ake
themselves smart before the girls awoke.

For many hours the sisters slept on, for they had come a long way,
from a town where there was scarcely anything to eat, and felt weak
and tired. But by-and-by they opened their eyes and saw the two birds
watching them.

'I hope you are rested?' asked the owl politely.

'Oh, yes, thank you,' answered the girls. 'Only we are so very hungry.
Do you think we could have something to eat?'

'Certainly!' replied the eagle. And he flew away to a farmhouse a mile
or two off, and brought back a nest of eggs in his strong beak; while
the owl, catching up a tin pot, went to a cottage where lived an old
woman and her cow, and entering the shed by the window dipped the pot
into the pail of new milk that stood there.

The girls were so much delighted with the kindness and cleverness of
their hosts that, when the birds inquired if they would marry them and
stay there for ever, they accepted without so much as giving it a second
thought. So the eagle took the younger sister to wife, and the owl the
elder, and never was a home more peaceful than theirs!

All went well for several months, and then the eagle's wife had a son,
while, on the same day, the owl's wife gave birth to a frog, which she
placed directly on the banks of a stream near by, as he did not seem to
like the house. The children both grew quickly, and were never tired of
playing together, or wanted any other companions.

One night in the spring, when the ice had melted, and the snow was gone,
the sisters sat spinning in the house, awaiting their husbands' return.
But long though they watched, neither the owl nor the eagle ever came;
neither that day nor the next, nor the next, nor the next. At last the
wives gave up all hope of their return; but, being sensible women,
they did not sit down and cry, but called their children, and set out,
determined to seek the whole world over till the missing husbands were
found.

Now the women had no idea in which direction the lost birds had gone,
but they knew that some distance off was a thick forest, where good
hunting was to be found. It seemed a likely place to find them, or, at
any rate, they might hear something of them, and they walked quickly
on, cheered by the thought that they were doing something. Suddenly the
younger sister, who was a little in front, gave a cry of surprise.

'Oh! look at that lake!' she said, 'we shall never get across it.'

'Yes we shall,' answered