No matter--it has one good quality which no one can dispute--it is not in the ordinary style of either adventure or narration. Novelty is all the rage at the present day, and what imparts value to things is not their intrinsic merit, but their strangeness. Here, then, is my story presented to you, kind reader, just as Messrs. Asbjoernsen and Moe give it, in their curious collection of Norwegian tales and legends. PART II. GUDBRAND AND HIS WIFE. There was once a man called Gudbrand, who lived in a lonely little farm-house on a remote hillside. From this circumstance he got the name among his neighbors of Gudbrand of the Hill. Now, you must know that Gudbrand had an excellent wife, as sometimes happens to a man. But the rarest thing about it was, that Gudbrand knew the value of such a treasure; and so the two lived in perfect harmony, enjoying their own happiness, and giving themselves no concern about either wealth or the lapse of years. No matter what Gudbrand might do, his wife had foreseen and desired that very thing; so that her good man could not touch or change or move anything about the house without her coming forward to thank him for having divined and forestalled her wishes. Besides, it was easy for them to get along, since the farm belonged to them, and they had a hundred solid crowns in a drawer of their closet and two excellent cows in their stable. They lacked nothing, and could quietly pass their old age without fear of poverty or toil, and without having to look to the friendship or the commiseration of any of their fellow-creatures. One evening, while they were talking over their various little tasks and projects, says the wife of Gudbrand to her husband,-- 'Husband, I've got a new notion in my head: you must take one of our cows to town and sell her. We'll keep the other, and she'll be quite enough to furnish us with all the milk and butter we can use. Why should we toil for other people? We've money lying in the drawer, and have no children to look after. So, wouldn't it be better to spare these arms of ours, now that they are growing old? You will always find something to occupy your time about the house;--there'll be no lack of furniture and things to mend, and I'll be more than ever beside you with my distaff and my knitting-needles.' Gudbrand bethought him that his wife was right, as usual, and so, as the next morning was a beautiful one, he set off for the town, at an early hour, with the cow he wanted to sell. But it was not market day, and he found no purchaser to take the animal off his hands. 'Well! well!' said Gudbrand, 'at all events, I can take Sukey back to the place I brought her from; I've got hay and litter in plenty, there, for the poor brute, and it's no farther returning than it was coming hither.' Whereupon, he very quietly started again on the road to his home.