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, 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 called out: “Eat,
drink! eat, drink! but take care you’re not
drowned in the broth.”
Away he ran as fast as his legs would carry him to
his brother’s house, and begged him in heaven’s
name to take back the mill, and that at once, for,
said he, “If it grinds only one hour more, the
whole parish will be swallowed up by herrings and
broth.”
So the poor brother took back the mill, and it wasn’t
long before it stopped grinding herrings and broth.
[Illustration: With the herrings and broth at
his heels]
And now he set up a farmhouse far finer than the one
in which his brother lived, and with the mill he ground
so much gold that he covered it with plates of gold.
And, as the farm lay by the seaside, the golden house
gleamed and glistened far away over the sea. All
who sailed by put ashore to see the rich man in the
golden house, and to see the wonderful mill the fame
of which spread far and wide, till there was nobody
who hadn’t heard of it.
So one day there came a skipper who wanted to see
the mill, and the first thing he asked was if it could
grind salt.
“Grind salt!” said the owner, “I
should just think it could. It can grind anything.”
When the skipper heard that, he said he must have
the mill, for if he only had it, he thought, he need
not take his long voyages across stormy seas for a
lading of salt. He much preferred sitting at home
with a pipe and a glass. Well, the man let him
have it, but the skipper was in such a hurry to get
away with it that he had no time to ask how to handle
the mill. He got on board his ship as fast as
he could and set sail. When he had sailed a good
way off, he brought the mill on deck and said, “Grind
salt, and grind both good and fast.”
And the mill began to grind salt so that it poured
out like water, and when the skipper had got the ship
full he wished to stop the mill, but whichever way
he turned it, and however much he tried, it did no
good; the mill kept on grinding, and the heap of salt
grew higher and higher, and at last down sank the
ship.
There lies the mill at the bottom of the sea, and
grinds away to this very day, and that is the reason
why the sea is salt—so some folks say.
There was once a very rich squire who owned a large
farm, had plenty of silver at the bottom of his chest,
and money in the bank besides; but there was something
he had not, and that was a wife.
