costume, and pick up the bird if the marksman
succeeded in bringing it down. Down came
the bird indeed; and the friar, who had undertaken
to pick it up, faithfully kept his promise;
whereupon the marksman took up his fiddle,
and forced the two ascetics to dance. The one
who had remained in the road did not fare so
ill; but his brother in the thicket tore nearly
all the flesh from his bones.

Both, as might be expected, were highly
incensed, and informed the police of the nearest
town, that a dangerous magician was practising
his tricks in the neighbourhood. As soon,
therefore, as the ex-porter of the Evil One
showed his face within the walls, he was
summoned before the commissary, and contrived to
wait on that important functionary exactly at
dinner-time.

The commissary was grumpy. " Stop till I
have done my dinner," said he.

"That I will, certainly," said the courteous
vagabond; " and to make the meal more agreeable,
I will accompany it with a little music."
Accordingly he struck up a tune, which made
not only the commissary, his wife, his children,
his maid-servant, his usher, and his cat, but even
the tables and chairs, the plates and dishes,
join in a lively dance.

"Go to the devil!" was the first ejaculation
of the commissary when he had recovered
sufficient breath to say anything: whereupon the
adventurer once more set off and went his way,
till he met his old master.

"Jump into the sack," he cried, opening
wide the untempting receptacle, and with this
command the Evil One was forced to comply.
The sack, with its precious contents, he took to
the nearest smithy, informing the master of the
establishment that he wanted him to hammer
out a lot of iron.

"Take it out, and I will go to work at once,"
said the smith.

"No; I want to have it hammered in the
sack."

"Do you? Then I have only to tell you
that I don't choose to hammer out what I can't
see."

Without wasting more words, the adventurer
took up his fiddle, and fiddled the smith
and all his workmen into compliance.

"Will you hammer now?"

"Yes," answered the smith, " if Old Nick
himself is in the sack."

"That," returned the young fellow, "is
actually the case."

"Pity you did not say so at once!" retorted
the smith. " I would have gone to work with-
out making any fuss, and a world of trouble
would have been saved. However, here goes."

The blows of the sledge-hammer having been
bestowed with sufficient liberality, the
crestfallen fiend was liberated from the sack. The
expression of his countenance was by no means
agreeable, and he warned his former porter that,
if he had an opportunity of repaying him, it
would not be thrown away.

Elated with his last success, the adventurer
again set off, and met a pretty peasant girl, by
whom he was not a little smitten. He asked
her to become his companion on his travels, and,
on meeting with a refusal, told her that she
would be forced to accompany him, whether she
liked it or not. The reply to this assertion was
a sound box on the ear, which incensed the
adventurer so greatly that he not only opened his
sack and wrathfully told the offender to leap into
it, but closed it with so much haste that her
head emerged from the orifice, and she could
call lustily for assistance. Off he ran as fast as
he could, with the sack on his shoulder, and the
shouting head sticking out of it; but he was now
so hotly pursued by the peasants, who were
attracted by the noise, that he threw down his
burden and betook himself to his gun.

By shooting down one of his pursuers, he
was soon ahead of them all, and succeeded in
reaching a village in safety, though out of
breath. Here he met an old woman in tatters,
and asked her to procure him, if she could, a
night's lodging. Answering that she was willing
to do so, she led him into a majestic palace, the
rooms of which were all brilliantly lighted, while
in the grand hall a table was superbly laid out,
though not a person was to be seen. The solitude
was just to his taste. He was heartily
pleased to regale himself with the dainty viands
and choice wines, and then to rest in a bed,
which he found in a small ante-room.

Waking at midnight, he saw the great hall
filled with gentlemen, clad in cloaks and huge
periwigs, who danced about with solemn faces,
until at last they vanished, and he then found
himself in a sea of fire. " I must get out of this,"
he exclaimed, and as a troop of cavalry passed
through the hall, he leaped out of bed upon a
horse that had no rider. The animal dissolved
beneath him, and he sank down, down, down,
till he reached the gate at which he had stood as
porter, little more than a year before, and which
was now opened to him by his successor.

III..

At Cogolo, a village at the foot of the mountains,
a new church had been built, which,
though otherwise admired, was found too large
for the old steeple. A meeting was accordingly
held on the subject, and the very natural
proposal was made that the old steeple should be
pulled down and a new one erected in its stead.
This plan the villagers regarded as too expensive,
and they accordingly listened to the following
speech, gravely delivered by the schoolmaster:

"Men of Cogolo. If you wish your steeple to
be larger, feed it liberally, and 'l will answer
for its increase in bulk. Only look at our
priest. He came to us in skinny condition,
and you see what a portly man he is now. It
stands to reason that wnat is good for the
priest must be good for the church likewise."

Moved by this discourse, the villagers brought
together their whole domestic store of sausages,
and hung them all round the steeple to its very
summit, making the venerable pile of masonry
look more like the establishment of a pork-
butcher conducted on a colossal scale than a
portion of a sacred edifice.