f bright-coloured pebbles and put them in his pocket. After
breakfast, which consisted of bread and water, the farmer said to
Johnnie and Grizzle,

"Come, my dears, I am going to take you for a walk," and with that he
went with them into the forest near-by.

Johnnie said nothing, but dropped one of his pebbles at every turning,
which would show him the way back. When they got far into the forest
the farmer said to the children,

"My dears, I have to go and get something. Stay here and don't go
away, and I'll soon come back. Give me a kiss, children," and with
that he hurried away and went back home by another road.

After a time Grizzle began to cry and said,

"Where's father? Where's father? We can't get home. We can't get
home."

But Johnnie said, "Never mind, Grizzle, I can take you home; you just
follow me."

So Johnnie looked out for the pebbles he had dropped, and found them
at each turn of the road, and a little after midday got home and asked
their mother for their dinner.

"There's nothing in the house, children, but you can go and get some
water from the well and, please God, we'll have bread in the morning."

When the farmer came home he was astonished to find that the children
had found their way home, and could not imagine how they had done so.
But at night he said to his wife,

"Betty, my dear, I do not know how the children came home; but that
does not make any difference; I cannot bear to see them starve before
my eyes, better that they should starve in the forest. I will take
them there again to-morrow."

Johnnie heard all this and crept downstairs and put some more pebbles
into his pocket; and though the farmer took them this time further
into the forest the same thing occurred as the day before. But this
time Grizzle said to her mother and father,

"Johnnie did such a funny thing; whenever we turned a new road he
dropped pebbles. Wasn't that funny? And when we came back he looked
for the pebbles, and there they were; they had not moved."

Then the farmer knew how he had been done, and as evening came on he
locked all the doors so that Johnnie could not get out to get any
pebbles. In the morning he gave them a hunk of bread as before for
their breakfast and told them he was going to take them into the nice
forest again. Grizzle ate her bread, but Johnnie put his into his
pocket, and when they got inside the forest at every turning he
dropped a few crumbs of his bread. When his father l