“All animals look dark at night.”

“Except a white cow,” suggested the butcher.

“But, Hartman, you have three boys with you,” continued the forest-keeper.  “So young and yet night-strollers!”

“No, these boys are all right.  They have been passing their holiday in Frankfort, and are on their way home.  They got lost in the forest, the rain came up and they took shelter in the abandoned cabin.  One of them tells me that he is the son of Forest-keeper Krupp.”

The forester said good-night, and they walked on for some distance and at length came to a clearing in the forest.  Looking up, they could see the unchangeable stars, the same that looked down upon Mother Earth when she was fresh from the hands of her Creator.  A tinkling brook lay across their path, which the forester cleared at a bound, and the three apprentices followed.  The triplets halted to view the situation, but Pixy sprang across, then looked back as if to say, “It is nothing.  Just give a spring and you are on this side,” and they ran back, gave a long jump and were over.

A short distance beyond was the forest-keeper’s cottage, a comfortable place for weary travelers on a wet night.

“I cannot give you all a sleeping place in my house,” he said, “but can make room for the three smaller boys.  You larger ones can go to the straw shed.  You will find plenty of clean, dry straw, and there you can sleep until morning and shall have a good breakfast before you leave.  But before we part for the night, you must turn your pockets inside out that I may see that you have no matches or anything else that will strike a spark.”

They agreed willingly, and he then led the way to the shed, took from a feed box a number of coarse sacks for covering and said good-night.

“We are thankful to you for giving us this comfortable place to sleep,” said the blacksmith.  “We thought it harsh treatment to make us leave the cabin, but you have given us better quarters and we are truly obliged to you.  You are certainly good to us.”

“Yes, I try to be good to everybody, especially to hard-working boys out on their holiday, when I find that they are not common tramps who do not wish to work.”

He left the shed and the boys followed him to his dwelling, and to a room adjoining the living-room.

“There are two straw-beds on this bedstead,” he said.  “One can be taken off and put on the floor, and one of you can sleep upon it, while the other two can have the one on the bedstead.”

“I will take the one on the floor.  Then Pixy can sleep with me,” said Fritz.

“Suit yourselves about that, only take off your wet clothes, shoes and stockings, and my wife will put them about the kitchen fire, and they will be dry by morning.”

The boys hurriedly disrobed, and the forest-keeper bade them good-night, and left the room.

Paul and Franz crept jubilantly under the coverings of the bed, and Fritz was equally glad for the piece of carpet which the forest-keeper had given him in lieu of a quilt, and with Pixy close to him, he was happier than many a king.