neglected, the rough brothers
whose cheeks he had pelted black and blue; and yearned for the very
chinks in the walls, the very thatch on the home-roof.

Gladly would he have given every fairy-flower, at the root of which
clung a lump of gold ore, if he might have had his own coverlet
"happed" about him once more by the gentle hands he had despised.

"Mither," he whispered in his dreams, "my shoon are worn, and my feet
bleed; but I'll soon creep hame, if I can. Keep the parritch warm for
me."

Robin was as strong as a mountain-goat; and his strength was put to
the task of threshing rye, grinding oats and corn, or drawing water
from a brook.

Every night, troops of gay fairies and plodding brownies stole off on
a visit to the upper world, leaving Robin and his companions in ever
deeper despair. Poor Robin! he was fain to sing,--

"Oh that my father had ne'er on me smiled!
Oh that my mother had ne'er to me sung!
Oh that my cradle had never been rocked,
But that I had died when I was young!"

Now, there was one good-natured brownie who pitied Robin. When he took
a journey to earth with his fellow-brownies, he often threshed rye for
the laddie's father, or churned butter in his good mother's dairy,
unseen and unsuspected. If the little creature had been watched, and
paid for these good offices, he would have left the farmhouse forever
in sore displeasure.

To homesick Robin he brought news of the family who mourned him as
dead. He stole a silky tress of Janet's fair hair, and wondered to see
the boy weep over it; for brotherly affection is a sentiment which
never yet penetrated the heart of a brownie. The dull little sprite
would gladly have helped the poor lad to his freedom, but told him
that only on one night of the year was there the least hope, and that
was on Hallow-e'en, when the whole nation of fairies ride in
procession through the streets of earth.

So Robin was instructed to spin a dream, which the kind brownie would
hum in Janet's ear while she slept. By this means the lassie would not
only learn that her brother was in the power of the elves, but would
also learn how to release him.

Accordingly, the night before Hallow-e'en, the bonnie Janet dreamed
that the long-lost Robin was living in Elf-land, and that he was to
pass through the streets with a cavalcade of fairies. But, alas! how
should even a sister know him in the dim starlight, among the passing
troops of elfish and mort