here and there a single log cabin with two or three ragged children at
play outside, or a baby creeping over the doorstep, while farther on
among the trees stands a man with his axe, cutting, with heavy blows,
some tall trees into such logs as those of which the house is built.

These are new and strange sights to the children of the River Rhine.
They wonder, and often ask their parents if they, too, shall live in a
little log house like that.

How fresh and fragrant the new logs are for the dwelling, and how
sweet the pine and spruce boughs for a bed! A good new log house in
the green woods is the best home in the world.

Oh, how heartily tired they all are when at last they stop! They have
been riding by day and by night. The children have fallen asleep with
heads curled down upon their arms upon the seats of the car, and the
mother has had very hard work to keep little Hans contented and happy.
But here at last they have stopped. Here is the new home.

They have left the cars at a very small town. It has ten or twelve
houses and one store, and they have taken here a great wagon with
three horses to carry them yet a few miles farther to a lonely, though
beautiful place. It is on the edge of a forest. The trees are very
tall, their trunks moss-covered; and when you look far in among them
it is so dark that no sunlight seems to fall on the brown earth. But
outside is sunshine, and the young spring grass and wild flowers,
different from those which grow on the Rhine banks.

But where is their house?