DANISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
The poor man approached his house, thinking how well it would be when all the small mouths, which were so often clamoring for bread, could be filled with good things, and the little cheeks become as rosy-red as they ought to have been long ago. He stooped forward, bending his head under the heavy burden of the fagots, when suddenly a merry voice called: "Papa—there is papa!" Lifting his head and glancing in the direction of his house, he saw his youngest boy rush along the path to meet him. There was no time to warn the child or keep him back; he had seen him first, and of course he must part with him. It gave him great pain; but when he entered the house and found abundance of everything he appeared cheerful and unconcerned, and said nothing of the promise which the stranger had received from him.
Time passed. The man expected every day to lose his child, but no one came. The little boy gradually developed a wonderful keenness and scholarship. In school he could be taught nothing that he did not already know, so at length he was allowed to stay at home, where he read and wrote diligently, paying visits to both the blacksmith and the minister—the two learned men in this part of the country—who loaned him all sorts of queer books.
On his thirteenth birthday the boy told his father that he knew all about the agreement with the man in the forest. "Now you must take a knife and
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