Late one evening the demon set out to fulfil his promise. He swam the lake, climbed the wall of the castle, entered the room in which the young Baron slept by the window, and, during the scarcely more than momentary absence of the nurse, abstracted the baby from his cot, deposited therein an elfin child of the same size, and departed with the real baby by the same way he had come. Now, the little Baron had, from his first entrance into the world, been distinguished by his remarkably docile and tractable nature. He rarely cried, never fretted, and was, in consequence, a general pet, so far as such a term can be applied to an infant of such tender age. Within an hour or two, however, after the occurrence which I have just related, Mother Grutchen began to find {064}her charge less quiet and more troublesome than had previously been the case. She forthwith reported the fact to the Baroness, who, however, took her to task sharply for the same, saying that it was all fancy, and that the dear child was a little angel. This the poor nurse by no means wished to deny, but it entered her head that there were different kinds of angels, and that vowed {065}and declared that this was not the right child. [Illustration: 077] This was an unpleasant and curious exclamation, and put Mother Grutchen in a terrible flurry. She owned that she thought the young Baron looked rather queer, but remarked that babies varied considerably from time to time; and, moreover, that as she had scarcely had him out of her sight since the day he was born, he could not by any possibility be anything else than the young Baron. Still the Baroness held to her opinion, and even some of these might occasionally be troublesome. She determined faithfully to do her duty by the child nevertheless, and to make no more complaints to her mistress. The latter was not slow, however, to find out that something was amiss with the infant. The very next morning, when it was brought to her, she looked at it with a strange and startled expression, and declared that it was not her child. Upon this the Baron was appealed to at once. He, poor man, was terribly annoyed at being asked the question. Proud as he had been from the first of his infant son, he was one of those who held the theory that all babies are, up to a certain age, very much alike, and was positively quite incapable of pronouncing upon the identity of his own child. He put on his large gold-rimmed spectacles, stared vacantly down upon the infant, and said several things which had nothing whatever to do with the question.