homesick for the gentle sister he had neglected, the rough brothers
whose cheeks he had pelted black and blue; and yearned for the very
chinks in the walls, the very thatch on the home-roof.

Gladly would he have given every fairy-flower, at the root of which
clung a lump of gold ore, if he might have had his own coverlet
"happed" about him once more by the gentle hands he had despised.

"Mither," he whispered in his dreams, "my shoon are worn, and my feet
bleed; but I'll soon creep hame, if I can. Keep the parritch warm for
me."

Robin was as strong as a mountain-goat; and his strength was put to
the task of threshing rye, grinding oats and corn, or drawing water
from a brook.

Every night, troops of gay fairies and plodding brownies stole off on
a visit to the upper world, leaving Robin and his companions in
ever-deeper despair. Poor Robin! he was fain to sing,--

"Oh that my father had ne'er on me smiled!
Oh that my mother had ne'er to me sung!
Oh that my cradle had never been rocked,
But that I had died when I was young!"

Now, there was one good-natured brownie who pitied Robin. When he took
a journey to earth with his fellow-brownies, he often threshed rye for
the laddie's father, or churned butter in his good mother's dairy,
unseen and unsuspected. If the little creature had been watched, and
paid for these good offices, he would have left the farmhouse forever