"_Please, Mother, tell us a story. Have him a wood-chopper boy this time. Please, Mother, quick, for Elizabeth is sleepy already. Oh, Mother, hurry!_" _So here is the story._ * * * Once upon a time there was a little boy who lived all alone with his parents in the heart of a deep wood. His father was a wood-chopper who worked hard in the forest all day, while the mother kept everything tidy at home and took care of Robin. Robin was an obliging, sunny-hearted little fellow who chopped the kindling as sturdily as his father chopped the dead trees and broken branches, and then he brought the water and turned the spit for his mother. As there were no other children in the great forest, he made friends with the animals and learned to understand their talk. In the spring the mother robin, for whom he thought he was named, called him to see the blue eggs in her nest, and in the autumn the squirrels chattered with him and brought him nuts. But his four dearest friends were the Owl, who came to his window evenings and gave him wise counsel; the Hare, who played hide-and-seek with him around the bushes; the Eagle, who brought him strange pebbles and shells from the distant seashore; and the Lion, who, for friendship's sake, had quite reformed his habits and his appetite, so that he lapped milk from Robin's bowl and simply adored breakfast foods. Suddenly all the happiness in the little cottage was turned to mourning, when the good wood-chopper was taken ill, and the mother was at her wits' end to take care of him and to provide bread and milk. Robin's heart burned within him to do something to help, but he could not swing an ax with his little hands. "Ah," he said that night to his friend the Owl, "if I were a great knight, perhaps I could ride to the city and win the Prize for Good Luck." "And what is the Prize for Good Luck?" asked the Owl, who knew everything in the world except that. [Illustration: "THE OWL CALLED A COUNCIL OF ROBIN'S BEST FRIENDS"] Then Robin explained that the lovely princess, whose hair was like spun gold and whose eyes were like the blue forget-me-nots by the brook, had lost her precious amulet, given to her by her godmother, which kept her, as long as it lay on her neck, healthy and beautiful and happy. One day, when she was playing in the flower-garden, the little gold chain snapped and the amulet rolled away. Everybody in the palace had searched, the soldiers had been called out to help, and all the small boys had been organized into an amulet brigade, for what they cannot see is usually not worth seeing at all. But no one could find it, and in the meantime the princess grew pale, and, truth to tell, rather cross. Her hair dulled a little, and her eyes looked like forget-me-nots drowned in the brook. When the court philosopher reasoned the matter out and discovered that the amulet had been carried far away, perhaps outside the kingdom, the king offered the Prize for Good Luck for its return.