the stakes, and Andras, as the stranger was told to jump
first. Going back to the flag which had been stuck into the sand to mark
the starting place, he ran forward, with his head well thrown back, and
cleared the boat with a mighty bound. The lookers-on cheered him, and
indeed he well deserve it; but they waited anxiously all the same to
see what the bailiff would do. On he came, taller than Andras by several
inches, but heavier of build. He too sprang high and well, but as
he came down his heel just grazed the edge of the boat. Dead silence
reigned amidst the townsfolk, but Andras only laughed and said
carelessly:

'Just a little too short, bailiff; next time you must do better than
that.'

The bailiff turned red with anger at his rival's scornful words, and
answered quickly: 'Next time you will have something harder to do.' And
turning his back on his friends, he went sulkily home. Andras, putting
the money he had earned in his pocket, went home also.

The following spring Andras happened to be driving his reindeer along a
great fiord to the west of Vadso. A boy who had met him hastened to tell
the bailiff that his enemy was only a few miles off; and the bailiff,
disguising himself as a Stalo, or ogre, called his son and his dog and
rowed away across the fiord to the place where the boy had met Andras.

Now the mountaineer was lazily walking along the sands, thinking of the
new hut that he was building with the money that he had won on the day
of his lucky jump. He wandered on, his eyes fixed on the sands, so
that he did not see the bailiff drive his boat behind a rock, while he
changed himself into a heap of wreckage which floated in on the waves.
A stumble over a stone recalled Andras to himself, and looking up he
beheld the mass of wreckage. 'Dear me! I may find some use for that,'
he said; and hastened down to the sea, waiting till he could lay hold
of some stray rope which might float towards him. Suddenly--he could not
have told why--a nameless fear seized upon him, and he fled away from
the shore as if for his life. As he ran he heard the sound of a pipe,
such as only ogres of the Stalo kind were wont to use; and there flashed
into his mind what the bailiff had said when they jumped the boat: 'Next
time you will have something harder to do.' So it was no wreckage after
all that he had seen, but the bailiff himself.

It happened that in the long summer nights up in the mountain, where
the sun never set, an