death. He also gored Sidsel a great hole in her arm just lately: you
remember the girl with her eyebrows grown together?"

"There is also in the wood a wild sow, with eleven sucking pigs!" said
Sophie, in ironical gravity; "it would not be agree able to meet with
her!"

"She is almost as dangerous as the bullocks!" said the Kammerjunker, and
laughed at Eva.

The conversation took another turn.

"Shall we not visit Peter Cripple?" asked Sophie. "The gentlemen can
then see the smith's pretty daughter; she is really too beautiful to be
his wife!"

"Is Peter Cripple married?" inquired Otto.

"No, the wedding will be held on Sunday!" replied the Kammerjunker; "but
the bride is already in the house. The bans were published last Sunday,
and they immediately commenced housekeeping together. This often takes
place even earlier, when a man cannot do without a wife. She has taken
him on account of his full money-bags!"

"Yes, with the peasant it is seldom love which brings about the affair!"
said Louise. "Last year there was quite a young girl who married a
man who might have been her grandfather. She took him only, she said,
because he had such a good set of earthenware."

"These were very brittle things to marry upon!" remarked Otto.

Meantime they were nearly come to the edge of the wood. Here stood a
little house; hops hung luxuriantly over the hedge, the cat stood with
bent back upon the crumbling edge of the well.

Sophie, at the head of the whole company, stepped into the room, where
Peter Cripple sat on the table sewing; but, light and active as an
elf, he sprang down from the table to kiss her hand. The smith's pretty
daughter was stirring something in an iron pot in the hearth. St. John's
wort, stuck between the beams and the ceiling, shot forth in luxuriant
growth, prophesying long life to the inhabitants of the house. On the
sooty ceiling glittered herrings' souls