"Heaven help us, we have no Lord Mayors in Norway; the sheriff is good enough for us, and trouble enough he gives us sometimes; but we have a story, the end of which is as like your Lord Mayor's story as one pea is like another, and here it is, only we call it
THE HONEST PENNY.
"Once on a time there was a poor woman who lived in a tumble-down hut far away in the wood. Little had she to eat, and nothing at all to burn, and so she sent a little boy she had out into the wood to gather fuel. He ran and jumped, and jumped and ran, to keep himself warm, for it was a cold gray autumn day, and every time he found a bough or a root for his billet, he had to beat his arms across his breast, for his fists were as red as the cranberries over which he walked, for very cold. So when he had got his billet of wood and was off home, he came upon a clearing of stumps on the hillside, and there he saw a white crooked stone.
"'Ah! you poor old stone,' said the boy; 'how white and wan you are! I'll be bound you are frozen to death;' and with that he took off his jacket, and laid it on the stone. So when he got home with his billet of wood his mother asked what it all meant that he walked about in wintry weather in his shirtsleeves. Then he told her how he had seen an old crooked stone which was all white and wan for frost, and how he had given it his jacket.
"'What a fool you are!' said his mother; 'do you think a stone can freeze? But even if it froze till it shook again, know this—everyone is nearest to his own self. It costs quite enough to get clothes to your back, without your going and hanging them on stones in the clearings,' and as she said that, she hunted the boy out of the house to fetch his jacket.
"So when he came where the stone stood, lo! it had turned itself and lifted itself up on one side from the ground. 'Yes! yes! this is since you got the jacket, poor old thing,' said the boy.
"But, when he looked a little closer at the stone, he saw a money-box, full of bright silver, under it.
"'This is stolen money, no doubt,' thought the boy; 'no one puts money, come by honestly, under a stone away in the wood.'
"So he took the money-box and bore it down to a tarn hard by and threw the whole hoard into the tarn; but one silver pennypiece floated on the top of the water, "'Ah! ah! that is honest,' said the lad; 'for what is honest never sinks.'
"So he took the silver penny and went home with it and his jacket. Then he told his mother how it had all happened, how the stone had turned itself, and how he had found a money-box full of silver money, which he had thrown out into the tarn because it was stolen money, and how one silver penny floated on the top.