“Oh, don’t be sorrowful,” said his daughter, “eat your supper, and sleep plenty, and eat your breakfast in the morning, and when you are going to work, I will tell you.”
In the morning said she to him, “Say, when he asks you the question, that there is not a river but has two banks.”
When he went to work the master came and asked him, “Which is there the greater number of, rivers or banks?”
“There is not a river,” said he, “but has two banks.”
“Your question is answered; but you must tell me to-morrow the number of the stars.”
And he went home in the evening sorrowful and troubled. And his daughter asked him what ailed him, and he told her. She bade him not to be sorrowful, for she would tell him in the morning. And in the morning he went to his work, and his master came and asked him to count the number of the stars; and he said,—
“I will hang you at twelve to-morrow, if you don’t give me the measure of the sea in quarts.”
And he went home to his daughter and told her, and in the morning, as he was going to work, she said,—
“Let him stop the rivers that are going into the sea or out of it, and you will measure it in quarts.”
So he gave that answer to his master, and his master could not stop the rivers.
Then he asked for the little girl in marriage, and the old man told him not to be making fun of the little girl, she was not fit for him. He would get a lady.
“I will not do that,” said he, “you must give her to me to marry.”
“Well, I must see the little girl; she will know what she will do.”
He went to his daughter and told her what the gentleman said, and the little girl answered her father, and said to him,—
“I will marry him, but he must give me a writing under his hand that on the day when he puts me away he must give me my choice of all that’s in his house, to take away three loads with me.”
And he said he would give her that, and she got it in his handwriting and signed by the lawyer.
Then the little girl came and lived in his house with him until she had two children.
At that time there was a dispute in the village between two men, one of whom had a horse, and the other a mare and a foal, and the three beasts used to be together. And the man who owned the horse said that the foal belonged to the horse; and the man of the mare, said no, that the foal was his; and the man who owned the horse put law on the man who owned the mare, and they left it to arbitration; and the man who was brought in to decide was the gentleman, who said he would settle it between them. And this is the judgment he gave, “He would put the three beasts into an empty house, and he would open two doors, and which ever of the two the foal followed, she should be with that one.” And he (did so) and opened the doors, and struck each beast, and prodded the horse; and the horse went out first and the foal followed him. Then the foal was given to the man who owned the horse.
