"But how did you get to the top of the dovecot when the door into the
house was bolted and fast?"

The children laughed and laughed and did not answer a word.

"Laugh you may," says the old man; "but it is I who get the scolding
when the turnips fly away in the night."

"Never mind! never mind!" cried the children. "We'll pay for the
turnips."

"All very well," says the old man; "but that tablecloth of yours--it
was fine yesterday, but this morning it would not give me even a glass
of tea and a hunk of black bread."

At that the faces of the little queer children were troubled and
grave. For a moment or two they all chattered together, and took no
notice of the old man. Then one of them said,--

"Well, this time we'll give you something better. We'll give you a
goat."

"A goat?" says the old man.

"A goat with a cold in its head," said the children; and they crowded
round him and took him behind the hut where there was a gray goat with
a long beard cropping the short grass.

"It's a good enough goat," says the old man; "I don't see anything
wrong with him."

"It's better than that," cried the children. "You tell it to sneeze."

The old man thought the children might be laughing at him, but he did
not care, and he remembered the tablecloth. So he took off his hat and
bowed to the goat. "Sneeze, goat," says he.

And instantly the goat started sneezing as if it would shake itself to
pieces. And as it sneezed, good gold pieces flew from it in all
directions, till the ground was thick with them.

"That's enough," said the children hurriedly; "tell him to stop, for
all this gold is no use to us, and it's such a bother having to sweep
it away."

"Stop sneezing, goat," says the old man; and the goat stopped
sneezing, and stood there panting and out of breath in the middle of
the sea of gold pieces.

The children began kicking the gold pieces about, spreading them by
walking through them as if they were dead leaves. My old father used
to say that those gold pieces are lying about still for anybody to
pick up; but I doubt if he knew just where to look for them, or he
would have had better clothes on his back and a little more food on
the table. But who knows? Some day we may come upon that little hut
somewhere in the forest, and then we shall know what to look for.

The children laughed and chattered and kicked the gold pieces this way
and that into the green bushes. Then they brought the old man into the
h