wing
round on the wheel. "It's probably because she's frightened," said the
farmer folk. "To-morrow, when she feels more at home, she will both eat
and play."

Meanwhile, the women folk on the farm were making preparations for a
feast; and just on that day when the lady squirrel had been captured,
they were busy with an elaborate bake. They had had bad luck with
something: either the dough wouldn't rise, or else they had been
dilatory, for they were obliged to work long after dark.

Naturally there was a great deal of excitement and bustle in the
kitchen, and probably no one there took time to think about the
squirrel, or to wonder how she was getting on. But there was an old
grandma in the house who was too aged to take a hand in the baking; this
she herself understood, but just the same she did not relish the idea of
being left out of the game. She felt rather downhearted; and for this
reason she did not go to bed but seated herself by the sitting-room
window and looked out.

They had opened the kitchen door on account of the heat; and through it
a clear ray of light streamed out on the yard; and it became so well
lighted out there that the old woman could see all the cracks and holes
in the plastering on the wall opposite. She also saw the squirrel cage
which hung just where the light fell clearest. And she noticed how the
squirrel ran from her room to the wheel, and from the wheel to her room,
all night long, without stopping an instant. She thought it was a
strange sort of unrest that had come over the animal; but she believed,
of course, that the strong light kept her awake.

Between the cow-house and the stable there was a broad, handsome
carriage-gate; this too came within the light-radius. As the night wore
on, the old grandma saw a tiny creature, no bigger than a hand's
breadth, cautiously steal his way through the gate. He was dressed in
leather breeches and wooden shoes like any other working man. The old
grandma knew at once that it was the elf, and she was not the least bit
frightened. She had always heard that the elf kept himself somewhere
about the place, although she had never seen him before; and an elf, to
be sure, brought good luck wherever he appeared.

As soon as the elf came into the stone-paved yard, he ran right up to
the squirrel cage. And since it hung so high that he could not reach it,
he went over to the store-house after a rod; placed it against the cage,
and swung himself up--in th