One fine
day the goat leaped down, and away to the cliff; he went straight up,
and came where he never had been before.

[Footnote 20: From _A Happy Boy_ in J. G. Whittier's _Child Life in
Prose_.]

Oeyvind did not see him when he came out after dinner, and thought
immediately of the fox. He grew hot all over, looked round about, and
called, "Killy-killy-killy-goat!"

"_Bay-ay-ay_," said the goat, from the brow of the hill, as he cocked
his head on one side and looked down.

But beside the goat there kneeled a little girl. "Is it yours--this
goat?" she asked.

Oeyvind stood with eyes and mouth wide open, thrust both hands into
the breeches he had on, and asked, "Who are you?"

"I am Marit, mother's little one, father's fiddle, the elf in the
house, granddaughter of Ole Nordistuen of the Heide farms, four years
old in the autumn, two days after the frost nights, I!"

"Are you really?" he said, and drew a long breath, which he had not
dared to do so long as she was speaking.

"Is it yours, this goat?" asked the girl again.

"Ye-es," he said, and looked up.

"I have taken such a fancy to the goat. You will not give it to me?"

"No, that I won't."

She lay kicking her legs, and looking down at him, and then she said,
"But if I give you a butter-cake for the goat, can I have him then?"

Oeyvind came of poor people, and had eaten butter-cake only once in
his life; that was when grandpa came there, and anything like it he
had never eaten before or since. He looked up at the girl. "Let me see
the butter-cake first," said he.

She was not long about it, and took out a large cake, which she held
in her hand. "Here it is," she said, and threw it down.

"Ow, it went to pieces," said the boy. He gathered up every bit with
the utmost care; he could not help tasting the very smallest, and
that was so good he had to taste another, and, before he knew it
himself, he had eaten up the whole cake.

"Now the goat is mine," said the girl.

The boy stopped with the last bit in his mouth, the girl lay and
laughed, and the goat stood by her side, with white breast and dark
brown hair, looking sideways down.

"Could you not wait a little while?" begged the boy; his heart began
to beat. Then the girl laughed still more, and got up quickly on her
knees.

"No, the goat is mine," she said, and threw her arms round its neck,
loosened one of her garters, and fastened it round. Oeyvind looked up.
She got up, and began pulling