When the Samoyede and his wife enter the
tent belonging to the brothers, the lady is
invisible, but the husband accosts his sister, whom
he finds alone. The brothers, she informs him,
are from home at present, but will return in the
evening, and she gives him ample instructions
how he is to proceed in his pious work. What
these instructions were will be shown by the
manner in which they were carried out, though
we must premise that the hero slinks off to his
own residence, and his wife undertakes the
achievement of the adventure.

When the brothers come home, they eat their
supper, and, spreading out seven deer-skins
on the ground, lay themselves down to rest.
The captive maiden then goes round to them
all with a dish. In this they place their hearts,
which are afterwards hung on one of the tent-
poles by the treacherous attendant. The wife,
securing her prize, returns with it to her hus-
band, who, on the following morning, pays
the brothers a visit, and finds them all in a
wretched state. Six of the hearts he casts on
the ground, and the six younger brothers
immediately die, but the seventh is informed that if
he will restore the deceased old lady to life, he
may have his heart back. The desired resuscitation
is effected by means of certain charms,
but the seventh heart is nevertheless thrown
on the ground, and the eldest brother perishes
like the rest, while the Avenger takes his mother
and sister home.

An important personage in the family of
the Avenger is his father's sister. It was by
her counsel that he obtained his gifted wife,
detaining her garment while she was bathing
with her six sisters, and refusing to restore it
till she had promised not to leave him. In fairy
tales all the world over this mode of ensnaring
semi-supernatural personages is exceedingly
common, and therefore we but lightly touch on this
incident, as being less characteristic than any of
the others.

The wise aunt, consulted once by her nephew,
presents him with a knife, that he is to give to
his wife, who will assuredly make a proper use
of it. With these injunctions the nephew
complies, and the wife no sooner receives the
weapon than she cuts out the heart of every one
in: the tent, including her own and her
husband's, and flings them up into the air. The
aunt visiting the tent, finds every one alive,
though destitute of the most important organ
of vitality; and, with a view of recovering the
lost hearts, proceeds to a lake, where the six
sisters of the wife are bathing, and weeping for
the loss of the seventh. Detaining the clothes
of one of the bathers, she will not restore them
save in exchange for a number of hearts, found
by the sisters in their aërial residence, and
which may possibly be those recently extracted.
Loaded with these hearts, which have been
purified in a celestial region, the aunt returns to
the tent, and all on receiving their hearts
become pure and holy. The wife proposes that
they should now join her sisters, and ascending
through the air in a reindeer sledge, they
penetrate a thick mist, and at last reach a warm,
blissful place, in which they are living to the
present day.

In consequence of missionary operations, the
legends of the Finnish races not unfrequently
show a curious mixture of the Christian with
the national elements, the Apostles sometimes
appearing as powerful allies of the ancient gods.
We can hardly help suspecting that the Christian
doctrine of regeneration is to some extent
shadowed forth in this last and least savage of
our Samoyede tales.

       A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.

             IN FIVE PARTS. PART IV,
          CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.

IT was my function in the last number
to give the reader an account of my method
of dealing with a damp bed. It was a chapter
of china stoves, of mattresses, of French
windows, and French politeness—topics, into
the consideration of which we were drawn by
the necessity under which we were placed of
examining how far a temporary residence in the
French metropolis may consist with the
observance of the principles of economy.

My experiments in this matter were far from
satisfactory. Though I am inclined to think
that in the lodging department I was singularly
unfortunate, and that all cheap lodgings must
not be classed with that which I was unlucky
enough to occupy in the "Rue de la Gouttière."
It was a sorry crib and a squalid, and even when
I got into that better apartment, for which I had
to wait, as I have said, four days, even then
there were circumstances connected with this
place of abode which made one ever monstrous
glad to get out of it. Why, take the smells
alone. Nay, take one of the smells alone. There
was always an odour of frying of the most
violent kind pervading the whole house. It was
so strong that it was as if this culinary process
was going on in one's own room, and so rank
and poisonous that when I was in a morbid or
melancholy mood, as would sometimes happen,
it used to suggest itself to me that the man with
the lounging-cap and the wicked smile was in
the habit of murdering his lodgers for the sake
of what they might have about them, and of
getting rid of the bodies by cutting them into
very little bits, and frying them all day long.

Next to sleeping in one's clothes, I know of
few things which seem to deprive one of all the
benefit of a night's rest more completely than
waking up in the morning to a powerful smell of
fried lodger.

Night's rest! I think I spoke of rest. l am
disposed to believe that I have alluded to waking
up. How shall he wake up who has not been
asleep? How shall he rest who has a night cab-
stand outside his door, and a coach-house for
voitures de remise under his window. Rest, with
perpetual arrivals of hackney-coaches at the
stand, and perpetual backings of carriages and
horses into the remise. Eheu! what stampings
and hangings, what swearings and growlings!