A Picture-book of Merry Tales Page 13

  The farmer, now hearing constant complaints, said some evil spirit musthave crept into the house; and he was right enough.

  A brownie or goblin had taken up his abode there, and not finding thequiet within which the outside promised, bestowed his ill-humour uponthe inmates, and daily invented some new scheme for tormenting thechildren.

  In one corner of the kitchen in which they generally played there was acloset, where the brownie had located himself; and that he might watchthem, and see at what moment he could best torment them, he had thrustout a knot that was in the closet door, thus making himself a littlewindow.

  Now, it happened one day that the eldest boy had the shoe-horn in hishand, and merely in play stuck it in the knot-hole, whence it wasimmediately ejected, striking the boy on the head.

  _The Brownie's revengeful Pranks._]

  As often as this was repeated so often it darted out, such good aimbeing taken that it invariably struck one of them on the head, andgenerally the one who had put it there.

  Though one always suffered, it was sport to the others, and thereforethe horn was frequently stuck in the hole, so that the brownie becamemore and more irritated, not confining his pranks to the children, butmaking the parents suffer in various ways.

  There would be noises in the night, and things that were in daily usewould all at once be mislaid, and, after ever so much trouble andworry, found in places where they had already been a dozen times lookedfor. There could be no doubt this was the brownie's doing, and therecould be still less doubt when the chair was moved back, just at themoment when one of the old couple was going to sit down, and he or shewent rolling on the floor, for then a laugh was heard proceeding fromthe moved chair.

  This trick was played them more particularly when they had anythingin their hands, such as a cup of tea, which would be emptied in thefalling one's face, and the laughing on such occasions was louder andlonger.

  At length, unable to bear it, the farmer determined to leave a housewhere there was no longer any comfort, and, if possible, to let it.

  The last load of the furniture was being removed, and the Farmer,following with his wife, said--

  "I'm heavy at heart at leaving the old house, where, for years, we wereso happy, and perhaps we shall not find the new one half as convenient."

  "The new one will not be half as convenient," was uttered in a strange,squeaky voice, which seemed to be in an old tub at the back of the cart.

  "Oh! oh! are you there?" cried the poor Farmer, "then we may as wellturn back."

  "Yes! turn back," said the squeaky voice.

  They did, in fact, turn back, and from that day peace was restored tothe house, for the brownie no longer tormented any of its inmates, nor,indeed, gave any signs of being there, excepting by immediately dartingthe shoe-horn out whenever it was put in the knot-hole.

  THE END.

  CHISWICK PRESS:--PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.

  Transcriber's note

  Text in italics has been surrounded with _underscores_, and smallcapitals were changed to all capitals.

  A few punctuation errors have been corrected silently, and anextraneous space was removed. Otherwise the original was preserved,including inconsistent spelling and hyphenation. For example: the riverPegnitz is also spelled as Pegnetz, this has not been changed.