like beings, but I don't believe there is much in it. I have neither seen one nor the other. Of course I have not been so very much about in my lifetime, but I believe it is all nonsense. But old Stine out in the kitchen there, she says she has seen the brownie. About the time when I was confirmed she was in service with my parents. She came to us from a captain's, who had given up the sea. It was a very quiet place. The captain only took a walk as far as the quay every day. They always went to bed early. People said there was a brownie in the house. Well, it so happened that Stine and the cook were sitting in their room one evening, mending and darning their things; it was near bedtime, for the watchman had already sung out 'Ten o'clock!' but somehow the darning and the sewing went on very slowly indeed; every moment 'Jack Nap' came and played his tricks upon them. At one moment Stine was nodding and nodding, and then came the cook's turn,—they could not keep their eyes open; they had been up early that morning to wash clothes. But just as they were sitting thus, they heard a terrible crash down stairs in the kitchen, and Stine shouted, 'Lor' bless and preserve us! it must be the brownie.' She was so frightened she dared scarcely move a foot, but at last the cook plucked up courage and went down into the kitchen, closely followed by Stine. When they opened the kitchen door they found all the crockery on the floor, but none of it broken, while the brownie was standing on the big kitchen table with his red cap on, and hurling one dish after the other on to the floor, and laughing in great glee. The cook had heard that the brownies could sometimes be tricked into moving into another house when anybody would tell them of a very quiet place, and as she long had been wishing for an opportunity to play a trick upon this brownie, she took courage and spoke to him,—her voice was a little shaky at the time,—that he ought to remove to the tinman's over the way, where it was so very quiet and pleasant, because they always went to bed at nine o'clock every evening; which was true enough, as the cook told Stine later, but then the master and all his apprentices and journeymen were up every morning at three o'clock and hammered away and made a terrible noise all day. Since that day they have not seen the brownie any more at the captain's. He seemed to feel quite at home at the tinman's, although they were hammering and tapping away there all day; but people said that the gude-wife put a dish of porridge up in the garret for him every Thursday evening, and it's no wonder that they got on well and became rich when they had a brownie in the house. Stine believed he brought things to them. Whether it was the brownie or not who really helped them, I cannot say," said Mother Skau, in conclusion, and got a fit of coughing and choking after the exertion of telling this, for her, unusually long story.

When she had taken a pinch of snuff she felt better, and became quite cheerful again, and began:—

"My mother, who, by the way, was a truthful woman, told a story which happened here in the town one Christmas Eve. I know it is true, for an untrue word never passed her lips."

"Let us hear it, Madame Skau," said I.

"Yes, tell, tell, Mother Skau!" cried the children.

She coughed a little, took another pinch of snuff, and proceeded:—