and he started
up. "_Bay-ay-ay!_" it said; and it was the goat, who had come back
again.

"What! have you got back?"

He got up, took it by the two forelegs, and danced with it as if it
were a brother; he pulled its beard, and he was just going in to his
mother with it, when he heard someone behind him, and, looking, saw
the girl sitting on the greensward by his side. Now he understood it
all, and let go the goat.

"Is it you who have come with it?"

She sat tearing the grass up with her hands, and said:

"They would not let me keep it; grandfather is sitting up there,
waiting."

While the boy stood looking at her, he heard a sharp voice from the
road above call out, "Now!"

Then she remembered what she was to do; she rose, went over to
Oeyvind, put one of her muddy hands into his, and, turning her face
away, said:

"I beg your pardon!"

But then her courage was all gone; she threw herself over the goat,
and wept.

"I think you had better keep the goat," said Oeyvind, looking the
other way.

"Come, make haste!" said grandpapa, up on the hill; and Marit rose,
and walked with reluctant feet upwards.

"You are not forgetting your garter?" Oeyvind cried after her. She
turned around, and looked first at the garter and then at him. At last
she came to a great resolution, and said, in a choked voice:

"You may keep that."

He went over to her, and, taking her hand, said:

"Thank you!"

"Oh, nothing to thank for!" she answered, but drew a long sigh, and
walked on.

He sat down on the grass again. The goat walked about near him, but he
was no longer so pleased with it as before.

* * * * *

The goat was fastened to the wall; but Oeyvind walked about, looking
up at the cliff. His mother came out and sat down by his side; he
wanted to hear stories about what was far away, for now the goat no
longer satisfied him. So she told him how once everything could talk:
the mountain talked to the stream, and the stream to the river, the
river to the sea, and the sea to the sky; but then he asked if the sky
did not talk to any one; and the sky talked to the clouds, the clouds
to the trees, the trees to the grass, the grass to the flies, the
flies to the animals, the animals to the children, the children to the
grown-up people; and so it went on, until it had gone round, and no
one could tell where it had begun.

Oeyvind looked at the mountain, the trees, the sky, and had never
re