at the goat. It would not follow, but
twisted its neck downward to where Oeyvind stood.

"_Bay-ay-ay_," it said.

But she took hold of its hair with one hand, pulled the string with
the other, and said gently, "Come, goat, and you shall go into the
room and eat out of mother's dish and my apron." And then she sang:

"Come, boy's goat,
Come, mother's calf,
Come, mewing cat
In snow-white shoes.
Come, yellow ducks,
Come out of your hiding-place;
Come, little chickens,
Who can hardly go;
Come, my doves
With soft feathers;
See, the grass is wet,
But the sun does you good;
And early, early is it in summer,
But call for the autumn, and it will come."

There stood the boy.

He had taken care of the goat since the winter before, when it was
born, and he had never imagined he could lose it; but now it was done
in a moment, and he would never see it again.

* * * * *

His mother came up humming from the beach, with wooden pans which she
had scoured; she saw the boy sitting with his legs crossed under him
on the grass, crying, and she went up to him.

"What are you crying about?"

"Oh, the goat, the goat!"

"Yes; where is the goat?" asked his mother, looking up at the roof.

"It will never come back again," said the boy.

"Dear me! How could that happen?"

He would not confess immediately.

"Has the fox taken it?"

"Ah, if it only were the fox!"

"Are you mad?" said his mother. "What has become of the goat?"

"Oh-h-h, I happened to--to--to sell it for a cake!"

As soon as he had uttered the word, he understood what it was to sell
the goat for a cake; he had not thought of it before. His mother said:

"What do you suppose the little goat thinks of you, when you could
sell him for a cake?"

And the boy thought about it, and felt sure that he could never again
be happy in this world, and not even in heaven, he thought,
afterwards. He felt so sorry, that he promised himself never again to
do anything wrong, never to cut the thread on the spinning wheel, nor
let the goats out, nor go down to the sea alone. He fell asleep where
he lay, and dreamed about the goat, that he had gone to heaven; our
Lord sat there with a great beard, as in the catechism, and the goat
stood eating the leaves off a shining tree; but Oeyvind sat alone on
the roof, and could not come up.

Suddenly there came something wet close up to his ear,