"So he mounted his horse and rode out, for he thought it dull work staying at home; but when he got out among the ploughed fields, there sat Peik on a stone playing on a Jews' harp.
"'What! are you sitting there, Peik?' said the King.
"'Here I sit, sure enough,' said Peik. 'Where else should I sit?"
"'Now you have cheated me foully, time after time,' said the King; 'but now you must come along home with me, and I'll kill you.'
"'Well, well,' said Peik, 'if it can't be helped it can't; I suppose I must go along with you.'
"When they got home to the King's Grange, they got ready a cask which Peik was to be put in, and when it was ready they carted it up to a high fell; there he was to lie three days thinking on all the evil he had done, then they were to roll him down the fell into the firth.
"The third day a rich man passed by, but Peik sat inside the cask and sang,--
'To heaven's bliss and Paradise, To heaven's bliss and Paradise.
"'I'd sooner far stay here and not be made an angel.'
"When the man heard that, he asked what he would take to change places with him.
"'It ought to be a good sum,' said Peik, 'for there wasn't a coach ready to start for Paradise every day.'
"So the man said he would give all he had, and so he knocked out the head of the cask and crept into it instead of Peik.
"'A happy journey,' said the King, when he came to roll him down; 'now you'll go faster to the firth than if you were in a sledge with reindeer; and now it's all over with you and your fooling rods.'
"Before the cask was half-way down the fell, there wasn't a whole stave of it left, nor a limb of him who was inside. But when the King came back to the Grange, Peik was there before him, and sat in the courtyard playing on the Jews' harp.
"'Yes! here I sit, sure enough; where else should I sit?' said Peik. 'Maybe I can get house-room here for all my horses and sheep and money.'
"'But whither was it that I rolled you that you got all this wealth?' asked the King.
"'Oh, you rolled me into the firth,' said Peik, 'and when I got to the bottom there was more than enough and to spare, both of horses and sheep and of gold and silver. The cattle went about in great flocks, and the gold and silver lay in large heaps as big as houses.'