Now, his old dame, who was in the field tossing hay, thought it a long
time to dinner, and at last she said:

"Well! though the master doesn't call us home, we may as well go. Maybe
he finds it hard work to boil the broth, and will be glad of my help."

The men were willing enough, so they sauntered homeward; but just as
they had got a little way up the hill, what should they meet but
herrings, and broth, and bread, all running and dashing, and splashing
together in a stream, and the master himself running before them for his
life, and as he passed them he bawled out: "Would to heaven each of you
had a hundred throats! but take care you're not drowned in the broth."

Away he went, as though the Evil One were at his heels, to his brother's
house, and begged him for God's sake to take back the quern that
instant; for, said he:

"If it grinds only one hour more, the whole parish will be swallowed up
by herrings and broth."

But his brother wouldn't hear of taking it back till the other paid him
down three hundred dollars more.

So the poor brother got both the money and the quern, and it wasn't long
before he set up a farmhouse far finer than the one in which his
brother lived, and with the quern he ground so much gold that he covered
it with plates of gold; and as the farm lay by the sea-side, the golden
house gleamed and glistened far away over the sea. All who sailed by,
put ashore to see the rich man in the golden house, and to see the
wonderful quern, the fame of which spread far and wide, till there was
nobody who hadn't heard tell of it.

So one day there came a skipper who wanted to see the quern; and the
first thing he asked was if it could grind salt.

"Grind salt!" said the owner; "I should just think it could. It can
grind anything."

When the skipper heard that, he said he must have the quern, cost what
it would; for if he only had it, he thought he should be rid of his long
voyages across stormy seas for a lading of salt. Well, at first the man
wouldn't hear of parting with the quern; but the skipper begged and
prayed so hard that at last he let him have it, but he had to pay many,
many thousand dollars for it. Now, when the skipper had got the quern on
his back, he soon made off with it, for he was afraid lest the man
should change his mind; so he had no time to ask how to handle the
quern, but got on board his ship as fast as he could, and set sail.
When he had sailed a good way off, he brought