e friendly goblin.

"Well, Bartlemy," croaked the being; "and how have you prospered with
the Gold Stone?"

"Marvellously well, your worship!" replied Bartlemy, in a joyous tone.

"And you found a crown and a shilling, and a guinea and a crown,
instead of your penny and farthing; did you, Bartlemy?"

"Why, yes, your worship, I did, certainly."

"And the Gold Stone changed them, did it, Bartlemy?"

"Why, yes, your worship; of course it did."

"Now, Bartlemy," said the goblin, in a confidential tone, laying his
hand on the other's shoulder, "I want to tell you something. It isn't
the Gold Stone!"

"It's--not--the--Gold--Stone!!" gasped Bartlemy.

"Why, no, you donkey! there's no such thing!"

Bartlemy turned fairly green and yellow with horror and disappointment.

"Listen to me, Bartlemy Bowbell," said the goblin; "nobody but a donkey
would suppose that a round bit of purple glass----"

"Of purple glass!" repeated Bartlemy, in a sort of dream.

"Don't interrupt, Bartlemy--that a bit of purple glass could change
copper into gold. Your master paid you the wages your work was worth,
that is all. There is no such preposterous jewel on the face of the
earth as you imagine; but there _is_ a true Gold Stone, and its name is

'FAITHFUL INDUSTRY!'"

As the goblin spoke these words, he suddenly began to change his form,
and grew taller and broader. His bell-button thimbles fell off, his flat
nose became long and sharp, his thread hair gave place to a bald pate,
and his whole appearance became wonderfully like Bartlemy's master. He
raised his yardstick, brought it down with a tremendous
crack--and--Bartlemy WOKE!

Yes! he was lying under the tree where he had thrown himself down the
night before. The whole of what had passed, Gold Stone, money, goblin,
and all, was but the fantastic tracery of a dream; and above him really
stood his master, who had repented of having turned away his luckless
'prentice, and had come to seek him.

The lesson was not lost, however, on our hero. He returned to his
master's shop, where he worked diligently, without any yardstick coming
after him; and in three years' time rose to be a master tailor, married
his old master's daughter, cut the coats of the king himself, and took
for his arms a Gold Stone, supported by two shears, and the motto:

FAITHFUL INDUSTRY.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] A shop-board is a kind of table on which tailors sit when
a