ILL-LUCK AND THE FIDDLER

“T am glad to hear it,” says the Fiddler.

“You may well be,” said the old man, ‘for I am all
alone in the world, and without wife or child. And this
morning I said to myself that the first body that came to
my house I would take for a son—or a daughter, as the
case might be. You are the first, and so you shall live
with me as long as I live, and after I am gone everything
that I have shall be yours.”

The Fiddler did nothing but stare with open eyes and
mouth, as though he would never shut either again.

Well, the Fiddler lived with the old man for maybe
three or four days as snug and happy a life as ever a
mouse passed in a green cheese. As for the gold and
silver and jewels—why, they were as plentiful in that
house as dust ina mill! Everything the Fiddler wanted
came to his hand. He lived high, and slept soft and
warm, and never knew what it was to want either more
or less, or great or small. In all of those three or four
days he did nothing but enjoy himself with might and
main.

But by-and-by he began to wonder where all the good
things came from. Then, before long, he fell to pestering
the old man with questions about the matter.

At first the old man put him off with short answers, but
the Fiddler was a master-hand at finding out anything
that he wanted to know. He dinned and drummed and
worried until flesh and blood could stand it no longer.
So at last the old man said that he would show him the
treasure-house where all his wealth came from, and at
that the Fiddler was tickled beyond measure.

The old man took a key from behind the door and led

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