THE CHILD AMONG THE WOLF-CUBS.
In a cottage that stood on a great range of mountains in Germany, there once lived a poor woman who had a little child and a flock of sheep. Now, one day she sat with her little child in the forest, and gave the child some porridge out of a pipkin, and the sheep were nibbling the grass in the glades around. But in the thick parts of the forest there were wicked wolves, and when the sheep went further away under the trees, the woman thought, “Perhaps the wolves may attack them.” So she gave the child the bowl with porridge in it, and a wooden spoon, and bade her eat it; saying, “Be sure not fill the spoon too full,” and off she went after the sheep.
And as the child sat alone, and ate and ate, there came a big she-wolf out of the forest; and she ran straight to the child and took hold of her by the jacket at the back, and carried her into the forest. So when the mother came back the child was gone; the bowl was there, but the spoon was not with it, for the child had held the spoon fast in her little hand. Directly the poor mother saw the child was gone, she thought the wolf must have taken it, so she ran back to the village, and called the people to come and help her to find her child.
Meantime a man who had lost his way in the wood, and was wandering about among the bushes, heard a sound of talking near him, and thought at once, “There must be some people here;” and a little voice kept saying, “Go, or I’ll give you something!” And when he looked through the bushes, to see what this might be, behold! there sat a little child on the ground, and six little wolf-cubs round her, which kept snapping at her hands; but the old she-wolf was gone. Each time that a little wolf-cub snapped at her hands, the child hit it on the nose with the wooden spoon, and said, “Go, or I’ll give you something!”
The man ran up quickly, and beat off the wolf-cubs with his stick, so they all ran away. Then he took up the child in his arms, for he feared the old wolf might come back. In a short time he met the villagers coming out to kill the wolf, and with them was the child’s mother. How rejoiced she was! How she thanked the man, and still more God, that her child was saved!
LITTLE LAMBS.
I walk’d in a field of fresh clover this morn,