"Because the wind did not bear you away, and I could put you in the ground, is the reason why you are here. First out of sight, then to the light, my little seed! But," he said sorrowfully, "I wish we had the other one, for your kind is rare." The plant then told the gardener that her sister purposely went away, at which he wondered that she had power of motion until she became a plant. "Oh, she asked the wind to carry her," answered the fresh-growing plant. "If I knew where she had gone I'd search for her, and bring her back." "She asked the wind to take her to yonder hill-side," said the plant, hoping, oh, so much! that he would go and find the seed, and plant it beside her, that she, too, might have the pleasure of becoming a plant as beautiful as herself. The gardener went towards the hills; but the seed saw him, and begged the south wind to bear her away. And she took her on her wing and wafted her many miles from home. The gardener searched a long time, and was obliged to return without her. So he took extra care of the plant, and it grew to be the pride of the garden; while the seed that had her own way was roaming over the world. The truant one soon lost all her influence over the winds, who finally refused to carry about a good-for-nothing seed while they had so much needful work to perform. A cold northern blast was the last one she could persuade to bear her, and he dropped her on a rock, where she at last perished from exposure to the rain and cold. The day before her death, a company of people passed by her, bearing in their hands some rare and fragrant blossoms, to which she felt a strange attraction. This gave place to a deep thrill of sorrow as she heard them describe the lovely plant which grew in a beautiful garden, and which by their description she knew was her own home, which she in her folly had left. "Had I but accepted the conditions of growth, I too might have been a lovely plant, giving and receiving pleasure," she said, after the people had passed on. "But now, alas!" and her breath grew quick and short, "if I had only some one to profit by my last words, telling of my life of folly, I might not have lived wholly in vain." But there was nothing about her which she could discern save a tuft of moss upon the cold, hard rock which must now be her death-bed. But behind the rock, on the south side, there was growing a family of wild daisies, who were going to migrate to a warmer part of the country to plant their seeds before the winter came on. This was one of the conditions which Providence ever has around the most seemingly deserted and desolate, that her words might not only profit them, but that they could convey the benefit of them to all wayward seeds who were unwilling to accept the natural conditions of growth. And thus the seed, though dying with its mission unfulfilled, did not live wholly in vain; for its wasted life saved others from a similar fate. XXI. ONLY GOLD.