THE TAILOR AND THE WOLVES.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN.
Ever so long ago there lived a tailor's apprentice, a merry, light-hearted fellow, but with a large hump, so that he always looked like a country-woman going to market on a Saturday, carrying her goods on her back.
One night, as he was returning from some festivity in the town, he had to go through a thick wood, in which it was so dark that he could not see his hand before his face. As he was dawdling along quite merrily, and whistling the tune of the last waltz that he had danced, he lost his way, and fell into a deep pit, so that sight and hearing forsook him, and he gave himself up for lost. But when he found out that he was unhurt after the fall, he began to cry pitiably and to call for help, till he suddenly heard talking not far off.
In the pit, which sloped sideways far down into the earth, lived a large wolf with his wife and two little ones, and when they had heard the tailor's fall and screams, the old wolf said, joyfully, to his wife,
"Be quick, my dear, hang the pot over the fire; I think we shall have something good to-night."
These words reached the ears of the tailor, who, in the deepest anxiety for his life, became as still as a mouse.
But the wolf opened the door of his den, put a lamp in his paw, and peered all round till he had discovered the tailor, whom he then seized by the legs, and, without more ado, dragged into his sitting-room.
When he was about to be killed, the poor fellow cried and bemoaned himself in such a heart-rending manner that the wife, who was a good soul, put in a word for him to her husband.