'I dreamed thou wast here; ho, hasten to bind me! No; not over there, but behind you will find me.' "The lad jumped up and looked around him, and caught a glimpse of a green petticoat just slipping away between the shrubs. He followed, and it came to a hunting all through the forest. So swift-footed as that huldre, no human creature could be: he flung steel over her again and again, but still she ran on just as well as ever. But soon the lad saw, by her pace, that she was beginning to grow tired, though he saw, too, by her shape, that she could be no other than the huldre. 'Now,' he thought, you'll be mine easily;' and he caught hold on her so suddenly and roughly that they both fell, and rolled down the hills a long way before they could stop themselves. Then the huldre laughed till it seemed to the lad the mountains sang again. He took her upon his knee; and so beautiful she was, that never in all his life he had seen any one like her: exactly like her, he thought his wife should have been. 'Ah, who are you who are so beautiful?' he asked, stroking her cheek. She blushed rosy red. 'I'm your wife,' she answered." The girls laughed much at that tale, and ridiculed the lad. But Godfather asked Arne if he had listened well to it. "Well, now I'll tell you something," said a little girl with a little round face, and a very little nose:-- "Once there was a little lad who wished very much to woo a little girl. They were both grown up; but yet they were very little. And the lad couldn't in any way muster courage to ask her to have him. He kept close to her when they came home from church; but, somehow or other, their chat was always about the weather. He went over to her at the dancing-parties, and nearly danced her to death; but still he couldn't bring himself to say what he wanted. 'You must learn to write,' he said to himself; 'then you'll manage matters.' And the lad set to writing; but he thought it could never be done well enough; and so he wrote a whole year round before he dared do his letter. Now, the thing was to get it given to her without anybody seeing. He waited till one day when they were standing all by themselves behind the church. 'I've got a letter for you,' said the lad. 'But I can't read writing,' the girl answered. "And there the lad stood. "Then he went to service at the girl's father's house; and he used to keep hovering round her all day long. Once he had nearly brought himself to speak; in fact, he had already opened his mouth; but then a big fly flew in it. 'Well, I hope, at any rate, nobody else will come to take her away,' the lad thought; but nobody came to take her, because she was so very little.