ent, and she seemed to have no objections to Franzl being
carried off in a sledge. She assisted to help old Franzl to pack her
things; but the old woman made her leave the room, for she wished above
all to pack up a certain secret shoe carefully.

"I have my own feather bed here," said Franzl, "do you think you could
put it on the sledge?"

"Let Knuslingen sleep on it in peace," answered Pilgrim; "make a
footstool of your pillow, and leave all the rest."

"Must I leave my hens and my geese here too? They are my own, they all
belong to me; and my beautiful gold speckled hen has been laying for
the last six weeks."

The bepraised lady stuck her head out, between the bars of the coop,
and showed her red comb.

Pilgrim said that hens and geese all ran after the veritable Cinderella
of their own accord; and that if these chose to do the same, no one
wished to prevent them, but that they certainly would not be taken in
the sledge.

Franzl now charged her sister-in-law to pay the greatest attention to
the cherished creatures she left behind: she was to take care of them,
to feed them well, and to send them to her when a man came for them.

When Franzl was leaving the room, the hens began to cackle uneasily in
their coop, and even the geese said a friendly word of regret as she
passed them.

It was a fine, bright winter night when Franzl drove off with Pilgrim;
the stars glittered above, and a heaven filled with shining stars arose
within Franzl's soul. She often laid hold of her bundle, and pressed it
till she felt her shoe was safe there; and often, as they dashed along,
she thought it was all a dream.

"Look! there is my little patch of potato ground that I bought," said
Franzl; "it was only a heap of stones, and I have cultivated it so well
during the four years I have had it, that it is worth double, and the
potatoes it grows are like flour."

"Potatoes may be very precious in the sight of the Knuslingers, but you
shall get something better now," answered Pilgrim. He then detailed to
her every particular, with regard to the rescue of the inhabitants of
the house on the Morgenhalde, and told her that they all were now to
live with old Petrowitsch, and that they were the best of friends; the
old miser seemed entirely changed, and Annele's first request was, that
Franzl should be sent for. Franzl sobbed aloud when Pilgrim told her
that Annele's hair was now snow white.

At every house they passed, where lights w