IZABETH HARRISON

THE following story is one of many which has drifted down to us from the
story-loving nurseries and hearthstones of Germany. I cannot recall when
I first had it told to me as a child, varied, of course, by different
tellers, but always leaving that sweet, tender impression of God's
loving care for the least of his children. I have since read different
versions of it in at least a half-dozen story books for children.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, far away across the great ocean, in a
country called Germany, there could be seen a small log hut on the edge
of a great forest, whose fir-trees extended for miles and miles to the
north. This little house, made of heavy hewn logs, had but one room in
it. A rough pine door gave entrance to this room, and a small square
window admitted the light. At the back of the house was built an
old-fashioned stone chimney, out of which in winter usually curled a
thin, blue smoke, showing that there was not very much fire within.

Small as the house was, it was large enough for the two people who
lived in it. I want to tell you a story to-day about these two people.
One was an old, gray-haired woman, so old that the little children of
the village, nearly half a mile away, often wondered whether she had
come into the world with the huge mountains, and the great fir-trees,
which stood like giants back of her small hut. Her face was wrinkled all
over with deep lines, which, if the children could only have read
aright, would have told them of many years of cheerful, happy,
self-sacrifice, of loving, anxious watching beside sick-beds, of quiet
endurance of pain, of many a day of hunger and cold, and of a thousand
deeds of unselfish love for other people; but, of course, they could not
read this strange handwriting. They only knew that she was old and
wrinkled, and that she stooped as she walked. None of them seemed to
fear her, for her smile was always cheerful, and she had a kindly word
for each of them if they chanced to meet her on her way to and from the
village. With this old, old woman lived a very little girl. So bright
and happy was she that the travellers who passed by the lonesome little
house on the edge of the forest often thought of a sunbeam as they saw
her. These two people were known in the village as Granny Goodyear and
Little Gretchen.

The winter had come and the frost had snapped off many of the smaller
branches from the pine-trees in the forest. G