an elf all one's life if it
were always as easy to get good food as it is here," he thought.

He sat and mused as he ate, wondering finally if it would not be as well
for him to remain here and let the wild geese travel south without him.

"I don't know for the life of me how I can ever explain to Morten
Goosey-Gander that I cannot go home," thought he. "It would be better
were I to leave him altogether. I could gather provisions enough for the
winter, as well as the squirrels do, and if I were to live in a dark
corner of the stable or the cow shed, I shouldn't freeze to death."

Just as he was thinking this, he heard a light rustle over his head,
and a second later something which resembled a birch stump stood on the
ground beside him.

The stump twisted and turned, and two bright dots on top of it glowed
like coals of fire. It looked like some enchantment. However, the boy
soon remarked that the stump had a hooked beak and big feather wreaths
around its glowing eyes. Then he knew that this was no enchantment.

"It is a real pleasure to meet a living creature," remarked the boy.
"Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me the name of this place, Mrs.
Brown Owl, and what sort of folk live here."

That evening, as on all other evenings, the owl had perched on a rung of
the big ladder propped against the roof, from which she had looked down
toward the gravel walks and grass plots, watching for rats. Very much to
her surprise, not a single grayskin had appeared. She saw instead
something that looked like a human being, but much, much smaller, moving
about in the garden.

"That's the one who is scaring away the rats!" thought the owl. "What in
the world can it be? It's not a squirrel, nor a kitten, nor a weasel,"
she observed. "I suppose that a bird who has lived on an old place like
this as long as I have ought to know about everything in the world; but
this is beyond my comprehension," she concluded.

She had been staring at the object that moved on the gravel path until
her eyes burned. Finally curiosity got the better of her and she flew
down to the ground to have a closer view of the stranger.

When the boy began to speak, the owl bent forward and looked him up and
down.

"He has neither claws nor horns," she remarked to herself, "yet who
knows but he may have a poisonous fang or some even more dangerous
weapon. I must try to find out what he passes for before I venture to
touch him."

"The place is called