There they
worked in most brotherly friendship, though with
little encouragement.
On one unlucky day a new cobbler arrived in
the village. He had lived in the capital city of the
kingdom and, by his own account, cobbled for the
queen and the princesses. His awls were sharp,
his lasts were new; he set up his stall in a neat
cottage with two windows. The villagers soon
found out that one patch of his would outwear
two of the brothers'. In short, all the mending
left Scrub and Spare, and went to the new cobbler.
The season had been wet and cold, their barley
did not ripen well, and the cabbages never half-
closed in the garden. So the brothers were poor
that winter, and when Christmas came they had
nothing to feast on but a barley loaf and a piece of
rusty bacon. Worse than that, the snow was very
deep and they could get no firewood.
Their hut stood at the end of the village;
beyond it spread the bleak moor, now all white and
silent. But that moor had once been a forest;
great roots of old trees were still to be found in it,
loosened from the soil and laid bare by the winds
and rains. One of these, a rough, gnarled log, lay
hard by their door, the half of it above the snow,
and Spare said to his brother:--
``Shall we sit here cold on Christmas while the
great root lies yonder? Let us chop it up for
firewood, the work will make us warm.
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