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Rh church next Sunday, and find out whether anyone had seen him. Then he bade them ‘Good-bye,’ and went home and dined on a good fat veal roast.

Now it so happened that the clerk took in a newspaper, and one day he chanced to read in its columns of a new merchant who had settled in a town at some distance, and whose name was ‘Peter Bull.’ He put the newspaper in his pocket, and went round to the sorrowing couple who had lost their heir. He read the paragraph to them, and added, ‘I wonder, now, whether that could be your bull-calf Peter?’

‘Yes, of course it is,’ said the man; ‘who else would it be?’

His wife then spoke up and said, ‘You must set out, good man, and see about him, for it is him, I am perfectly certain. Take a good sum of money with you, too; for who knows but what he may want some cash now that he has turned a merchant!’

Next day the man got a bag of money on his back and a sandwich in his pocket, and his pipe in his mouth, and set out for the town where the new merchant lived. It was no short way, and he travelled for many days before he finally arrived there. He reached it one morning, just at daybreak, found out the right place, and asked if the merchant was at home. Yes, he was, said the people, but he was not up yet.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ said the peasant, ‘for I am his father. Just show me up to his bedroom.’

He was shown up to the room, and as soon as he entered it, and caught sight of the merchant, he recognised him at once. He had the same broad forehead, the same thick neck, and same red hair, but in other respects he was now like a human being. The peasant rushed straight up to him and took a firm hold of him. ‘O Peter,’ said he, ‘what a sorrow you have caused us, both myself and your mother, by running off like this just as we had got you well educated! Get up, now,