h of the savy-tree, and was waked by
the first ray of the sun. Then the sky-lark flew and flew up and up to
the topmost arch of the sky, and sang the hymn of the morning.

But a frog, who was croaking in the cranberry marsh, said, "Why do you
take such pains and fly so high? the sun shines here, and I can sing
here."

And the bird said, "God has made me to fly. God has made me to see. I
will fly as high as He will lift me, and sing so loud that all shall
hear me."

* * * * *

And when the little Prince Ladislaus had read the fable, he cried out,
"The sky-lark is the bird for me, and I will paint his picture on my
shield after school this morning."

Then the Prince Bela read the next fable,--the fable of the

WATER-RAT.

A good beaver found one day a little water-rat almost dead. His father
and mother had been swept away by a freshet, and the little rat was
almost starved. But the kind beaver gave him of her own milk, and
brought him up in her own lodge with her children, and he got well, and
could eat, and swim, and dive with the best of them.

But one day there was a great alarm, that the beavers' dam was giving
way before the water. "Come one, come all," said the grandfather of the
beavers, "come to the rescue." So they all started, carrying sticks and
bark with them, the water-rat and all. But as they swam under an old
oak-tree's root, the water-rat stopped in the darkness, and then he
quietly turned round and went back to the hut. "It will be hard work,"
said he "and there are enough of them." There were enough of them. They
mended the dam by working all night and by working all day. But, as
they came back, a great wave of the freshet came pouring over the dam
and, though the dam stood firm, the beavers were swept away,--away and
away, down the river into the sea, and they died there.

And the water-rat lived in their grand house by himself, and had all
their stores of black-birch bark and willow bark and sweet poplar bark
for his own.

* * * * *

"That was a clever rat," said the Prince Bela. "I will paint the rat on
my shield, when school is done." And the priest Stephen was very sad
when he said so; and the Prince Ladislaus was surprised.

So they went to the play-room and painted their shields. The shields
were made of the bark of hemlock-trees. Ladislaus chipped off the rough
bark till the shield was white, and made on the place the