therefore to make their way for Hedale, but it was only a slight path, so when the night set in they lost the track, and to make matters worse they could not find the birdcatchers' hut either. Before they knew where they were, they were right in the thick of Bjölstad wood. They knew they should not be able to get out of the wood that night, so they commenced cutting boughs off the pine trees, made a fire and built a hut of the branches, for they had a hatchet with them. So they gathered heather and moss to make a bed of. Shortly after they had lain down, they heard something which sniffed and snuffed very loudly through the nose. The boys put their ears to the ground and listened attentively to hear whether it were wild beasts or a troll. Just then the sniffing became louder and some one shouted, "I smell Christian blood about here!"
And they heard somebody walking so heavily that the ground shook under their feet. They knew it was the trolls who were about. "Lord help us! what shall we do?" said the youngest lad to his brother.
"Oh, you had better stand under the fir tree, where you are, and be ready to take our bags and make off, when you see them coming; I will look after the hatchet," said the elder brother.
Just then they saw the trolls approaching; they were so big and tall that their heads reached as high as the tops of the fir trees, but they had only one eye amongst the three of them, and this they used in turn. They had a hole in their foreheads, in which they put it and shifted it about with their hands. He who had the eye went first; the others followed behind and kept hold of the first.
"Run away now," said the elder of the lads, "but don't run too far, before you see what happens. Since they have got their eye so high up, they can't see me very well, when I tackle them from behind."
Well, the younger brother ran off and the trolls after him. In the meantime the elder brother got behind them and gave the last troll a cut with the hatchet in the ankle. The troll gave
