ruins three
families--who deserve no better fate. How the Umbrella and the Caldron
first come into the story the reader must be left to find out for
himself. Suffice it to say that grouped around them are very many
pleasant and--by way of piquant contrast--a sprinkling of unpleasant
personages, whose adventures and vicissitudes will, I am convinced,
supply excellent entertainment to all lovers of fine literature and
genuine humor.

R. NISBET BAIN.

The Legend

PART I

CHAPTER I.

LITTLE VERONICA IS TAKEN AWAY.

The schoolmaster's widow at the Halap was dead. When a schoolmaster dies
there is not much of a funeral, but when his widow follows him, there is
still less fuss made. And this one had left nothing but a goat, a goose
she had been fattening, and a tiny girl of two years. The goose ought to
have been fattened at least a week longer, but the poor woman had not
been able to hold out so long. As far as the goose was concerned she had
died too soon, for the child it was too late. In fact, she ought never
to have been born. It would have been better had the woman died when her
husband did. (Dear me, what a splendid voice that man had to be sure!)

The child was born some months after its father's death. The mother was
a good, honest woman, but after all it did not seem quite right, for
they already had a son, a priest, a very good son on the whole, only it
was a pity he could not help his mother a bit; but he was very poor
himself, and lived a long way off in Wallachia, as chaplain to an old
priest. But it was said that two weeks ago he had been presented with a
living in a small village called Glogova, somewhere in the mountains
between Selmeczbanya and Besztercebanya. There was a man in Halap, Janos
Kapiczany, who had passed there once when he was driving some oxen to a
fair, and he said it was a miserable little place.

And now the schoolmaster's widow must needs go and die, just when her
son might have been able to help her a little. But no amount of talking
would bring her back again, and I must say, for the honor of the
inhabitants of Halap, that they gave the poor soul a very decent
funeral.

There was not quite enough money collected to defray the expenses, so
they had to sell the goat to make up the sum; but the goose was left,
though there was nothing for it to feed on, so it gradually got thinner
and thinner, till it was its original size again; and instead of
waddling about in th