have sought and
plucked for him--she who loved him best--would never now be brought.
His beautiful young daughter, who in the magic garb of a swan had
flown over sea and land away to the distant north, would never more
return. "She is dead and gone," had the two swan ladies, her
companions, declared on their return home. They had concocted a tale,
and they told it as follows:--

"We had flown all three high up in the air when a sportsman saw us,
and shot at us with his arrow. It struck our young friend; and, slowly
singing her farewell song, she sank like a dying swan down into the
midst of the lake in the wood. There, on its banks, under a fragrant
weeping birch tree, we buried her. But we took a just revenge: we
bound fire under the wings of the swallow that built under the
sportman's thatched roof. It kindled--his house was soon in flames--he
was burned within it--and the flames shone as far over the sea as to
the drooping birch, where she is now earth within the earth. Alas!
never will she return to the land of Egypt."

And they both wept bitterly; and the old stork-father, when he heard
it, rubbed his bill until it was quite sore.

"Lies and deceit!" he cried. "I should like, above all things, to run
my beak into their breasts."

"And break it off," said the stork-mother; "you would look remarkably
well then. Think first of yourself, and the interests of your own
family; everything else is of little consequence."

"I will, however, place myself upon the edge of the open cupola
to-morrow, when all the learned and the wise are to assemble to take
the case of the sick man into consideration: perhaps they may then
arrive a little nearer to the truth."

And the learned and the wise met together, and talked much, deeply,
and profoundly of which the stork could make nothing at all; and,
sooth to say, there was no result obtained from all this talking,
either for the invalid or for his daughter in "the wild morass;" yet,
nevertheless, it was all very well to listen to--one _must_ listen to
a great deal in this world.

But now it were best, perhaps, for us to hear what had happened
formerly. We shall then be better acquainted with the story--at least,
we shall know as much as the stork-father did.

"Love bestows life; the highest love bestows the highest life; it is
only through love that his life can be saved," was what had been said;
and it was amazingly wisely and well said, the learned declared.

"It is a be