the
egg! She heard the gentle pecking inside the shell, but she thought it
was her own heart that was beating.

"At home in her poor cottage she took out the egg. 'Tick! tick!' it
said, as if it had been a gold watch, but it was not; it was an egg--a
real, living egg.

"The egg cracked and opened, and a dear little baby swan, all feathered
as with the purest gold, pushed out its tiny head. Around its neck were
four rings, and as this woman had four boys--three at home, and this
little one that was with her in the lonely wood--she understood at once
that there was one for each boy. Just as she had taken them the little
gold bird took flight.

"She kissed each ring, then made each of the children kiss one of the
rings, laid it next the child's heart awhile, then put it on his finger.
I saw it all," said the Sunshine, "and I saw what happened afterward.

[Illustration: The egg cracked and opened....]

"One of the boys, while playing by a ditch, took a lump of clay in his
hand, then turned and twisted it till it took shape and was like
Jason, who went in search of the Golden Fleece and found it.

"The second boy ran out upon the meadow, where stood the
flowers--flowers of all imaginable colors. He gathered a handful and
squeezed them so tightly that the juice flew into his eyes, and some of
it wet the ring upon his hand. It cribbled and crawled in his brain and
in his hands, and after many a day and many a year, people in the great
city talked of the famous painter that he was.

"The third child held the ring in his teeth, and so tightly that it gave
forth sound--the echo of a song in the depth of his heart. Then thoughts
and feelings rose in beautiful sounds,--rose like singing
swans,--plunged, too, like swans, into the deep, deep sea. He became a
great musical composer, a master, of whom every country has the right to
say, 'He was mine, for he was the world's.'

"And the fourth little one--yes, he was the 'ugly duck' of the family.
They said he had the pip and must eat pepper and butter like a sick
chicken, and that was what was given him; but of me he got a warm, sunny
kiss," said the Sunshine. "He had ten kisses for one. He was a poet and
was first kissed, then buffeted all his life through.

"But he held what no one could take from him--the ring of fortune from
Dame Fortune's golden swan. His thoughts took wing and flew up and away
like singing butterflies--emblems of an immortal life."

"That was a dreadfu