“Not at all,” replied the man, putting the gold in his pocket; “if you wanted half you should have said so before you sang.” “But I trusted you,” cried Lanis. “More fool you,” retorted the man carelessly; “but I saw you were a fool when you sang.” “You are doing a wicked thing.” “It’s only business,” shrieked the man; “you ought to be pleased at my giving a beggarly poet like you anything, instead of trying to steal the money I’ve worked for so hard.” Then the man ran about the city telling all the people that he had done a great kindness to Lanis, and been shamefully treated for doing so. All the citizens, who quite agreed with the man’s way of doing business, fell upon Lanis, and, driving him out of the city, shut their gates against him. In this way, therefore, did Lanis gain his first experience of the world’s unkindness when there is any question between right and might. Picking up his lyre, he walked on, leaving the city wherein he had been so cruelly deceived far behind him, and as he went he sang sadly: “In the school of life Is the lesson taught, That with harshest strife Is our knowledge bought. We are bought and sold In our joy and grief; I have lost my gold, I have lost belief. Ah, by cruel Fate We are onward led; I have learned to hate, And my faith is dead.” Lanis certainly should not have sung so bitterly when such a beautiful world bloomed around him; after all, being deceived by one man does not mean that every one else is as cruel; but then Lanis was very sensitive, and the unjust way in which he had been treated made him very sad, so that all his songs now spoke but of the sorrows of life and the sadness of despair. As he wandered on for many months in this dismal mood, he met with many adventures, but, alas! nothing which could give him back his former childlike belief in human kindness, and he was very anxious to get to the Kingdom of Shadows and find once more his lost happiness. Once he came to a great city which was the capital of a very rich kingdom, and here found the citizens in a state of great dismay, for their King, whom every one loved, had gone out of his mind. No one could cure him of his madness, so it had been proclaimed that whomsoever should do so would become the husband of the lovely Princess Iris, who was the King’s daughter. Lanis saw the Princess, and she was so beautiful that he at once fell deeply in love with her, and, forgetting all his former experience of ingratitude, he thought that if he cured her father, she would grow to love him, and he would thus discover his happiness without looking any more for the Kingdom of Shadows. [Illustration]