lehem.'"

"Well, now the coach may drive away," said the sentry; "we have
the whole twelve. Let the horses be put up."

"First, let all the twelve come to me," said the captain on
duty, "one after another. The passports I will keep here. Each of them
is available for one month; when that has passed, I shall write the
behavior of each on his passport. Mr. JANUARY, have the goodness to
come here." And Mr. January stepped forward.

When a year has passed, I think I shall be able to tell you what
the twelve passengers have brought to you, to me, and to all of us.
Now I do not know, and probably even they don't know themselves, for
we live in strange times.

THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER

The storks relate to their little ones a great many stories, and
they are all about moors and reed banks, and suited to their age and
capacity. The youngest of them are quite satisfied with "kribble,
krabble," or such nonsense, and think it very grand; but the elder
ones want something with a deeper meaning, or at least something about
their own family.

We are only acquainted with one of the two longest and oldest
stories which the storks relate--it is about Moses, who was exposed by
his mother on the banks of the Nile, and was found by the king's
daughter, who gave him a good education, and he afterwards became a
great man; but where he was buried is still unknown.

Every one knows this story, but not the second; very likely
because it is quite an inland story. It has been repeated from mouth
to mouth, from one stork-mamma to another, for thousands of years; and
each has told it better than the last; and now we mean to tell it
better than all.

The first stork pair who related it lived at the time it happened,
and had their summer residence on the rafters of the Viking's house,
which stood near the wild moorlands of Wendsyssell; that is, to
speak more correctly, the great moorheath, high up in the north of
Jutland, by the Skjagen peak. This wilderness is still an immense wild
heath of marshy ground, about which we can read in the "Official
Directory." It is said that in olden times the place was a lake, the
ground of which had heaved up from beneath, and now the moorland
extends for miles in every direction, and is surrounded by damp
meadows, trembling, undulating swamps, and marshy ground covered
with turf, on which grow bilberry bushes and stunted trees. Mists
are almost always hovering over this region, which, seventy year