This was what the girl had been hoping for, and so rejoiced was she, that, without even stopping to thank the old woman, she ran as fast as she could to the loft. There were the caskets, blue and red, green and yellow, silver and gold; and there in the corner stood a little black casket just like the one her stepsister had brought home. ‘If there are so many jewels in that little black thing, this big red one will hold twice the number,’ she said to herself; and snatching it up she set off on her road home without even going to bid farewell to her mistress. ‘See, mother, see what I have brought!’ cried she, as she entered the cottage holding the casket in both hands. ‘Ah! you have got something very different from that little black box,’ answered the old woman with delight. But the girl was so busy finding a place for it to stand that she took little notice of her mother. ‘It will look best here--no, here,’ she said, setting it first on one piece of furniture and then on another. ‘No, after all it is to fine to live in a kitchen, let us place it in the guest chamber.’ So mother and daughter carried it proudly upstairs and put it on a shelf over the fireplace; then, untying the key from the handle, they opened the box. As before, a bright light leapt out directly the lid was raised, but it did not spring from the lustre of jewels, but from hot flames, which darted along the walls and burnt up the cottage and all that was in it and the mother and daughter as well. As they had done when the stepdaughter came home, the neighbours all hurried to see what was the matter; but they were too late. Only the hen-house was left standing; and, in spite of her riches, there the stepdaughter lived happily to the end of her days. [From Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories.] The Goldsmith’s Fortune Once upon a time there was a goldsmith who lived in a certain village where the people were as bad and greedy, and covetous, as they could possibly be; however, in spite of his surroundings, he was fat and prosperous. He had only one friend whom he liked, and that was a cowherd, who looked after cattle for one of the farmers in the village. Every evening the goldsmith would walk across to the cowherd’s house and say: ‘Come, let’s go out for a walk!’