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146 "It shall be so! It shall be so!"

The widow Dorothy, horrified at the sound, turned towards the window and saw a white face outside looking at her with a fiendish smile on its lips. Yanechek jumped down from the table, seized his mother's stick, and ran with it out of the hut. In the darkness of the evening he could just make out some person fleeting away. He raised the stick and threw it after the figure; but the stick fell to the ground only a little way before him, and from a distance came a burst of malicious laughter mingled with which came the words distinctly uttered,—

"It shall be so! It shall be so!"

It was a summer day. The sun shone warmly on fields and gardens, on rivulets and lakes. On the bank of the still pool, Yanechek, the mischievous son of Dorothy the shepherdess, danced about joyfully. He whistled aloud and undressed himself that he might make a plunge into the cool water. On the surface of the water there floated a bunch of most beautiful flowers, so beautiful that it was difficult to tell whether they were really flowers or a cluster of precious stones. The flowers seemed to smile upon Yanechek, and to say to him, "Come and take us, we will gladden your heart until your life's end." Thus the flowers enticed him to take them. But the boy was as cunning as a fox, and cried out,—