ing by drowning cats and
cutting hens' heads off for people.

"Thora Heja, where are you going?" I called out.

"Oh! I am going down to attend to two hens at the sexton's," shouted
Thora across to us.

"Wait a little and you shall see Niagara Falls!"

"See what?"

"Wait a little and you shall see something wonderful!"

Karsten and I grabbed our big stakes and quick as lightning tore away
the dam. However it happened, I really don't know, but it must be that
we tore away some big stones we had never disturbed before, and that our
doing this made the whole waterfall take an entirely different
direction. It foamed and crashed--you couldn't hear yourself think!--It
was really magnificent.

"Hurrah!" shouted Karsten and I.

But right through the tremendous roar of the waterfall, there came
cleaving the air the wildest pig squeal you ever heard, from the ground
down below us. The waterfall kept on roaring, and the pig squeals grew
worse and worse.

It never occurred to me for a moment that the pig squeals had anything
to do with our waterfall. We couldn't see what was going on below from
where we stood. I thought Thora Heja was behaving in the queerest way,
however, for instead of standing quietly and admiring the waterfall as
we had expected, she began to shriek and point and throw up her arms
beseechingly and try to tell us something; finally she took to her heels
and vanished through the wet grass down the steep hillside, shouting and
screaming as she went.

Soon after we heard many voices down below all talking at once, but the
waterfall kept on with its rush and noise, for, as I have said, there
was a tremendous lot of water in the pond that day. All this happened in
a much shorter time than it takes me to write it, you know.

I heard Soren, the mason's, angry voice.

"Such a thing as this sha'n't be permitted! I won't have it--not if I
swing for it! Even if it is the judge's children themselves----"

A sudden suspicion popped into my head.

"Karsten! Something must have gone wrong with our waterfall!"

"I'll run down and see!"

"No! Are you crazy? Don't go! Can't you hear how angry Soren, the mason,
is?"

By this time the whole pond had emptied itself out. The waterfall had
subsided into little trickling rills, coursing in straggling lines down
the precipice. Then Soren, the mason, appeared in the distance, having
reached a piece of ground where he could look across to where we were.

[Illustrati