A Tale for Halloween

Babette and Antone were the children of a very poor woodcutter. They lived in a little cottage on the side of a steep mountain, and the mountain looked upon a great forest. Now though their father toiled in this forest from dawn until dark, he could earn but little. Wood in that region was plentiful, and woodcutters were numerous. Their mother made fine laces which Antone carried to the market to sell; but in spite of all their efforts, the poor parents seldom could give their children more than bread and broth to eat. Often indeed the broth was lacking if the woodcutter found no hare in the traps he set. Babette and Antone, however, were happy little children and never thought of their poverty. But it worried the woodcutter that Antone was ten years old and had not yet gone to school. Antone's mother taught him to read and write, that the other boys and girls would not be too far beyond him, and Antone studied his lessons diligently. Often as he sat doing his sums on the hearthstone, with a bit of charcoal for a pencil, his mother would sigh sadly. Antone did not like his mother to be sad, and so he always laughed to cheer her.

"Never fear, Mother," he would say. "Soon I shall send myself to school. My vegetable patch does finely. Then, when I am a great scholar, you shall be poor no longer. My father shall have a team of oxen and you a fine satin gown; Babette shall have a dozen real dollies instead of the turnip dollies she now rocks in her dolly cradle.