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THE LADS WHO MET THE TROLLS[1] IN THE HEDALE WOOD.

Once upon a time in the olden days there lived a poor old couple, tenants on a small farm up in Vaage in the Gudbrandsdale. They had many children, and two of the sons, who might be about half grown up, had always to tramp about the parish begging. They knew therefore all the roads and by-roads, and they knew also the short cut to Hedale.

They were one day going there, but as they had heard that some falconers had built themselves a hut at Mœla, they thought they would just look in there at the same time and see the birds and how they were caught, so they took the short cut over the Longmoors. But it was so late in the autumn, that the dairymaids had gone away from the dairies on the mountains and

they could find neither shelter nor food anywhere. They had

  1. The ogres of the Norwegian Fairy Tales.
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