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wondering if it were something bad or not; ‘I’ll make you a good warm hole in the thatch. But you must be hungry after that long sleep?—here is a slice of barley bread. Come, help us to keep Christmas!’

“The cuckoo eat up the slice, drank water from the brown jug, for he would take no beer, and flew into a snug hole which Spare scooped for him in the thatch of the hut.

“Scrub said he was afraid it wouldn’t be lucky; but as it slept on, and the days passed, he forgot his fears. So the snow melted, the heavy rains came, the cold grew less, the days lengthened, and one sunny morning the brothers were awoke by the cuckoo shouting its own cry to let them know the spring had come.

“‘Now I’m going on my travels,’ said the bird, ‘over the world to tell men of the spring. There is no country where trees bud or flowers bloom, that I will not cry in before the year goes round. Give me another slice of barley bread to keep me on my journey, and tell me what present I shall bring you at the twelvemonth’s end.’

“Scrub would have been angry with his brother for cutting so large a slice, their store of barley-meal being low; but his mind was occupied with