rds in the world,
and they are in our barn eating everything up.'

The carter went out to the barn where he kept his corn and found it was
just as his wife had said. Thousands and thousands of birds were eating
up the grain, and in the middle of them sat the little sparrow. When he
saw his old enemy, the carter cried out: 'Oh! what an unlucky fellow I
am!'

'Not unlucky enough yet,' answered the sparrow, 'for, mark my words,
carter, your cruel conduct will cost you your life;' and with these
words she flew into the air.

The carter was much depressed by the loss of all his worldly goods, and
sat down at the fire plotting vengeance on the sparrow, while the little
bird sat on the window ledge and sang in mocking tones: 'Yes, carter,
your cruel conduct will cost you your life.'

Then the carter seized his axe and threw it at the sparrow, but he only
broke the window panes, and did not do the bird a bit of harm. She
hopped in through the broken window and, perching on the mantelpiece,
she called out: 'Yes, carter, it will cost you your life.'

The carter, quite beside himself with rage, flew at the sparrow again
with his axe, but the little creature always eluded his blows, and he
only succeeded in destroying all his furniture. At last, however, he
managed to catch the bird in his hands. Then his wife called out: 'Shall
I wring her neck?'

'Certainly not,' replied her husband, 'that would be far too easy a
death for her; she must die in a far crueller fashion than that. I will
eat her alive;' and he suited the action to his words. But the sparrow
fluttered and struggled inside him till she got up into the man's mouth,
and then she popped out her head and said: 'Yes, carter, it will cost
you your life.'

The carter handed his wife the axe, and said: 'Wife, kill the bird in my
mouth dead.'

The woman struck with all her might, but she missed the bird and hit the
carter right on the top of his head, so that he fell down dead. But the
sparrow escaped out of his mouth and flew away into the air.

[From the German, _Kletke_.]

_THE STORY OF THE THREE SONS OF HALI_

Till his eighteenth birthday the young Neangir lived happily in a
village about forty miles from Constantinople, believing that Mohammed
and Zinebi his wife, who had brought him up, were his real parents.

Neangir was quite content with his lot, though he was neither rich nor
great, and unlike most young men of his age had no desire to leave