The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-07-25
TALE OF MYRrILLA.
From the French of Erckmann- chatrain

Now it happened that Christian Bre- mer, when he came in from hunting, one night, had in his gamebag little Bohe- milan or } years old, as lively as a squirrel and as brown as a berry. He had found the child in the pack of an un- fortunate gipsy-woman, dead of fatigue. and perhaps hunger, at the foot of a tree.
 You can imagine Catharine's exclama- ton and protestation. But Bremer had way of ruling in his own house, and simply said to his wife that the little one should be baptized with the names of Susanna Frederika Myrtilla, and they would educate her with their own little Fritz.
 All the village gossips came, of course, to look at the little gipsy, whose grave and dreamy countenance was wonder to them.
 "She is not like other children" they pronounced. "She is real pagan You can see in her black eyes that she un- derstands everythingl She is listening 1! Take care, good man; gipsies have hooked fingers. If you rear little weasels they will wiring your cocks neck for you SOLlC hBC Ody, dho away WINA kLC key to your fields"
 "Go to the devil " cried Bremen "Mind your own affairs! l have seen Russians and Spaniards, Italians, Ger mans and Jews. Some were brown, some were black, and others red. Some had hooked noses and others had flat ones and among them all have seen good people"
 The gossips, however, were not alto gether in the wrong, as people unfortu- nately found out dozen years later.
 Fritz found his pleasure in giving fod- der to the animals, leading the horses to drink, blowing, sowing, cutting and bind ing the grain, and bringing it triumph antly to the village, while Myrtilla cared little to milk the COWS, churn the butter, shell the peas and pare the pota- toes
 When the maidens of Dosenheim called her "the hea,hen" she looked compla- gently at herself in the fountain, and, sec ing her beautiful jet black hair, her crim- son lips, her white teeth and her necklace of red rose-haws, she would smile and say to herself:
 "They call me heather because am so much pret,ier than they"
 And with the tip of her little foot she would stir the water and laugh heartily.
 Catharine, observing all these things, complained bitterly. "Myrtilla," said she, "is good for nothing. She will not do anything It is of no use for me to talk to her and reprove her. She does everything wrong. Only the other day, when we were getting the apples ready for the fruiterer, she took 1t into her head to bite into all the finest ones to see If they were ripe She shows more talent in offering everything she can lay her hands on than in anything else"
 Bremen himself could not help seeing the heathenish nature in Ter, and when he heard his wife calling from morning till night, Myrtilla Myrtilla! Where are you? Oh, th at miserable girl ! She has run away again for blackberries in the brambies!" he laughed to himself, and thought, Poor Catharinel You are like a hen that has matched ducks eggs. and sees her chicks getting into the water"
 Alter the harvest every year Frilz and Myrtilla passed long days away from the farm, watching the cows at pasture, sing ing. whistling, roasting potatoes in the ashes, and descending the rocky slope in the evening at the call of the horn. These were Myrtilla's brightest days. Sitting by the fire pf henp-stalks, with her beautiful dark head leaning on her little hand, she would not move for hours together, as if lost in deep thought
 The focks of wild geese and ducks which crossed the desert sky at that sea- son ofthe year, over the forest, from one mountain top to another, seemed to sad den her to the depths of her soul. She would follow them with long, long look into the boundless depths of space, and suddenly she would spring to her feet and stretch out her arms, crying:
 must go-I, too, must go! shall go away !"
 Ard then she would sit and weep, with her head on her knees and Fritz, stand ing beside her, would weep, too, saying |:
 "Why you weeping, Myrtilla! Has any one done something to you9 Is it one of the boys in the village? Just tell me and I'll beat him."
 Moi"
 "What is the matter, then?"
 "l do not know"
 "Do you want to run to the Falberg p
 "No; tt isn't far enough away"
 "Where do you want to go, MyvtillA?"
 "Yonder! yonder!" she would say. Beyond the mountain, where the birds go"
 Fntz would then raise his eyes and gaz- open-mou,hed into the distance.
 One day when they were out on the edge of the woods the heat became so great and the air V as so calm about noon that the smoke of their little fire, instead of rising in a gray column. lay like a sheet of water under the cried bushes The cigala had ceased its montonous song not an insect was humming not a Leaf ~as rustling; not a bird twittered. The cattle, with closed eyes and legs bent