tched as could be, and each
one crawled into the barrel and vanished. This went on for some time
when, unable to restrain my curiosity and wondering why on earth the
barrel didn't become full, I hurriedly left my hiding-place and looked
therein, to find that it yet remained quite empty. I had barely time
enough to regain my hiding-place when more and more old men came along
the road and disappeared into the barrel.

'This went on all day, and when the evening drew near, I could see my
little man approaching from the town. As I expected, he walked straight
up to the barrel, and in a twinkling had vanished inside. Without giving
myself a moment to think, I once more left my hiding-place and climbed
into the mysterious old tub. It was certainly rather a tight fit, but I
managed to get in somehow or other. Presently I was astonished and
alarmed to find that the bottom of the barrel, which I had imagined to
rest on the earth, began to give way and open like a trap-door, and I
felt myself sinking lower and lower, down a sort of well. The next
thing, I found myself at the bottom of the well, and at the mouth of a
tunnel so narrow and low that I could only go through it on my hands and
knees. This, however, I proceeded to do, and found that it opened into a
great chamber cut out of the solid rock.

'Not daring to enter, I gazed into this strange place, which was lighted
with many candles all affixed to the rocky walls with their own tallow.
On the centre of the floor was piled a great heap of children's
toys,--tin trumpets, wooden horses, drums, hoops, skipping-ropes,
rocking-horses, peg-tops, in fact, every conceivable toy that a sensible
child could wish for. Around this great heap, instead of children, sat
all the poor miserable old men I had seen enter the barrel, and amongst
them I now perceived my husband, who certainly seemed no happier than
the rest. Securely hidden in the narrow passage from every one in the
room, I could now watch all that took place, in the greatest comfort.

'Not a word was said by any of the decrepit creatures as they stared
absently at the toys in the middle of the room. Presently one whom I
took to be their host, as I had not seen him enter the barrel, took from
a peg on the wall, from which it had been suspended by a piece of
string, an old bent tin pipe and proceeded to play. At once the wrinkled
faces of the poor old fellows began to brighten up, and as the music
grew more lively, they rocke