presently.

"Poor, forgiving little thing!" said the Devil compassionately, "I have not the heart to grudge her her present happiness. While you were on earth threatening perdition to the man she loved, she had a devil of a time of it, but your arrival here transported her to the seventh heaven."

8. THE PRINCE AND HIS TWO MISTRESSES.

A certain Prince had a mistress, of whom, after many years he began to tire, finding her exceeding faithfulness to him grow wearisome. So beginning to neglect his former passion, and having lighted on a new love of deeper complexion and more to his present taste, he made a song in praise of her beauty.

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After day" he sang, comes night, and the moon lifts her face; after red locks dark locks have hold on me!”

Before long his former mistress observing that his ardour slackened, found where her felicity had flown to; and without haste took counsel with herself how to regain the lost place which her jealousy and devotion still coveted.

Presently on his visits to his new mistress, the Prince began to recognise certain jewels adorning her person, which he had bestowed in other days on the one who had then crowned his fancy. "Whence came these?" he began enquir

ing, after searching vainly in his own mind for a solution.

For a while his new lady-love sought to evade his questions; but when she could no more put him off (while she needs must flaunt the trinkets as more and more of them came into her possession), she answered: "There is a certain skew-eyed and faded creature, a poor broken-down old troll, who comes and drops these on me at times. And her tale is of the strangest; but as I profit by her madness I let it go. And what she says to me is this: 'One of the many who have long wearied me with their love is now your lover; and that is well, since it leaves me free to follow my own liking. Therefore, I pray you bind him close to you and keep him from troubling me further; and every time that you receive him I, in thankfulness to be rid of him, will bring you a token of my gratitude, which I hold well earned, since then I can be in the arms of the lover I love truly.' This is her story, and truly I have reaped profit out of it, for each time you visit me she brings me a fresh jewel. Why, then, should I laugh in the face of the poor thing who is happy in her folly ?"

But when he had considered the matter well, the Prince left her, and went back to his former mistress.

9. TWO KINGS AND THEIR QUEENS.

Two Kings, who bore rule over adjoining territories having come together amicably, in state and with a great

retinue, for the settlement of a disputed question of boundaries, became greatly enamoured each of the other's consort.

While in public they were defining one boundary amicably from day to day, each in secret was plotting how another boundary might be over-stepped. The Queens, finding themselves royally pursued, remained demure, but put their heads together for a friendly purpose by stealth, not wishing to disturb the political situation.

So presently, by the aid of chamberlains and ladies of honour, all ready to take bribes at cross-purposes, the game grew hot; virtuous protestation died on the Queens' lips, and the monarchs came each to the belief that he had, without knowledge of the other, secured an assignation which would overwhelm his infelicity.

A hunting expedition, and a certain mis-arrangement of the pavilions destined for the separated repose of royalty, gave the occasion and the means; the Kings beheld a way pointed to them, more plainly than by any star in the East, for the consummation of their desires.

What was the chagrin of the two monarchs on awakening to the light of reason after an experience which had made each believe himself the most blest of mortals, to find that they had fallen into a lawful embrace, and had deceived themselves with the decorous bonds of matrimony.

The ladies themselves put a quiet countenance on the matter, and were astonished when presently they lost their two heads for the crime of being found in the embraces of

their own true lords, time not being given them to make the mathematical calculation by which their judges arrived at a conviction of their intended guiltiness.

Whether, indeed, those lords signed their death-warrants as thieves defrauded of their booty, or as owners finding their possession threatened, only kings themselves can decide. But it is sometimes more dangerous to force kings into the paths of virtue than to attract them into the ways of vice.

LAURENCE HOUSMAN.