ilt a huge fire in his forge, and the flames thereof filled
the whole Northern sky with rays of light that danced up, up, up to
the Star, singing glad songs the while. So Norss and Faia were wed,
and they went to live in the cabin in the fir grove.

To these two was born in good time a son, whom they named Claus. On
the night that he was born wondrous things came to pass. To the cabin
in the fir grove came all the quaint, weird spirits,--the fairies, the
elves, the trolls, the pixies, the fadas, the crions, the goblins, the
kobolds, the moss-people, the gnomes, the dwarfs, the water-sprites,
the courils, the bogles, the brownies, the nixies, the trows, the
stille-volk,--all came to the cabin in the fir grove, and capered
about and sang the strange, beautiful songs of the Mist-Land. And the
flames of old Jans's forge leaped up higher than ever into the
Northern sky, carrying the joyous tidings to the Star, and full of
music was that happy night.

Even in infancy Claus did marvellous things. With his baby hands he
wrought into pretty figures the willows that were given him to play
with. As he grew older, he fashioned, with the knife old Jans had made
for him, many curious toys,--carts, horses, dogs, lambs, houses,
trees, cats, and birds, all of wood and very like to nature. His
mother taught him how to make dolls too,--dolls of every kind,
condition, temper, and color; proud dolls, homely dolls, boy dolls,
lady dolls, wax dolls, rubber dolls, paper dolls, worsted dolls, rag
dolls,--dolls of every description and without end. So Claus became at
once quite as popular with the little girls as with the little boys of
his native village; for he was so generous that he gave away all these
pretty things as fast as he made them.

Claus seemed to know by instinct every language. As he grew older he
would ramble off into the woods and talk with the trees, the rocks,
and the beasts of the greenwood; or he would sit on the cliffs
overlooking the fiord, and listen to the stories that the waves of the
sea loved to tell him; then, too, he knew the haunts of the elves and
the stille-volk, and many a pretty tale he learned from these little
people. When night came, old Jans told him the quaint legends of the
North, and his mother sang to him the lullabies she had heard when a
little child herself in the far-distant East. And every night his
mother held out to him the symbol in the similitude of the cross, and
bade him kiss it ere he we