much.

Raising his head, he looked the lustrous stranger in the face.

"Well, Midas," observed his visitor, "I see that you have at length hit
upon something that will satisfy you. Tell me your wish."

"It is only this," replied Midas. "I am weary of collecting my treasures
with so much trouble, and beholding the heap so diminutive, after I have
done my best. I wish everything that I touch to be changed to gold!"

The stranger's smile grew so very broad, that it seemed to fill the room
like an outburst of the sun, gleaming into a shadowy dell, where the
yellow autumnal leaves--for so looked the lumps and particles of
gold--lie strewn in the glow of light.

"The Golden Touch!" exclaimed he. "You certainly deserve credit, friend
Midas, for striking out so brilliant a conception. But are you quite
sure that this will satisfy you?"

"How could it fail?" said Midas.

"And will you never regret the possession of it?"

"What could induce me?" asked Midas. "I ask nothing else, to render me
perfectly happy."

"Be it as you wish, then," replied the stranger, waving his hand in
token of farewell. "To-morrow, at sunrise, you will find yourself gifted
with the Golden Touch."

The figure of the stranger then became exceedingly bright, and Midas
involuntarily closed his eyes. On opening them again, he beheld only one
yellow sunbeam in the room, and, all around him, the glistening of the
precious metal which he had spent his life in hoarding up.

Whether Midas slept as usual that night, the story does not say. Asleep
or awake, however, his mind was probably in the state of a child's, to
whom a beautiful new plaything has been promised in the morning. At any
rate, day had hardly peeped over the hills, when King Midas was broad
awake, and, stretching his arms out of bed, began to touch the objects
that were within reach. He was anxious to prove whether the Golden Touch
had really come, according to the stranger's promise. So he laid his
finger on a chair by the bedside, and on various other things, but was
grievously disappointed to perceive that they remained of exactly the
same substance as before. Indeed, he felt very much afraid that he had
only dreamed about the lustrous stranger, or else that the latter had
been making game of him. And what a miserable affair would it be, if,
after all his hopes, Midas must content himself with what little gold he
could scrape together by ordinary means, instead of creating it by a
to