One day the Robber Mother left the robbers' cave in which she lived with her husband and children in the forest of Göinge, to go on a begging round in the neighboring village. Her husband, the Robber Father, was an outlaw who dared not step beyond the bounds of the forest. All he could do was waylay the travelers who ventured deep into the forest and strip them of their money and their goods. But in those days travelers were few in the northern district of Skåne.

Weeks upon weeks would pass without the Robber Father being granted any travelers whose belongings he might seize, and then the Robber Mother was driven to beg. On this round she was accompanied by her five little ones in their ragged clothes of deerskin; they wore shoes of sandar bark, and every one of them carried a long sack that hung down to his heels.

The Robber Mother would enter the huts, and no one refused her anything she asked, for she did not scruple to set fire by night to the hut of any who bolted their door in her face. She and her little ones were worse than a pack of wolves. Many a man's soul whispered to him to plunge his spear into their breasts; but such men knew, of course, that her husband dwelt in the forest, and that he would not fail to take vengeance on anyone who assaulted his wife and little

ones or touched them with the least harm.

The Robber Mother wandered from place to place until one day she halted at the farm of Övid. She found herself before the cloister, so she rang the bell and asked for food. The gatekeeper opened a little hatch in the great door and handed her six loaves, for herself

and her five children, who were close by, romping and playing. Presently one of them came and tugged at the hem of her dress, and she understood at once that her son had seen something and was calling her to come and look at it, so she went along with him.

The cloister was enclosed by a high, strong wall. The boy had