, catch it he would and catch it
he must. But he must acquire greater skill before he would be able to
render something so delicate and elusive.

Accordingly Nils applied himself with all his might and main to his
music, in the intervals between his work.

He was big enough now to accompany his father to the woods, and help
him pile turf and earth on the heap of logs that were to be burned
to charcoal. He did not see the Hulder face to face, though he was
constantly on the watch for her; but once or twice he thought he saw a
swift flash of scarlet and gold in the underbrush, and again and again
he thought he heard her soft, teasing laughter in the alder copses.
That, too, he imagined he might express in music; and the next time he
got hold of the schoolmaster's fiddle he quavered away on the fourth
string, but produced nothing that had the remotest resemblance to
melody, much less to that sweet laughter.

He grew so discouraged that he could have wept. He had a wild impulse
to break the fiddle, and never touch another as long as he lived. But he
knew he could not live up to any such resolution. The fiddle was already
too dear to him to be renounced for a momentary whim. But it was like an
unrequited affection, which brought as much sorrow as joy.

There was so much that Nils burned to express; but the fiddle refused to
obey him, and screeched something utterly discordant, as it seemed, from
sheer perversity.

It occurred to Nils again, that unless the Nixy took pity on him and
taught him that marvellous, airy strain he would never catch it. Would
he then ever be good enough to win the favor of the Nixy?

For in the fairy tales it is always the bad people who come to grief,
while the good and merciful ones are somehow rewarded.

It was evidently because he was yet far from being good enough that both
Hulder and Nixy eluded him. Sunday child though he was, there seemed to
be small chance that he would ever be able to propound his three wishes.

Only now, the third wish was no longer a five-bladed pocket-knife, but
a violin of so fine a ring and delicate modulation that it might render
the Nixy's strain.

While these desires and fancies fought in his heart, Nils grew to be a
young man; and he still was, what he had always been--a charcoal-burner.
He went to the parson for half a year to prepare for confirmation; and
by his gentleness and sweetness of disposition attracted not only the
good man himself, but all wi