The mother stooped and took hold of it, and lifted harder and harder, until she raised it from the step. Her cheek blanched as she noted its great weight, and breathlessly she carried it in and laid it upon the breakfast table. With trembling fingers she loosened the string and emptied the contents upon the table. Gold and silver—more than she had ever thought of in her wildest dreams of comfort, and almost buried in the pile of treasure lay Totty's little blue stocking.
We will not intrude longer upon such happiness; but leave the joyful family sounding praises to Heaven and Santa Claus.
Anon.
* * * * *
A LEGEND OF BREGENZ.
Girt round with rugged mountains
The fair Lake Constance lies;
In her blue heart reflected
Shine back the starry skies;
And, watching each white cloudlet
Float silently and slow,
You think a piece of Heaven
Lies on our earth below!
Midnight is there: and Silence,
Enthroned in Heaven, looks down
Upon her own calm mirror,
Upon a sleeping town:
For Bregenz, that quaint city
Upon the Tyrol shore,
Has stood above Lake Constance
A thousand years and more.
Her battlements and towers,
From off their rocky steep,
Have cast their trembling shadow
For ages on the deep:
Mountain, and lake, and valley,
A sacred legend know,
Of how the town was saved, one night,
Three hundred years ago.
Far from her home and kindred,
A Tyrol maid had fled,
To serve in the Swiss valleys,
And toil for daily bread;
And every year that fleeted
So silently and fast,
Seemed to bear farther from her
The memory of the Past.
She served kind, gentle masters,
Nor asked for rest or change;
Her friends seemed no more new ones,
Their speech seemed no more strange
And when she led her cattle
To pasture every day,
She ceased to look and wonder
On which side Bregenz lay.