old songs and dance-melodies all day long, and sometimes mixed up both words and tunes wofully; and when his memory failed him, he sang the first thing that popped into his head. Some people said they had heard him humming the multiplication table to the tune of "Old Norway's Lion," and whole pages out of Luther's Catechism to jolly dance tunes. Not that he ever meant to be irreverent; it was just his way of amusing himself. He was an odd stick, people thought, and not of much use to his family. Whatever he did, "luck went against him. But it affected his temper very little. Halvor was still light-hearted and good-natured, and went about humming, as usual. If he went out hunting and came home with an empty pouch, it did not interfere in the least with his gayety; but knowing well the reception which was in store for him, it did occasionally happen that he paused with a quizzical look before opening the door, and perhaps, after a minute's reflection, concluded to spend the night in the barn; for Turid, his wife, had a mind of her own, and knew how to express herself with emphasis. She was, as every one admitted, a very worthy and competent woman, and accomplished more in a day than her husband did in a fortnight. But worthy and competent people are not invariably the pleasantest people to associate with, and the gay and genial good-fornothing Halvor, with his bright, irresponsible smile and his pleasant ways, was a far more popular person in the parish than his austere, estimable, over-worked wife. For one thing, with all her poverty, she had a great deal of pride; and people who had never suspected that one so poor could have any objection to receiving alms had been much offended by her curt way of refusing their proffered gifts. Halvor, they said, showed a more realizing sense of his position; he had the humble and contrite heart which was becoming in an unsuccessful man, and accepted with equal cheerfulness and gratitude whatever was offered him, from a dollar bill to a pair of worn-out mittens. It was, in fact, this extreme readiness to accept things which first made difficulty between Halvor and his wife. It seemed to him a pure waste of labor to work for a thing which he could get for nothing; and it seemed to her a waste of something still more precious to accept as a gift what one might have honestly earned by work. But as she could never hope to have Halvor agree with her on this point, she comforted herself by impressing her own horror of alms-taking upon her children; and the children, in their turn, impressed the same sound principles upon their pet kid and the pussy cat.

the eldest, was ten years old, and Dolly, the youngest, was one, and the rest were scattered between. It was a pretty sight to see them of a summer afternoon on the grass plot before the house, rolling over one another and gamboling like a sportive family of kittens; only you could hardly help feeling vaguely uneasy about the mountain, the steep, black wall of which, sparsely clad with pines, rose so threateningly above them. It seemed as if it must, some day, swoop down upon them and crush them. The mother, it must be admitted, was occasionally oppressed by some such fear; but when she reflected that the mountain had stood there from time immemorial, and had never yet moved, or harmed any one, she felt ashamed of her apprehension, and blamed herself for her distrust of God's providence.

Besides the children, there was another young inhabitant of the Myrbraaten cottage, and surely a very important one. He, too, was named Hans, but, in order to distinguish him from the son of the house, the word "Little" was prefixed, and the latter, although he was really the smaller of the two, was called, by way of distinction, Big Hans. The most remarkable thing about Little Hans was that he had, in spite of his youth, a very welldeveloped beard. Big Hans, who had not a hair on his chin, rather envied him this manly ornament. Then, again, Little Hans was a capital fighter, and could knock you down in one round with great coolness and sweet-tempered seriousness, as if he were acting entirely from a sense of duty. He never used any hard words; but, the moment his adversary attempted to rise, Little Hans quietly gave him another knock, and winked wickedly at him, as if warning him to lie still. He never bragged of his victories, but showed a modest self-appreciation to which very few of his age ever attain. Big Hans, who valued his friend and namesake above others, and had a hearty admiration for his many fine qualities, declared himself utterly unable to rival him in combativeness, modesty, and coolness of temper. For Big Hans, I am sorry to say, was sometimes given to bragging of his muscle and of his skill in turning hand-springs and standing on his head, and he could easily be teased into a furious temper. Now, Little Hans could not turn hand-springs, nor could he stand on his head; but, though he promptly resented any trifling with his dignity, I never once knew him to lose his temper. He never laughed when anything struck him as being funny; in fact, he seemed to regard every boisterous exhibition of feeling as undignified. He only turned his head away and stood chewing a piece of paper or a straw, with his usual look of comical gravity

Many people wondered at the fast friendship which bound Big Hans and Little Hans together. Their tastes, people said, were dissimilar; in temperament, too, they had few points of resemblance. And yet they were absolutely inseparable. Wherever Big Hans went, Little Hans was sure to follow. Often they were seen racing along the beach or climbing up the mountain-side; and, as Little Hans was a capital hand (or ought I to say foot?) at climbing, Big Hans often had hard work to keep up with him. Sometimes Little Hans would leap up a rock which was so steep that it was impossible for his friend to climb it, and then he would grin comically down at Big Hans, who would stand below calling tearfully to his companion until he descended, which usually was very soon. For Little Hans was very fond of Big Hans, and could never bear to see him cry. And that is not in the least to be wondered at, as Big Hans had saved him from starvation and death when Little Hans was really in the sorest need. Their acquaintance began in the following manner: one day when Big Hans was up in the mountains trapping hares, he heard a feeble voice in a cleft of the rocks near by, and, hurrying to the spot, he found Little Hans wedged in between two great stones, and his leg caught in so distressing a manner that it cost Big Hans nearly an hour's work to set it free. Then he dressed the bruised foot with a rag torn from the lining of his coat, and carried Little Hans home in his arms. And as Little Hans's parents had never claimed him, and he himself could give no satisfactory account of them, he had thenceforth remained at Myrbraaten, where all the children were very fond of him. Turid their mother, on the other hand, had no great liking for him, especially after he had devoured her hymnbook (which was her most precious property) and eaten with much appetite a piece of Dolly's dress. For, as I intimated, Little Hans's tastes were very curious, and nothing came amiss when he was hungry. He had a trick of pulling off Dolly's stockings when she was sitting out on the green, and, if he were not discovered in time, he was sure to make his breakfast off of them. With these tastes, you will readily understand, Big Hans could have no sympathy, and the only thing which could induce him to forgive Little Hans's eccentricities was the fact that Little Hans was a goat.

II.

IN the winter of 187-, a great deal of snow fell on the northwestern coast of Norway. The old pines about the Myrbraaten cottage were laden

down with it; the children had to be put to work with snow-shovels early in the morning, in order to hollow out a tunnel to the cow-stable where the cow stood bellowing with hunger. The mother, too, worked bravely, and sometimes when the thin roof of snow caved in and fell down upon them, and made them look like wandering snowimages, they all laughed heartily, and their mother, too, could not help laughing, because they were so happy. Little Hans also made a pretense of working, but only succeeded in being in everybody's way, and when the cold snow drizzled down upon his nose he grinned and made faces so queer that the children shouted with merriment.

Day after day, and week after week, the snow continued to descend. Big Hans and his friend sat at the window watching the large feathery flakes, as they whirled slowly and silently through the air and covered the earth far and near with a white pall. Soon there was a scarcity of wood at the Myrbraaten cottage, and Halvor was obliged to get into his skees* and go to the forest. Humming the multiplication table (so far as he knew it) to the tune of a hymn, he pulled on his warmest jacket, took his ax from its hiding-place under the eaves, and went in a slanting line upon the mountain-side; but, before he had gone many rods it struck him that it was useless to go so far for wood, when the whole mountain-slope was covered with pines. Fresh pine would be a little hard to burn, to be sure, but then pine was full of pitch and would burn, anyhow. He therefore took off his skees, dug a hole in the snow, and felled three or four trees only a few hundred rods above the cottage. When his wife heard the sound of his ax so near the cottage, she rushed out and cried to him:

"Halvor, Halvor, don't cut down the trees on the slope! They are all that keep the snow from coming down upon us, in an avalanche, and sweeping us into the ocean!"

"Oh, the Lord will look out for his own," sang Halvor cheerily."

"The Lord put the pine-trees there to protect us,” replied his wife.”

But the end was that, in spite of his wife's protests, Halvor continued to fell the trees.

The heavy fall of snow was followed in the course of a week by a sudden thaw.

Strange creaking and groaning sounds stole through the forest. Sometimes, when a large load of snow fell, it rolled and grew as it rolled, until it dashed against a huge trunk and nearly broke it with its weight.

lanche had wrought. All that was left of Myrbraaten was the cow-stable, where the cow and Little Hans and Big Hans had slept. Little Hans had been very ill-behaved the night before, so Turid had sent him to sleep with the cow; and Big Hans, who thought it would be cruel to ask his companion to spend the night in that dark stable, with only a cow for company, had gone with him and slept with him in the hay. Thus it happened that Little Hans and Big Hans both were saved. It was pitiful to see them shivering in the wet snow.

Big Hans was crying, as if his heart would

A smoke-like cloud rose in the darkness, and a sound as of a thousand thundering cataracts filled the night. On it swept, onward, with a wild, resistless speed! At the jutting rock, where the juniper stood, the avalanche divided, tearing up the old spruces and the birches by the roots and hurling them down, but leaving the juniper standing alone on its barren peak. It was but a moment's work. The avalanche shot downward with increased speed-hark! - a sharp shriek, a smothered groan, then a fierce hissing sound of waves that rose toward the sky and returned with a long thundering cannonade to the strand! The night was darker and the silence deeper than before.

break; and the women who crowded about him were unable to comfort him. What should he, a small boy of ten, do alone in this wide world? His father and his mother and his little brothers and sisters all were gone, and there was no one left who cared for him. Just then Little Hans, who was anxious to express his sympathy, put his nose close to Big Hans's face and rubbed it against his cheek.

"Yes, you are right, Little Hans," sobbed the boy, embracing his faithful friend; "you do care for me. You are the only one I have left now, in all the world. You and I will stand by each other always."

Little Hans then said, "Ma-a-a," which in his language meant, "Yes."

The question soon arose in the parish,-- what was to be done with Big Hans? He had no relatives except a brother of his mother, who had emigrated many years before to Minnesota; and there was no one else who seemed disposed to assume the burden of his support. It was finally decided that he

should be hired out as a pauper to the lowest bidder, and that the parish should pay for his board. But when the people who bid for him refused to take Little Hans too, the boy determined, after some altercation with the authorities, to seek his uncle in America. One thing he was sure of, and that was that he would not part from Little Hans. But there was no one in the parish who would board Little Hans without extra pay. Accordingly, the cow and the barn were sold for the boy's benefit, and he and his comrade went on foot to the city, where they bought a ticket for New York.

Thus it happened that Big Hans and Little Hans became Americans. But before they reached the United States, some rather curious things happened to them. The captain of the steamship, Big Hans found, was not willing to take a goat as a passenger, and Big Hans was forced to return with his friend to the pier, while the other emigrants thronged on board. He was nearly at his wit's end, when it suddenly occurred to him to put Little Hans in a bag and smuggle him on board as baggage. This was a lucky thought. Little Hans was quite heavy, to be sure, but he seemed to comprehend the situation perfectly, and kept as still as a mouse in his bag while Big Hans, with the assistance of a benevolent fellowpassenger, lugged him up the gang-plank. And when he emerged from his retirement some time after the steamer was well under way, none of the officers even thought of throwing the poor goat overboard; for Little Hans became a great favorite with both crew and passengers, although he played various mischievous pranks, in his quiet, unostentatious way, and ate some shirts which had been hung out to dry.

It was early in April when the two friends arrived in New York. They attracted considerable attention as they walked up Broadway together; and many people turned around to laugh at the little emigrant boy, in his queer Norwegian costume, who led a full-grown goat after him by a halter. The bootblacks and the newsboys pointed their fingers at them, and, when that had no effect, made faces at them, and pulled Big Hans by his short jacket and Little Hans by his short tail. Big Hans was quite frightened when he saw how many of them there were; but, perceiving that Little Hans was not in the least ruffled, he felt ashamed of himself, and took heart again. Thus they marched on for several blocks, while the crowd behind them grew more and more boisterous and importunate. Suddenly, one big boy, who seemed to be the leader of the gang, sprang forward with a yell and knocked off Big Hans's hat, while all the rest cheered loudly; but, just as he was

turning around to enjoy his triumph, Little Hans turned around too, and gave him a bump from behind which sent him headlong into the gutter. Then, rising on his hind legs, Little Hans leaped forward again and again, and dispatched the second and third boy in the same manner, whereupon all the rest ran away, helter-skelter, scattering through the side streets. It was all done in so quiet and gentlemanly a manner, that not one of the grown-up spectators who had gathered on the sidewalk thought of interfering. Big Hans, however, who had intended to see something of the city before starting for the West, was so discouraged at the inhospitable reception the United States had given him, that he gave up his purpose, and returned disconsolately to Castle Garden. There he spent the rest of the day, and when the night came, he went to sleep on the floor, with his little bundle under his head; while Little Hans, who did not seem to be sleepy, lay down at his side, quietly munching a piece of pie which he had stolen from somebody's luncheon basket.

Early the next morning, Big Hans was awakened by a gentle pulling at his coat-collar; and, looking up, he saw that it was Little Hans. He jumped up as quickly as he could, and he found that it was high time, for all the emigrants had formed into a sort of a procession and were filing through the gate on their way to the railway station. There were some seven or eight hundred of them, toil-worn, sad-faced men and women, and queer-looking children in all sorts of outlandish costumes. Big Hans and his friend ran to take their places at the very end of the procession, and just managed to slip through the gate before it was closed. At the railway station the boy exhibited his ticket which he had bought at the steamship office in Norway, and was just about to board the train, when the conductor cried out:

"Hold on, there! This is not a cattle train! You can't take your goat into the passenger-car!" Big Hans did not quite comprehend what was said, but from the expression of the conductor's voice and face, he surmised that there was some objection to his comrade.

"I think I have money enough to buy a ticket for Little Hans, too," he said, in his innocent Norwegian way, as he pulled a five-dollar bill from his pocket.

"I don't want your money," cried the conductor, who knew as little of Norwegian as Big Hans did of English. "Get out of the way there with your billy goat!"

And he hustled the boy roughly out of the way to make room for the other emigrants, who were thronging up to the platform.