The children were soon quiet, and Mother Skau oommenced as foliows:— * m You hear a great deal about brownies and fairies and such like beings, but I don't believe there is much in it. I have neither seen one nor the other, — of course I have not been so very much about in my lifetime, but I believe it is all nonsense. But old Stine out in the kitchen there, she says she has seen the brownie. About the time when I was confirmed, she was in service with my parents. She came to us from a captain's, who had given up the sea. It was a very quiet place. They never went anywhere, and nobody came to see them. The captain only took a walk as far as the quay every day. They always went to bed early. People said there was a brownie in the house. Well, it so happened that Stine and the cook were sitting in their room one evening, mending and darning their things ; it was near bedtime, for the watchman had already sung out " Ten o'clock," but somehow the darning and the sewing went on very slowly indeed ; every moment " Jack Nap " came and played his tricks upon them ! At one moment Stine was nodding and nodding, and then came the cook's turn—they could not keep their eyes open ; they had been early up that morning to wash clothes. But just as they were sitting thus, they heard a terrible crash down stairs in the kitchen and Stine shouted : * Lor* bless and preserve us ! it must be the brownie.' She was so frightened she dared scarcely move a foot, but at last the cook plucked up courage and went down into the kitchen, closely followed by Stine. When they opened the kitchen door, they found all the crockery on the floor, but none of it broken, while the brownie was standing on the big kitchen table with his red cap on and hurling the one dish after the other on to the floor and laughing in great glee. The cook had heard that the brownies could some times be tricked into moving to another house, when anybody would tell them of a very quiet place, and as she long had been wishing for an opportunity to play a trick upon this brownie, she took courage and spoke to him—her voice was a little shaky at the time—that he ought to remove to the tinman's over the way, where it was so very quiet and pleasant, because they always went
