While they wrangled, the children of the wood peeped in at the door, ragged and rosy and bright-eyed, and laughed, and ran away.

   "Let us make a feast too," they said, "even if we have no fine things."

   They set them down under a great oak tree that grew beside the way, and one gathered acorn cups, and another pulled burdock leaves and laid them for a cloth, and a third plucked the wild strawberries that shone like rubies in the grass.

   "Here is a fine feast!" cried the wood children.

   Just then along came the little Prince, and they called to him, "Come and play with us, and share our feast!"

   "With all my heart!" said the little Prince. "But are there not other children in the house yonder who would like to join us?"

   "Nay, they are busy quarrelling!" said the wood children.

   "Then we do not want them!" said the little Prince. He sat down with them

   under the oak tree, and they all ate and drank and were right merry.

   But the children in the dim, rich house pulled the table this way and that, and moved the lights hither and yon, and looked at their delicate robes and sighed: "The little Prince is long in coming!" they said.

   A man was toiling, seeking, toiling, by hot sun and cold moon, with pickaxe and with spade; and as he toiled there came a bright Spirit, and looked him in the face, and smiled.

   "Who are you, fair Spirit?" asked the man. And the other answered, "My name is Truth!"

   Then the man threw down his pick and spade, and ran, and brought costly robes and wrapped the Spirit in them; and set him on a throne, and bound him fast with chains of gold, and covered his face with a veil of precious web, and fell down and worshipped him. Happy man was he!

   Now by and by as he worshipped a traveller came by that way, and stopped to look.

   "Fair answer to your prayers, brother!" said the traveller. "What God do you worship?"

   And the man said, "The Spirit of Truth."

   "Nay!" said the other; "how can that be? I met that spirit but now upon the 

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