, down came the _Trolls_. Some were
great, and some were small; some had long tails, and some had no tails
at all; some, too, had long, long noses; and they ate and drank, and
tasted everything. Just then one of the little _Trolls_ caught sight
of the white bear, who lay under the stove; so he took a piece of
sausage and stuck it on a fork, and went and poked it up against the
bear's nose, screaming out:

"Pussy, will you have some sausage?"

Then the white bear rose up and growled, and hunted the whole pack of
them out of doors, both great and small.

Next year Halvor was out in the wood, on the afternoon of Christmas
Eve, cutting wood before the holidays, for he thought the _Trolls_
would come again; and just as he was hard at work, he heard a voice in
the wood calling out:

"Halvor! Halvor!"

"Well," said Halvor, "here I am."

"Have you got your big cat with you still?"

"Yes, that I have," said Halvor; "she's lying at home under the stove,
and what's more, she has now got seven kittens, far bigger and fiercer
than she is herself."

"Oh, then, we'll never come to see you again," bawled out the _Troll_
away in the wood, and he kept his word; for since that time the
_Trolls_ have never eaten their Christmas brose with Halvor on the
_Dovrefell_.

ONE'S OWN CHILDREN ARE ALWAYS PRETTIEST

A sportsman went out once into a wood to shoot, and he met a _Snipe_.

"Dear friend," said the _Snipe_, "don't shoot my children!"

"How shall I know your children?" asked the _Sportsman_. "What are
they like?"

"Oh!" said the _Snipe_, "mine are the prettiest children in all the
wood."

"Very well," said the _Sportsman_, "I'll not shoot them; don't be
afraid."

But for all that, when he came back, there he had a whole string of
young snipes in his hand which he had shot.

"Oh, oh!" said the _Snipe_, "why did you shoot my children after
all?"

"What! these your children!" said the _Sportsman_; "why, I shot the
ugliest I could find, that I did!"

"Woe is me!" said the _Snipe_; "don't you know that each one thinks
his own children the prettiest in the world?"

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Illustrations have been moved closer to their relevant paragraphs.
The page numbers in the List of Illustrations do not reflect the new
placement of the illustrations, but are as in the original.

Author's archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation i