"Bide a bit," said the old wife, as she fumbled down in her big pocket. "Here you have an old key—I have nothing better or worse to give you—but when you look through the ring at the top, you can see whatever you choose to see."
So when he got to the king's grange, the cook was hard at work drawing water, and that was great toil to her.
"It's too heavy for you," said Boots, "but it's just what I am fit to do."
The one that was glad then, you may fancy, was the kitchen-maid, and from that day she always let Boots scrape the porridge-pot; but it was not long before he got so many enemies by that, that they told lies of him to the king, and said he had told them he was man enough to do this and that.
So one day the king came and asked Boots if it were true that he was man enough to keep the fish in the mill-dam, so that the Troll could not harm them, "For that's what they tell me you have said," spoke the king.
"I have not said so," said Boots; "but if I had said it, I would have been as good as my word."
Well, however it was, whether he had said it or not, he must try, if he wished to keep a whole skin on his back; that was what the king said.
"Well, if he must, he must," said Boots, for he said he had no need to go about with red stripes under his jacket.
In the evening Boots peeped through his key-ring, and then he saw that the Troll was afraid of thyme. So he fell to plucking all the thyme he could find, and
