e hot days of May, which
so quicken the growth of the crops, would be succeeded by a frost that
would blight utterly the whole field produce of the island of Dago in
a single night.

And so it happened. Not on that island alone but throughout the whole
of northern Russia, the hopes of the agriculturists were shattered by
that terrible frost. The capricious weather brought in its train that
pestilence which attacks only the poor--Starvation.

In such circumstances larger and more powerful States may easily
procure money, and tide over the evil day by purchasing grain in lands
more blessed than theirs, and distributing it among their people. But
a small and poverty-stricken republic like the island of Dago could
not so easily get gold and silver to give in exchange for bread. The
poor people had to fall back upon such nutriment as fish and cheese.
"This year," they said, "we must eat no bread." That was the
solution.

The old women of the island now came much more frequently to the tower
to sell their flowers. But instead of gold they now begged for a
little corn.

"Listen to me!" said the Master of the tower to them one day. "You
want bread. Well, I know a secret which enables me to transform earth
at once into corn and barley. Bring me earth, then--but rich and
fertile it must be--and I will give you corn in exchange for it.
However large the sack may be in which you bring the clods, just so
large will be the sack of corn I will give you in return."

At first it was only the women that made the trial. They brought the
magician good, dark loam in small sacks. For this they received a like
quantity of wheat. The grain was such as they had never before seen.
At once the strong young men were seized with the desire to
participate in such profitable barter, and soon they too were carrying
to the tower as heavy sacks of mother earth as their brawny arms and
broad shoulders could support.

The Very Reverend Pastor Waimoener did, indeed, pronounce his anathema
against all who dared to make such pilgrimages to the Satanic shrine
in order to barter their own blessed earth for a stranger's accursed
corn. He warned them that grain grown in such a mysterious and
suspicious soil could not but give them the itch and elflock, and that
one day their souls must inevitably sink for ever in the pool of fire.
His threats and warnings, however, were of no avail. The people's
skins did not turn black with eating the mysterious corn, n