One evening he sat down as usual to eat his supper with a good appetite, drew over the bowl to him, and was just beginning, as he thought, to make a comfortable meal, when he found that the maid had forgotten to put any butter into it for him. At this he fell into a furious rage, got up in the height of his passion, and went out into the cow-house, and twisted the neck of the best cow that was in it. But as he felt himself still very hungry, he stole back again to the kitchen to take some of the groute, such as it was, and when he had eaten a little of it he perceived that there was butter in it, but that it had sunk to the bottom under the groute. He was now so vexed at his injustice toward the maid, that, to make good the damage he had done, he went back to the cow-house and set a chest full of money by the side of the dead cow, where the family found it nest morning, and by means of it got into flourishing circumstances. _The Nis and the Boy._ There was a Nis in a house in Jutland; he every evening got his groute at the regular time, and he, in return, used to help both the men and the maids, and looked to the interest of the master of the house in every respect. There came one time an arch mischievous boy to live at service in this house, and his great delight was, whenever he got an opportunity, to give the Nis all the annoyance in his power. One evening, late, when everything was quiet in the place, the Nis took his little wooden dish, and was just going to eat his supper, when he perceived that the boy had put the butter at the bottom, and concealed it, in hopes that he might eat the groute first, and then find the butter when all the groute was gone. He accordingly set about thinking how he might repay the boy in kind; so, after pondering a little, he went up to the loft, where the man and the boy were lying asleep in the same bed. When he had taken the bed-clothes off them, and saw the little boy by the side of the tall man, he said, "Short and long don't match;" and with this word he took the boy by the legs and dragged him down to the man's legs. He then went up to the head of the bed, and "Short and long don't match," said he again, and then he dragged the boy up once more. When, do what he would, he could not succeed in making the boy as long as the man, he still persisted in dragging him up and down in the bed, and continued at this work the whole night long, till it was broad daylight.