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and even to print it out for your children to read

Once upon a time a young couple named Fritz and Gisela lived in a small cabin on the very edge of the mountains where early snow fell heavy and lasted long.

The air was sweet and clean. Every morning they woke their little boy and girl up and went outside so they could breathe deeply of the crisp, clean air. As they looked around at the tall grass and lonely trees they dreamed they would live forever.

"Our children will grow up strong and healthy here."

The young man was a guide in the Emperor's service. Fritz was stationed on the mountain to guide army parties over the trails into the land of Lubwick.

But Fritz also knew all the trails in the mountains and he bravely went to find those smaller parties that lost their way. He found them even when they had been covered deep with molten ice and freezing cold.

In the icy streams of the mountains Fritz found much gold, which he hid in the cabin and never sold.

"Someday this gold will see to it that our children go to university and learn all there is to know."

Without a vision the people perish, and this was their dream, that their children would grow up strong and healthy and be wise in all the ways of man.

But until that day of university came Fritz and Gisela taught their children all about the wild things that lived near them. They learned about the squirrels, and the bear. They learned about the red birds and the black birds and the blue. They learned about the antlered deer and the baby fawns that grew. They learned about the harmless doves and the screaming eagle that flew. They could tell the weather by watching the flies and they could hear the leaves of the forest talking about the storms about to be.

Fritz and Gisela whose parents were ill unto death. They begged their brother to care for the two little ones as he would his own.
The uncle promised he would be a father to them, but he soon began to scheme to possess the money the parents had left in his care for the children. He sent for two robbers and bargained with them to take the two babes into the woods and kill them.

After going many miles into the woods one of the robbers said, "Let us not kill the little children, they never harmed us." The other robber would not consent, so they came to blows. This frightened the children so much that they ran away and did not see the robbers again.

They wandered on and on until they became so tired and hungry that at length they sat down at the foot of a tree and cried as if their hearts would break. The little birds heard them and began to trill sweet lullabies, which presently lulled them to rest.
The birdies knew that the children would die of cold and hunger, so they covered them with leaves of crimson and brown and green. They then told the angels in Heaven the sad story of the lost babes, and one of the white-robed angels flew down to earth and carried both the little ones back to Heaven, so that when they awoke they were no longer tired and hungry, but were again with their dear mother.

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