ventive was this young friendship in its
early bud.

Both of the boys now entered upon a new and happy life. Ivo had never
had a brother's heart of his own age; Clement, in the frequent
migrations of his father's family, had never attached himself to any
one but an elder sister. Now Ivo, when he awoke in the morning, looked
up joyfully and said, "Good-morning, Clement," although Clement slept
in another apartment. Though away from home, he was a stranger no
longer. The convent had ceased to be a place of coercion and unpitying
law: he did all things willingly, because his Clement was with him. It
cost him no further resolution to write cheerful letters home. All his
life was a life of pleasure; and his mother often shook her head when
she read his sounding periods. Clement, who had read innumerable
fairy-tales and books of knight-errantry, introduced his friend to a
world of wonders and strange delights. He made two banished princes of
Ivo and himself, and a giant Goggolo of the director; and for a time
they always addressed each other by the names of their imaginary
characters.

The world of wonders and fairy-tales, which strive to outdo the riddle
of existence by still more puzzling combinations and thus in a manner
to expound the world of every day, this self-oblivious dream of a
toying, childish fancy, had not hitherto met the mental gaze of Ivo.
What Nat had told him was too much intertwined with the rude and simple
experiences of field and forest life, and knew nothing of subterranean
castles of gold and precious stones. He was entirely unprepared for the
gorgeous trappings of these magic gardens and these cities at the
bottom of the sea.

The hawthorn was venerated by both as the trysting-tree of their
friendship, and they never passed it without looking at it and at each
other. Ivo, whom we already know as well versed in the Bible, once
said, "We have just had the same luck as Moses. Jehovah appeared to him
in the bush, and it was burning, but yet was not consumed. Do you know
what Jehovah means? I am he who shall be: it is the future of Hava. We
shall be friends in future too, as we are now, sha'n't we?"

"I'll tell you a story," replied Clement. "Once there was a princess on
an island: her name wasn't Leah, like the old lady in the Bible, but
Hawa. She hadn't red eyes, either, but beautiful dark-blue ones. But
she couldn't abide thorns: the least little thorn was a thorn in her
eye, and the moment she saw