Not long after this, the time came round, and the smith sallied forth,
prepared as instructed. Sure enough as he approached the hill, there
was a light where light was seldom seen before. Soon after, a sound of
piping, dancing, and joyous merriment reached the anxious father on
the night wind.

Overcoming every impulse to fear, the smith approached the threshold
steadily, stuck the dirk into it as directed, and entered. Protected
by the Bible he carried on his breast, the fairies could not touch
him; but they asked him, with a good deal of displeasure, what he
wanted there. He answered, "I want my son, whom I see down there, and
I will not go without him."

Upon hearing this the whole company before him gave a loud laugh,
which wakened up the cock he carried dozing in his arms, who at once
leaped up on his shoulders, clapped his wings lustily, and crowed loud
and long.

The fairies, incensed, seized the smith and his son, and throwing them
out of the hill, flung the dirk after them, and in an instant all was
dark.

For a year and a day the boy never did a turn of work, and hardly ever
spoke a word; but at last one day, sitting by his father and watching
him finishing a sword he was making for some chief, and which he was
very particular about, he suddenly exclaimed, "That is not the way to
do it;" and taking the tools from his father's hands he set to work
himself in his place, and soon fashioned a sword, the like of which
was never seen in the country before.

From that day the young man wrought constantly with his father, and
became the inventor of a peculiarly fine and well-tempered weapon, the
making of which kept the two smiths, father and son, in constant
employment, spread their fame far and wide, and gave them the means in
abundance, as they before had the disposition, to live content with
all the world and very happily with each other.

_The Grateful Crane_[1]

"Fighting sparrows fear not man," as the old proverb says. Yet it was
not a sparrow but a crane that fell down out of the air. Near the feet
of Musai, the farmer's boy, it lay, as he waded in the ooze of his
rice field, working from daybreak to sundown.

[Footnote 1: From "The Fire-fly's Lovers," by William Elliot Griffis,
copyright, 1008, by T. Y. Crowell & Co.]

The farmer's boy was used to cranes, for in the plough's furrow on the
dry land these long-legged birds walked close behind, not the least
afraid in the Mikado's dominions.