of
his wet sty and empty trough, master pig gave a loud squeak one November
day, struggled out of his moist lodgings into a pool of water hard by,
and died. For all that he was eaten up, because the nine children wanted
food, whatever it might be, and the jackdaw scolded loudly for bread,
but got less and less daily.

To be sure, the turpentine ran faster and clearer than ever from the
trees, but then it was worth less to the old Jew who bought it, and the
striped red serge and rancid oil were dearer than ever; so the children
ate their supper by the light of the pine-cones they gathered in the
forest, and went to bed to keep warm, where Mihal, the youngest boy,
told them long stories of the old days in Bohemia, when there were
fierce witches with steeple-crowned hats and flame-colored cloaks, who
were burned to death in the market-place of Prague, and their ashes
scattered on the waters of the Elbe, to find no rest on earth or in the
water,--and legends of gnomes and elves that worked with little swarthy
hands in the mountain mines, and hid their treasures away from human
miners, unless spell and incantation brought them to light, and then the
gnomes would scream and sob in the deep caverns till the miners fled
away for fear.

These stories Mihal had learned from his old grandmother, who died the
year before the famine. She used to sit in the open air knitting, or
spinning with a distaff, and the scarlet yarn that trailed across the
gray jacket and green petticoat glowed in the sun like a thread of
crawling fire, and seemed to keep time to her droning voice, as she
poured story after story into the wide-open ears of the child nestled on
her feet.

But all these pretty tales of Mihal did not keep his eight brothers and
sisters warm. Zitza, the least of all, cried herself to sleep often, and
woke with hunger, wailing, in the sad and quaint accents of her land,
for bread and berries. These were sorrowful sounds for poor Otto Koenig;
he knew well the eager pain for food that forced that cry from the
child's lips,--for his black crust was as small as it could be to keep
him alive, and his cup of sour beer was only a quarter filled. Often, as
he shouldered the rude axe with which he gashed the trees, and wandered
out into the forest, the spicy smell of the pine-boughs seemed to make
him sick and giddy, he was so faint with hunger; and instead of the
hymns the wind used to sing in the long green tufts of leaves, there was