ested upon it the night before the battle of Bosworth Field, where he
was killed. Clumsy as the bedstead was, he took it about with him from
place to place; but after the fatal battle it passed into the hands of
various owners, and nothing remarkable was discovered about it until the
king had been dead a hundred years. By that time the bedstead had come
into the possession of a woman who found a fortune in it. One morning,
says the story, as she was making the bed, she heard a chinking sound,
and saw, to her great delight, a piece of money drop on the floor. Of
course she at once set about examining the bedstead, and found that the
lower part of it was hollow and contained a treasure. Three hundred
pounds--a fortune in those days--was brought to light, having remained
hidden all those years. As King Richard was not there to claim his gold,
the woman quickly possessed herself of it. But, as it happened, she had
better have remained in ignorance and poverty. As soon as the matter
became known one of her servants robbed her of the gold, and even caused
her death. Thus it was said in the neighborhood that 'King Richard's
gold' did nobody any good."

The children were very much pleased with this story, and Malcolm said
that he always liked to hear about people who found gold and things.

"I think that I do, myself," replied Miss Harson, "although, as in this
poor woman's case and in many others, gold is not the best thing to
find. It often brings with it so much sorrow and sin as to be a curse to
its owner. The only safe treasure is that laid up in heaven, where
'neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal,'

"From the very earliest times the oak has been used for shipbuilding.
The Saxons, we are told, kept a formidable fleet of vessels with curved
bottoms and the prow and poop adorned with representations of the head
and tail of some grotesque and fabulous creature. King Alfred had many
vessels that carried sixty oars and were entirely of oak. A vessel
supposed to be of his time has been discovered in the bed of a river in
Kent, and after the lapse of so many centuries it is as sound as ever
and as hard as iron."

"Do oak trees ever have apples on 'em?" asked Clara. "In a story that I
read there was something about 'oak-apples.'"

[Illustration: THE OAK-GALL INSECT (_Cynips_).]

"They are not apples such as we eat, or fruit in any sense," said her
governess. "They are the work