Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/92

 shoe the horse and shoe the colt and shoe the wild mare; and he did it well. But he hadn't enough to do, and so he was very poor.

Well, to go back, the blacksmith sprang out of bed on tiptoe. Then without making the least bit of noise in the world that ever was heard, he opened the door of his bedroom and looked all about the shop. He couldn't see sight nor light of anybody, but he heard the hammering, and whistling, and the singing between times:

"I'm a cunning blacksmith, I can make a shoe,  Heat the iron,  Bend the iron,  Hammer it true— Il y ho, il y hoo, Il y ho, il y hoo—  I'm a cunning blacksmith,  I can make a shoe."

"It's very odd," said he, under his breath; "where can the wee small thing be!" All of a sudden, as he peered about more sharply, he spied it stuck in the girth of a white mare standing in the stall nearest the forge. The elfin smith was wearing a bit of an apron before him, and a tid of a nightcap on his head, and hammering away at a speck of a horseshoe.

"He'll bring me good luck, if I can only catch