Wonder-Box Tales | Page 2

You have fine hawthorn-trees hereabouts; just now they are as white as snow; and then you have a noble wood behind you."
"Ah, you may well say that," said the young woman. "It is a noble wood to us; it gets us bread. My husband works in it."
"And a fine sheet of water there is in it," continued the old man. "As I sat by it to-day it was pretty to see those cranes, with red legs, stepping from leaf to leaf of the water-lilies so lightly."
As he spoke he looked rather wistfully at a little saucepan which stood upon the hearth.
"Why, I shouldn't wonder if you were hungry," said the young woman, laying her baby in the cradle, and spreading a cloth on the round table. "My husband will be home soon, and if you like to stay and sup with him and me, you will be kindly welcome."
The old man's eyes sparkled when she said this, and he looked so very old and seemed so weak that she pitied him. He turned a little aside from the fire, and watched her while she set a brown loaf on the table, and fried a few slices of bacon; but all was ready, and the kettle had been boiling some time before there were any signs of the husband's return.
"I never knew Will to be so late before," said the stranger. "Perhaps he is carrying his logs to the saw-pits."
"Will!" exclaimed the wife. "What, you know my husband, then? I thought you were a stranger in these parts."
"Oh, I have been past this place several times," said the old man, looking rather confused; "and so, of course, I have heard of your husband. Nobody's stroke in the wood is so regular and strong as his."
"And I can tell you he is the handiest man at home," began his wife.
"Ah, ah," said the old man, smiling at her eagerness; "and here he comes, if I am not mistaken."
At that moment the woodman entered.
"Will," said his wife, as she took his bill-book from him, and hung up his hat, "here's an old soldier come to sup with us, my dear." And as she spoke, she gave her husband a gentle push toward the old man, and made a sign that he should speak to him.
"Kindly welcome, master," said the woodman. "Wife, I'm hungry; let's to supper."
The wife turned some potatoes out of the little saucepan, set a jug of beer on the table, and they all began to sup. The best of everything was offered by the wife to the stranger. The husband, after looking earnestly at him for a few minutes, kept silence.
"And where might you be going to lodge to-night, good man, if I'm not too bold?" asked she.
The old man heaved a deep sigh, and said he supposed he must lie out in the forest.
"Well, that would be a great pity," remarked his kind hostess. "No wonder your bones ache if you have no better shelter." As she said this, she looked appealingly at her husband.
"My wife, I'm thinking, would like to offer you a bed," said the woodman; "at least, if you don't mind sleeping in this clean kitchen, I think that we could toss you up something of that sort that you need not disdain."
"Disdain, indeed!" said the wife. "Why, Will, when there's not a tighter cottage than ours in all the wood, and with a curtain, as we have, and a brick floor, and everything so good about us--"
The husband laughed; the old man looked on with a twinkle in his eye.
"I'm sure I shall be humbly grateful," said he.
Accordingly, when supper was over, they made him up a bed on the floor, and spread clean sheets upon it of the young wife's own spinning, and heaped several fresh logs on the fire. Then they wished the stranger good night, and crept up the ladder to their own snug little chamber.
"Disdain, indeed!" laughed the wife, as soon as they shut the door. "Why, Will, how could you say it? I should like to see him disdain me and mine. It isn't often, I'll engage to say, that he sleeps in such a well-furnished kitchen."
The husband said nothing, but secretly laughed to himself.
"What are you laughing at, Will?" said his wife, as she put out the candle.
"Why, you soft little thing," answered the woodman, "didn't you see that bunch of green ash-keys in his cap; and don't you know that nobody would dare to wear them but the Ouphe of the Wood? I saw him cutting those very keys for himself as I passed to the sawmill this morning, and I knew him again directly, though he has disguised himself as an old man."
"Bless us!" exclaimed the little wife; "is the Wood Ouphe in our cottage? How frightened