tever the sheriff might do, were it
ever so kind an action, he always spoke harshly and unkindly. So he now
called the boy to him, promised to provide for him, and told him it was
a good thing his mother was dead; she was good-for-nothing!

She was buried in the paupers' churchyard. Maren planted a little
rose-tree over the grave; the boy stood by her side the while.

"My darling mother!" he sighed, as the tears streamed down from his
eyes. "It was not true that she was good-for-nothing!"

"No, indeed!" cried her old friend, looking up to heaven. "Let the world
say she was good-for-nothing; our Lord in his heavenly kingdom will not
say so."

"IN THE UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE SEA"

By HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

Some large ships were sent up toward the North Pole, for the purpose of
discovering the boundaries of land and sea, and of trying how far men
could make their way.

A year and a day had elapsed; amid mist and ice had they, with great
difficulty, steered further and further; the winter had now begun; the
sun had set, one long night would continue during many, many weeks. One
unbroken plain of ice spread around them; the ships were all fast moored
to it; the snow lay about in heaps, and had even shaped itself into
cubiform houses, some as big as our barrows, some only just large enough
for two or three men to find shelter within. Darkness they could not
complain of, for the Northern Lights--Nature's fireworks--now red, now
blue, flashed unceasingly, and the snow glistened so brightly.

At times when it was brightest came troops of the natives,
strange-looking figures, clad in hairy skins, and with sledges made out
of hard fragments of ice; they brought skins to exchange, which the
sailors were only too glad to use as warm carpets inside their snow
houses, and as beds whereon they could rest under their snowy tents,
while outside prevailed an intensity of cold such as we never experience
during our severest winters. But the sailors remembered that at home it
was still autumn; and they thought of the warm sunbeams and the leaves
still clinging to the trees in varied glories of crimson and gold. Their
watches told them it was evening, and time for rest, and in one of the
snow houses two sailors had already lain down to sleep; the youngest of
these two had with him his best home-treasure, the Bible that his
grandmother had given him at parting. Every night it lay under his
pillow; he had known its contents f