"I cannot give you all a sleeping place in my house," he said, "but can make room for the three smaller boys. You larger ones can go to the straw shed. You will find plenty of clean, dry straw, and there you can sleep until morning and shall have a good breakfast before you leave. But before we part for the night, you must turn your pockets inside out that I may see that you have no matches or anything else that will strike a spark."
They agreed willingly, and he then led the way to the shed, took from a feed box a number of coarse sacks for covering and said good-night.
"We are thankful to you for giving us this comfortable place to sleep," said the blacksmith. "We thought it harsh treatment to make us leave the cabin, but you have given us better quarters and we are truly obliged to you. You are certainly good to us."
"Yes, I try to be good to everybody, especially to hard-working boys out on their holiday, when I find that they are not common tramps who do not wish to work."
He left the shed and the boys followed him to his dwelling, and to a room adjoining the living-room.
"There are two straw-beds on this bedstead," he said. "One can be taken off and put on the floor, and one of you can sleep upon it, while the other two can have the one on the bedstead."
"I will take the one on the floor. Then Pixy can sleep with me," said
Fritz.
"Suit yourselves about that, only take off your wet clothes, shoes and stockings, and my wife will put them about the kitchen fire, and they will be dry by morning."
The boys hurriedly disrobed, and the forest-keeper bade them good-night, and left the room.
Paul and Franz crept jubilantly under the coverings of the bed, and Fritz was equally glad for the piece of carpet which the forest-keeper had given him in lieu of a quilt, and with Pixy close to him, he was happier than many a king.