curls over his shoulders, and in his cap was a little pearl ornament which fastened a bird's wing. And Francisco, as he looked at the wing, thought he had never in his life seen anything so wonderful, for the feathers were soft like velvet, but glowed and burned in the sunlight like the rubies in the ring on the child's hand. He raised his hand and touched the lovely object, and the wearer of the cap, being as kind-hearted as he was beautiful, began to tell Francisco the story of the wing--how it had been given to him by a great soldier, who had brought it from a long way off, farther than he himself had ever been; farther than the mountains or the sea even. Francisco wondered at this, and when the child passed on he stood still thinking a long time; it seemed so strange to hear that there were other places and countries besides this quiet little valley where he had always lived. Then he went back to his work, disagreeable work it was, very, for he had to watch the swine and keep them from straying off; but that night his dreams were brighter than ever, for he dreamed that he had visited those strange lands that he had heard of from the child, and that he had found enough treasures there to make him rich and great. The morning came and the dream was gone, but it left behind a thought that did not go away. And always after the boy Francisco carried with him the resolve to make his dream come true. But for many years there seemed no hope of anything beyond the mean life he was living, and sometimes he quite despaired. He was very proud and ambitious, too, and his lowly lot in life seemed all the more bitter when he compared it with that of the more fortunate boys who had good comfortable homes and could go to school. He thought that he should have a good home and go to school too, for his father was a man of wealth and of good birth; but his mother was only a peasant, and it was with her he had always lived, and the poor woman could not afford to bring up her child in comfort, or even to have him taught to read and write. And so Francisco grew to be a big boy, and still watched the pigs from morning till night, and still sighed restlessly to get away from his distasteful life, and find one fairer and nobler. One day, when he was quite a big lad, a stranger came to the little valley; he was an old, weather-beaten sailor, and had sailed across distant seas and journeyed through many strange lands, and at night, when the peasant boys were through with their day's work, they all gathered around him and listened to his tales of the great world that lay beyond the mountains that shut in their quiet little valley, just as the stone wall shut in the duke's palace.