MOTHER BERTHA'S StORIES. 120 hundreds of other things, which 1 will not tire my readers By enumerating. When the boy at last was gone, old Bertha seated herself agåio by the hearth. She was in her holiday dress, the one worn by old people in her native district Hadeland, where she came from when she moved to Romerike—a blue jacket trimmed with braid, black kilted skirt, and cap with ruffles and bows. Her sharp irrimovable eyes with irregular pupils, her projecting chin, her broad nose, and her yellow complexion gave Bertha's face a strange, Oriental, almost witchlike appearance ; and this was not to be wondered at, because she was considered the first wise woman for a good many miles around. I wondered that she still was up, and I asked if she expected visitors, since she had her best clothes on. " No, not that exactly," she answered, " but I have been up in Ullensogn to see to a woman who suffered from a wasting disease, and from that place I was fetched to a youngster who had the rickets. I had to read and melt lead over that child. I have only just returned home, although they drove me as far as the innkeeper's." " But if I recollect rightly, Bertha, you can cure sprains as well ? " I asked, as seriously as possible. "Oh yes, I think I can, for Siri, our neighbour, didn't get well before I came to her, although the doctor and Mother Kari, on the farm just below here, had been experimenting on her leg," she said with a wicked expression ; "and if you think it will do any good," she continued, with a suspicious look, "I don't think it would hurt your foot to read over a little brandy and put on it." "Yes, do so, Bertha, read over the brandy and try it ; it's sure to do me good," I said, hoping to become initiated into one or other of the mysteries of the art of healing by magic. Bertha fetched a square, bluish-looking flask, and a glass with a wooden stem, from her flower-painted cupboard, poured out the brandy, put the glass on the hearth by her side, buttoned up my snow socks, and pulled my boot off. She then began making crosses over the brandy and whispering into it, but as she was rather deaf herself,
