A post-sledge was gliding rapidly over the frozen road towards Viletna; and as it neared the village, a thin worn man, with white hair, who was sitting in it alone, leant forward and touched the driver.
"I want to go to the great house. You remember?"
"Oh, you're going to see Mikhail? He hasn't come to the great house yet, though. It's all being done up."
"No, I'm going to Madame Olsheffsky's!"
"Anna Olsheffsky! Haven't you heard she was drowned in the flood? Washed away. Just before the children lost their property to that thief of a cousin!"
The driver went on adding the details, not noticing that the gentleman had fallen back, and lay gasping as if for air.
"You knew Anna Olsheffsky, perhaps?" he said at last, turning towards the traveller. Then seeing his face, "Holy Saints! What is the matter? He'll die surely, and no help to be had!"
"She was my wife," said the gentleman hoarsely. "You don't remember me? I am André Olsheffsky."
"To think that I shouldn't have known you,Barin!" cried the driver in great excitement, dropping the reins. "Not that it's much to be wondered at, and you looking a young man when you left! Welcome home! Welcome home!"
"Where are the children?" said André Olsheffsky, brokenly. "Perhaps they're dead, too?"
"Oh, the children are all well,Barin! They are at Volodia Ivanovitch's."
"Drive me there, then," said Mr. Olsheffsky; and the sledge dashed off with a peal of its bells, and drew up with a flourish in front of Volodia's doorway.
"Do look out, Elena!" cried Boris, who was carving a wooden man with an immense pocket-knife. "Here's a sledge stopped, and a funny tall gentleman getting out—not old, but all white!"
Elena went to the window, but the stranger had disappeared into the shop.
They could hear voices talking, now loud, now soft, then a cry of astonishment from Maria. The door burst open, and Volodia, his grey hair flying, the tears rolling down his cheeks, dragged in the white-haired gentleman by the hand.
"Oh, children! children! this is a happy day. TheBarin'scome home. This is your father!"
The next morning Elena and Boris awoke with a delightful feeling of expectation.
It seemed impossible to realize that their father had really come back to them, and that he was dearer and kinder than anything they had imagined!
"If only mamma were here," sighed Elena, "howhappy we should be!"
"Perhaps she knows," said Boris soberly. "She always told us papa was a hero, and I'm sure he looks like one."
André Olsheffsky felt his wife's loss deeply. The children were his only comfort, and every moment he could spare from his business affairs he gave to them.
With Elena he discussed their position seriously.
It would be impossible, he said, to prove their claim to Madame Olsheffsky's estate unless the lost box could be recovered, but if that were ever found the papers inside would completely establish their right. "I have sent notices to all the peasants, describing the box, and offering a reward. Who knows, Elena? itmaybe discovered!"
Time passed on, and though Mr. Olsheffsky made many expeditions into the town of Mourum, and drove all round the country, making enquiries of the peasants, he could hear nothing of the wooden box.
"It's one of the secrets of the lake," said Volodia. "That's my opinion; it's lying snugly at the bottom there; and it's no good looking for it anywhere else."
But Mr. Olsheffsky continued his enquiries.
One day, just as Daria and Var-Vara were about to start for a morning walk—Elena and Boris having gone for a drive with their father—an old man in a rough sheep-skin coat and plaited bark shoes came up to the house door, and taking off his high felt hat respectfully, asked if he could speak to theBarin.[D]
[D] Master.
"The master has gone out," said Var-Vara, "but I daresay you can see him in the afternoon. Have you anything particular to ask him?"
"Nothing to ask, but something to show," and the old man blinked his eyes cunningly.
"Not the wooden box!" screamed Daria. "Oh, let's go at once! Come, Var-Vara!Whata surprise for papa when he gets back!Isit the wooden box? You might tell me," cried Daria, fixing her blue eyes on the oldmujik's face pleadingly.
"It may be, and it mayn't be," replied the old man. "You may come along with me if you like, Daria Andreïevna. I'll show you the way to where I live—near the forest, you know. Of course, I've heard all about the reward," he continued, "and as I was clearing a bit of my yard this morning, what should I find but a heap of something hard—pebbles, and drift, and sticks, and such like. When I came to sorting it out—for I thought, 'Why waste good wood, when you can burn it? the good God doesn't like waste'—I struck against the corner of something hard, and there was a——. Well, what do you think, Daria Andreïevna?"
"A box! A box!" cried Daria, seizing one of the old man's hands, and dancing round him in an ecstasy of delight.
"Not at all, Daria Andreïevna! The legs of an old chair."
Daria's face fell. "I don't see why you come to tell papa you've found an old chair!" she said crossly.
"Stop a bit,Matoushka. There's more to come. Where was I?"
"The chair! You'd just found it," said Daria, pulling at his hand impatiently.
"So I had. A chair! Well, it had no back, and as I pulled it out it felt heavy, very heavy. It wasn't much to look at—a poor chair I should call it—and I thought, 'Thisisn't much of a find;' but there inside it was something sticking as tight as wax!"
"The box!" cried Daria, "I felt sure of it!" and seizing Var-Vara by one hand, and themujikby the other, she dragged them down the street, the old peasant remonstrating and grumbling.
"Not so fast, Daria Andreïevna!" said Var-Vara, gasping for breath at the sudden rush. "Let Ivan go first; he knows the way!"
Daria could scarcely control her impatience during the walk.
"Make haste, Var-Vara! we shall never get there," she kept crying; and old Var-Vara, who was stout, and had on a heavy fur pelisse, arrived at the hut in a state of breathless exhaustion.
"Aïe! Aïe! what a child it is! Show her the box now, Ivan, or we shall have no peace."
Ivan went to the corner of his hut, where a large object stood on the top of the whitewashed stove under a red and yellow pocket-handkerchief. He carefully uncovered it, and stepping back a few paces said proudly,
"What do you think ofthat, now?"
It was the box, safe and unhurt, Madame Olsheffsky's name still on it in scratched white letters.
Daria was wild with joy, and almost alarmed Ivan with her excitement. She danced about the room, threw her arms round his neck, and finally persuaded him to carry the box to Volodia's house, so that it might be there as a delightful surprise to her father on his return.
The children, Volodia and his wife, Var-Vara, and Adam; all stood round eagerly as André Olsheffsky superintended the forcing open of the precious box.
"It's my belief the papers will be a pulp," whispered Volodia. "We must be ready to stand by theBarinwhen he finds out the disappointment."
But the papers were not hurt. The box contained another tin-lined case, in which the parchments had lain securely, and though damaged in appearance, they were as legible as the day on which they were first written.
"Oh, papa, Iamso glad!" shouted Boris and Daria; and Elena silently took her father's hand.
"I always thought theBarinwould have his own again," cried Volodia triumphantly, forgetting that only a moment before he had been full of dismal prophecies.
Adam and Var-Vara wept for joy, and Ivan stood by smiling complacently. He felt that all this happiness hadbeen brought about entirely by his own exertions, and he already had visions of the manner in which he would employ the handsome reward.
"No more troubling about my old age," he thought. "I shall have as comfortable a life as the best of them."
That evening Mr. Olsheffsky started for Moscow, carrying the parchments with him.
The two months of his absence seemed very long to the children, though they heard from him constantly; and there were great rejoicings when he returned with the news that their affairs had at last been satisfactorily settled. Mikhail Paulovitch had withdrawn his claim, and the great house was their own again.
All the peasants of the neighbourhood came in a body to congratulate them. Those who could not get into Volodia's little sitting-room remained standing outside, and looked in respectfully through the window; while the spokesman read a long speech he had prepared for the occasion.
Mr. Olsheffsky made an appropriate reply, and then, turning to Volodia and the old servants, he thanked them in a few simple words for their goodness to the children.
"You might have knocked me flat down with a birch twig," said Uncle Volodia afterwards, when talking it over with Adam. "The idea of thankingusfor what was nothing at all but a real pleasure! He's a good man, theBarin!"
The springtime found the children and their father settled once more in their old home, with Adam, Var-Vara, andAlexis; and life flowing on very much as it had always done, except for the absence of the gentle, motherly, Anna Olsheffsky.
Uncle Volodia continued to look after his shop with zeal; and the two rooms with the gilt furniture, which Mr. Olsheffsky had insisted on his not removing, became objects of the greatest pride and joy to him.
He never allowed anyone but himself to dust them, and in spare moments he polished the looking-glass with a piece of leather, kept carefully for the purpose in a cigar box.
"It's a great pleasure to me," he remarked one day to a neighbour, "to think that when I leave this house to Boris Andreïevitch—as I intend to do, after old Maria—it will have two rooms that are fit foranyone of the family to sleep in. He'll never have to be ashamed ofthem!"
On his seventieth birthday, Elena—now grown a tall slim young lady, with grave brown eyes—persuaded him that it was really time to take a little rest, and enjoy himself.
He thereupon sold his stock, and devoted himself to gardening in the yard at the back of his house; where he would sit on summer evenings smoking his pipe, in the midst of giant dahlias and sunflowers.
Here Daria often came with Boris and Tulipan; and sitting by Uncle Volodia's side, listened to the well-known stories she had heard since her babyhood—always ending up with the same words in a tone of great solemnity—
"Andthis, children, is a true story, every word of it!"
It was a room at the top of a rough wooden house in Norway. Though it was only a garret, it was all very white and clean; and little Erik Svenson lay in the small bed facing the barred window, through which the moonbeams streamed till they seemed to turn the walls into polished silver.
As Erik tossed about, he heard his mother working in the room below.
Thethump, thump,of her iron, as she wearily finished the last of the clothes, that must be sent home to the rich family at the farmhouse, early next morning.
"Poor mother! how hard she works," thought Erik, "and I can't do more than mind Farmer Torvald's boat on the fiord. If I could only be employed in the town, I might be able to help her!"
Thump,thump, went the iron. The clock chimed twelve, and still the poor washerwoman smoothed and folded, though her heavy eyes almost refused to keep open, and the room began to feel the chill of the frosty air outside.
"Erik sha'n't want for anything while I have two arms to work for him," she said to herself; and went on until the iron fell from her tired hand, and she sank back in her chair in a deep sleep.
Erik, too, had closed his eyes, and was dreaming happily, when he was awakened by the brush of something light and soft, across his pillow.
Starting up, he saw that the moon was still brilliant, and in its clearest rays stood a faint white figure, with shadowy wings outstretched behind it.
A vapoury garment enveloped it, and the face seemed young and beautiful.
"Oh, how wonderful! How wonderful you are!" cried Erik. "Why have I never seen you before?"
"I am Vanda, the Spirit of the Moon," said the Angel gently. "Only to those who are in need of help can I become visible. Your mother knows me well. Winter and summer, I have soothed her to sleep; and to-night, as you looked from the window, your thoughts joined mine, and I was able to come to you. What will you ask of me?"
"Oh, Vanda, dear Vanda! Show me how to help my mother; I ask nothing else!" cried Erik.
He jumped from his bed, and threw himself at the feet of the shadowy Angel.
"Do you see that window?" said the Moon-Spirit, pointing to the small panes that were now covered with a delicatetracery of glittering frost-work. "Of what do those patterns remind you?"
Erik
"Of flowers!" cried Erik. "I have often thought so. Sometimes I can see grasses, and boughs, and roses, butalwayslilies, because they are so white and spotless."
The Angel smiled softly.
"To-night I shall shine upon them, and make them live," she said. "Take what you will find upon the window sill at sunrise, and sell them in the town. Bring the money back to your mother at night-time."
With the last words the Moon-Spirit melted into the white light, leaving Erik with a feeling of the happiest expectation.
Long before daybreak he was awake, and his first thought was of the wonderful ice-flowers. Would the Angel have kept her promise? What would he see awaiting him?
As the rays of the sun shot over the fiord, he sprang out of bed and ran to the window. There lay a bunch of beautiful white lilies, nestling in a mass of delicate moss-like green.
"Theyarethe frost-flowers!" cried Erik, and wild with joy he rushed into his mother's room, and held the bunch up for her to look at.
"Look, look, mother! See what we have had given us. We shall soon have enough money to rent the little farm you have always been longing for!"
Erik's visit to the town was very successful. He sold his flowers directly, although he had some difficulty in answering all the questions of the townspeople, who wanted to know where he had grown such delicate things in the middle of a severe winter. To everyone he replied that it was a secret; and they were obliged to be contented.
He returned home in good time for his work upon the fiord, and if it had not been for the store of silver pieces he poured into his mother's work-box, he would almost have imagined that he had only been dreaming.
That night, as he laid his curly head upon the pillow, his mind was full of thoughts about the Moon-Angel. He wondered if she would appear again, and whether she would once more leave him her gift of the white frost-flowers.
The moon shone with silvery clearness into the garret; and as the boy strained his eyes towards the window, the bright form slowly floated through the bars and stretched a pale hand towards him.
"You have done well, to-day, Erik. Look to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, until my light has waned and faded; and every day you will find the lilies waiting for you."
Again Erik felt the soft brush of Vanda's wings, and she disappeared in the path of the moonbeams.
The next morning the flowers lay fresh and fair upon the window-sill, and for days the frost-lilies were always blooming.
But each time the bunch grew smaller and smaller, untilat last, when the moon was nothing more than a thread of brightness, Erik found one single blossom lying half drooping on the window-frame.
"Vanda's gifts have ended," thought Erik, "but she has been a good true friend to us! We have gained enough money for my mother to put away her iron, and take the little farmhouse by the fiord. How happy we shall be together."
The winter was nearly over, and Erik and his mother had settled down to their happy life in the farmhouse.
Frost-flowers, with delicate fantastic groupings, still bloomed upon the window-panes; but the Moon-Angel was not there to give them her fairy-like gifts of life and beauty.
She had gone to console other struggling workers.
Long, long years ago, a young girl wandering with her herd of goats upon the Mettenalp, lost her way amidst a mountain storm, and fell into a chasm of the rock, where she lay white and lifeless.
The terrified goats reached the valley beneath, but the young girl was never again heard of.
The spirits of the great mountain had claimed her for an Alpen-Echo, and every day, for hundreds of years after, she floated amongst the snow-covered peaks and crags of the Mettenalp, answering every horn that sounded from the hunters or cow-herds, with a soft, sweet note, so sad and distant it was like a soul in pain, and tears came to your eyes—you knew not why—as you listened to its exquisite music.
"Come, follow me! Follow me to my secret haunts," wailed the Echo. "Give me my soul! Give me my soul!"—but no one through all the centuries had ever climbed to the Echo's hiding-place.
"IfonlyI could make them understand!" sobbed the Echo,"my long bondage would cease. The first foot that treads my prison, frees me, and gives me rest."
However, all the world was too busy to listen to the poor Echo, and she called and cried in vain through the misty ages!
A boy, with a long Alpen-horn in his hand, stood by a châlet far away in the wilds of Switzerland. Every now and then he blew a few wailing notes upon the horn—notes that echoed across the valley, up to the snow-covered heights beyond—and he smiled as the answer floated clearly back again.
"The echoes are talking together, to-day," he said to himself. "They love the bright air and the sunshine;" and again he blew a long, changing note, that died away softly into the far distance.
"Tra-la-la-a-a" came faintly from the opposite mountain—but to the boy's astonishment the echo did not now cease, and fade away, as it always had done before. It shifted from point to point; its elfin tones ringing sweet and sad like the bugle of a Fairy Huntsman.
All that day the Echo sounded in the boy's ears, all night it whispered amongst the mountain tops; and as soon as it became daylight he sprang up, determined that he would climb the side of the opposite valley, and find out the reason of the strange music.
A pale-green light tinged the sky, the mountains looked dark and forbidding, and from the peaks above came the soft sighing of the distant Echo.
"It is like a soul in pain," thought the boy. "Imustfind out what it means!" and he began to climb higher and higher, until the valley lay far beneath him, and his home looked a little brown speck amidst a sea of fields and pine trees.
Before him still sounded the Elfin voice, now dying into a whisper, now ringing clear and distinct, as though close beside him—but always with the same beseeching sadness: "Follow me! Follow me to my secret haunts! Give me my soul! Give me my soul!" And the boy climbed on until he reached the rocky crag which formed the summit of the mountain.
"At last!" he cried, as he stretched out his arms to clasp the Echo's fairy-like form that floated mistily before him ... but the Echo had faded from his sight as he approached her; and her last words were borne faintly towards him as she vanished into the golden glory of the sunshine—
"At last! At last! I am at rest at last!"
The boy had learnt the secret of the Alpen-Echo. He had freed her soul from its long bondage, and a few days afterwards they found him lying with a smile upon his face on the topmost peak of the Mettenalp.
In the pale light of the moon the sleeping town lay hushed and noiseless. At its foot the river rolled, spanned by the curves of the old grey stone bridge, and behind rose the giant hills, clothed with tracts of pine and birch trees. A high wall surrounded the town, with towers at intervals, from which gleamed the light of the watchmen's lanterns.
All was silent on the earth and in the air, when through the deep blue of the star-sprinkled sky a little Child-Angel winged his way from Heaven, and hovering over the steep red roofs beneath him, folded his wings and dropped softly into the deserted Market Place. In his hand he held a Scroll with strange writing upon it, and crossing the Square over the rough cobblestones, he fixed the paper to the Fountain, and spreading his white wings, flew up again to the home from which he came.
Next day the country people flocking into the Market Place saw to their astonishment a track of beautiful white flowers springing up from amongst the cobblestones, and stretching from one corner of the Square to the Fountain.
They were star-like flowers, with bright-green leaves, and they grew in patches—"like a child's footsteps," the women said.
A little crowd soon gathered round the paper fastened to the ancient Fountain. On the top of the Scroll was written, very clearly—"All those who can read the words beneath shall be rewarded generously," but the lines that followed were in a strange language, and in such crabbed characters that they defied every effort to decipher them.
All day the crowd ebbed and flowed round the Fountain, while the learned men of the town came with their dictionaries under their arms and spectacles on nose, and sat on stools, attempting to make out the crooked letters of the inscription.
In the end each one decided upon a different language, and the argument became so warm between them that they had to be separated by a party of watchmen, and conducted back again to their own houses.
Professors from the University on the other side of the mountains journeyed over the rough roads, and brought their learning to the old stone Fountain in the Market Place—but they, too, went away discomfited.
No one could read the strange writing, and no one could pull down the paper, for it appeared to be fixed to the stone by some means that made it impossible to tear it away.
Time went on, and the snow covered up the Market Square, threw a white mantle over the steep roofs, and buried the old gardens in its soft deepness.
In one of the houses near the spot where the little Angel had first touched the earth lived a poor, lonely woman. She worked all day at some fine kind of needlework, but when, in the evenings, the sun had set and the twilight began to fall, she would steal out for a few minutes to breathe the fresh air. Often, though she was so wearied with her incessant stitching, she would carry in her hand a flower from the plants that grew in her latticed window to a neighbour's sick child. It was a weary climb up a steep flight of stairs to the attic where the sick child lay, but it was reward enough to the woman to see the bright smile that lighted up the little drawn face as she laid the flower on the counterpane.
All the summer the poor sempstress had been too busy during the daylight, to afford time even to cross the Square to study the strange paper on the Fountain. "If learned men cannot read it, a poor ignorant woman like me could certainly never do so," she said to the child, and the little girl looked up at her with tender love in her eyes.
"You are so good, you could doanything," she whispered, and clasped the worn hand on which the needle-pricks had left the marks of many long years of patient sewing. "I should like to see the paper so much," continued the child, after a thoughtful pause. "I wish I could walk there, but it is so long since I walked, and the snow is so deep now," and she sighed.
"Some day, if the good God pleases, I will carry you there," said the workwoman—and the child as she laypatiently on her little bed, dreamt and dreamt of the mysterious paper that no one could read, until the longing to see it became uncontrollable, and her friend the sempstress promised that she would spare an hour the next day from her work, and if the sun shone she would carry the invalid across the Market Place to the old stone Fountain.
The next morning the child's face was bright with anticipation, as the woman wrapped her in a warm shawl and carried her fragile weight down the staircase. The cobblestones hurt the poor sempstress's feet, and she staggered under the light burden, but she persevered, for the child's murmurs of delight rang in her ears—
"How sweetly the sun shines! How white the snow looks! How beautiful, howbeautifulit is to be alive!"
When they reached the Fountain the sun shone brightly upon the Angel's Scroll.
The workwoman seated herself on one of the swept stone steps, still holding the child in her arms, and they gazed long and earnestly at the writing above them.
Gradually a smile of delight spread across both their faces. "It is quite,quiteeasy!" they cried together. "How is it people have been puzzling so long?"—for as they looked the crabbed letters unrolled before them, straightened, and arranged themselves in order, and the Angel's message was read by the poor workwoman and the sick child.
"Love God, and live for others," said the Scroll, and asoft light seemed to stream from it and shed a glow of happiness right into the hearts of the two who read it. The air was warmer, the sun shone more brightly, and just by the foot of the Fountain, pushing through the snow, sprang one blue head of palest forget-me-not.
As the letters on the Scroll became plainer and plainer, the paper slowly rolled up and shrunk away, until it had disappeared altogether.
The sempstress carried back the child up the steep staircase, laid her tenderly on her bed, and hurried away to her own attic.
In her absence strange things had happened. The room was swept and tidy, the flowers were watered, and the piece of work she had left half done was lying finished on the broad window seat. The poor woman looked round her in astonishment. She went downstairs to enquire if any neighbours had prepared this surprise for her, but they only stared at her, and told her "she must have left her wits in the Market Place," and that "that was what came of leaving your own duties to look after other people's."
The sempstress did not listen to their taunts, for a song of joy was welling up in her heart—a song so sweet and true, it might have been the echo of that sung by the angels. Never had life seemed so beautiful to her. The ill looks of the neighbours appeared to her to be smiles of kindness and love; their hard speeches sounded soft and altered; the steep stairs to her room were not so steep, her attic not sobare and desolate. Life was no longer lonely, for the song in her heart brought her all the happiness she had ever hoped for.
The sick child, too, found the same wonderful change in all that surrounded her. The aunt with whom she lived, who had always been so careless and unloving, now seemed to the child to be kind and gentle. Her aching back was less painful, her thoughts as she lay on her bed were bright and happy. The Angel's message had brought sunshine to the lives of the only two who could read and understand it.
In time the sick child went to live with the sempstress, and their love for each other grew and strengthened, and overflowed in a thousand little acts of kindness to all who came near them. Their room was filled with brightness. The birds flew to perch on the window-sill and sing in the early mornings; flowers bloomed in the cracks of the old stonework; the sempstress sang as she worked, and whenever she left her sewing to carry the child out into the Market Place to breathe the fresh air she would find her work finished when she returned.
"It was a happy day that we read the message in the Market Place," she said to the sick child; "indeed we have been rewarded generously."
Deep down in a buried Etruscan tomb there lay a little three-cornered piece of pottery.
It had some letters on it and a beautiful man's head, and had belonged to a King some three thousand years ago.
Its only companions were a family of moles; for everything else had been taken out of the tomb so long ago that no one remembered anything about it.
"What a dull life mine is," groaned the piece of pottery. "No amusement, and no society! It's enough to make one smash oneself to atoms!"
"Dull, but safe," replied the Mole, who never took the least notice of the three-cornered Chip's insults. "And then, remember the dignity. You have the whole tomb to yourself."
"Except for you," said the Chip ungraciously.
"Well, we must live somewhere," said the Mole, quite unmoved, "and I'm sure we don't interfere. I always bring up my children to treat you with the greatest respect, in spite of your being cr-r—br-r—. Ishouldsay, not quite so large as you used to be."
"If only you had belonged to a King," sighed the Chip, "I might have had someone of my own class to talk to."
"I don't wish to belong to a King," said the Mole. "There's nothing I should dislike more. I am for a Liberal Government, and no farming."
"What vulgarity!" cried the Chip.
"It's a blessing it's dark, and he can't see the children laughing," thought the Mole-mother, "or I don't know what would happen."
"Everything that belonged to a King should be treated with Royal respect," continued the Chip.
"As to that, I really haven't time for it," replied the Mole; "what with putting the children to bed, and getting them up again, and all my work in the passages, I can't devote myself to Court life."
"If you like, you can represent the people," said the Chip. "Idon't mind, only then I can't talk to you."
"You can read out Royal Decrees, and make laws," said the Mole; and to herself she added, "It won't disturb me. I shan't take any notice of them."
"Who's to be nobles?" said the Chip, crossly. "I'd rather not do the thing at all, if it can't be done properly!"
"Well, I can't be people and nobles too, that's quite certain," remarked the Mole-mother, as she tidied up her house. "Besides, the children are too young—they wouldn't understand."
"What's it like up above?" enquired the Chip languidlyafter a short pause, for it was almost better to speak to the Mole, than to nobody. "People still walk on two legs?"
"Why, of course," answered the Mole, "there's never any difference in people, thatIcan see. They're always exactly alike, except in tempers."
The Chip was sitting upon a little stone-heap against one of the pillars. He fondly imagined it was a Throne; and the Mole-mother, with the utmost good nature, had never undeceived him.
As the last words were spoken, a lump of earth fell from the roof, flattening out the stone-heap, and the Chip only escaped destruction by rolling on one side, where he lay shaking with fright and calling to the Mole-mother to help him. But the Mole had retired with her family to a place of safety. She knew what was happening. The tomb was being opened by a party of antiquarians, and in a few more minutes the blue sky shone into the darkness, and the three-cornered piece of pottery was lying wrapped in paper in the pocket of one of the explorers.
When the Chip recovered himself, he found he was reclining on the velvet floor of a large glass case full of Etruscan vases. Here was the society he had been pining for all his life!
"What are Moles compared to this?" he said to himself, and quivered with joy at the thought of the pleasures before him.
"How did that broken thing come into our Division?" enquired a Red Dish with two handles.
"I can't imagine! The Director put him in just now," replied a Black Jug. "It's not what we're accustomed to. Everything in here is perfect."
The Chip lay for a moment, dumb with horror and astonishment.
"I belonged to a King," he gasped at last. "You can look at the name written on me."
"You may have names written all over you, for all I care," said the Dish. "You're a Chip, and no King can make you anything else"—and she turned away haughtily.
"And to think that for all those years the Mole-mother was never once rude to me!" thought the Chip. "She was a person ofrealrefinement. Whatever shall I do if I have to be shut up with these ill-bred people?" he groaned miserably.
"How the woodwork does creak!" said the Director as he came up to the glass case, with a young lady to whom he was showing the treasures of the Museum.
"That's the most recent discovery," he continued smiling and pointing to the three-cornered piece of pottery—"All I found in my last digging."
"It has a beautiful head on it," said the young lady, "I should be quite satisfied if I could ever find anything so pretty."
"Will you have it?" said the Director of the Museum, who after all was only a young man; looking at the young lady earnestly.
She took the despised Chip in her little hand.
"Thank you very much. It will be a great treasure," she said—and looking up at her face, the three-cornered piece of pottery knew that a happy life was in store for him.
"In spite of the rudeness of my own people, I am in the Museum after all," remarked the Chip, as some months afterwards he hung on a bracket on the wall of the young lady's sitting room. "In what a superior position, too!Theyonly belong to the Director, butIbelong to the Director's wife!"
The Heif Goats lived close to the Heifen Glacier, one of the largest in Switzerland. In fact, their Châlet, or the cavern which they christened by that name, overhung the steepest precipice, and was inaccessible to anyone except its proprietors.
"It is such a comfort to be secluded in these disturbed times," the Goat-mother often remarked to her husband. "If I lived near a high road I should never know amoment'shappiness. The children are so giddy, they would be gambolling about round the very wheels of the char-à-bancs, turning head over heels for halfpence, before I could cry Goats-i-tivy!"
The whole glacier valley swarmed with the kin of the Goat family. There were the bond-slaves who worked for the peasants, and the free Goats who possessed their own caves, cultivated their ground industriously, and lived greatly on the sandwich papers left by tourists in the summer-time.
"Such a treat, especially the light yellow sort with printing, that always has crumbs in it," said the Goat-mother. "Itmakes a delicious meal. We generally have it on fête days."
The family of the Heif Goats consisted of the Heif-father, his wife, and their four children, Heinrich, Lizbet, Pyto, and Lénora.
The young Goats had been brought up with some severity by their parents, who had old-fashioned notions with regard to discipline; and three things had been especially enjoined upon them from their infancy. Always to speak the truth, never to mess their clean pinafores, and last, but not least,neverto play with the Chamois!
"They are too wild and frivolous," the Goat-mother used to say, with a nod of her frilled cap. "Such very long springs are in exceedingly bad taste. The Chamois havenorepose of manner."
Under this system the children grew up very well-behaved. The daughters worked in the house, the sons helped their father; and in the evening they all descended to the Glacier to collect any remnants of food left by the endless stream of visitors, who all through the summer toiled up to the Eismeer, and down again to the Inn on the other side of the valley.
These travellers were a perpetual source of interest and amusement to the Goat family.
They could never quite make out what they were doing, but the Heif-mother finally decided that their journeys must be some religious or national observance.
"People would never struggle about on the ice like that—tied to each other with ropes, too!—unless it was a painful duty," she said. "I consider it very praiseworthy."
Sometimes the young Goats in their invisible eyrie, would go off into shouts of merriment as a group of excursionists crawled slowly into sight; the ladies in their short skirts and large flapping hats, alpenstock in hand, clinging desperately to the guides as they ascended every slippery ice-peak.
But on these occasions the Goat-mother always reproved them.
"Remember," she would say severely, "that because people are ridiculous you shouldn't be unmannerly. They can't help their appearance, poor things! They may think themselves quite as good as we are."
"Well, at all events, we don't look likethat," said Lizbet. "I am sure you would never allow it."
The principal news from the outer world was brought to the Heif family by a Stein-bok pedlar, who wandered about the country with his wares, and was so popular that he was a friend of all classes, and supplied even the Chamois with their groceries and tobacco.
He generally arrived at the Châlet on the first of every month, and spread out his wares on the grass plot in front of the cave, while the Goat-mother and her children walked up and down, and bargained good-humouredly for anything they had taken a fancy to.
It was a bright sunny day, and the Goat-mother sat with her daughters at the door of the cavern. The Goat-father had gone off by himself to get some provisions at a village on the opposite side of the Glacier, and Heinrich and Pyto were digging in the fields at the back of the Châlet; when the Stein-bok, in his well-known brown cloth coat, appeared panting up the narrow pathway.
Throwing himself down on a stone bench, he tossed his Tyrolese hat on to the ground, and fanned himself with his handkerchief.
"Good morning, Herr Stein-bok. You seem exhausted," said the Goat-mother.
"I am, ma'am, and well I may be. Five miles with twenty pounds on my back is no joke, I can assure you."
"Shall I bring you a glass of lager-beer?" enquired the Heif-mother.
"It would be acceptable, ma'am, and then I will tell you my news. You've heard nothing of the Goat-father, have you?"
"Nothing," said the Goat-mother. "I am beginning to feel very nervous. I never knew him to stay away two days before."
The Stein-bok looked round darkly.
"I have something to tell you," he whispered. "Prepare for bad news. The Goat-father has been captured."
The Heif-mother gave a wild shriek, and fell back upon Lizbet, who was peeling potatoes in the doorway.
"When—where—how—who—what?" she cried frantically. "Tell me at once, or I shall faint away."
"Be calm, ma'am," said the Stein-bok soothingly. "I heard it from the Chamois, who have a habit of bounding about everywhere, as you know. Your dear husband reached the middle of the Glacier in safety, when—being hampered by a satchel and a green cotton umbrella—he fell in attempting to jump an ice-pinnacle, and sprained his foot so severely that he was unable to move. Though he bleated loudly for help, no one came except some huntsmen who were in search of Chamois. They picked him up, and dragged him to the Inn on the other side of the valley, where he was locked up securely in a shed, and there he is at the present moment."
"My brave Heif in prison! He will never, never survive it!" cried the Goat-mother, shedding tears in profusion.
"Oh yes he will, ma'am," replied the Stein-bok, "they're not going to kill him, their idea is to take him down to the village."
"Thatthey shall never do!" cried the Heif-mother, starting up, "not if I go myself to rescue him! Go, Lizbet, and call your brothers. We must consult together immediately."
Lizbet darted off, and the Stein-bok continued.
"I have still something else I must let you know, ma'am. As our great poet observes—