Many years ago, in a certain city in Germany, there lived an honest cobbler and his wife. The good man sat all day and mended boots and shoes; he made new ones too, if he could get a customer to trust him with the job, but then he had first to buy the leather, for he was too poor to keep a stock in hand. His wife sold fruit and vegetables, which she grew in a little plot of ground outside the city gates. She had many customers, for she was clean and tidy, and had a knack of setting out her wares to the best advantage. [Illustration: _Jacob._] The cobbler and his wife had a beautiful little boy, named Jacob. Although he was but eight years of age he was tall and well grown, and so he sat by his mother’s side in the market-place, and acted as errand boy to the housewives and cooks who made large purchases from his mother, carrying the fruit and vegetables home for them. Very often he came back with a piece of money in his pocket, or at least with a cake, or some sweetmeats, for he was so pretty and obliging that people liked to see him in their homes. One morning the cobbler’s wife was sitting in her accustomed place in the market. She had a supply of cabbages and other vegetables, fresh herbs and seeds, and a smaller basket of early pears and apricots. Little Jacob sat beside her and called out in his shrill little voice: “Come buy, come buy, fine cabbages, fresh herbs, early pears, fine ripe apples and apricots. Come buy, buy, buy, my mother’s goods are cheap to-day.” An old woman came slowly across the market-place. She was dressed in rags and tatters and had a little, pointed face, all wrinkled and furrowed with age, red-rimmed eyes, and a sharp hooked nose that nearly met the pointed chin. She helped herself along with a stick, and it is difficult to say how she moved, for she stumbled and limped and rolled along almost as though her legs were broken-down wheels which would soon give way. The cobbler’s wife stared hard at her, for although she had been sitting in the market-place every day for the last sixteen years she had never noticed the queer old creature before. But she shuddered involuntarily when the old woman hobbled towards her and stood still before the baskets. [Illustration: _THE DWARF LONG-NOSE._ _“An old woman came slowly across the market-place.”_] “Are you Hannah, the vegetable dealer?” she said in a cracked unpleasant voice, her head shaking as though with palsy. “Yes, that is my name,” replied the cobbler’s wife, “is there anything I can serve you with?” “I must see, I must see,” she replied. “Let me look at your herbs and see if you have anything I require.” She plunged her brown skinny fingers into the basket of herbs which had been so neatly set out, and, grasping handful after handful, put them to her long hooked nose and smelt them.