“Is it not so in your work, Al-an?” she asked. “Do not the good colors and the bad contend always until you bring them into agreement?” Alan had told her of his work, and it seemed to interest her immensely. She was greatly delighted when she learned that he had found memoranda in her father's own handwriting, which had led to the making of wonderful deep blue glass. “If I had the little books he wrote for me,” she said one day, “you might find something beautiful in them also.” He watched and wondered at the sure instinct guiding her deft, small fingers in the placing of colors--the purple fruit, the gold-green vine or the scarlet pomegranate flower in her maze-like embroidery. “But how can you make pictures in the windows,” she would say, with her lilting laughter, “if you do not know about color?” To Alan's secret amusement he perceived that she thought her life very ordinary and natural, while his own adventures on the moorland farm of his boyhood were to her like fairy-tales. She was shyly but intensely curious about his mother. She had never known anything of the ways of mothers except from books and tales. One bright morning she took from a coffer a prism of rock-crystal. “This is one of the playthings my father gave me,” she said. “Look how it makes the colors dance upon the wall.” Like a quick silent fairy the little rainbow flitted here and there. “He told me,” she went on, “that seven invisible colors live together in a sunbeam, but when they pass this magic door they must go in single file, and then we may see them. Not all are good colors. Some are bad and quarrelsome, and some are good when they are alone, but not when they are with colors they do not like. But when they live together in peace they make the beautiful clear daylight, and we see the world exactly as it is.” “As it is--saints protect her,” muttered old Maddalena, and the jester smiled his twisted smile. That evening Stefano said suddenly, “What are you going to do with your clerk?” “To-morrow,” said Alan, “I shall go to his mine.” “You have not been there?” “No; he has made some silly excuse each time it has been suggested.” “He will never take you there,” said the jester. “You will see.” “Simon,” said Alan pleasantly that night, “I am going into the mountains with you to-morrow.” Suspicion, fear, jealous greed, chased one another over the clerk's mean face. “You are in great haste,” he muttered. “It is not good weather, but we will go of course, if you wish.” In the morning Simon lay groaning with rheumatism, unable to move. Alan made a fire, covered him warmly, left food within his reach, and went out to think the matter over. Unconsciously his steps tended toward the house of the jester. Stefano, coming out, caught sight of him. “Hey!” said the fool, “why are you not in the mountains?”