He had no sooner come in sight of the hut than the dozens and dozens of little queer children came pouring out of the door to meet him.  And every single one of them had a turnip, and showed it to the old man, and laughed and laughed as if it were the best joke in the world.

“I knew it was you,” said the old man.

“Of course it was us,” cried the children. “We stole the turnips.”

“But how did you get to the top of the dovecot when the door into the house was bolted and fast?”

The children laughed and laughed and did not answer a word.

“Laugh you may,” says the old man; “but it is I who get the scolding when the turnips fly away in the night.”

“Never mind! never mind!” cried the children.  “We’ll pay for the turnips.”

“All very well,” says the old man; “but that tablecloth of yours—­it was fine yesterday, but this morning it would not give me even a glass of tea and a hunk of black bread.”

At that the faces of the little queer children were troubled and grave.  For a moment or two they all chattered together, and took no notice of the old man.  Then one of them said,—­

“Well, this time we’ll give you something better.  We’ll give you a goat.”

“A goat?” says the old man.

“A goat with a cold in its head,” said the children; and they crowded round him and took him behind the hut where there was a gray goat with a long beard cropping the short grass.

“It’s a good enough goat,” says the old man; “I don’t see anything wrong with him.”

“It’s better than that,” cried the children.  “You tell it to sneeze.”

The old man thought the children might be laughing at him, but he did not care, and he remembered the tablecloth.  So he took off his hat and bowed to the goat.  “Sneeze, goat,” says he.

And instantly the goat started sneezing as if it would shake itself to pieces.  And as it sneezed, good gold pieces flew from it in all directions, till the ground was thick with them.

“That’s enough,” said the children hurriedly; “tell him to stop, for all this gold is no use to us, and it’s such a bother having to sweep it away.”

“Stop sneezing, goat,” says the old man; and the goat stopped sneezing, and stood there panting and out of breath in the middle of the sea of gold pieces.

The children began kicking the gold pieces about, spreading them by walking through them as if they were dead leaves.  My old father used to say that those gold pieces are lying about still for anybody to pick up; but I doubt if he knew just where to look for them, or he would have had better clothes on his back and a little more food on the table.  But who knows?  Some day we may come upon that little hut somewhere in the forest, and then we shall know what to look for.