As we drove home, E---- told a story of a child who was lost, seventy or eighty years ago, among the woods and hills. He was about five years old, and had gone with some work-people to a clearing in the forest, where there was a rye-field, at a considerable distance from the farm-house. Getting tired, he started for home alone, but did not arrive. They made what search for him they could that night, and the next day the whole town turned out, but without success. The day following, many people from the neighboring towns took up the search, and on this day, I believe, they found the child's shoes and stockings, but nothing else. After a while, they gave up the search in despair; but for a long time, a fortnight or three weeks or more, his mother fancied that she heard the boy's voice in the night, crying, "Father! father!" One of his little sisters also heard this voice; but people supposed that the sounds must be those of some wild animal. No more search was made, and the boy never was found. But it is not known whether it was the next autumn, or a year or two after, some hunters came upon traces of the child's wanderings among the hills, in a different direction from the previous search, and farther than it was supposed he could have gone. They found some little houses, such as children build of twigs and sticks of wood, and these the little fellow had probably built for amusement in his lonesome hours. Nothing, it seems to me, was ever more strangely touching than this incident,--his finding time for childish play, while wandering to his death in these desolate woods,--and then pursuing his way again, till at last he lay down to die on the dark mountain-side. Finally, on a hill which E---- pointed out to me, they found a portion of the child's hair adhering to the overthrown trunk of a tree; and this is all that was ever found of him. But it was supposed that the child had subsisted, perhaps for weeks, on the berries and other sustenance such as a forest-child knew how to find in the woods. I forgot to say, above, that a piece of birch or other bark was found, which he appeared to have gnawed. It was thought that the cry of "Father! father!" which the mother and little sister heard in the night-time, was really the little fellow's voice, then within hearing of his home; but he wandered away again, and at last sank down, and Death found him and carried him up to God. His bones were never found; and it was thought that the foxes or other wild animals had taken his little corpse, and scattered the bones, and that, dragging the body along, one lock of his flaxen hair had adhered to a tree.