Long, long ago, said these gossips,--so long that nobody now could remember exactly when it was,--Karen's great-great-great-grandfather, (or perhaps _his_ grandfather--who could tell?) when hunting in the high mountains, met a beautiful, tiny maiden, so small and light that a man could easily carry her in the palm of one hand. This maiden he fell in love with, and he won her to be his wife. She made a good wife; kept the house as bright as new tin; and on her wheel spun linen thread so fine that mortal eye could hardly see it. But a year and a day from the time of her marriage she went out to walk in the wood, and never came back any more! The reason of this was, that she was a gnomide,--daughter of one of the forest gnomes,--and when her own people encountered her thus alone, they detained her, and would not suffer her to return to her husband. The baby she left in the cradle grew to be a woman,--bigger than her gnome mother, it is true, but still very small; and all the women of the race have been small since that time. Witness little Karen herself, whose head only came up to the shoulder of her tall Fritz. Then her passion for woods and solitary places, her beautiful swift spinning, her hair, of that peculiar pale white-brown shade,--all these were proofs of the drops of unearthly blood which ran in her veins. Gnomes always had white hair. This was because they lived in holes and dark places. Even a potato would throw out white leaves if kept in a cellar,--everybody knew that,--and the gossips, ending thus, would shake their heads again, and look very wise. Karen had heard these stories, and laughed at them. No fairy or gnome had ever met her eyes in the woods she loved so well; and as for hair, Rosel Pilaff's, and Gretchen Erl's too, was almost as pale as hers. Fair hair is common enough in the German mountains. Her little boy--bless him!--had downy rings which promised to become auburn in time, the color of his father's beard. She did not believe in the gnome story a bit. But there came a time when she almost wished to believe it, for the gnomes are said to be wise folk, and little Fritz fell ill of a strange disease, which neither motherly wisdom nor motherly nursing was able to reach. Each day left him thinner and weaker, till he seemed no more than half his former size. His very face looked strange as it lay on the cradle-pillow, and Karen was at her wits' end to know what to do. "I will go to the village and ask Mother Klaus to come and see the child," said Fritz. "She may know of a remedy." "It will be of no use," declared Karen, sadly. "She went to the Berards' and the baby died, and to Heinrich's and little Marie died. But go, go, Fritz!--only come back soon, lest our angel take flight while you are away!" She almost pushed him from the door, in her impatience to have him return.