Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/151

 with my comrades, I should have been boiled to broth."

"I might have shared the same fate," said the straw, "for all my brothers were pushed into fire and smoke by the old woman. She seized sixty of us at once, and brought us in here to take away our lives, but luckily I slipped through her fingers."

"Well, now what shall we do with ourselves?" said the coal.

"I think," answered the bean, "as we have been so fortunate as to escape death together, we may as well be companions, and travel away together to some more friendly country."

This pleased the two others; so they started on their journey together. After traveling a little distance, they came to a stream, over which there was no bridge of any sort.

Then the straw thought of a plan, and said, "I will lay myself across the stream, so that you may step over me, as if I were a bridge."

So the straw stretched himself from one shore to the other, and the coal, who was rather hot-*headed, tripped out quite boldly on the newly built bridge. But when he reached the middle of the stream, and heard the water rushing under him, he was so frightened that he stood still, and dared not move a step farther. The straw began to burn, broke in two, and fell into the brook. The coal slid