night, hoping
to find his way easier by the clear light of the morning. He rolled
himself together like a hedgehog in his warm fur-cloak and fell asleep.
I don't know how long he lay there before he was roused by somebody
shaking him, and a stranger's voice said in his ear, "Get up, farmer, or
the snow will bury you, and you will never get out again." The sleeper
pushed his head out of his fur, and opened his sleepy eyes wide. He saw
a tall thin man before him, who carried a young fir-tree, twice as high
as himself, as his staff.

"Come with me," said the man; "we have made a fire under the trees,
where you can rest better than in this open field." The traveller could
not refuse such a friendly invitation, so he got up directly, and
walked on quickly with the stranger. The snowstorm raged so furiously
that they could not see a step before them, but when the stranger lifted
his fir staff and cried with a loud voice, "Ho there, mother of the
snowstorm, make way!" a broad pathway appeared before them, on which no
snowflakes fell. A dreadful snowstorm raged on either side of the
wanderers and behind them, but it did not touch them. It appeared as if
an invisible wall held back the storm on either hand. The men soon
reached the wood, and they had already seen the light of the fire from
afar off. "What is your name?" asked the man with the fir staff, and the
peasant answered, "Hans, the son of tall Hans."

Three men sat at the fire, clothed in white linen garments, as if it had
been midsummer. For thirty paces or more around them, everything looked
like summer; the moss was dry, the herbage was green, and the grass
swarmed with ants and small beetles; but afar off Hans heard the blasts
of wind and the raging of the storm. Still stranger seemed the burning
fire, which spread a bright light around, but threw up no smoke. "What
think you, tall Hans' son? isn't this a better resting-place for the
night than under the juniper bush in the open field?" Hans assented,
and thanked the stranger for bringing him there. Then he took off his
fur-cloak, rolled it up as a pillow for his head, and lay down in the
glow of the fire. The man with the fir staff took his flask from under a
bush and offered Hans a drink, which tasted most excellent, and warmed
his heart. He then lay down too, and began conversing with his
companions in a foreign language, of which Hans could not understand a
word; and Hans presently fell asleep.

When he awoke,