Twenty-Four Unusual Stories for Boys and Girls Part 4

The people were very happy when they heard what the birds said, and with much excitement began to get ready for the springtime.

Now, of course, the King knew nothing about all this, and was very happy in thinking of the surprise that he was to give the people. He took the warm suns.h.i.+ne and the soft south wind for companions, and made his way in all haste to the land of ice and snow. As he arrived, with his delightful secret, as he thought, hidden in his heart, he was amazed to find an old woman sitting in her doorway knitting.

"Why are you sitting here?" he asked. "Why are you not within, warming your feet by the fire?"

"Why, don't you know?" she said, "spring is coming!"

"Spring?" he asked, almost roughly; "how do you know?"

"Oh," said she with a smile, trying not to look at a robin that turned his back behind the picket fence, hoping that if the King saw him he might think he was an English sparrow, "a little bird told me."

The King walked up the street, looking gloomy enough, and soon came across a gardener with his rake, uncovering the crocuses and the daffodils.

"Why do you do this, my good man? Surely your flowers will freeze. You had much better be covering them up."

"Oh, no," he said, straightening his bent back, "spring is coming."

"Spring," said the King; "how do _you_ know?"

"Oh," said the gardener, with a grin, and a twinkle in his left eye, as he caught sight of a bluebird peeking half-scared around the limb of a near-by apple tree, "a little bird told me."

Then the disgraceful story all came out: that

_The robin pipped, and the bluebird blew; The sparrow chipped, and the swallow, too: "We know something,--we won't tell,-- Somebody's coming,--you know well.

This is his name ('twixt you and me), S-P-R-I-N-G."_

My! but wasn't the Earth King disgusted! And weren't the bird-messengers ashamed to come when he sternly called them! Each laid his little pointed nose on his little scratchy toes, and dropped his eyes and uttered never a word.

"Silly birds," he said in scornful voice. "You vowed to keep my secrets.

You have broken your vow. You obeyed my commands and called the south wind and the suns.h.i.+ne; so I cannot be too harsh with you. But you cannot keep my secrets, so I cannot keep you as my messengers. Now and then I may use you as my servants. Adieu!"

Then the birds flew sadly away as quietly and quickly as ever they could, and set to work building their nests in holes in the trees and holes in the ground and in out-of-the-way places, making such a chattering meantime that neither they, nor any one else, could hear themselves think.

By this time the Earth King was nearly discouraged. He did not know what in the world to do. He rested his elbow on his knee and his great head in his hand and thought and wondered. Then once again he rose and took the great brush and wrote the same big words on the sky. And for very weariness he lay down on a great bank of clouds and soon was sound asleep. As he slept, the cloud grew bigger and bigger and blacker and blacker, and the thunder came nearer and nearer until, all at once, CRASH-CRASH--the cloud seemed torn to pieces and the King leaped to his feet half-scared to death, even if he was a King. There before him, darting this way and that way, and up and down, and across-ways, was a swarm of little red-hot creatures that hissed and buzzed and cracked like the Fourth of July.

"Who are you?" he asked in half-fright as he rubbed his eyes, "and what do you want?"

"Messengers, messengers, messengers," whispered they all at once, "and we have come to serve the King."

"What are your names?"

"We are the Lightning Spirits; sometimes men call us Electricity--

_The swiftest creatures that are known to men, To carry your messages, a million times ten."_

The King charged them gravely and solemnly, as he had done the winds and the birds before them, that his messengers must be true and faithful and must keep his secrets. But no matter how great the task nor how heavy the oaths with which he bound them to be faithful, they were eager, all of them, to serve the King. Only he must build road-ways for them. They had not wings to fly, and their feet were not accustomed to the highways of the land. They might lose their way. So the King decided to try them.

He called his laborers and ordered them to erect tall poles, and from pole to pole to lay slender roadways of wire. Miles and miles of these roadways he built, over the hills and through the valleys. And when all was complete, he called the spirits to him and whispered to them his secret messages. Quick as thought they ran over the little roadways, hither and thither, and back again, doing faithfully and well the King's errands and keeping the King's secrets. They whispered never so much as a word of them. So the Earth King called a great a.s.sembly, and before them all appointed the Lightning Spirits to be his trusted messengers for ever and a day.

Of course the winds were very jealous when they heard of it, and they determined to get revenge by stealing the messages from the spirits.

They dashed against the wires day after day, trying to break them and get the secrets, but all to no purpose. All they could hear was MUM-MUM-MUM-M-M; and the harder they blew, the louder they heard it.

The birds had all along been sorry that they had given away the great secret, and had been hoping that the King would give them another chance. They were much too gentle to do as the winds did. But they were very curious to find out what the King's messages were. So day after day they went to the wires and sat upon them and snuggled down as close to them as they could get and listened hard, putting now the right ear down and now the left--but all they could ever hear was MUM-MUM-MUM-M-M-M-M.

_And they seem never to have got over that habit!_ If you want to find out for yourself the truth of this tale, _you go_ some day when the wind is blowing against the wires and the birds are sitting upon them, snuggled close, and put your ear to a telegraph pole and all _you_ will hear is MUM-MUM-MUM-M-M-M.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHKA AND THE DEVIL]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: By permission of the publishers from _The City That Never Was Reached,_ by Dr. Jay T. Stocking. Copyright by _The Pilgrim Press_.]

KATCHA AND THE DEVIL[5]

THE STORY OF A CLINGING VINE

THERE was once a woman named Katcha who lived in a village where she owned her own cottage and garden. She had money besides but little good it did her because she was such an ill-tempered vixen that n.o.body, not even the poorest laborer, would marry her. n.o.body would even work for her, no matter what she paid, for she couldn't open her mouth without scolding, and whenever she scolded she raised her shrill voice until you could hear it a mile away. The older she grew the worse she became until by the time she was forty she was as sour as vinegar.

Now as it always happens in a village, every Sunday afternoon there was a dance either at the burgomaster's, or at the tavern. As soon as the bagpipes sounded, the boys all crowded into the room and the girls gathered outside and looked in the windows. Katcha was always the first at the window. The music would strike up and the boys would beckon the girls to come in and dance, but no one ever beckoned Katcha. Even when she paid the piper no one ever asked her to dance. Yet she came Sunday after Sunday just the same.

One Sunday afternoon as she was hurrying to the tavern she thought to herself: "Here I am getting old and yet I've never once danced with a boy! Plague take it, to-day I'd dance with the devil if he asked me!"

She was in a fine rage by the time she reached the tavern, where she sat down near the stove and looked around to see what girls the boys had invited to dance.

Suddenly a stranger in hunter's green came in. He sat down at a table near Katcha and ordered drink. When the serving maid brought the beer, he reached over to Katcha and asked her to drink with him. At first she was much taken back at this attention, then she pursed her lips coyly and pretended to refuse, but finally she accepted.

When they had finished drinking, he pulled a ducat from his pocket, tossed it to the piper, and called out:

"Clear the floor, boys! This is for Katcha and me alone!"

The boys snickered and the girls giggled, hiding behind each other and stuffing their ap.r.o.ns into their mouths so that Katcha wouldn't hear them laughing. But Katcha wasn't noticing them at all. Katcha was dancing with a fine young man! If the whole world had been laughing at her, Katcha wouldn't have cared.

The stranger danced with Katcha all afternoon and all evening. Not once did he dance with any one else. He bought her marzipan and sweet drinks and, when the hour came to go home, he escorted her through the village.

"Ah," sighed Katcha when they reached her cottage and it was time to part, "I wish I could dance with you forever!"

"Very well," said the stranger. "Come with me."

"Where do you live?"

"Put your arm around my neck and I'll tell you."

Katcha put both arms about his neck and instantly the man changed into a devil and flew straight down to h.e.l.l.

At the gates of h.e.l.l he stopped and knocked.