on: She began to shriek and point and throw up her
arms.--_Page 151._]

He is a thin old man, and dresses in white mason's clothes, and has a
frightfully sharp chin. He was as red in the face as a boiled lobster,
shook his fists at us and shouted:

"Aha! it's a good thing I have witnesses here against you--you two
rapscallions! setting waterspouts running all over people. You shall
hang for it! you shall hang for it! Two little pigs are dead and the
others nigh unto it. If there never has been a lawsuit before, there
shall be one now for such imposition and abuse. I am going to your
father this very minute to complain of you."

And Soren, the mason, started up the hill in a terrible hurry, straight
to Father's office.

Karsten and I looked for an instant at each other. I had a cowardly wish
to run away at once.

"What shall we do?" asked Karsten. "Shall we hide up on the top of the
hill here all day?"

"No--we had better go down right away. We shall have to defend ourselves
from Soren, the mason."

"Yes, perhaps he will say that we set the waterfall on his pigs on
purpose."

When we got home, there stood Father on the door-steps and Soren, the
mason, down in the yard.

Oh! how Soren looked! He was wringing his hands and crying and
threatening. Father had a deep wrinkle between his eyes. That's always a
sign that he is angry.

"What is this I hear? Have you drowned two young pigs of Soren's?"

"The waterfall went into his pig-pen instead of over our ground,"
whimpered Karsten.

"Explain how it happened," said Father to me; and I explained the whole
of it exactly as it was. I tell you it was lucky for us that we _had_
come down from the hilltop!

"Here are ten crowns to pay for your little pigs, Soren," said Father,
"and I hope that will make it all right between us."

But for Karsten and me it wasn't all right by any means--for I had to
break open my savings-bank and pay Father back for the pigs. And I had
been saving ever since Christmas and had over seven crowns in it. Ugh!
it is horrid that young pigs are such tender little creatures! And all
that afternoon I was kept under arrest up in the trunk-room on account
of the waterfall disaster.

Karsten got a whipping. He had to give up his savings, too, but there
were only fifteen oere in his bank, for Karsten shakes the money out of
the slit of his savings-bank almost as soon as he has put it in.

That was the last time in my whole life that I made a