ced a stupor. He felt a great change coming over him.
He seemed to become one of the family of guinea pigs and squirrels,
and, like them, to serve their mistress. Delightful little people
they were,--he came to regard them as brothers; and time flew by.

Years flew by, and other years, when one day the dame took her
crutch and went out. She left her herb-room open, and he went in. In
one of the secret cupboards he discovered an herb that had the same
scent as the soup he had eaten years before. He examined it. The
leaves were blue and the blossoms crimson. He smelt of it.

He began to sneeze,--such a delightful sneeze! He smelt, and sneezed
again. Suddenly he seemed to awake, as from a dream,--as though some
strange enchantment had been broken.

"I must go home," he said. "How mother will laugh when I tell her my
dream! I ought not to have gone to sleep in a strange house."

He went out into the street. The children and idlers began to follow
him.

"Oho, oho! look, what a strange dwarf! Look at his nose! Never the
like was seen before."

Jamie tried to discover the dwarf, but could not see him.

He reached the market. His mother was there, a sad old woman, in the
same place. She seemed altered; looked many years older than when he
left her. She leaned her head wearily on her hand.

"What is the matter, mother dear?" he asked.

She started up.

"What do you want of me, you poor dwarf? Do not mock me. I have had
sorrow, and cannot endure jokes."

"But, mother, what has happened?"

He rushed towards her to embrace her, but she leaped into the air.

The market-women came to her and drove him away.

He went to his father's cobbler's shop. His father was there, but he
looked like an old man.

"Good gracious! what is that?" said he wildly, as Jamie appeared.

"How are you getting on, master?" asked Jamie.

"Poorly enough. I'm getting old, and have no one to help me."

"Have you no son?"

"I _had_ one, years ago."

[Illustration: MOUNTAIN SCENE IN GERMANY.]

"Where is he now?"

"Heaven only knows. He was kidnapped one market-day, seven years
ago."

"Seven years ago!"

Jamie turned away. The people on the street stared at him, and the
ill-bred children followed him. He chanced to pass a barber's shop,
where was a looking-glass in the window. He stopped and saw himself.

The sight filled him with terror. He wa