HIS MIND WAS QUIET.... 'HOW
IF THIS POOR PEBBLE BE THE TOUCHSTONE, AFTER ALL?' SAID HE."]

Then the younger brother laughed aloud. "Why," said he, "I have found
the touchstone years ago, and married the maid, and there are our
children playing at the gate."

Now at this the elder brother grew as gray as the dawn. "I pray you
have dealt justly," said he, "for I perceive my life is lost."

"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.

"Oh, 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."

MAGAZINE NOTES.

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD--DR. JOWETT.

The late Dr. Jowett is reported to have once said to Mrs. Humphry
Ward: "We shall come in the future to teach almost entirely by
biography. We shall begin with the life that is most familiar to
us, 'The Life of Christ,' and we shall more and more put before our
children the great examples of persons' lives so that t