blue and melting-the most ravishingly lovely lady he had ever! Nothing at all like it had Prince Terralus ever supposed possible! He never once noticed the robe clasped under the dimpled chin with a ruby cluster; for the enchanting face was such that he could think of nothing else!

Now, if Prince Terralus was fascinated with this beautiful vision, the Princess Aquaret was none the less in love with him. And she had this advantage of him, that she had seen him often before when he had been lounging, or sleeping among the rocks beside the sea; but she had been too modest to reveal herself before. Nor would she have done so now had she not supposed her lover was as fast asleep as he pretended to be!

we all

I have a feeling all along as if I am telling you a story which know, or ought to have known, long ago: How Aquaret was the only daughter of the Emperor of the Sea, as good as she was beautiful: How she had found no one of all the Princes of the sea to love, as Terralus had found none of all the Ladies of the Land whom he could care the least in the world for: How the happy moment these two saw each other they felt that they could never again be happy apart. And, whether it was the color coming and going in the face of the Prince as he lay, or whether his eyes would open a little wider in spite of him, or it was only the quivering at the corners of his mouth, or his forgetting to breathe regularly as a sleeping person should -in any case Aquaret came to know that the Prince was as wide awake and as deeply in love with her as she was with him! Nor do I intend to tell how they slowly came, after many an attempt on the part of the Prince in vain, to express to each other their love. It was the spending by Prince Terralus of all his waking hours at the rock, positively refusing to let a soul be with him there, or to explain himself about it at all, which made the wonder, already spoken of, through all the Empire of the Solid Ground.

Even after they became well acquainted, and the very opposite of

afraid of each other, there remained this remarkable obstacle in their way. Go down to this next lake or river, or sea, and try putting your head under the water! If it is as clear as crystal you can hold it there only half a minute, or so, at the longest. As for talking under the water it is impossible. In fact, if you hold your head a second too long you will drown and die! And this was the terrible trouble in the way of Prince Terralus. Seated on his rock he could see his dear Princess seated on the rocks under the transparent water, clothed in her robes of green decked with all manner of gems, perfectly at her ease there, the water being to her only what the air was to him. You see, the air is only a kind of thinner water, while the water is only a sort of thicker air; but while Prince Terralus lived only in the air, the Princess Aquaret could live only in the water, so that there was the difference of death between these two, love each other as much as they might!

II.

ONE beautiful summer day the Prince had been seated from early dawn upon those jagged rocks extending into the water, which had become to him as the very gates of Paradise. The Emperor, his father, and the Empress, his mother, had besought him to tell them why he had become so attached to that desert spot, but he had implored them, with tears in his eyes, not to ask him, assuring them that it was nothing wrong, even if he could not explain it. Some of his companions had earnestly begged leave to go with him, but he had thanked them, and said, No, in a way so very much unlike Yes, that they saw it was no use trying to turn the No into a Yes. Of course it was folly in Dr. Udebetternot, his tutor, who was never known to wash his face or comb his head, so profoundly was he taken up in his studies, quite useless for him to stop the Prince as he went out of the Palace, and implore him to remain at his studies. The Doctor even tempted him

with the delightful offer, that if Prince Terralus would only go with him to the school-room instead, he would prove to him on the blackboard how beautifully the sum of the three angles of a triangle were pre-cisely equal to two right angles! And when the Prince refused, Dr. Udebetternot actually tore out whole handfuls of his own hair.

"It improves your appearance," was the unfeeling remark of the Prince. "If you can only weep a little, Doctor, that will better your complexion." But he would never have dared to say it, if he had not become so beside himself about his lovely Aquaret.

Well, on that summer morning, the Princess appeared so exceedingly charming as she sat on her rock beneath the pure water, toying with her coral bracelets, or arranging and rearranging her beautiful hair of melted gold, as the water lifted and let it fall about her shoulders—so very lovely she seemed, that Prince Terralus bade good-by to what few senses he had left. For weeks now they had smiled at each other, had managed even a sort of conversation, by a million graceful motions of their hands aiding the fuller language of their eyes. But this morning the Prince, as he lay upon his bosom with his face so near the water, put off his plumed cap, and actually allowed his face to sink toward Aquaret, under the surface. It seemed so impossible for that to hurt him, in which she seemed so much at home. Of course he was nearly strangled. The salt water blinded and burned his eyes, and got into mouth and nose, exactly as it would do in your case. Had he not withdrawn his head, he would have been drowned. When he could stop coughing, and get the hair off his face, and the water out of his eyes, he saw that Aquaret was laughing with pearly teeth, and blue eyes full of tears, as if she would fall off from her seat. As she never seemed just exactly that beautiful before, the Prince forgave her with all his soul, laughed himself as joyously. The next moment he saw her set her rosy lips, as if with some sudden purpose, and

The

draw her robe more closely about her neck, and shut her eyes, and ―rise! The Prince reached out both hands in a transport of joy, as the fair head and face of Aquaret appeared above the surface. Alas! it was with her when in the air, exactly as it had been with him in the water. She opened and shut her eyes, struggled with her hands and arms, and gasped and strangled in a way dreadful to see. air would have drowned her in a minute more, exactly as the sea would have drowned her lover. So that he was glad when she suddenly drew her head under water again. She was such a long time passing her hands over her face, even after she had got back, as if in distress, that the Prince feared she had done herself a deadly hurt. But he did not feel in the least disposed to laugh at her, as she had at him, which shows how much more tender-hearted men are than women.

As soon as she could compose herself, she sat still as death on her rock under the water, with her hands and all her golden hair about her face, and the Prince saw that she was weeping, bitterly weeping. And he, feeling as miserably as she did, would gladly have fought somebody about it; for, where a woman finds relief in weeping, a man finds his only relief in making some one else weep.

Yes. We are not going to tell what was not the exact truth in the case of these even to please you, dear reader! He was of the earth and air. She was

of the earth and water. Only the earth was common to them both; but the air was his element and the water was hers. Near as they were to each other, clearly as they could see each other, dearly and devotedly as they loved each other, it was better they should never have known and loved each other at all! If they were millions of miles apart they could not have been more separated from each other! It seemed such a very little difference between these two, he of the air and she of the water, but that difference was-death!

And all the time there was a way, the simplest and easiest way in the

world, for overcoming this terrible difference between them if they had but known it! Many a perfect cure lies right in our reach in this world—if we only knew it. Mothers have had their children bitten by serpents, dying in agony before their eyes, with bottles of spirits on top shelves near by, jars of soda on the very table by them-if the mothers had only known what these remedies were. Plenty of fragments of iron and steel, with abundance of water everywhere around, for thousands of years before steam-engines were found out, if people had only known how to put the iron and steel and water together so as to make an engine. There were plenty of poles and acids and wire in the world, if people had only known how to make them into telegraphs. The sun had all the power to make photographs from the creation of the earth it has now, if people had only understood how to photograph with the sun. And there are many things we can not do to-day, that we will be able to do; flying through the air perhaps, some day by some simple means lying right in our reach, if we only knew it. When we do find them out we will say, "O, pshaw, why didn't I think of that before!" So with Terralus and Aquaret. It was the easiest thing possible for them to have arranged on the spot so that Aquaret could have come out of the sea, and sit as long as she pleased beside her beloved on his rock, not at all inconvenienced by the air, as much at home in it as she was in the water-if they had only known it. By the same means the Prince could have walked down from rock to rock till he had reached Aquaret under the sea, could have sat beside her there for days, could have gone with her far away from the shore and the air, down, down to the bottom of the ocean, along the valleys and over the broad plains there, with the surface of the sea miles above their heads, just as much at home there surrounded by the water as in air-if they had only known it! So that they were together, they could have lived happily under water, or on shore as it happened,

and as long as they lived-if they had only known the way to do so. Such a perfectly easy way !

And it was a double pity they did not know of it then. Little as Prince Terralus supposed it, he had been followed that morning by Prince Asquinx of whom we spoke at the outset! Being the nephew of the Emperor of the Solid Ground, he would be his heir if Terralus, who was the Emperor's only child, was dead. And if I were to stop to tell you a tenth part of how ugly and mean and cross and lying and thievish and malicious and sneaking and false and traitorous suppose

we say nothing more about Prince Asquinx! Where we can say nothing good of any one it is better to hold our tongues altogether! Unless it is necessary to speak. And it is sufficient to add, that Prince Asquinx saw all that took place that morning from behind a rock. He saw nothing that was in the least wrong. Yet a terrible story he made of it! story he made of it! In a whisper and as a great secret as soon as he got back to Court. Did you ever hear the hum a great bell makes when it stops ringing? We said that the mere wonder before what Prince Terralus could be visiting the seaside for was like the buzzing over the land of a big bee; now, the buzzing was like that of a whole swarm of fifty million bees! In one week after Prince Asquinx betrayed the secret no two people in all the Empire of the Solid Ground could be together a moment without talking about it, each talking at the top of his or her voice all the time without waiting an instant to hear what the other had to say. Because all the men were down upon Prince Terralus and all the women were down upon the Princess Aquaret-men and women, all alike, being themselves wrong in that as we all generally are where we do not know what we are talking about. Dr. Udebetternot was wrong in still another way. With his face dirtier, his cravat more awry, his hair more uncombed than ever before, his very spectacles upside down on his nose with his eagerness, he kept on saying to every soul he met: "A Princess

of the Sea! Stuff! unless you can prove her to me on the blackboard I will never believe it. You can't believe what you can't prove!" Alas! and Aquaret had been watched, too; from under the sea! Of all her companions in the world of waters, by her own dearest friend the Countess Anemone! So beautiful a lady as she was, too, only less beautiful than Aquaret herself. Of course she told it

as a great secret the moment she got back to the Court of the Emperor of the Sea! And, of course, in one week there was not one of the inhabitants of the sea but knew all about it and talked of nothing else, and, then too, while all the men were down upon the poor young Prince, not a lady, from the Empress of the Sea down, but was very severe indeed upon poor, poor

M

Y dear little readers of OUR MONTHLY, I want to tell you a nice little story which I think will interest you. One day while taking my morning horseback-ride in Perth, in Scotland, a little girl came running to me, as I was riding across a field, weeping bitterly. Her first words were: "Oh ! sir, there is a dog cautched in a traup, and he's been greetin a' mornin sin nine o'clock. Will ye no gang awa' an' tak him out?"

I said to her, "But what are you greeting about. Your eyes look as if Your eyes look as if you too had been crying all the morning."

"Oh! sir, he's been greeting sair. A coudna help it." "But why did you not take him out?" "A daurna, for the gamekeeper would be angry."

So I turned my horse round the edge of the woods, and there I found a nice-looking shepherd's dog, away up among a ledge of rocks with his fore-foot fast in a strong steel trap. His foot was bleeding, and he was whining and howling and yelling in a most fearful manner. I found it very difficult to get to him, for the rocks were so steep and high. But I climbed up at last, and as I came nearer to him he stopped howling for a little, and as I had never seen a dog in a trap before, I thought he would be glad enough to have me open the trap and

let his bleeding foot out. But as I stooped down to open the trap, HE

FLEW AT ME AND BIT MY HAND TILL IT BLED FEARFULLY. It would have been natural for me to have pelted him with stones and left him, but I pitied the poor fellow so that I could not leave him. At last I managed to cut the rope that held him; but what do you think he did? The moment the rope was cut, though his foot, all bleeding, was still in the biting trap, yet with the trap clinging to his foot, he sprang at me and before I could turn round, he seized me by the arm and gave me another hard bite. I pushed him off, and he went tumbling down the hill-side making an awful noise, as if he were mad. I was afraid that if the poor fellow was left in the woods he would die, and so I spent an hour or two in finding his master. And when at last I got him to his master, he quietly lay down and let him open the trap and take out his cut and bleeding foot. When once his foot was out of the trap he seemed quite thankful to me. He was not mad at all. He could not do enough to express his gratitude to his master and me. It was only then that he came to his right mind, and seemed to find out who his true friends were.

You will wonder why I have told you this story. Do not, my dear little

friends, lay down this book till you have read the full answer.

It taught me three most important lessons. First, the little girl's tears for the poor dog caught in the trap led me to think of how Jesus weeps over sinners in the devil's trap. When we were in the Holy Land several years ago, we stood upon the spot between Bethany and Jerusalem, where "HE BEHELD THE CITY, AND WEPT OVER IT."

I then wished that I was more like Jesus, that my tears might oftener flow at the sight of poor lost sinners in the devil's trap; and in danger of being dragged down to hell. That little girl who was at work in the field near where the dog was caught wept for nearly two hours; so great was her sorrow for the dog. But, my dear child, if you are not a Christian, you are in a worse trap than that dog was. All sinners are in the devil's trap. I for one feel sorry for you. I was once in just such a trap as you are in now! I remember how my dear mother used to weep over me when I was a boy. She knew my danger better than I did. She knew that Jesus alone could save me from Satan's power, and fit me for heaven. My dear young friend, that is true of you. Your soul is in danger. It was because the dear Savior knew our dreadful danger that He left His house in heaven, and came down to this wicked world, and bled and died on the cross IN OURSTEAD, that our sins might be all forgiven.

Again you remember how that dog flew at me and bit me when I went to get him out of the trap. Just so I have known of some who have gotten angry when loving Christians have kindly gone to them, and tried to get them out of the devil's trap. They feel so unhappy that they seem to think that if they become Christians they will lose some of their pleasures, and so they are often vexed with God's people that try to do them good. But little children do not often act so foolishly. A wicked infidel in Guernsey once flew at me and tore my coat quite in two, when I was kindly telling him and many others about how the dear Jesus was wounded for our transgressions, and

bruised for our iniquities. But little children always seem thankful when Christians try to do what they can to bring them to the Savior. But grown people are often so miserable on account of their sins, that they feel cross and ready to fly at those who are really their best friends, just as that dog flew at me when I cut the rope that he might get away to his master who would gladly let him out. In heathen lands I have sometimes gathered a group of ignorant children around me, and told them of the sufferings of Christ on the cross; and I have seen the tears in their eyes at the thought of their not loving Him "who His own self bare our own sins in His own body on the tree." I might have left that dog when he appeared so ungrateful to me, and flew at me and bit me; and just so Christians are sometimes tempted to leave sinners alone when they are ungrateful for their kindness to them; but when they think of what Jesus suffered from those whom He came to save, they are often led to hear scoffs and insults that they may get their unhappy friends out of the devil's trap. I remember a bad boy in one of our children's meetings in Glasgow who was so wicked, that he came into the meetings just to make a disturbance. He seemed to hate me and all the good people in the meetings, but we did not turn him out of the church, for we knew if we could only get him to JESUS,that HE would let him out of Satan's clutches; and so we prayed for him, and told him how kind and loving the Savior was. And after a little we saw the great tears rolling down his cheeks. God showed him that he was indeed in the devil's trap, in danger of being dragged down to the dark prison-house of hell. At first he seemed to think that he was such a sinner that he could not be saved, but when he went to Jesus he found Him able to break the iron fetters of sin and to let him go free.

And this leads me to say a word or two about the last lesson which the story teaches. You remember that the dog, though he would not let me open the trap, was quite willing that his master