ered toward the window and beat against the panes,
as if it wished to be released, so they opened the casement and let it
out in the wind and cold.

Poor little thing! They were very sorry for it; but after a while they
nearly forgot it, for they were but children. Little Hulda only
remembered it, and she carefully enclosed the beautiful sceptre in a
small box. But Midsummer day passed by, and several other Midsummer
days, and still Hulda saw nothing and heard nothing of the fairy. She
then began to fear that she must be dead, and it was a long time since
she had looked at the wand, when one day in the middle of the Norway
summer, as she was playing on one of the deep bay windows of the castle,
she saw a pedlar with a pack on his back coming slowly up the avenue of
pine-trees, and singing a merry song.

"Can I speak to the lady of this castle?" he said to Hulda, making at
the same time a very low bow.

Hulda did not much like him, he had such restless black eyes and such a
cunning smile. His face showed that he was a foreigner; it was as brown
as a nut. His dress also was very strange; he wore a red turban, and had
large earrings in his ears, and silver chains wound round and round his
ankles.

Hulda replied that her mother was gone to the fair at Christiana, and
would not be back for several days.

"Can I then speak with the lord of the castle?" asked the pedlar.

"My father is gone out to fish in the fiord," replied little Hulda; "he
will not return for some time, and the maids and the men are all gone to
make hay in the fields; there is no one left at home but me and my old
nurse."

The pedlar was very much delighted to hear this. However, he pretended
to be disappointed.

"It is very unfortunate," he said, "that your honored parents are not at
home, for I have got some things here of such wonderful beauty that
nothing could have given them so much pleasure as to have feasted their
eyes with the sight of them--rings, bracelets, lockets, pictures--in
short, there is nothing beautiful that I have not got in my pack, and if
your parents could have seen them they would have given all the money
they had in the world rather than not have bought some of them."

"Good pedlar," said little Hulda, "could you not be so very kind as just
to let me have a sight of them?"

The pedlar at first pretended to be unwilling, but after he had looked
all across the wide heath and seen that there was no one coming, and
that th