Happiness, they say, does not last long. The truth of this saying the peasant experienced only too soon. On arriving home he found his parents were dead; Kate, the girl whom he had loved before all others, was married, and had four children; most of his friends. were either dead or had removed to distant parts.

The unfortunate peasant bore his misfortunes bravely. He tried to forget his troubles by the tillage, in the sweat of his brow, of a small piece of land. Sometimes, especially on holidays, he would go to the village public-house, and there, surrounded by his neighbours, would tell the story of his adventures, and the trials he had suffered through the cruel vengeance of the despised witch.

III.

A peasant, having been a wolf for seven years, was permitted by the witch who had transformed him to resume his natural shape. Although hungry and without clothes, he walked the whole day to reach his home where he had left his wife and children. He arrived late at night before his hut, and knocked at the door.

"Who is there ?" demanded a voice from within; and the peasant at once recognised it as that of his wife.

"It is I—your husband; open the door, quick!” "Heaven help us!" cried the terrified woman. "Here, husband, get up!"

The wondering peasant soon saw before him his former servant, who, having married his wife, had come into all his property. The new husband rushed out of the hut armed with a pitchfork, determined to drive away its rightful owner. The unhappy man-wolf, exasperated at his wife's inconstancy, cried out in his anguish,—

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Oh, that I were again a wolf, that I might punish my faithless wife, and never feel my misery!"

His wish was gratified on the instant: he was changed again into a wolf. Maddened with rage, he attacked his wife, who stood by holding a child of the second marriage in her arms. He pulled her down to the ground, devoured the child, and revenged himself upon its mother by mangling her body in a fearful manner.

At the cries of the wounded woman the neighbours ran to her assistance and set upon the furious animal. The wolf did not long defend himself; he soon fell beneath the repeated blows of his assailants. When the peasants, shouting with joy at their victory, began to examine the creature by the light of the burning pine splinters, they found to their surprise and horror, that instead of a wolf, they had killed their countryman who was lost seven years before, and was supposed to have been changed into a wolf. They tried to restore him, but it was too late. Whilst they were lamenting his unhappy end, the faithless woman, his wife, died of the wounds she had received.

YANECHEK AND THE WATER DEMON.

(FROM THE BOHEMIAN.)

A SHEPHERDESS in Borohrady had an only son whose name was Yanechek,* but that one son was more trouble to her than ten daughters would have been to any other mother. Yanechek was in truth a very mischievous boy. There was not one of his playmates, girl or boy, upon whom he had not practised some trick; and not a woman in Borohrady who had not complained of his pranks to his mother, the widow Dorothy.

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Gossip Dorothy," cried Mistress Betusche, “your Yanechek fastened my door on the outside last night, and I had to call to my neighbours for half a day before I could get out."

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Shepherdess Dorothy," said the magistrate one day in the village market-place, "if I catch Yanechek in my pigeon-house again I will send him to prison."

* Johnny.

"My dear Dorothy," complained Mistress Anichka, "last night, at twelve o'clock, Yanechek frightened us dreadfully."

And thus it was day after day: "Gossip Dorothy, Shepherdess Dorothy, My dear Dorothy," and day after day Dorothy shed tears over her troubles.

"Why don't you correct the boy?" suggested the shepherdess's brother.

But Dorothy was afraid to whip her mischievous son, because that would make him cry; and the boy, knowing his mother's weakness, did as he pleased without fear. In his mischief he did not consider his mother's feelings in the least. He would chase the goats up the steepest rocks, while his mother, Dorothy, standing at the bottom, would scream, "Come down, Yanechek!" at the top of her voice, her heart ready to break with fear. But Yanechek would climb to the very top, then seize the thin branches of a bush with his right hand and bend his whole body forward, so that it appeared as if he were suspended in the air, or upon the point of falling down to cut himself to pieces on the sharp rocks beneath. At this sight his poor mother Dorothy would be seized with a fainting fit, and crying, "Heaven help me!" would fall senseless to the ground. Then, as the poor shepherdess began to recover from her swoon, the wicked Yanechek would hold her in his arms, crying,—

"Open your eyes, mother! open your eyes!"

And as soon as his mother opened her eyes, Yanechek would jump up, turn round on his heel, and clapping his hands together would cry joyfully,—

"Mother is alive again! Mother is alive again!" And the shepherdess, instead of taking a cane to chastise her mischievous son, would simply say,

"How you frightened me, you naughty boy!"

And this reproof seemed to her a sufficient punishment for her dear son.

But the wicked boy caused the greatest anxiety to his mother Dorothy when he went to bathe in the large pool. There was no part of that pool, deep as it was, where Yanechek did not dive to the bottom. On warm

days he would splash about in the smooth water, turn somersaults, and leap and gambol like a playful carp. Or he would climb up the willow trees growing on the bank of the pool, and from the highest and thinnest branches he would spring headlong into the cool, deep water.

"Yanechek! Yanechek!" his mother often cried, "don't bathe in the pool. You will fall into the Water Demon's net some day."

"I don't care for the Water Demon," the boy would answer laughing. Then he would run into the forest. and gather a cap full of strawberries or a basket of mushrooms for his mother. For Dorothy was very fond