the bark." This
he said in jest, hoping to entice his mother to see the wonder.

"Nay, child," said she, "my old bones are too stiff for climbing
now-a-days, and nought that the elves can do can make me wonder, seeing,
as I do, all the strange new things that are coming every day into the
world." And it was In vain that Hans tried to persuade her.

Some days after this, however, Hans on paying a visit to the tree and
finding that the white wood of the beech, from which he had peeled away
the bark, was becoming brown, so that the letters no longer looked out
plain and distinct, the thought came into his head of cutting each of
these raised letters away from the tree and taking them home. He did
so--slicing them carefully off, so that they were not split or broken,
and he was thus able to carry home to his mother, as she would not come
to see them, this first specimen of his own writing.

We shall see how the carrying home of those letters was afterwards to
influence the fate of Hans Gensfleisch--and of the whole world!

Proud was Hans that evening, when after his frugal supper was over, he
swept away the crumbs from off their little table, and arranged side by
side the letters of his name before his astonished mother--so that when
she compared them with his name upon the slip of parchment which was the
register of his birth, she could see that it was really and truly her
son's name that the curious signs signified. She thought her Hans very
clever, and she was pleased. We are not sure that Hans did not think
himself very clever too!

Hans put his letters carefully away in an old leather pouch which had
once belonged to his father, and often after his day's work was done
would he pull them out and arrange them on the table or on the hearth
before the fire. He soon found out that besides making his own name, he
could put together several other words which he had learned to spell.
Out of the letters which formed Hans Gensfleisch, for instance, he could
make the word _fisch_ which is the German for fish--_lang_,
long--_schein_, shine; and it was a great delight to his mother as
well as to himself, when he found too that he could put together the
letters of her name, _Lischen,_ just as they were also written on
the parchment register of his birth.

But he had other discoveries still to make with regard to his letters;
for one evening it so happened that as his mother was busy over a
boiling of ink that he was to take t