you said, but I don't see them in the fire a bit. Can you see them all
the time?"

"It makes a good deal of difference how I feel about it," I answered,
"and a little difference how the fire burns. To-night, you see, the
fire does not burn quite as it usually does. It is cold out of doors,
and there is a wind that comes in gusts and blows different ways. It
gives the fire a good draught, and on the whole it burns rather
fiercely, but when the wind goes down the fire goes down a little too,
and when the wind changes it blows a puff of smoke down the chimney now
and then. Altogether it is not a well-behaved fire at all, and I am
afraid if we try to see things in it, some of them will be rather rough
and rude, and none of them very cheerful. Still, if you would like to
try--"

"Oh, do try," the child said, "I like nice gloomy things."

"Very well. Just now the fire is so fierce and hot that it seems to me
nothing less than a house on fire. It is a house that stands all alone
in the woods. Before it was set on fire a boy and a girl lived there.
Neither of them had any mother, but the boy's father lived with them
and took care of them, going out hunting and leaving the boy and the
girl together, till the boy was old enough to go hunting with him, and
then the girl was left alone. They were very happy there together, all
three of them, and the father always thought that the girl would
sometime grow up and be his son's wife. But now, while they are
hunting, a robber has come and has burned the house, and he takes the
girl with him and carries her off to his own house, far away among the
mountains.