ing better than a
miserable old man living in a wretched hut with no friends or
companions but buzzing bees."
The Junior Sorcerer and his Masters then returned to their homes,
happy in the success of their great performance; and the Youth went
back to his home anxious to begin a life of activity and energy.
Years and years afterward, when the Junior Sorcerer had become a
Senior and was very old indeed, he passed through the country of Orn,
and noticed a small hut about which swarms of bees were flying. He
approached it, and looking in at the door he saw an old man in a
leathern doublet, sitting at a table, eating honey. By his magic art
he knew this was the baby which had been transformed from the
Bee-man.
"Upon my word!" exclaimed the Sorcerer, "He has grown into the same
thing again!"
THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON.
* * * * *
Over the great door of an old, old church which stood in a quiet town
of a far-away land there was carved in stone the figure of a large
griffin. The old-time sculptor had done his work with great care, but
the image he had made was not a pleasant one to look at. It had a
large head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back
arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout
legs in front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs
behind,--the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished
off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under
him, the end sticking up just back of his wings.
The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had
evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it,
also in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the
church, not very far from the ground, so that people could easily
look at them, and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great
many other sculptures on the outside of this church,--saints,
martyrs, grotesque heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those
of other creatures which cannot be named, because nobody knows
exactly what they were; but none were so curious and interesting as
the great griffin over the door, and the little griffins on the sides
of the church.
A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of dreadful wilds
scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been
put up over the church-door. In some way or other, the old-time
sculptor had seen him,
|