To his amazement the cock saw the miser bending over a pot on the fire. At last the old fellow turned round to get a spoon with which to stir his pot, and then the cock, waking up, looked in and saw that the miser was making oyster-soup, for he had found some oyster-shells in an ash-pit, and to give the mixture a colour he had put in a few halfpence in the pot. The miser chanced to turn quickly round, while the cock was peering into the saucepan, and, chuckling to himself, he said: "I shall have chicken broth after all." He tripped up the cock into the pot and shut the lid on. The bird, feeling warm, said: "Water, water, don't boil!" But the water only said: "You drank up my young brothers once: don't ask a favour of _me_." Then he called out to the Fire: "Oh! kind Fire, don't boil the water." But the fire replied: "You once let my young sisters die: you cannot expect any mercy from me." So he flared up and boiled the water all the faster. At last, when the cock got unpleasantly warm, he thought of the wind, and called out: "Oh, Wind, come to my help!" and the Wind said: "Why, there is that noble domestic bird in trouble. I will help him." So he came down the chimney, blew out the fire, blew the lid off the pot, and blew the cock far away into the air, and at last settled him on a steeple, where the cock remained ever since. And people say that the halfpence which were in the pot when it was boiling have given him the queer brown colour he still wears. From the Spanish. SNEGOURKA. There lived once, in Russia, a peasant and his wife who would have been as happy as the day is long, if only God had given them a little child. One day, as they were watching the children playing in the snow, the man said to the woman: "Wife, shall we go out and help the children make a snowball?" But the wife answered, smiling: "Nay, husband, but since God has given us no little child, let us go and fashion one from the snow." And she put on her long blue cloak, and he put on his long brown coat, and they went out onto the crisp snow, and began to fashion the little child. First, they made the feet and the legs and the little body, and then they took a ball of snow for the head. And at that moment a stranger in a long cloak, with his hat well drawn over his face, passed that way, and said: "Heaven help your undertaking!" And the peasants crossed themselves and said: "It is well to ask help from Heaven in all we do." Then they went on fashioning the little child. And they made two holes for the eyes and formed the nose and the mouth. And then-- wonder of wonders--the little child came alive, and breath came from its nostrils and parted lips. And the man was feared, and said to his wife: "What have we done?"