"There they are!" cried Lars, and immediately began to put on his boots, his scarf, and heavy coat. I did the same, and by the time we were ready we heard shouts and the crack of whips. We harnessed Axel to the sled, and proceeded slowly in the direction of the sound, which came, as we presently saw, from a company of farmers, out thus early to plough the road. They had six pairs of horses geared to a wooden frame, something like the bow of a ship, pointed in front and spreading out to a breadth of ten or twelve feet. This machine not only cut through the drifts but packed the snow, leaving a good, solid road behind it. After it had passed, we sped along merrily in the cold morning twilight, and in a little more than an hour reached the post-house at Umeå, where we found Lars' father prepared to return home. He waited, nevertheless, until Lars had eaten a good warm breakfast, when I said good-bye to both, and went on towards Lapland. Some weeks afterwards, on my return to Stockholm, I stopped at the same little station. This time the weather was mild and bright, and the father would have gone with me to the next post-house; but I preferred to take my little bed-fellow and sled-fellow. He was so quiet and cheerful and fearless, that although I had been nearly all over the world, and he had never been away from home,--although I was a man and he a young boy,--I felt that I had learned a lesson from him, and might probably learn many more if I should know him better. We had a merry trip of two or three hours, and then I took leave of Lars forever. HOW JUNE FOUND MASSA LINKUM By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps June laid down her knives upon the scrubbing-board, and stole softly out into the yard. Madame Joilet was taking a nap upstairs, and, for a few minutes at least, the coast seemed to be quite clear. Who was June? and who was Madame Joilet? June was a little girl who had lived in Richmond ever since she could remember, who had never been outside of the city's boundaries, and who had a vague idea that the North lay just above the Chick-ahominy River and the Gulf of Mexico about a mile below the James. She could not tell A from Z, nor the figure 1 from 40; and whenever Madame Joilet made those funny little curves and dots and blots with pen and ink, in drawing up her bills to send to the lodgers upstairs, June considered that she was moved thereto by witches. Her authority for this theory lay in a charmig old woman across the way, who had one tooth, and wore a yellow cap, and used to tell her ghost stories sometimes in the evening. Somebody asked June once how old she was.