"O thou great god Thor," cried the peasants, "spare us! Indeed had we known, not one bone would we have taken in our unhappy fingers; and all night long would we have watched beside the goat skins that no harm should come to them. Spare us, O spare us, great Thor! Take all we have--our house, our cattle, our children, everything--only spare our lives to us!" Thor seized his hammer in his hand. His great knuckles grew white, so strong was his giant hold upon the handle. The peasants sank upon their knees. Their faces dropped and their eyes closed. Shaking with terror, they awaited the falling of the hammer. "Up, up, ye peasants," thundered Thor. "This offense I forgive. Your lives too, shall be spared you; but I will carry away with me these children of yours,--Thjalfe and Roskva; and they shall serve me in my journeys across the lands and over the seas." "The goats I leave with you; and I charge you, by your lives see that no harm comes to them in any way. Come Thjalfe, come Roskva, place yourselves before the chariot, and bear me quickly across the seas." All day long the chariot wheeled on and on, the children never tiring, until, at nightfall, they found themselves upon the shores of the country of the Frost giants. Plunging into a deep forest, they hurried through and came out into a great plain beyond. Here they found a house, the very doors of which were as high as the mountains and as broad as the broadest river. "We will rest here," said Thor, and, spreading the great skins which they found near the doorway, they made for themselves beds, and soon were fast asleep. At midnight they were awakened by a terrible roar. The whole house shook with its vibrations. Thor, seizing his hammer in his strong right hand, strode to the door. The whole earth trembled, but in the darkness even Thor could not see beyond the doorway. Hour after hour he stood there, listening. Slowly, at last, the dawn began to come; the sun rose, and there, just at the edge of the forest, Thor saw the outstretched body of a giant, whose head was in itself a small mountain, and whose feet stretched away into the valley below. "And it is you, then, that have rocked the very earth with your giant snores, and have taken from me my night of rest," thought Thor, when he saw the giant form stretched out before him. With one angry stride Thor reached the side of the sleeping giant. Raising his hammer a full mile into the air, he smote the giant full upon the skull, with a crash that sounded like the fall of a mighty oak. "What is that?" asked the giant, opening his sleepy eyes. "Indeed, Thor, are you here? Something awoke me. I think an acorn must have dropped upon my head," said the giant, gathering himself to rise. "Go to sleep again," growled Thor; "it isn't morning yet. I am going to sleep myself." A few minutes and the snores of the giant rang through the air again.