hill with corn. When the corn was ripe
the troll did not appear at all. He was down under the hill busily
cutting the roots of the corn, well content with this share of the
harvest. So the farmer was crafty in his planting. The next season it
was carrots, and the next, beans. The troll gathered his carrot tops
and his bean roots, and laid them away carefully for the winter.

Which goes to show how easily you can satisfy a troll, but what a poor
farmer he is.

SCHOOL

A PURITAN SCHOOL-DAY

Peregrine fastened his long black cloak, and Patience smoothed her
white apron and tied the strings of her close-fitting bonnet beneath
her dimpled chin. The brother and sister crossed the threshold of the
log house which was their home in old Plymouth, almost three hundred
years ago, and started to walk across the corn fields and through a
patch of woodland, lying between their house and the next cabin.

They were two little Puritan children, going to school.

They laughed and pointed happily to the full ears of corn as they
crossed the fields. There would be a good harvest, they knew, and that
meant plenty of hot corn-meal mush filling the big copper kettle that
hung over their fireplace, and corn would fill the huge brick oven.
But as Peregrine and Patience crept softly between the great pine
trees of the wood, they clasped each other's hands more tightly, and
started to see a red-winged bird dart out of the branches. "Suppose
it had been the bright feather head-dress of an Indian," they
whispered. One was very apt to meet Indians on the way to school in
those old-time days.

The long distance was travelled in safety, though. Promptly at eight
o'clock, the two little Puritans knocked at the door of a second log
house and it was opened by their neighbor, Mistress Endicott. There
was no school-bell, there were no desks and comfortable chairs and
blackboards and picture books. Mistress Endicott had risen from her
spinning wheel, that stood by the fireplace, to let in Peregrine and
Patience, and a dozen other small boys and girls of Plymouth. There
was no real schoolhouse as yet in Plymouth. Mistress Endicott kept
house, and tended her garden, and taught all the children of the
neighborhood as well.

There were long settles beside the fireplace and here the children
seated themselves, Peregrine on one side, and Patience on the other,
to study their lessons. They were given queer little books, called the
New England Pr