nkincense of the islands of
the East.

One there was amongst them who seemed to have got nothing to carry home
with him; and yet he, as well as the rest, had laid out his master's
gifts. Then some of the other servants asked him, what he had stored up
for the king? and he said that he had no riches which he could shew to
them, but that he had an offering which he knew that the merciful heart
of the king would make him love and value. Then they asked him to tell
them his story; so he said that, as he was walking through the market, he
had seen a poor woman weeping and wringing her hands, as if her heart
would break: he stopped, and asked her the cause of her sorrow; and she
told him that she was a widow, and that some merchants, to whom her
husband had owed large sums of money, had come that morning to her house
and taken all that she had, and seized her children too; and that they
were dragging them away to the slave-market to sell them for slaves in a
far land, that they might pay themselves the debt which her husband had
owed them. So when he heard her sad tale, he opened his bag of treasure,
and found that all the gold which he had got in it would just pay the
widow's debt and set her children free. Then he went with her to the
merchants, and he told out to them all that sum, and set the children of
the widow free, and gave them back to their mother; "and I am taking," he
said, "to our merciful king the offering of the widow's tears and
gratitude; and I know well that this is an offering which will be well-
pleasing in his sight."

So it fared with these faithful servants in their trading; and all the
while they were cheerful and light-hearted, because they remembered
constantly the love and kindness which their king had shewed to them; and
they rejoiced that they were able to serve him and to trade for him with
his gifts. They thought also of the goodness of the king's son towards
them; they remembered how he had sought them when they were prisoners in
the dark dungeons of their tyrant enemy; and they were full of joy when
they thought that they should be able to offer to him the goodly pearl,
and the other curious gifts, which they had bought. They thought of
these things until they longed to hear the trumpet sound, which was to
call them out of the town and gather them together for their journey
home. When that trumpet might sound, they knew not; but the sun was now
passed its noon, and the town, which had