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 anything wrong again,--neither cut the cord of the
spinning-wheel, nor let the sheep loose, nor go down to the sea alone.
He fell asleep lying there, and he dreamed that the goat had reached
heaven. There the Lord was sitting, with a long beard, as in the
Catechism, and the goat stood munching at the leaves of a shining tree;
but Oyvind sat alone on the roof, and, could get no higher. Then
something wet was thrust right against his ear, and he started up.
"Ba-a-a-a!" he heard, and it was the goat that had returned to him.

"What! have you come back again?" With these words he sprang up,
seized it by the two fore-legs, and danced about with it as if it were
a brother. He pulled it by the beard, and was on the point of going in
to his mother with it, when he heard some one behind him, and saw the
little girl sitting on the greensward beside him. Now he understood
the whole thing, and he let go of the goat.

"Is it you who have brought the goat?"

She sat tearing up the grass with her hands, and said, "I was not
allowed to keep it; grandfather is up there waiting."

While the boy stood staring at her, a sharp voice from the road above
called, "Well!"