Page:Story of the bitter wedding (1).pdf/3



fine summer morning---it was many hundred years ago---young Berthold set out with a very heavy heart from his Alpine hut, with a view of reaching in the evening the beautiful valley of Siebenthal, where stood his native village, and where he designed to be an unknown and silent guest at the dancing and festivity of certain merry makers.

'Ah, heavens,' sighed he, 'it will be a bitter wedding! Had I died last spring it had been better with me now.'

'Fiddle faddle!' exclaimed a snarling voice from the road side. 'Fiddle faddle! Where master Almerich touches his strings, there goes it merrily---there is the hurly burly, dirling the bottoms out of the tubs and pitchers! Good morning, my child! Come, cheer up my hearty, and let us trudge on together in good neighbourship.'

The young herdsman had stopped when he heard such a frog-croak of a now he could not speak for laughing. An odd-looking dwarfish figure mounted upon