road, with the stream of herrings and broth at his heels, roaring
like a waterfall over the whole farm. 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 homewards; 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 farm-house far finer than the one in which