for few of my race believe in the
existence of yours. What, then, can I do? I can only thank you for your
goodness. But tell me at least your name, if you have a name, that I may
cut it on a ring, and wear it always on my finger.'

"'My name,' replied the fairy, 'is Perseverance.'"

"Well!" said the children, looking at each other, "she has cheated us
after all!"

A LOST WAND

More than a hundred years ago, at the foot of a wild mountain in Norway,
stood an old castle, which even at the time I write of was so much out
of repair as in some parts to be scarcely habitable.

In a hall of this castle a party of children met once on Twelfth-night
to play at Christmas games and dance with little Hulda, the only child
of the lord and lady.

The winters in Norway are very cold, and the snow and ice lie for months
on the ground; but the night on which these merry children met it froze
with more than ordinary severity, and a keen wind shook the trees
without, and roared in the wide chimneys like thunder.

Little Hulda's mother, as the evening wore on, kept calling on the
servants to heap on fresh logs of wood, and these, when the long flames
crept around them, sent up showers of sparks that lit up the brown
walls, ornamented with the horns of deer and goats, and made it look as
cheerful and gay as the faces of the children. Hulda's grandmother had
sent her a great cake, and when the children had played enough at all
the games they could think of, the old gray-headed servants brought it
in and set it on the table, together with a great many other nice things
such as people eat in Norway--pasties made of reindeer meat, and castles
of the sweet pastry sparkling with sugar ornaments of ships and flowers
and crowns, and cranberry pies, and whipped cream as white as the snow
outside; but nothing was admired so much as the great cake, and when the
children saw it they set up a shout which woke the two hounds who were
sleeping on the hearths, and they began to bark, which roused all the
four dogs in the kennels outside who had not been invited to see either
the cake or the games, and they barked, too, shaking and shivering with
cold, and then a great lump of snow slid down from the roof, and fell
with a dull sound like distant thunder on the pavement of the yard.

"Hurrah!" cried the children, "the dogs and the snow are helping us to
shout in honor of the cake."

All this time more and more nice things were coming in--fr