"There is a child's story," said the Pastor, "with its humour; but it is very simple, as all stories of the people should be. A boy found a pretty box in a wood, but he could not open it, for it was locked. A little further he found a key. The question was whether the key would fit the box. He blew into the key and put the key into the lock, when lo! it fitted, and the box opened. But can you guess what was in the box? No, of course not. There was a calf's tail in the box, but if the calf's tail had been longer, so would this story be." "But that is a Norwegian story," said Hardy. "Are there none essentially Danish?" "They are related to some extent in H. C. Andersen's stories, and they have been translated into English. There is a story, however, that may not have been translated. A king and queen had no children; but a beggar came to her and said, 'You can have a son, if you will let me be his godfather when he is christened.' The queen assented. The queen had a son, but the king had to go to war to quell a rebellion. The king made her promise that she would nurse the child herself, and not trust to nurses and other people. The queen did so, and the beggar stood godfather. The beggar bent down over the child, and said that everything it wished for it should have. This the king's attendant heard. He was accustomed to attend the king when hunting, and he thought that such a child was worth possessing. The queen, however, watched the child night and day. One day she was in a summer-house and had fallen asleep, with the child in her lap; when she woke the child was gone. When the king returned, he had a tower built in a wood, and he walled the queen up in it, as a punishment for losing the child. The attendant brought the child up as his own, and there was no suspicion. He took the child, when grown up, out hunting when the king went, and taught him to wish for such and such a head of game, and if he shot an arrow at it, he always hit. The king could not understand how so young a hunter could always be so successful, but the attendant assured him that it was only a sure hand and eye. The attendant had meanwhile become very rich, by getting the king's son to wish him to be so. The attendant had taken a girl into his service, who grew up to be very beautiful. She had suspicions that all was not right, and asked the attendant; but he would not tell her. At last the attendant told her the boy must be killed, and she must do it, and cut out his tongue, to show him that she had murdered him. She, however, killed a hind, and cut out its tongue, and showed the attendant the tongue. The attendant thought she had done as she was told, and told her the story, which the king's son heard from a place where she had hid him. The king's son immediately wished the attendant should be a three-legged dog, that must always follow him. He wished the girl to be a rose and put her in his button-hole. The king's son then attended