a grater or a mortar?" inquired Lenore, laughing.

"I have neither of those machines," replied the forester.

"A hammer, then," suggested Fink, "and a clean sheet of paper."

The hammer was soon brought, but the paper was only found after a long
search. Fink undertook to pound the chocolate, the forester brought
fresh water from the spring, Lenore washed out some cups, and Fink
hammered away with all his heart. "This is antediluvian paper," said he,
"thick as parchment; it must have lain for some centuries in this magic
hut." Lenore shook the chocolate powder into the saucepan, and stirred
it. Then they all three sat down, and much enjoyed the result of their
handiwork.

The golden sunbeams shone fuller into the room, lighting up the bright
form of the beautiful girl, and the fine face of the man opposite her;
then they fell upon the wall, and decked the head of the heron and the
wings of the hawk. The raven came to the end of his soliloquy, and
fluttered from his seat, hopping about the lady's feet, and croaking out
again, "Lenore! Lenore!"

Lenore now conversed at her ease with the stranger, and the forester
every now and then threw in a suitable remark. They spoke of the
district and its inhabitants.

"Wherever I have met Poles in foreign lands, I have got on very well
with them," said Fink. "I am sorry that these disturbances prevent one
visiting them in their own homes; for, certainly, one best learns to
know men from seeing them there."

"It must be delightful to see so many different scenes and people,"
cried Lenore.

"It is only at first that the difference strikes you. When one has
observed them a while, one comes to the conclusion that they are every
where much alike: a little diversity in the color of the skin and other
details; but love and hate, laughter and tears, these the traveler finds
every where, and every where these are the same. About twenty weeks ago
I was half a hemisphere off, in the log hut of an American, on a barren
prairie. It was just the same as here. We sat at a stout rustic table
like this, and my host was as like this old gentleman as one egg is to
another, and the light of the winter sun fell in just the same way
through the small window. But if men have so little to distinguish them,
women are still more alike in essentials. They only differ in one
trifling particular."

"And what is that?" asked the forester.

"They are rather more or less neat," said Fink, carelessly; "