and lighted it up. Charlemagne thought of his promise to the prior to have this abomination removed. He blamed himself, as for a sin, that he had neglected spiritual for temporal things; and gave orders that on the next day the labourers, instead of working in the Fosse, should go and level to the very ground this place of offence to the good monks.

"On the evening of the next day, accordingly, nothing remained in the place but overturned stones; part of which are now sunk into the marsh, and others have served in later years for foundation and corner-stones of the village and church which sprung up there.

"The king, however, had lost the hearts of the people by thus demolishing the old temple. Most of them, although baptised, were nothing but ignorant heathens, and were as much annoyed by this sudden destruction of their temple, as the people of old, who said to Joas, 'Give us thy son, that he may die; inasmuch as he has broken down the altar of Baal, and has hewn down the grove thereof.' In order, therefore, to revenge themselves, they resolved not again to work at the Fosse.

"The next morning, therefore, a messenger came to the king in St. Willibald's convent, with the tidings that the overseer of the work stood alone in the Fosse: the labourers had all vanished in the night, like storks in autumn. The king had no army with him at that time with which to drive the disobedient forth from their glens, their woods, and their hidingplaces, and before he could arrange any mode of compulsion he was called away to chastise the insurgent Saxons."

Here the schoolmaster was interrupted by the return of the scholars, who had been in search of wood to make up the

fire for the preparation of coffee; and with them, to the surprise of the Curate and his friend, came two strangers, a gentleman and lady, who were in deep mourning, and whose appearance was that of people of wealth and condition. Their countenances were amiable and kind, but expressive of a deep melancholy; they seemed like persons who had lost some beloved friend, and were upon a journey which should remove them from the neighbourhood where everything reminded them of their loss.

The Curate received them in the most friendly manner, and invited them to spend an hour with him and his wandering school, and to be pleased to drink a cup of the coffee, which his Latin cooks should instantly prepare. The invitation was thankfully accepted.

The gentlemen filled and lighted their pipes, and the lady, by her own choice, busied herself in assisting the boys in the preparation of the coffee. Better coffee never was presented to a select company of ladies. But ah! the white sugar which had been brought put them all into the utmost perplexity. Friedrich, instead of sugar, had given out a quantity of broken alabaster, which, a short time before, had been collected in a quarry, and now lay in the Curate's cupboard. The error was rather excusable, because broken alabaster resembled broken white sugar. But who can tell the shame and mortification of poor Friedrich! The apothecary's Michaelmas goose, the salted gingerbread, and the embittered sausages, seemed at once to fly in his face. He could have cried with humiliation. And then, what was to be done? Must they all drink their coffee, like the Arabs in the desert, without sugar, and that through his fault? He sate with downcast eyes, and said not a word in his own excuse. Fortunately,

however, for him, at the very moment when he heard the whispered jeering of his school-companions around him, the kind-hearted strangers set all right by declaring that they had a good store of sugar-candy in their travelling-carriage, a short distance off. To Friedrich they seemed like angels from heaven.

A short quarter of an hour set all right, and the lady graciously declared that the coffee was only the clearer for standing so long.

"Friedrich," said the Curate, anxious to reinstate his poor favourite in the good opinion of his guests, and at the same time meaning to inculcate a moral lesson to the boys, who still jeered him about his stone-sugar, "come here; canst thou not tell us something for our entertainment?"

Friedrich rose up, blushed, and looked round the company. "Thou canst tell us that which the Miller's George did when his enemy threw a cherry-stone at him, canst thou not?" asked the Curate.

Friedrich bowed, and, turning himself towards the strangers, began as follows:-"The Miller's George sate one Sunday evening upon the bench by the door, learning out of his prayerbook. It was always very difficult for George to learn; and for that reason he learnt every thing aloud, which drew upon him the ridicule of his school companions. Just at that moment there came up to him one of his young persecutors, the constable's son Hans, and threw a cherry-stone at his eye, which hurt him very much. George, however, took no notice, but remained sitting on the bench; and only said to himself, 'What pain it gives me! If I had had no eye-lids to my eyes, like the carp in my father's mill-dam, it would have knocked my eye out!' He

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then took up the cherry-stone, examined it on this side and on that, and put it in his waistcoat pocket. After that he went on learning; and the lesson which he was driving into his head was this: And since we daily sin greatly, and deserve punishment, ought we not, on our part, heartily to forgive, and be willing to do good to those that sin against us?' and all the time he was learning it, he was obliged to keep wiping away the water which ran from his eye with his shirt sleeve.

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Eight days after this, as he was feeling in his pocket, he found the cherry-stone; and he thought to himself, that that was not the best way of keeping it, so he went into the garden and set it like a bean, in the soil near the garden hedge: and, as it generally happens with seed when it is sown, the kernel of the cherry-stone shot forth, and sprang up, and grew a foot in height every year. One day George looked at it, and bent it this way and that; and Now,' said he to himself, if I let it grow on just as it pleases, it will be no better than the constable's Hans, who, everybody says, is wilder than an unbroken colt.' So he fetched the schoolmaster, who understood how to manage this as well as children, and asked him to look at his young cherry-tree. The schoolmaster directly cut off all the wild shoots, and grafted upon the stock the real great-heart cherry. After this the tree grew and grew, and all the nobler shoots spread themselves high and wide, till the tree was larger and finer than any in the garden.

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Anybody who had not seen it for twenty years, would no more have known it than they would have known the Miller's George himself. Very handsome and richly ornamented were they both, on a certain Sunday evening, as they stood together; the tree with its thousands of leaves and abundant crimson fruit,

and he with manly beauty, and grace, and joy, in his countenance. Nor were either of them known again by a man who crept along under the garden hedge, as if he feared to shew himself again in that village. The Miller's George, however, knew this prodigal son, in the torn coat and worn-out shoes, to be no other than his old enemy the constable's Hans; but he behaved just as if he knew him not, and called him to his garden gate. 'Friend,' said he, you are weary, and hungry, and thirsty; come and sit under my tree, and I will give you bread to eat, and wine to drink, and then you shall proceed on your journey.'

"Hans knew the voice; he saw where he was; and, with tears in his eyes-tears of repentance and remorse-sate down under the tree, and, for the first time in his life, earnestly prayed God to forgive him.”

When Friedrich had ended his story, the stranger gentleman commended it greatly, but the lady said nothing: tears were rapidly chasing each other down her cheeks. The gentleman, who knew very well the cause of his wife's tears, and that it had nothing to do with the story she had just heard, inquired from the boy if he could not relate something more to them. Friedrich, who, on finishing his former story, had withdrawn to his place among the boys, at a hint from the Curate, again approached; and wishing to say something which should, as he thought, be applicable to the lady who wept, and was in mourning, he bowed, and began, in a low voice, as follows:

"Once upon a time, a mother went over the sea in a little boat, towards her home in Heligoland; and her thoughts travelled far quicker than her boat in the moonlight. But the little daughter that lay in her lap did not let the mother dream long about home, but pointed between the fluttering sails up to