She crossed herself, and said, “This will not serve; what wilt thou do with the maiden?”

“A rede I see for that,” said he, and therewith caught them both up, and laid the little one in her mother’s lap, and set both of them thus on his left arm, but had his right free; and so he took the ford withal, nor durst they cry out, so afeard were they.

Now the river took him up to his breast forthwith, and a great ice-floe drave against him, but he put forth the hand that was free and thrust it from him; then it grew so deep, that the stream broke on his shoulder; but he waded through it stoutly, till he came to the further shore, and there cast them aland:  then he turned back, and it was twilight already by then he came home to Sand-heaps, and called for his meat.

So when he was fulfilled, he bade the home-folk go into the chamber; then he took boards and loose timber, and dragged it athwart the chamber, and made a great bar, so that none of the home-folk might come thereover:  none durst say aught against him, nor would any of them make the least sound.  The entrance to the hall was through the side wall by the gable, and dais was there within; there Guest lay down, but did not put off his clothes, and light burned in the chamber over against the door:  and thus Guest lay till far on in the night.

The goodwife came to Isledale-river at church-time, and men marvelled how she had crossed the river; and she said she knew not whether a man or a troll had brought her over.

The priest said he was surely a man, though a match for few; “But let us hold our peace hereon,” he said; “maybe he is chosen for the bettering of thy troubles.”  So the goodwife was there through the night.

CHAP.  LXV.

Of Guest and the Troll-wife.

Now it is to be told of Guest, that when it drew towards midnight, he heard great din without, and thereafter into the hall came a huge troll-wife, with a trough in one hand and a chopper wondrous great in the other; she peered about when she came in, and saw where Guest lay, and ran at him; but he sprang up to meet her, and they fell a-wrestling terribly, and struggled together for long in the hall.  She was the stronger, but he gave back with craft, and all that was before them was broken, yea, the cross-panelling withal of the chamber.  She dragged him out through the door, and so into the outer doorway, and then he betook himself to struggling hard against her.  She was fain to drag him from the house, but might not until they had broken away all the fittings of the outer door, and borne them out on their shoulders:  then she laboured away with him down towards the river, and right down to the deep gulfs.

By then was Guest exceeding weary, yet must he either gather his might together, or be cast by her into the gulf.  All night did they contend in such wise; never, he deemed, had he fought with such a horror for her strength’s sake; she held him to her so hard that he might turn his arms to no account save to keep fast hold on the middle of the witch.