not cut much wood. Good-day!"--and he skipped away behind the wood-pile.

Jules jumped up and looked after him, but he was gone. These
fairy-people have a strange way of disappearing.

Jules was not married and had no home of his own. He lived with a good
couple who had a little house and an only daughter, and that was about
the sum of their possessions. The money Jules paid for his living helped
them a little, and they managed to get along. But they were quite poor.

Jules was not poor. He had no one but himself to support, and he had
laid by a sum of money for himself when he should be too old to work.

But you never saw a man so disappointed as he was that evening as he sat
by the fire after supper.

He had told the family all about his meeting with the dwarf, and
lamented again and again that he had lost such a capital chance of
making his fortune.

"If I only could have thought what it was best to do!" he said, again
and again.

"I know what I should have done," said Selma, the only daughter of the
poor couple, a girl about eleven years old.

"What?" asked Jules, eagerly.

"I should have just snatched the little fellow up, and rubbed his feet
and wrapped them in my shawl until they were warm," said she.

"But he would not have liked that," said Jules. "He was an old man and
very particular."

"I would not care," said Selma; "I wouldn't let such a little fellow
stand suffering in the snow, and I wouldn't care how old he was."

"I hope you'll never meet any of these fairy-people," said Jules. "You'd
drive them out of the country with your roughness, and we might all
whistle for our fortunes."

Selma laughed and said no more about it.

Every day after that, Jules looked for the dwarf-man, but he did not see
him again. Selma looked for him, too, for her curiosity had been much
excited; but as she was not allowed to go to the woods in the winter, of
course she never saw him.

But, at last, summer came; and, one day, as she was walking by a little
stream which ran through the woods, whom should she see, sitting on the
bank, but the dwarf-man! She knew him in an instant, from Jules'
descriptions. He was busily engaged in fishing, but he did not fish like
any one else in the world. He had a short pole, which was floating in
the water, and in his hand he held a string which was fastened to one
end of the pole.

When Selma saw what the old fellow was doing, she burst out laughing.
She knew it was not ve