mer could say
that the name of God had occurred to him just at the right time.

THE FOUNDLING.

(JANNSEN.)[44]

One evening a little boy was sleeping restlessly in a village on the
island of Dagoe. His father saw a small hole which had been bored in the
wall, and thinking that the draught disturbed the child, he stopped it
up. He then saw a beautiful little girl playing with the boy, and
preventing him from sleeping quietly. As she could not get away again,
she remained in the house; and when the children grew up, they married,
and had two children. One Sunday they went to church, and the wife
laughed; but when her husband asked why, she replied that she would tell
him if he told her how she came into his house. Thinking no harm, he
promised to tell her, as he had heard the story from his father. Then
she told him that she saw a great horse-skin spread on the wall of the
church, on which the devil wrote the names of all the people who slept
or talked in church instead of attending to the word of God. When it was
full, he tried to stretch it with his teeth, but in doing so, he
knocked his head against the wall and made a wry face, and she laughed.
When they got home, he took the wooden plug from the hole, and showed it
to his wife, but she instantly disappeared through it and never
returned. The man wept himself blind, but the children grew up and
prospered all their lives. People said their mother visited them
secretly and brought treasures to the house.

* * * * *

The next story introduces us to the Gnomes, who appear to come more
frequently into contact with human beings than any of the other
nature-spirits, perhaps because their nature may be more akin to that of
man. They are seen with more or less similar characteristics in all the
mining countries of Northern Europe, whether Celtic, as Ireland and the
Isle of Man; Teutonic, as England, Germany, and Scandinavia; or
Finnish-Ugrian. They were well known to the old Norsemen as the Dvergar.

[Footnote 44: Latham (_Nationalities of Europe_, i. p. 34) relates a
very similar Lithuanian story of a Lauma or Nightmare.]

THE CAVE-DWELLERS.

(KREUTZWALD.)

Once upon a time a man lost his way on a stormy night between Christmas
and New Year. He wore out his strength plunging through the deep
snowdrifts, until, by good luck, he found some protection from the wind
under a thick juniper bush. Here he resolved to pass the