tT

THE UNGRATEFUL CHILDREN. 21

wards I have never learnt my letters; how shall I
begin to do so now? A clerk cannot be fashioned
out of an old man ou the point of death!” But there
was no use talking, his children said he must go to
school, and the voices of his children prevailed against
his feeble old voice. So to school he had to go. Now
there was no church in that village, so he had to go
to the village beyond it to school. A forest lay
along the road, and in this forest the old man met a
nobleman driving along. When the old man came
near to the nobleman’s carriage, he stepped out of the
road to let it pass, took off his hat respectfully, and
then would have gone on further. But he heard
some one calling, and, looking back, saw the nobleman
beckoning to him; he wanted to ask him something,
The nobleman then got out of his carriage and asked
the old man whither he was going. The old man took
off his hat to the nobleman and told him all his
misery, and the tears ran down the old man’s cheeks.
“ Woe is me, gracious sir! If the Lord had left me
without kith and kin, I should not complain ; but
strange indeed is the woe that has befallen me! I
have four sons, thank God, and all four have houses
of their own, and yet they send their poor old father
to school to learn! Was ever the like of it known
before?” So the old man told the nobleman his
whole story, and the nobleman was full of compassion