sat a
little girl, and she sat with her eyes fixed upon the old oak tree
between the two huts.

"It was an old withered stem. It had been sawn off at the top, and
a stork had built his nest upon it; and he stood in this nest clapping
with his beak. A little boy came and stood by the girl's side: they
were brother and sister.

"'What are you looking at?' he asked.

"'I'm watching the stork,' she replied: 'our neighbors told me
that he would bring us a little brother or sister to-day; let us watch
to see it come!'

"'The stork brings no such things,' the boy declared, 'you may
be sure of that. Our neighbor told me the same thing, but she
laughed when she said it, and so I asked her if she could say 'On my
honor,' and she could not; and I know by that the story about the
storks is not true, and that they only tell it to us children for
fun.'

"'But where do babies come from, then?' asked the girl.

"'Why, an angel from heaven brings them under his cloak, but no
man can see him; and that's why we never know when he brings them.'

"At that moment there was a rustling in the branches of the willow
tree, and the children folded their hands and looked at one another:
it was certainly the angel coming with the baby. They took each
other's hand, and at that moment the door of one of the houses opened,
and the neighbour appeared.

"'Come in, you two,' she said. 'See what the stork has brought. It
is a little brother.'

"And the children nodded gravely at one another, for they had felt
quite sure already that the baby was come."

FOURTEENTH EVENING

"I was gliding over the Luneburg Heath," the Moon said. "A
lonely hut stood by the wayside, a few scanty bushes grew near it, and
a nightingale who had lost his way sang sweetly. He died in the
coldness of the night: it was his farewell song that I heard.

"The morning dawn came glimmering red. I saw a caravan of emigrant
peasant families who were bound to Hamburgh, there to take ship for
America, where fancied prosperity would bloom for them. The mothers
carried their little children at their backs, the elder ones
tottered by their sides, and a poor starved horse tugged at a cart
that bore their scanty effects. The cold wind whistled, and
therefore the little girl nestled closer to the mother, who, looking
up at my decreasing disc, thought of the bitter want at home, and
spoke of the heavy taxes they had not been able to raise. The whole
caravan thought of the same