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"Aye! we heard it. Woe to the liars! Death to them all!" the response came from far and near.

The fairy was about to continue her speech, but at a sign from the captain the men who had held her up on the shield dropped her out of sight. They bound and gagged her. She was seen and heard no more.

"Why tarry longer?" cried the Foe of Liars, brandishing his club. "She has told you to hear me, and I tell you to follow me. To the castle, then, to kill the armed liars who have oppressed us; next to the temple, to lift the treasures out of which they have cheated us and our fathers-"

the thousand lay-brothers were gathered. They slew them without mercy, because none of them could show them the way to the golden sanctuary.

But one escaped. He had seen the mob coming, and had carried news of the rising to the castle.

The summons had gone out to the legions, and while the rioters were massacring the priests, the King's hosts surrounded the temple.

When the captain of the Thralls of the Truth saw his forces outnumbered, he gathered the most trusted men about him and said: "The legions are coming, and the people will desert us when they attack. Therefore let us escape with

"To the temple, the temple!" howled what plunder we have. We shall not find the mob.

"To the castle," roared their leader, but all the rest yelled "the temple, the temple!"-for the gold was there, and the legions were not. And upon the temple the mob moved, carrying its leader with it in its wild rush.

On the way they passed the old seer's hut. The mob burned him in it, and set fire to every house on its way in which anybody lived who was accused of knowing more than the rest.

"We are the torch-bearers of the truth," they cried. "Death to the liars, the blood-suckers!" And where they went the people ran together and followed.

The mob scaled the temple walls and stormed into the great marble hall where

the golden vault now."

They threw their torches into the chamber where the priests kept the sandal-wood for the sacrificial fires, and fled through the back doors of the temple yard.

The flames made night into day. The King's men fell upon the mob. The people's leaders had fled, and the few who had arms threw them away and begged for their lives; but the soldiers cut them down, and when they sought to escape, drove them back, with their women and children, into the burning temple.

They perished by thousands, and the despairing cry rose above the roar of the flames: "Woe, woe! upon the lying woman who led us to a fiery death!"

EAVIER now grew the journey and the heart of the wanderer. From every door at which she knocked she was turned away with

curses.

"Away," they cried, "shameless jade, who spurned the King and his men!"

"Away, murderess! who slew our faithful priests and the wise men who lived to do us good."

"Be off! wicked seducer, who betrayed innocent thousands to their death."

VI

Thus she went from house to house, from town to town, in every land.

At last she came to a city far away, by the furthest mountains.

It was early dawn when she passed through the gate of the city. Before her, in the market-place, was a booth with a carpet spread at the door. A little hunchback sat cross-legged upon it. He was decked out in a garment of manycolored rags, stitched with glass beads and gay parrot feathers.

"Will you give shelter to a pilgrim whom all men disown because she speaks the truth?" asked the fairy.

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replied, and drew the door-hangings aside.

"Hear first to whom it is that you open your door." And she told him all that had happened to her.

Her story was not yet ended when a tumult arose in the market-place. It was the town crier, who proclaimed that on that day a notorious outlaw, a woman, was coming to the city. The official astrologer had predicted it, and the Prince offered a hundred pieces of gold to any one who brought him word of where she was to be found.

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"I am the one they seek," said the fairy and bade her tell them her story. exile.

"Then rest easy in my hut. I did I know my trade were I not crafty enough to befog your enemies with lies."

So the Daughter of Truth slept upon the juggler's bed. It was the first place on earth where she had found welcome and rest.

At noon came the judge, attended by a captain and four armed men, to the booth. The Fool, who kept vigil outside, threw himself upon his face when he saw them, crossed his legs over his hump, and cried, as he kissed the dust before their feet: "Now, blest be the bright face of the sun that casts two such venerable shadows athwart my threshold! When such honor is mine, no marvel shall be too great for me to show you."

"We came not to witness your tricks" began the judge.

"Truly your condescension is great. You will even deign, then, to listen to my poor minstrelsy?"

"Not so," retorted the captain, testily. "We came to seek an alien miscreant who has come to town to-day from the East. You, living here at the gate, should have seen her."

"I crave your pardon, noble lords! The good wife has been telling me fairy-tales, and if you but knew her you would understand how that for listening I could neither see nor hear another woman this day. Ah, most reverent masters! I make no doubt you have listened to the greatest story-teller of the land, but her like you have never met. She imagines it all herself, but, as she tells them, her stories grow real. When she speaks the words of the enchanted princess, then it is no longer her, but the princess herself

Seating himself at her feet, he accompanied the tale upon his lute.

She told them what had happened in the King's castle.

"By the gods!" exclaimed the captain, "there is truth in that story. So were kings and courtiers ever-in other lands." Next she she related her wanderings through the sanctuaries of the temple.

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"True! true!" cried the judge; the ministers of the gods have been thus everywhere-in former days."

Then she described the flight of the three stricken ones from the old seer, the meeting with the Foe of Liars, and the midnight gathering in the mountains.

"Splendid!" they both cried; "splendidly told! Just so are the people and their seducers always and everywhere."

When at last she had told of the burning of the temple, the murder of the priests, and how the mob was outdone, she ended with the words:

"Then I went from door to door, barred out and disowned by all, until I came here to this Fool. He gave me shelter, and, when you came seeking me, he told you I was his wife, and made you believe I was a story-teller, because he knew that I would declare-I am the woman you seek."

The captain started, and his armed men made as if to seize her; but the clown struck a brisk chord upon his lute and looked at his visitors, smiling. The judge nodded graciously and arose, loud in his praise of the artful ending of the tale.

"Of a truth, woman, it is given to thee to clothe thy fancy in the garb of truth. It is a great gift. We have heard thee gladly, and as thy meed I give to thee

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The cripple threw himself upon the whom alone the children of earth have ground before her.

"Give me," he prayed, " a token by which to bear ever in mind the hour when the Fairy of Truth found rest in the Fool's cabin."

"See this," said the Fairy, and plucked a peach from the tree at the door. "In it you will find a stone containing two seeds, a large and a small one. When

borne to be told that which they refused to hear from the Daughter of Heaven.

The poets spring from the little girl; the fools from the little boy.

So ends the fable of the Pilgrimage of Truth.

ABOVE ALL HEIGHTS

W

BY MARRION WILCOX

Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh.-GOETHE.

I.

WORK for work's sake, and for our art, I say:

Not for ourselves-no, not for our best friends,

Nor heart's content when our brief day's work ends;

A thousand times less for men's praise or pay.

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