When they rose to go they took the wooden plate and the
cup away with them as keepsakes.

Dobromil seated his wife in front of him on the horse and sped
homewards with her. All his people were at the palace gate waiting to
tell him what had happened in his absence.

It seems that the devil himself had come and before their very eyes
had carried off his wife and mother-in-law. They looked at each other
in amazement as Dobromil rode up with what seemed to be the same wife
whom the devil had so recently carried off.

Dobromil explained to them what had happened and with one voice they
called down punishment on the head of the wicked sister.

The golden spinning wheel had vanished. So Dobrunka hunted out her old
one and set to work at once to spin for her husband's shirts. No one
in the kingdom had such fine shirts as Dobromil and no one was
happier.

THE GOLDEN GODMOTHER

THE STORY OF POOR LUKAS

[Illustration: {A baby in a crib}]

THE GOLDEN GODMOTHER

There was once a wealthy farmer named Lukas who was so careless in the
management of his affairs that there came a time when all his property
was gone and he had nothing left but one old tumble-down cottage. Then
when it was too late he realized how foolish he had been.

He had always prayed for a child but during the years of his
prosperity God had never heard him. Now when he was so poor that he
had nothing to eat, his wife gave birth to a little daughter. He
looked at the poor unwelcome little stranger and sighed, for he didn't
know how he was going to take care of it.

The first thing to be thought about was the christening. Lukas went to
the wife of a laborer who lived nearby and asked her to be godmother.
She refused because she didn't see that it would do her any good to be
godmother to a child of a man as poor as Lukas.

"You see, Lukas, what happens to a man who has wasted his property,"
his wife said. "While we were rich the burgomaster himself was our
friend, but now even that poverty-stricken woman won't raise a finger
to help us.... See how the poor infant shivers, for I haven't even any
old rags in which to wrap it! And it has to lie on the bare straw! God
have mercy on us, how poor we are!" So she wept over the baby,
covering it with tears and kisses.

Suddenly a happy thought came to her. She wiped away her tears and
said to her husband:

"I beg you, Lukas, go to our old neighbor, the burgomaster's wife. She
is wealthy. I'm sure s