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THE PENITENT NIS

IT is related of a Nis, who had established himself in a house in Jutland, that he used every evening, after the maid was gone to bed, to go into the kitchen to take his groute, which they used to leave for him in a wooden bowl.

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 be 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 next morning, and by means of it got into flourishing circumstances.