Did you ever hear how Olaf, one of the village children, went in search of the Brownie and brought him back to the good people of Blednock?

It came about in this way.

Olaf’s father had often told him of the Brownie that had once lived in the village and had helped all the village people to do their work.

“The little lively thing would come night after night and clean the floor, and scrub the table, and wash the dishes, and keep the whole house as clean as a new pin. But one night he went away and he never came back.”

“Why did he go away, father?” asked Olaf.

190“Well,” said his father, “there’s great pride in Brownies. They’ll work their fingers off for love, but you must never thank them, nor give them anything, or away they will go. Good Grannie Duncan had told us that over and over again, but your mother and I forgot all about her wise words. We thought that the little thing ought not to work for nothing. So we bought a piece of green cloth and a piece of brown cloth and your mother sat up all night cutting and stitching. By morning she had made as neat a pair of little trousers and as fine a coat as ever she made for you.

“That night we laid the clothes in a little parcel beside the bowl of broth, and we heard the little thing saying to himself:

“‘A nice pair of green trousers and a little brown coat for me. I can come here no more—no more—till one of the children of the village travels the world over and finds me first.’

“And the strange little creature vanished in the night and no one has seen or heard 191of him since though we have missed him very, very much.”

Olaf thought about the Brownie all day. He felt that, although the world away from the village might be very dangerous, he was quite willing to travel in it if, by so doing, he could bring the Brownie back to Blednock.

Olaf asked each person in the village where to find the Brownie. Also, he asked the oldest apple tree in the orchard, but it said nothing. He asked the cows, but they said nothing. He asked the dog, but he barked about other things. Only the sheep helped him. They said nothing, but they looked as if they knew. Olaf tended the sheep and the young lambs throughout the year, and he wondered and wondered if the lambs learned from the old sheep where the Brownie was hidden.

“I will not come back until a child of this village travels the world over and finds me first,—travels the world over and finds me first,” Olaf kept saying to himself over and over.

192At last one summer evening, as he was coming home from the sheepfolds, he heard the faint sound of bagpipes very near. He heard it again the next night, and the next, and the night after that, and every night, until, at last, he made up his mind to follow the sound and find out who it was that played the pipes so sweetly.

He left the sheep path and followed the music, walking carefully lest he should lose it. The soft sweet notes seemed to come from a mass of rocks which lay on the moor behind him. As he came near the rocks he knew the music was directly above it, so he started to climb up. Halfway up the path was easy to climb, and he soon won his way up to a little tree which thrust itself out of the side of the pile. He twisted himself over the tree and rested there, wondering how he could get up the rest of the way, for he saw six feet of smooth rock up to the top.

All the time the music of the bagpipes, scarcely louder than a concert of bees and crickets, sounded close above his head. &ldquo............