e knocked.

'What do you want?' asked the old man who opened it. And the youth told
him how his father had turned him out of his house because he was so
lazy and stupid, and he needed shelter for the night.

'That you shall have,' replied the man; 'but to-morrow I shall give you
some work to do, for you must know that I am the chief herdsman of the
king.'

The youth made no answer to this. He felt, if he was to be made to work
after all, that he might as well have stayed where he was. But as he did
not see any other way of getting a bed, he went slowly in.

The herdsman's two daughters and their mother were sitting at supper,
and invited him to join them. Nothing more was said about work, and when
the meal was over they all went to bed.

In the morning, when the young man was dressed, the herdsman called to
him and said:

'Now listen, and I will tell you what you have to do.'

'What is it?' asked the youth, sulkily.

'Nothing less than to look after two hundred pigs,' was the reply.

'Oh, I am used to that,' answered the youth.

'Yes; but this time you will have to do it properly,' said the herdsman;
and he took the youth to the place where the pigs were feeding, and told
him to drive them to the woods on the side of the mountain. This the
young man did, but as soon as they reached the outskirts of the mountain
they grew quite wild, and would have run away altogether, had they not
luckily gone towards a narrow ravine, from which the youth easily drove
them home to his father's cottage.

'Where do all these pigs come from, and how did you get them?' asked the
old man in surprise, when his son knocked at the door of the hut he had
left only the day before.

'They belong to the king's chief herdsman,' answered his son. 'He gave
them to me to look after, but I knew I could not do it, so I drove them
straight to you. Now make the best of your good fortune, and kill them
and hang them up at once.'

'What are you talking about?' cried the father, pale with horror. 'We
should certainly both be put to death if I did any such thing.'

'No, no; do as I tell you, and I will get out of it somehow,' replied
the young man. And in the end he had his way. The pigs were killed,
and laid side by side in a row. Then he cut off the tails and tied them
together with a piece of cord, and swinging the bundle over his back,
he returned to the place where they should have been feeding. Here there
was a small swamp, which was jus