One evening a little boy was sleeping restlessly in a village on the island of Dagö. His father saw a small hole which had been bored in the wall, and thinking that the draught disturbed the child, he stopped it up. He then saw a beautiful little girl playing with the boy, and preventing him from sleeping quietly. As she could not get away again, she remained in the house; and when the children grew up, they married, and had two children. One Sunday they went to church, and the wife laughed; but when her husband asked why, she replied that she would tell him if he told her how she came into his house. Thinking no harm, he promised to tell her, as he had heard the story from his father. Then she told him that she saw a great horse-skin spread on the wall of the church, on which the devil wrote the names of all the people who slept or talked in church instead of attending to the word of God. When it was full, he tried to stretch it with his[Pg 113] teeth, but in doing so, he knocked his head against the wall and made a wry face, and she laughed. When they got home, he took the wooden plug from the hole, and showed it to his wife, but she instantly disappeared through it and never returned. The man wept himself blind, but the children grew up and prospered all their lives. People said their mother visited them secretly and brought treasures to the house. The next story introduces us to the Gnomes, who appear to come more frequently into contact with human beings than any of the other nature-spirits, perhaps because their nature may be more akin to that of man. They are seen with more or less similar characteristics in all the mining countries of Northern Europe, whether Celtic, as Ireland and the Isle of Man; Teutonic, as England, Germany, and Scandinavia; or Finnish-Ugrian. They were well known to the old Norsemen as the Dvergar. [Pg 114] THE CAVE-DWELLERS. (Kreutzwald.) Once upon a time a man lost his way on a stormy night between Christmas and New Year. He wore out his strength plunging through the deep snowdrifts, until, by good luck, he found some protection from the wind under a thick juniper bush. Here he resolved to pass the night, hoping to find his way easier by the clear light of the morning. He rolled himself together like a hedgehog in his warm fur-cloak and fell asleep. I don't know how long he lay there before he was roused by somebody shaking him, and a stranger's voice said in his ear, "Get up, farmer, or the snow will bury you, and you will never get out again." The sleeper pushed his head out of his fur, and opened his sleepy eyes wide. He saw a tall thin man before him, who carried a young fir-tree, twice as high as himself, as his staff.