It was drawing towards winter, and very cold weather, when one day the two elder brothers had gone out, with their usual warning to little Gluck, who was left to mind the roast, that he was to let nobody in, and give nothing out.  Gluck sat down quite close to the fire, for it was raining very hard, and the kitchen walls were by no means dry or comfortable-looking.  He turned and turned, and the roast got nice and brown.  “What a pity,” thought Gluck, “my brothers never ask anybody to dinner.  I’m sure, when they’ve got such a nice piece of mutton as this, and nobody else has got so much as a piece of dry bread, it would do their hearts good to have somebody to eat it with them.”

Just as he spoke there came a double knock at the house door, yet heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied up—­more like a puff than a knock.

“It must be the wind,” said Gluck; “nobody else would venture to knock double knocks at our door.”

No; it wasn’t the wind:  there it came again very hard, and what was particularly astounding, the knocker seemed to be in a hurry, and not to be in the least afraid of the consequences.  Gluck went to the window, opened it, and put his head out to see who it was.

It was the most extraordinary looking little gentleman he had ever seen in his life.  He had a very large nose, slightly brass-coloured; his cheeks were very round, and very red, and might have warranted a supposition that he had been blowing a refractory fire for the last eight and forty hours; his eyes twinkled merrily through long silky eyelashes, his moustaches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each side of his mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt colour, descended far over his shoulders.  He was about four-feet-six in height, and wore a conical pointed cap of nearly the same altitude, decorated with a black feather some three feet long.  His doublet was prolonged behind into something resembling a violent exaggeration of what is now termed a “swallow-tail,” but was much obscured by the swelling folds of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must have been very much too long in calm weather, as the wind, whistling round the old house, carried it clear out from the wearer’s shoulders to about four times his own length.

Gluck was so perfectly paralysed by the singular appearance of his visitor that he remained fixed without uttering a word, until the old gentleman, having performed another, and a more energetic concerto on the knocker, turned round to look after his fly-away cloak.  In so doing he caught sight of Gluck’s little yellow head jammed in the window, with its mouth and eyes very wide open indeed.

“Hollo!” said the little gentleman, “that’s not the way to answer the door.  I’m wet, let me in.”

To do the little gentleman justice, he was wet.  His feather hung down between his legs like a beaten puppy’s tail, dripping like an umbrella; and from the ends of his moustaches the water was running into his waistcoat pockets, and out again like a mill stream.