with
the dreadful bellowing from her mouths, and her arms swung frantically
about on every side to seize the knight and crush him. But this was the
strange thing about the battle: as often as the knight looked at the lady,
who stood near him, he gained new strength and the witch could not harm
him.

He was cutting off her arms one by one and victory was almost his, when
down the road came an old man wagging his grey beard dolefully and
muttering into his breast. And when he reached the three there at the
roadside, he stood for a moment watching the battle and still muttering in
his beard. Then without a word he beckoned to the lady. She hesitated,
sighed, and turned away, leaving the poor knight to struggle alone without
the blessing of her eyes. And immediately his strength seemed to abandon
him and his sword dropped at his side. You may be sure the witch shouted
with triumph at this, and the noise of her bellowing sounded like the
clanging of a hundred discordant bells. It was almost over with the
knight. But suddenly he too uttered a great cry. Despair came to give him
strength where hope had been before. "For love and the world!" he cried
out and drove at the monster once again with his uplifted sword.

And, dear Jack, do you wish to know how the battle ended? I am very, very
sorry, but I can't tell you, for when I came through the forest the knight
and the witch were still fighting. There was a look of desperate
determination in the knight's eyes, but, to tell you the truth, I think
his heart was with the lady who had left him, and it is not easy to fight
without a heart in this world, you know.

Write to me soon, a long, long letter and tell me about the trees of
Morningtown. Some day when you are grown up and live with men, you will be
glad to remember the friendship and the wise conversation of those
brothers of the forest. Good-bye for a time, my boy.

Affectionately, PHILIP TOWERS.

LIV

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

A wan beggar, seated on the coping that surrounds St. Paul's and
exploiting his misery before the world. A strange scene calculated to give
one pause,--the poor waif crying his distress on the curb, within the iron
fence the ancient sleeping dead, and along the thoroughfare of Broadway
the ceaseless unheeding stream of humanity. As I walked up the street with
this image in my mind, the lines of an old Oriental poem kept time with my
steps until I ha