clean and chubby-faced Italian baby with large black eyes rose out of
its marble depth and hailed them with simple, inarticulate delight.
Cranbrook gazed long at the child, then lifted it up in his arms and
kissed it. The young man who had opened the gate for them stood by
observing the scene with a doubtful expression of suspicion and
wonder. As the stranger again deposited the child on the blanket in
the bottom of the sarcophagus, he stepped up before the door and
called:

"Annunciata!"

A tall, comely matron appeared in the door--and the strangers hastened
away.

UNDER THE GLACIER.

I.

In one of the deepest fjord-valleys on the western coast of Norway
there lives, even to this day, a legend which may be worth relating.
Several hundred years ago, a peasant dwelt there in the parish who had
two sons, both born on the same day. During their infancy they looked
so much alike that even the father himself could not always tell one
from the other; and as the mother had died soon after their birth,
there was no one to settle the question of primogeniture. At last the
father, too, died, and each son, feeling sure that he was the elder,
laid claim to the farm. For well nigh a year they kept wrangling and
fighting, each threatening to burn the house over the other's head if
he dared to take possession of it. The matter was finally adjusted by
the opportune intervention of a neighbor who stood in high repute for
wisdom. At his suggestion, they should each plant side by side a twig
or sprout of some tree or herb, and he to whose plant God gave growth
should be the owner of the farm. This advice was accepted; for God,
both thought, was a safer arbiter than man. One of the brothers, Arne,
chose a fern (_Ormgrass_), and the other, Ulf, a sweet-brier. A week
later, they went with the wise man and two other neighbors to the
remote pasture at the edge of the glacier where, by common consent,
they had made their appeal to the judgment of heaven. Arne's fern
stood waving in dewy freshness in the morning breeze; but Ulf's
sweet-brier lay prostrate upon the ground, as if uprooted by some
hostile hand. The eyes of the brothers met in a long, ill-boding
glance.

"This is not heaven's judgment," muttered Ulf, under his breath.
"Methinks I know the hand that has wrought this dastardly deed."

The umpires, unmindful of the charge, examined the uprooted twig, and
decided that some wild animal must have trodden upon it. Acco