whiskers and the heaviest fur of any cat in the kingdom. Moreover, he had
hundreds of mice to his credit and no birds, for he was a good and wise
grimalkin. Sometimes he talked with his tail and sometimes he opened his
pink mouth and said just as plain as words that he had been stalking
through the moonlight and had seen old Egbert go limping home as if he
had the rheumatism.

So next day Mother Huldah with her little bag of medicines and ointments
would go to old Egbert's hut, and sure enough, find him bedridden; or
Tommie would tell her that Charlemagne the stork had carried a baby to a
poor mother who had no clothes for it. Then Mother Huldah would go to her
great cedar chest and take out linen that smelled all sweetly of
lavender, and carry it with some good food to the poor woman.

Mother Huldah was so kind and generous that everybody got in the habit of
taking things from her without sometimes so much as a "thank you," or an
inquiry as to her own health. But the little children loved her because
she made them pretty cakes; and told them the stories she used to tell
her own children, her two fine sons who were soldiers. These sons sent
her the money upon which she lived and out of which she made her little
charities, and they wrote her fine brave letters, and every year they
came home to see her, bearing beautiful presents from foreign lands,
ivory toys and shining silks (which she always gave to some bride) and
workboxes of sweet-scented wood richly carved--to show how much they
loved her.

One dreadful year a great war broke out, and not long after Mother Huldah
heard that her two sons had been killed, and she herself thought she
would follow them through grief. But she lived on and as she grew more
sorrowful she went less and less to the village, and people began to