when his
labor had been in vain, and all the writing had been obliterated. The
woman turned at times towards Ginnistan and the children, and dipping
her finger in the bowl, sprinkled some drops upon them, which, as soon
as they touched the nurse, the child, or the cradle, dissolved into a
blue vapor, exhibiting a thousand strange images, and floating and
changing constantly around them. If one of these by chance touched the
scribe, many figures and geometrical diagrams fell down, which he
strung with much diligence upon a thread, and hung them for an ornament
around his meagre neck. The child's mother, who was sweetness and
loveliness itself, often came in. She seemed to be constantly occupied,
always carrying with her some domestic utensil. If the prying scribe
observed it, he began a long reproof, of which no one took any notice.
All seemed accustomed to his fruitless fault-finding. The mother
sometimes gave the breast to little Fable, but was soon called away,
and Ginnistan took the child back again, for it seemed to love her
best. Suddenly the father brought in a small slender rod of iron, which
he had found in the court. The scribe looked at it, twirled it round
quickly, and soon discovered, that being suspended from the middle by a
thread, it turned of itself to the north. Ginnistan also took it in her
hand, bent it, pressed it, breathed upon it, and soon gave it the form
of a serpent biting, its own tail. The scribe was soon weary of looking
at it. He wrote down everything that had occurred, and was very diffuse
about the utility of such a discovery. But how vexed was he when all he
had written did not stand the proof, and when the paper came blank from
the bowl. The nurse continued to play with it. She chanced to touch
with it the cradle; the child awoke, threw off his covering, and
holding one hand towards the light, reached after the serpent with the
other. As soon as he received it, he leaped so quickly from the cradle
that Ginnistan was frightened, and the scribe fell nearly out of his
chair from wonder; the child stood in the chamber, covered only by his
long golden hair, and gazed with speechless joy upon the prize, which
pointed in his hands, towards the North, and seemed to awake within him
deep emotion. He grew visibly.

"Sophia," said he with a touching voice to the woman, "let me drink
from the bowl."

She gave it him without delay, and he could not cease drinking; yet the
bowl continued full. At la