eful race, you should forget what
you owe to me, and even when you grow older begin to doubt whether you
have ever seen me, the Lily you gathered will never fade till my promise
is accomplished.'

"So saying, she gathered around her the folds of her robe, crossed her
arms, and dropping her head on her breast, trembled slightly; and,
before the boy could remark the change, he had nothing in his hand but a
flower.

"He looked up. All the beautiful rosy flowers were faded to a shady
gray. The gold had disappeared from the water, and the forest was dense
and gloomy. He arose with the lily in his hand, went slowly home, laid
it in a casket to protect it from injury, and then proceeded to search
for the palette, which he shortly found; and, lest he should break the
spell, he began to use it that very night.

"Who would not like to have a fairy friend? Who would not like to work
with a magic palette? Every day its virtues become more apparent. He
worked very hard, and it was astonishing how soon he improved. His deep,
heavy outlines soon became light and clear; and his coloring began to
assume a transparent delicacy. He was so delighted with the fairy
present that he even did more than was required of him. He spent nearly
all his leisure time in using it, and often passed whole days beside the
sheet of water in the forest. He painted it when the sun shone, and it
was spotted all over with the reflection of fleeting white clouds; he
painted it covered with water-lilies rocking on the ripples; by
moonlight, when two or three stars in the empty sky shone down upon it;
and at sunset, when it lay trembling like liquid gold.

"But the fairy never came to look at his work. He often called to her
when he had been more than usually successful; but she never made him
any answer, nor took the least notice of his entreaties that he might
see her again.

"So a long time--several years--passed away. He was grown up to be a
man, and he had never broken the charm; he still worked every day with
his magic palette.

"No one in these parts cared at all for his pictures. His mother's
friends told him he would never get his bread by painting; his mother
herself was sorry that he chose to waste his leisure so; and the more
because the pictures on her walls were brighter far than his, and had
clouds and trees of far clearer color, not like the common clouds and
misty hills that he was so fond of painting, and his faintly colored
distant fore