yes, and another time the Lad came humbly to ask for
pardon. Then William laughed and put out his hand, but, as once before,
the Lad slipped his behind his back and said:

"It is so dirty, friend."

And this time he would not let William take it. So the King was forced
instead to lay his arm about the Lad's shoulder, and press it tenderly;
but the Lad made no response, and only stood hanging his head until the
King removed his arm. All the same, when next the King made a shoe he
was full of rage, and stamped on it, and ran out of the forge. Which
surprised the King all the more because it was so excellent a shoe. Yet
he was secretly glad of its rejection, for he felt it would break his
heart to go away from that place; and he could think of no good cause
for remaining, once Pepper was shod. So there he stayed, eating,
sleeping, and working, while the thews of his back became as strong
under the smooth skin as the thews of a beech-tree under the smooth
bark; and his craft was such that the Lad at last left the whole of the
work of the forge in his charge. For there was nothing he could not do
surpassingly well. And this the Lad admitted, save only in the case of
the fourth shoe.

But on Saturday, just before closing-time, the King set to and made a
shoe so fine that when the Lad saw it he said quietly, "I could not
make a better." Had he not said so he must have lied, or proved that he
did know a masterpiece when he saw it. And he too good a craftsman for
that, besides being honest.

Pepper instantly lifted up her near hind-foot.

"Upon my word!" exclaimed the King, "the world is full of stones, and
Pepper has found them all. The wonder is that she did not fall down on
the road."

"This is not a stone," said the Lad, "it is an opal."

And he displayed an opal of such marvelous changeability, such milk and
fire shot with such shifting rainbows, that it was as though it had had
birth of all the moods of all the women of all time.

"This enriches you for life," said the Lad gloomily, "and now you are
free of masters for ever."

But William thrust his hands into his pockets. "Keep it," he said, "for
this week you have given me love, and I have given you nothing but the
sinews of my body."

The Lad looked at him and said, "I have given you hard words, and fits
of temper, and much injustice."

"Have you?" said William. "I remember only your tenderness and your
tears. So keep the opal in love's name."

The Lad t