_“Aye, aye,” said the saint; “I suppose it was, in sooth, my turn. Ne’th’less, it gives me joy to follow so close so fair and lovely a lady.” And as he spoke he winked one eye at Cinderella, beckoned towards her with his cup of ale, and took a deep draught to her health. “I shall tell you,” said he, as soon as he had caught his breath again, “a story about an angel and a poor man who travelled with him, and all the wonderful things the poor man saw the angel do.”_ _“That,” said the Blacksmith who made Death sit in his pear-tree until the wind whistled through his ribs--“that, methinks, is a better thing to tell for a sermon than for a story.”_ _“Whether or no that be so,” said St. George, “you shall presently hear for yourselves.”_ _He took another deep draught of ale, and then cleared his throat._ _“Stop a bit, my friend,” said Ali Baba. “What is your story about?”_ _“It is,” said St. George, “about--”_ [Illustration] The Fruit of Happiness. Once upon a time there was a servant who served a wise man, and cooked for him his cabbage and his onions and his pot-herbs and his broth, day after day, time in and time out, for seven years. In those years the servant was well enough contented, but no one likes to abide in the same place forever, and so one day he took it into his head that he would like to go out into the world to see what kind of a fortune a man might make there for himself. “Very well,” says the wise man, the servant’s master; “you have served me faithfully these seven years gone, and now that you ask leave to go you shall go. But it is little or nothing in the way of money that I can give you, and so you will have to be content with what I can afford. See, here is a little pebble, and its like is not to be found in the seven kingdoms, for whoever holds it in his mouth can hear while he does so all that the birds and the beasts say to one another. Take it--it is yours, and, if you use it wisely, it may bring you a fortune.” The servant would rather have had the money in hand than the magic pebble, but, as nothing better was to be had, he took the little stone, and, bidding his master good-bye, trudged out into the world to seek his fortune. Well, he jogged on and on, paying his way with the few pennies he had saved in his seven years of service, but for all of his travelling nothing of good happened to him until, one morning, he came to a lonely place where there stood a gallows, and there he sat him down to rest, and it is just in such an unlikely place as this that a man’s best chance of fortune comes to him sometimes. As the servant sat there, there came two ravens flying, and lit upon the cross-beam overhead. There they began talking to one another, and the servant popped the pebble into his mouth to hear what they might say. _“Yonder is a traveller in the world,” said the first raven._ _“Yes,” said the second, “and if he only knew how to set about it, his fortune is as good as made.”_