e what you will find upon the window sill at sunrise, and sell
them in the town. Bring the money back to your mother at night-time."

With the last words the Moon-Spirit melted into the white light,
leaving Erik with a feeling of the happiest expectation.

Long before daybreak he was awake, and his first thought was of the
wonderful ice-flowers. Would the Angel have kept her promise? What
would he see awaiting him?

As the rays of the sun shot over the fiord, he sprang out of bed and
ran to the window. There lay a bunch of beautiful white lilies,
nestling in a mass of delicate moss-like green.

"They _are_ the frost-flowers!" cried Erik, and wild with joy he
rushed into his mother's room, and held the bunch up for her to look
at.

"Look, look, mother! See what we have had given us. We shall soon have
enough money to rent the little farm you have always been longing
for!"

* * * * *

Erik's visit to the town was very successful. He sold his flowers
directly, although he had some difficulty in answering all the
questions of the townspeople, who wanted to know where he had grown
such delicate things in the middle of a severe winter. To everyone he
replied that it was a secret; and they were obliged to be contented.

He returned home in good time for his work upon the fiord, and if it
had not been for the store of silver pieces he poured into his
mother's work-box, he would almost have imagined that he had only been
dreaming.

That night, as he laid his curly head upon the pillow, his mind was
full of thoughts about the Moon-Angel. He wondered if she would appear
again, and whether she would once more leave him her gift of the white
frost-flowers.

The moon shone with silvery clearness into the garret; and as the boy
strained his eyes towards the window, the bright form slowly floated
through the bars and stretched a pale hand towards him.

"You have done well, to-day, Erik. Look to-morrow, and to-morrow, and
to-morrow, until my light has waned and faded; and every day you will
find the lilies waiting for you."

Again Erik felt the soft brush of Vanda's wings, and she disappeared
in the path of the moonbeams.

The next morning the flowers lay fresh and fair upon the window-sill,
and for days the frost-lilies were always blooming.

But each time the bunch grew smaller and smaller, until at last, when
the moon was nothing more than a thread of brightness, Erik found one
single