D LIFE WITHOUT DEATH

5. THE LITTLE PURSE WITH TWO HALF-PENNIES

6. MOGARZEA AND HIS SON

7. CUNNING ILEANE

8. THE PRINCESS AND THE FISHERMAN

9. LITTLE WILD-ROSE

10. THE VOICE OF DEATH

11. THE OLD WOMAN AND THE OLD MAN

12. THE PEA EMPEROR

13. THE MORNING STAR AND THE EVENING STAR

14. THE TWO STEP-SISTERS

15. THE POOR BOY

16. MOTHER'S DARLING JACK

17. TELLERCHEN

18. THE FAIRY AURORA

* * * * *

Stan Bolovan.

Once upon a time, something happened. If it hadn't happened, it
wouldn't be told.

At the edge of the village, where the peasants' oxen break through the
hedges and the neighbors' hogs wallow in the ground under the fences,
there once stood a house. In this house lived a man, and the man had a
wife; but the wife grieved all day long.

"What troubles you, dear wife, that you sit there drooping like a
frost-bitten bud in the sunlight?" her husband asked one day. "You
have all you need. So be cheerful, like other folks."

"Let me alone, and ask no more questions!" replied the wife, and
became still more melancholy than before.

Her husband questioned her the second time, and received the same
reply. But, when he asked again, she answered more fully.

"Dear me," she said, "why do you trouble your head about it? If you
know, you'll be just sorrowful as I am. It's better for me not to tell
you."

But, to this, people will never agree. If you tell a person he must
sit still, he is more anxious to move than ever. Stan was now
determined to know what was in his wife's mind.

"If you are determined to hear, I'll tell you," said the wife.
"There's no luck in the house, husband,--there's no luck in the
house!"

"Isn't the cow a good one? Are not the fruit-trees and bee-hives full?
Are not the fields fertile?" asked Stan. "You talk nonsense, if you
complain of any thing."

"But, husband, we have no children."

Stan understood; and, when a man realizes such a thing, it isn't well.
From this time, a sorrowful man and a sorrowful woman lived in the
house on the edge of the village. And they were sorrowful because the
Lord had given them no children. When the wife saw her husband sad,
she grew still more melancholy; and the more melancholy she was, the
greater his grief became.

This continued for a long time.

They had masses repeated and prayers read in all the churches. They
questioned all the witches, but God's gift did not come.