med themselves into a prismatic mist of dewy
light; he stood for an instant veiled with them as with the belt of a
broad rainbow. The colors grew faint; the mist rose into the air; the
monarch had evaporated.

And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River, and its waves were
as clear as crystal and as brilliant as the sun. And when he cast the
three drops of dew into the stream, there opened where they fell a
small, circular whirlpool, into which the waters descended with a
musical noise.

Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed, because
not only the river was not turned into gold, but its waters seemed much
diminished in quantity. Yet he obeyed his friend the dwarf and
descended the other side of the mountains towards the Treasure Valley;
and as he went he thought he heard the noise of water working its way
under the ground. And when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley,
behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft
of the rocks above it and was flowing in innumerable streams among the
dry heaps of red sand.

And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the new streams, and
creeping plants grew and climbed among the moistening soil. Young
flowers opened suddenly along the riversides, as stars leap out when
twilight is deepening, and thickets of myrtle and tendrils of vine cast
lengthening shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the
Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance which had
been lost by cruelty was regained by love.

And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the poor were never driven
from his door, so that his barns became full of corn and his house of
treasure. And for him the river had, according to the dwarf's promise,
become a river of gold.

And to this day the inhabitants of the valley point out the place where
the three drops of holy dew were cast into the stream, and trace the
course of the Golden River under the ground until it emerges in the
Treasure Valley. And at the top of the cataract of the Golden River
are still to be seen two black stones, round which the waters howl
mournfully every day at sunset; and these stones are still called by
the people of the valley

THE BLACK BROTHERS

End of Project Gutenberg's The King of the Golden River, by John Ruskin.

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER ***

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