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and immediately the fox was changed into a man, and turned out to be the queen's brother, who had been lost a great many years.

THE OLD WIDOW.

THERE was once, in a great city, a poor old widow, who was sitting one evening alone in her room, and thinking how first she had lost her husband, then her two children, after that, all her relations, and now last of all, her only remaining friend, so that she was left quite desolate and forsaken. Thus she was sunk in the deepest melancholy; and above all, the loss of her two sons was so bitter to her that she even accused the Almighty of harshness and unkindness. Occupied in these miserable thoughts, she was surprised to hear the church bells ring for early service; having spent the whole night in grief and lamentation, without noticing how quickly the timepassed away. She then lit her lamp and went to church, which, on her arrival, she found lighted up; but not as usual with wax tapers, but with a strange twilight sort of glimmering haze. The church was already crowded with people, and every corner was crammed full, so that when she came to her usual place it was already occupied, and not an inch of room to spare. And as she looked at the people they seemed to be all dead relatives, sitting in their old fashioned dresses, and with pale and wan countenances. They neither spoke nor sang, but a low soft hum and sigh was heard throughout the church. An old female relative then stood up and told her if she would look in the direction of the altar she would see

her two sons. The old widow did so, and saw her two children, one hanging on a gallows, and the other stretched on the wheel. The old relative then proceeded and said-You see how it would have fared with your children, if they had lived, and had God not taken them to himself when innocent children. The old widow went trembling home, and thanked God on her knees that He had done better for her than she could have devised; and on the third day she fell ill and died.

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THE DEMON OF BROCKENBERG.

THE solitudes of the Harz forest in Germany, but especially the mountain called Brockenberg, are haunted by a sort of tutelar demon, in the shape of a wild man, of huge stature, his head wreathed with oak-leaves, and his middle cinctured with the same, bearing in his hand a pine torn up by the roots. It is certain that many persons profess to have seen such a form traversing, with huge strides, in a line parallel to their own course, the opposite ridge of a mountain, when divided from it by a narrow glen. In elder times the intercourse of the demon with the inhabitants was more familiar; and, according to the tradition of the Harz, he was wont, with the caprice usually ascribed to those earth-born powers, to interfere with the affairs of mortals, sometimes for their weal, sometimes for their wo. But it was observed, that even his gifts often turned out, in the long run, fatal to those on whom they were bestowed; and the fortunes of Martin Waldeck have been often quoted by the aged to their giddy children, when they were heard to scoff at a danger which appeared visionary.

A travelling Capuchin had once possessed himself of the pulpit of the thatched church, at a little hamlet called Morgenbrodt, lying in the Harz district, from which he declaimed against the wickedness of the inhabitants, and their communication with the woodland goblin of the Harz. The peasantry laughed to scorn the zeal with which the venerable man insisted upon his topic. Three young men, who had been present on this occasion, were upon their return to the hut

where they carried on the laborious and humble occupation of preparing charcoal for the smelting furnaces. On the way, their conversation naturally turned upon the demon of the Harz and the doctrines of the capuchin. Max and George Waldeck, the two elder brothers, although they allowed the language of the capuchin to have been indiscreet and worthy of censure, as presuming to determine upon the precise character and abode of the spirit, yet contended it was dangerous, in the highest degree, to accept of his gift, or hold any communication with him. He was powerful, they allowed, but wayward and capricious; and those who had intercourse with him seldom came to a good end. Did he not give the brave knight, Ecbert of Rabenwald, that famous black steed, by means of which he vanquished all the champions at the great tournament at Bremen ? and did not the same steed afterwards precipitate itself with its rider into an abyss, so steep and fearful, that neither horse nor man were ever seen more? Had he not given to Dame Gertrude Trodden a curious spell for making butter come? and was she not burnt for a witch by the grand criminal judge of the electorate, because she availed herself of his gift? But these and many other instances which they quoted, of mischance and ill-luck ultimately attending on the apparent benefits conferred by the Harz spirit, failed to make any impression upon Martin Waldeck, the youngest of the brothers. Martin was youthful, rash, and impetuous; excelling in all the exercises which distinguish a mountaineer, and brave and undaunted from his familiar intercourse with the dangers that attend them. He laughed at the timidity of his brothers. "Tell me not of such folly," he said, "the demon is a good demon-he lives among us

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