up to his father's palace and offered his services
there.

The king's men told him that a horse-shoer was indeed wanted at the
palace, but he must be one who could lift up the feet of the horse with
the golden shoes, and such a one they had not yet been able to find. The
prince asked to see the horse, and as soon as he entered the stable the
steed began to neigh in a friendly fashion, and stood as quiet and still
as a lamb while the prince lifted up his hoofs, one after the other, and
showed the king's men the famous golden shoes.

After this the king's men began to talk about the bird Grip, and how
strange it was that he would not sing, however well he was attended to.
The horse-shoer then said that he knew the bird very well; he had seen
it when it sat in its cage in another king's palace, and if it did
not sing now it must be because it did not have all that it wanted. He
himself knew so much about the bird's ways that if he only got to see it
he could tell at once what it lacked.

The king's men now took counsel whether they ought to take the stranger
in before the king, for in his chamber sat the bird Grip along with the
weeping princess. It was decided to risk doing so, and the horse-shoer
was led into the king's chamber, where he had no sooner called the bird
by its name than it began to sing and the princess to smile. Then the
darkness cleared away from the king's eyes, and the more the bird sang
the more clearly did he see, till at last in the strange horse-shoer
he recognised his youngest son. Then the princess told the king how
treacherously his eldest sons had acted, and he had them banished from
his kingdom; but the youngest prince married the princess, and got the
horse with the golden shoes and half the kingdom from his father, who
kept for himself so long as he lived the bird Grip, which now sang with
all its heart to the king and all his court.

Snowflake

Slavonic story. Contes Populaires Slaves, traduits par Louis Leger.
Paris: Leroux, Editeur.

Once upon a time there lived a peasant called Ivan, and he had a wife
whose name was Marie. They would have been quite happy except for one
thing: they had no children to play with, and as they were now old
people they did not find that watching the children of their neighbours
at all made up to them for having one of their own.

One winter, which nobody living will ever forget, the snow lay so deep
that it came up to the knees of even the tall