carpet of dead leaves. A robin lit upon
the branches of a tree above the cave and sang his morning song.

There was no other sound except the sizzling of a wet stick on the fire,
and the snapping noise made by the old woman when she took a roasted
acorn from the fire and cracked it with her teeth.

The old woman was not pretty to look at. Her face was as brown as
leather and covered with wrinkles, and her hair hung about it in ragged
grey locks. It was no wonder that her hair was rough and ragged, for it
had never been combed her whole life long, and she was quite old--oh, as
old as forty, maybe! But she really couldn't help her hair being like
that any more than she could help being forty, because there was not a
single comb yet made in the whole world!

It was a mystery how she cracked the nuts so well, because she had only
a few teeth left in her mouth. For clothing she had nothing but the
skin of a deer fastened over her left shoulder by a thorn, and tied
around her waist with a leather thong.

Although she seemed to be thinking of nothing but her nuts, the little
bright eyes of the old woman kept close watch in every direction, and
her ears were quick to hear every unusual sound. If a twig snapped, or
there was a rustling noise in the underbrush, she was ready in an
instant to fling fresh dry sticks on the fire and make it glow red
against the black opening of the cave.

She knew that no wild animal, however fierce and hungry, would dare come
near the leaping flames. Yet watchful as she was, she did not see two
children who were creeping stealthily toward her, over the great rocks
which sheltered the mouth of the cave.

They were a boy and a girl, and from their size they must have been
about eight years old. They both had bright twinkling eyes and flaming
red hair, and were dressed alike in skins of red foxes of almost the
same colour. You could tell at a glance that they were twins, but it
would have puzzled any one to tell whether they were both boys or both
girls, or one of each kind. They came down over the rocks so quietly
that not even the quick ears of the old woman heard the faintest sound.

When they had almost reached the ground, they stopped, and at the same
instant opened their mouths and howled exactly like two young wolves!

The noise was so sudden and so near that the old woman never thought of
her fire at all. She simply screamed and fell right over backwards into
the cave. The