."

"Justly?" quoth the younger brother. "It becomes you ill, that are a
restless man and a runagate, to doubt my justice, or the King my
father's, that are sedentary folk and known in the land."

"Nay," said the elder brother, "you have all else, have patience also;
and suffer me to say the world is full of touchstones, and it appears
not easily which is true."

"I have no shame of mine," said the younger brother. "There it is, and
look in it."

So the elder brother looked in the mirror, and he was sore amazed; for
he was an old man, and his hair was white upon his head; and he sat down
in the hall and wept aloud.

"Now," said the younger brother, "see what a fool's part you have
played, that ran over all the world to seek what was lying in our
father's treasury, and came back an old carle for the dogs to bark at,
and without chick or child. And I that was dutiful and wise sit here
crowned with virtues and pleasures, and happy in the light of my
hearth."

"Methinks you have a cruel tongue," said the elder brother; and he
pulled out the clear pebble and turned its light on his brother; and
behold the man was lying, his soul was shrunk into the smallness of a
pea, and his heart was a bag of little fears like scorpions, and love
was dead in his bosom. And at that the elder brother cried out aloud,
and turned the light of the pebble on the maid, and, lo! she was but a
mask of a woman, and withinsides she was quite dead, and she smiled as a
clock ticks, and knew not wherefore.

"O, well," said the elder brother, "I perceive there is both good and
bad. So fare ye all as well as ye may in the dun; but I will go forth
into the world with my pebble in my pocket."

XIX

THE POOR THING

There was a man in the islands who fished for his bare bellyful, and
took his life in his hands to go forth upon the sea between four planks.
But though he had much ado, he was merry of heart; and the gulls heard
him laugh when the spray met him. And though he had little lore, he was
sound of spirit; and when the fish came to his hook in the mid-waters,
he blessed God without weighing. He was bitter poor in goods and bitter
ugly of countenance, and he had no wife.

It fell in the time of the fishing that the man awoke in his house about
the midst of the afternoon. The fire burned in the midst, and the smoke
went up and the sun came down by the chimney. And the man was aware of
the likeness of one that warmed his hands at the