cking in vain. Now that I have him I shall keep him. There's no
elk safe in Odalen so long as that rascal is at large."

"That may be; but I shall then turn my informer's fee over to him, which
will reduce his fine from fifty dollars to twenty-five dollars."

"To encourage him to continue poaching?"

"Well, I confess I have a little more sympathy with poachers, since
we came so near being poachers ourselves. It was only an accident that
saved us!"

THE NIXY'S STRAIN

Little Nils had an idea that he wanted to be something great in the
world, but he did not quite know how to set about it. He had always been
told that, having been born on a Sunday, he was a luck-child, and that
good fortune would attend him on that account in whatever he undertook.

He had never, so far, noticed anything peculiar about himself, though,
to be sure, his small enterprises did not usually come to grief, his
snares were seldom empty, and his tiny stamping-mill, which he and his
friend Thorstein had worked at so faithfully, was now making a merry
noise over in the brook in the Westmo Glen, so that you could hear it a
hundred yards away.

The reason of this, his mother told him, according to the superstition
of her people, was that the Nixy and the Hulder [3] and the gnomes
favored him because he was a Sunday child. What was more, she assured
him, that he would see them some day, and then, if he conducted himself
cleverly, so as to win their favor, he would, by their aid, rise high in
the world, and make his fortune.

Now this was exactly what Nils wanted, and therefore he was not a
little anxious to catch a glimpse of the mysterious creatures who had so
whimsical a reason for taking an interest in him. Many and many a time
he sat at the waterfall where the Nixy was said to play the harp every
midsummer night, but although he sometimes imagined that he heard a
vague melody trembling through the rush and roar of the water, and saw
glimpses of white limbs flashing through the current, yet never did he
get a good look at the Nixy.

Though he roamed through the woods early and late, setting snares for
birds and rabbits, and was ever on the alert for a sight of the Hulder's
golden hair and scarlet bodice, the tricksy sprite persisted in eluding
him.

He thought sometimes that he heard a faint, girlish giggle, full of
teasing provocation and suppressed glee, among the underbrush, and once
he imagined that he saw a gleam of scarlet and