THE EMERGENCY MISTRESS.
(A Fairy Tale.)
By Frank R. Stockton.
Jules Vatermann was a wood-cutter, and a very good one. He always had employment, for he understood his business so well, and was so industrious and trustworthy, that every one in the neighborhood where he lived, who wanted wood cut, was glad to get him to do it.
Jules had a very ordinary and commonplace life until he was a middle-aged man, and then something remarkable happened to him. It happened on the twenty-fifth of January, in a very cold winter. Jules was forty-five years old, that year, and he remembered the day of the month, because in the morning, before he started out to his work, he had remarked that it was just one month since Christmas.
The day before, Jules had cut down a tall tree, and he had been busy all the morning sawing it into logs of the proper length and splitting it up and making a pile of it.
When dinner-time came around, Jules sat down on one of the logs and opened his basket. He had plenty to eat,—good bread and sausage, and a bottle of beer, for he was none of your poor wood-cutters.
As he was cutting a sausage, he looked up and saw something coming from behind his wood-pile.
At first, he thought it was a dog, for it was about the right size for a small dog, but in a moment he saw it was a little man. He was a little man indeed, for he was not more than two feet high. He was dressed in brown clothes and wore a peaked cap, and he must have been pretty old, for he had a full white beard. Although otherwise warmly clad, he wore on his feet only shoes and no stockings and came hopping along through the deep snow as if his feet were very cold.
When he saw this little old man, Jules said never a word. He merely thought to himself: "This is some sort of a fairy-man."