hurriedly got up on
her knees.

"No, the goat is mine," said she, and threw her arms about it, then
loosening one of her garters she fastened it around its neck. Oyvind
watched her. She rose to her feet and began to tug at the goat; it
would not go along with her, and stretched its neck over the edge of
the cliff toward Oyvind.

"Ba-a-a-a!" said the goat.

Then the little girl took hold of its hair with one hand, pulled at the
garter with the other, and said prettily: "Come, now, goat, you shall
go into the sitting-room and eat from mother's dish and my apron."

And then she sang,--

"Come, boy's pretty goatie,
Come, calf, my delight,
Come here, mewing pussie,
In shoes snowy white,
Yellow ducks, from your shelter,
Come forth, helter-skelter.
Come, doves, ever beaming,
With soft feathers gleaming!
The grass is still wet,
But sun 't will soon get;
Now call, though early 't is in the summer,
And autumn will be the new-comer."[1]

[Footnote 1: Auber Forestier's translation.]

There the boy stood.

He had taken care of the goat ever since winter, when it was born, and
it had never occurred to him that he could lose it; but now it was gone
in an instant, and he would never see it again.

The mother came trolling up from the beach, with some wooden pails she
had been scouring; she saw the boy sitting on the grass, with his legs
crossed under him, crying, and went to him.

"What makes you cry?"

"Oh, my goat--my goat!"

"Why, where is the goat?" asked the mother, glancing up at the roof.

"It will never come back any more," said the boy.

"Dear me! how can _that_ be?"

Oyvind would not confess at once.

"Has the fox carried it off?"

"Oh, I wish it were the fox!"

"You must have lost your senses!" cried the mother. "What has become
of the goat?"

"Oh--oh--oh! I was so unlucky. I sold it for a twisted bun!"

The moment he uttered the words he realized what it was to sell the
goat for a bun; he had not thought about it before. The mother said,--

"What do you imagine the little goat thinks of you now, since you were
willing to sell it for a twisted bun?"

The boy reflected upon this himself, and felt perfectly sure that he
never could know happiness more in _this_ world--nor in heaven either,
he thought, afterwards.

He was so overwhelmed with sorrow that he promised himself that he
would never do any