them would keep him. This one had a lot of little children, and
that one had a scold for a wife, and this house was too small, and
that house was too poor. "Go where thou wilt, old man," said they,
"only don't come to us." And the old man, grey, grey, grey as a
dove was he, wept before his sons, and knew not whither to turn.
What could he do? Entreaty was in vain. Not one of the sons would take
the old man in, and yet he had to be put somewhere. Then the old
man strove with them no more, but let them do with him even as
they would.

So all four sons met and took counsel. Time after time they laid their
heads together, and at last they agreed among themselves that the
best thing the old man could do was to go to school. "There will be a
bench for him to sit upon there," said they; "and he can take
something to eat in his knapsack." Then they told the old man about
it; but the old man did not want to go to school. He begged his
children not to send him there, and wept before them. "Now that I
cannot see the white world," said he, "how can I see a black book?
Moreover, from my youth upward I have never learnt my letters; how
shall I begin to do so now? A clerk cannot be fashioned out of an old
man on the point of death!" But there was no use talking, his children
said he _must_ go to school, and the voices of his children prevailed
against his feeble old voice. So to school he had to go. Now there was
no church in that village, so he had to go to the village beyond it to
school. A forest lay along the road, and in this forest the old man
met a nobleman driving along. When the old man came near to the
nobleman's carriage, he stepped out of the road to let it pass, took
off his hat respectfully, and then would have gone on farther. But he
heard some one calling, and, looking back, saw the nobleman beckoning
to him; he wanted to ask him something. The nobleman then got out of
his carriage and asked the old man whither he was going. The old man
took off his hat to the nobleman and told him all his misery, and the
tears ran down the old man's cheeks. "Woe is me, gracious sir! If the
Lord had left me without kith and kin, I should not complain; but
strange indeed is the woe that has befallen me! I have four sons,
thank God, and all four have houses of their own, and yet they send
their poor old father to school to learn! Was ever the like of it
known before?" So the old man told the nobleman his whole story, and
the nobleman wa