How the fire crackled and roared. A moment later there was a great crash and the oven fell to pieces. Haensel and Gretel, much terrified, started to run away, but found themselves, to their great surprise, entirely surrounded by a troop of little children. "It's the fence," exclaimed Haensel, "the gingerbread fence!" And so it was. The gingerbread had fallen off, and real children stood there, motionless, with closed eyes, murmuring softly: "Oh, touch us, we pray, That we may all awake!" "Pooh! if that's all they want!" said Gretel, proudly, and she repeated: "Hocus, pocus, elder bush, Rigid body, loosen hush!" Instantly life came back to the whole troop. They hurried toward Haensel and Gretel from all sides. They danced, they sang! Two boys ran to the oven and dragged out the Witch in the form of a big gingerbread cake. Then the merrymaking began in earnest. They made a big circle, and round and round it they danced. Last but not least, they ate up the candy house. At any rate, that is what they were doing when their mothers and fathers found them there that afternoon. [Illustration] THE MASTER SINGERS I Across the wide sea, amid the green hop fields of southern Germany, is the old, old city of Nuremberg. Shut off from the busy world outside by its great wall of stone, it has stood unchanged through all the passing centuries. There are the same narrow, crooked streets leading to the public squares, where quaintly carved stone fountains stand. There are the same many gabled, lofty houses, with oriole windows that open outward. There are latticed doorways with plaster figures that beckon and bless and welcome. And the gray castle, the grass-grown moat, the dark, pillared church, all tell stories of the days of long ago. In those days men dreamed dreams and sang songs as they sat on the bench or in the market place. The cobbler at his last, the baker before the oven, the silversmith by the fire, even the little apprentice, watching and learning, looked out upon a fair world and found it good. So while hands were busy, thoughts roved far and wide, and fancy wove many a song to sing by the fireside on wintry nights. But not only by the fireside were those songs sung in the days when Nuremberg was young. The good people there prized the Art of Song too highly for that alone.