“Well,” says Ill-Luck, “I have not much time to be pottering and playing upon Jack’s fiddle; but to oblige an old friend”--thereupon he made himself small and smaller, and--phst! he was in the nut before you could wink. Then what do you think St. Nicholas did? In his hand he held a little plug of wood, and no sooner had Ill-Luck entered the nut than he stuck the plug in the hole, and there was man’s enemy as tight as a fly in a bottle. “So!” says St. Nicholas, “that’s a piece of work well done.” Then he tossed the hazel-nut under the roots of an oak-tree near by, and went his way. And that is how this story begins. * * * * * Well, the hazel-nut lay and lay and lay, and all the time that it lay there nobody met with ill-luck; but, one day, who should come travelling that way but a rogue of a Fiddler, with his fiddle under his arm. The day was warm, and he was tired; so down he sat under the shade of the oak-tree to rest his legs. By-and-by he heard a little shrill voice piping and crying, “Let me out! let me out! let me out!” The Fiddler looked up and down, but he could see nobody. “Who are you?” says he. “I am Ill-Luck! Let me out! let me out!” “Let you out?” says the Fiddler. “Not I; if you are bottled up here it is the better for all of us;” and, so saying, he tucked his fiddle under his arm and off he marched. But before he had gone six steps he stopped. He was one of your peering, prying sort, and liked more than a little to know all that was to be known about this or that or the other thing that he chanced to see or hear. “I wonder where Ill-Luck can be, to be in such a tight place as he seems to be caught in,” says he to himself; and back he came again. “Where are you, Ill-Luck?” says he. “Here I am,” says Ill-Luck--“here in this hazel-nut, under the roots of the oak-tree.” Thereupon the Fiddler laid aside his fiddle and bow, and fell to poking and prying under the roots until he found the nut. Then he began twisting and turning it in his fingers, looking first on one side and then on the other, and all the while Ill-Luck kept crying, “Let me out! let me out!” It was not long before the Fiddler found the little wooden plug, and then nothing would do but he must take a peep inside the nut to see if Ill-Luck was really there. So he picked and pulled at the wooden plug, until at last out it came; and--phst! pop! out came Ill-Luck along with it. Plague take the Fiddler! say I. “Listen,” says Ill-Luck. “It has been many a long day that I have been in that hazel-nut, and you are the man that has let me out; for once in a way I will do a good turn to a poor human body.” Therewith, and without giving the Fiddler time to speak a word, Ill-Luck caught him up by the belt, and--whiz! away he flew like a bullet, over hill and over valley, over moor and over mountain, so fast that not enough wind was left in the Fiddler’s stomach to say “Bo!” [Illustration]