the world of the glorious masonry of those noble cities which she saw in her visions—cities where men and women moved like gods; where sorrow and want and selfishness seemed to be unknown. She longed to tell them of the harmonies which came to her of music which might stir a dead world to life, thrilling all nature into blossoms and fruits in abundance, as the music of a waterfall seems to send life into the flowers which grow beside. She would have told them of the colors with which nature loves to paint the sky, the mountains and valleys, sea and land, when all is ready for the master’s work. For nature paints wherever the canvas is prepared to receive the picture, and she asks no price for her work. Eline knew of times in the past—times that will come again—when man did not ever strive to be rich regardless of his poorer brothers, but each worked as he was able, all working for the whole world’s good. And she would have told them how in those times man did not earn his living by toil unending, by ceaseless pain and sorrow, but that nature helped him as he helped her, and the earth brought out her stores of rich fruits for the welfare of her upgrown sons, well knowing that they in turn with loving service would seek to make nobler and better that which nature gave to them in charge, birds and beasts, flowers and trees, plants and stones and all that lives—which is everything.

Eline saw how the desire to possess more than enough, for the selfish pleasure of saying, “It is mine!”—how the growth of selfishness in the world; the love of killing nature’s younger sons for food and pleasure increased; how the love of ease and forgetfulness of others and of duty to mother nature—how all these things had chilled the warmth of the one great life that is in all things, and crippled the mother’s efforts to help her wayward sons.

Others had told these things; others had striven to show the glorious light of life that shines behind the cold mist of sin and sorrow which has been cast like a veil over the earth; but all had been rejected. Some were ill-received; some were stoned; some were killed.

“How can I raise this humanity which like a great orphan has cut itself off from its mother and now lies ignorant of the happiness that awaits its coming?” thought Eline. “I have returned to tell them of the way, and they will not hear. Others have returned as far as they might and have been rejected. Others still have boldly plunged deeper yet in the hot sea of human life and have been lost in its poisonous fumes. Even so, I will again return, yet lower, if by chance there be a few who will not reject my message.”

VII

So Eline hid in her heart the things she knew and the things she would have told, as she had hidden in her soul at the river of forgetfulness the memory of the king’s garden of delight. And she took her way into the world with messages of love and of hope, such simple messages as the children understood, better sometimes than their elders. She told the children many beautiful fairy stories and they listened eagerly. They did not know that these were the stories which she had told to the learned ones of the earth and which were really true, though they had not believed.

The children listened, and they said: “It is beautiful. Some day we will seek out such a beautiful world as that of which the stories tell.”

SHE TOLD THE CHILDREN STORIES

There were houses, too, which they built—little toy houses with toy bricks. But Eline showed them how to shape the bricks

and how to make each brick fit in its proper place so that never a one should lose its worth. And Eline showed the children how that behind the building of beautiful mansions there was the beautiful thought that made the masonry so noble a work, though it were only toy masonry. And the children understood.

In their games they had done each his best and they did well. But Eline showed them games in which they all acted together, even the little ones helping and sharing. It was wonderful to them that they had not thought of this before, because now they found that they could do more than ever they had done when each worked alone and for himself.

Near the city where they dwelt was a vast plain full of great boulders, which they could have made into a great park and a beautiful garden; but the people of the city cared not for such things and would not help them. By themselves they knew not how to move the rocks. So it remained a waste of wild growth, except in those places where the children had moved one by one, and with great difficulty, the smaller stones.

Now Eline bid them take a strong rope. “For,” said she, “we will clear that plain, and it shall be for a dwelling and a garden for all.” She was thinking of the king’s garden.

The children looked at her in astonishment as though they wondered if she meant the thing she said.

“We have no rope,” they said, “and none will give us any.”

“There is your rope,” said Eline, pointing out the overgrown plain, where, amid the rocks in the great patches from which they had slowly and painfully drawn the smaller stones, grew masses of pale blue flowers, beautiful, delicate little blossoms, like wind-flowers.

Again the children looked at her, questioningly; not as the people at first had done, but trustingly, though they knew not what she would have them do, but sought to learn her wishes.

So at her bidding they gathered all the ripened stalks of the little flowers and laid them out in the sun as she directed.

Almost it seemed a pity to destroy the plants. One little worker asked Eline of this matter for he loved the flowers and was sorry to see them gathered and dried.

“Does it not hurt the flowers to pluck them?” he asked. “Some say that you can talk with them as with all living things, and you can tell if the flowers do not suffer in the gathering, although they are old and ripe.”

His was a loving heart and Eline saw that he asked this out of no mere curiosity. Gently she touched his forehead with her finger.

“Look!” she said. “Look and listen, for I have opened the seeing eye to you.”

VIII

And the boy looked around in wonderment, amazed, and saw that the whole great plain was full of teeming life which he had not before seen. Fairies and elves peeped from every flower, gnomes and earthmen worked and played and danced among the boulders. And where before was silence but for the rustling of the leaves in the breeze, there rose a murmur of many voices, like the humming of bees in the sunshine. The boy listened and at once he knew what the flowers were whispering.

“There is a saying that the flax-people are being used for a mighty work,” said one little blue fairy to another.

“I heard a bee spreading the