ily and
hourly dropping and dropping away from him. He lived economically, as he
had always done, even to parsimoniousness. The produce of his land, the
income from his twirling-stick trade, were as satisfactory as could be--
both improving! How could it happen then? Simon made known his misery to
his neighbours, craved counsel from his pastor. Each chucked in his
farthing's worth of wisdom; but it availed him nothing. In the
meanwhile, the strapping youth grew every day more and more a
ghost-seer; and the Dwarf was said to beset the premises of the farmer
nightly. Simon, at all events to show a reason in his complaints,
building upon these facts, boldly cast upon his son the imputation of
robbing him. Violent scenes ensued between the two--they quarrelled and
wrangled from morning till night; and at length, upon Simon's refusing
his assent to the marriage of his hulking boy with a very honest, but at
the same time somewhat uncouth and very poor girl--went bodily to law.

"Whilst father and son were valiantly tugging against each other in
court, the lawyers gleefully rubbing their hands over the case, and many
a good joint flying into their larders from the stalls of Twirling-stick
Mike, the substance of the honest farmer underwent rapid decay. His
neighbours, soon aware that Simon had falsely taxed his son, cleared up
the question, as folks in such cases are fain to do, with suppositions
and surmises. They gave out that the Dwarfs were gnawing away his
fortune; every body believed it, and from that moment forward, he was a
marked and doomed man.

"As the belief became general, Simon grew irritable and wild. He cursed,
and stormed, and raved, till his people trembled for their master's
reason. Vexation ate his flesh away, and Avarice, which had gained
entire possession of His soul, drove him restlessly about in the
endeavour to save and to secure as much as still remained to him. At
night, with his sullenly-burning lamp, he sped from room to room,
bearing in his two quivering hands leathern purses of money; then
shutting himself up in the most secret of his hiding-places, he counted
his dollars again and again--and with such haste and fear, that the cold
sweat dropped from him as he laboured. Horrible to relate, as often as
he added the same sums together, so often he found the total less. Oh,
it was like nothing else than the devil's own game; for the money,
unperceived by mortal eye, melted in the pure air!

"Unfor