THE TWO HERD-BOYS

PART II

"Well," he began, "some say it was true, and some that it wasn't. At any rate, it was a long, long while ago, and there's no telling how much to believe. My grandmother told me; but then she didn't know the man; she only had heard about him from her grandmother. He was a shepherd, and used to tend his sheep on the mountain-or may be it was cows, I'm not sure in some place where there were a great many kobolds and fairies.

"And so it went on from year to year. He was a poor man, but very cheerful, and always singing and making merry; but sometimes he would wish to have a little more money, so that he need not be obliged to go up to the pastures in the cold, foggy weather. That wasn't much wonder, sir, for it's cold enough up here, some days.

"It was in summer, and the flowers were all in blossom, and he was walking along after his sheep, when all at once he saw a wonderful sky-blue flower of a kind he had never seen before in all his life. Some people say it was sky-blue, and some that it was goldenyellow; I don't know which is right. Well, however it was, there was the wonderful flower, as large as your hand, growing in the grass. The shepherd stooped down and broke the stem; but just as he was lifting

up the flower to examine it, he saw that there was a door in the side of the mountain.

"Now he had been over the ground a hundred times before, and had never seen anything of the kind. Yet

it was a real door, and it was open, and there was a passage into the earth. He looked into it for a long time, and at last plucked up heart and in he went. After forty or fifty steps, he found himself in a large hall, full of chests of gold and diamonds. There was an old kobold, with a white beard, sitting in a chair beside a large table in the middle of the hall. The shepherd was at first frightened, but the kobold looked at

him with a friendly face, and said, 'Take what you want, and don't forget the best!'

"So the shepherd laid the flower on the table, and went to work and filled his pockets with the gold and diamonds. When he had as much as he could carry, the kobold said again, 'Don't forget the best!' 'That I won't,' the shepherd thought to himself, and took more gold and the biggest diamonds he could find, and filled his hat, so that he could scarcely stagger under the load. He was leaving the hall, when the kobold cried out, 'Don't forget the best!' But he couldn't carry any more, and went on, never minding. When he reached the door in the mountainside, he heard the voice again, for the last time, 'Don't forget the best!'

"The next minute he was out on the pasture. When he looked around, the door had disappeared: his pockets and hat grew light all at once, and instead of gold and diamonds he found nothing but dry leaves and pebbles. He was as poor as ever, and all because he had forgotten the best.

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'Now, sir, do you know what the best was? Why, it was the flower, which he had left on the table in the kobold's hall. That was the key-flower. When you find it and pull it, the door is opened to all the treasures under ground. If the shepherd had kept it, the gold and diamonds would have stayed so; and, besides, the door would have been always opened to him, and he could then help himself whenever he wished."

Otto had told the story very correctly, just as I had heard it told by some of the people before. "Did you ever look for the key-flower?" I asked him.

He grew a little red in the face, then laughed, and answered: "Oh, that was the first summer I tended the cattle, and I soon got tired of it. But I guess the flower doesn't grow any more, now."

"How long has Hans been looking for it?"

"He looks every day," said Otto, "when he gets tired doing nothing. But I shouldn't wonder if he was thinking about it all the time, or he'd look after his cattle better than he does."

As I walked down the mountain that afternoon I thought a great deal about these two herd-boys and the story of the key-flower. Up to this time the story had only seemed to me to be a curious and beautiful fairy-tale; but now I began to think it might mean something more. Here was Hans, neglecting his cows, and making himself restless and unhappy, in the hope of some day .finding the key-flower; while Otto, who remembered that it can't be found by hunting for it, was attentive to his task, always earning a little, and always contented.

Therefore, the next time I walked up to the pastures, I went straight to Hans. "Have you found the key-flower yet?" I asked.

There was a curious expression upon his face. He appeared to be partly ashamed of what he must now

and then have suspected to be a folly, and partly anxious to know if I could tell him where the flower

grew.

"See here, Hans," said I, seating myself upon a rock, "don't you know that those who hunt for it never find it? Of course you have not found it, and you never will, in this way. But even if you should, you are so anxious for the gold and diamonds that you would be sure to forget the best, just as the shepherd did, and would find nothing but leaves and pebbles in your pockets."

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed; "that's just what I wouldn't do."

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Why, don't you forget your work every day?" I asked. "You are forgetting the best all the timeI mean the best that you have at present. Now, I believe there is a key-flower growing on these very mountains; and, what is more, Otto has found it!"

He looked at me in astonishment.

"Don't you see," I continued, "how happy and contented he is all day long? He does not work as hard at his knitting as you do in hunting for the flower; and although you get half your summer's wages, and he nothing, he will be richer than you in the fall. He will have a small piece of gold, and it won't change into a leaf. Besides, when a boy is contented and happy he has gold and diamonds. Would you rather be rich and miserable, or poor and happy?"