Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/74

64 "I love her, my Karl. She told me that thou wert not dead. She is glad of thy joy each hour," Margaret often says.

On the right hand of the portrait of Königsee, framed in velvet and ivory, and also wreathed by edelweiss blossoms, hangs an oval of soft gray surface, on which is a tiny and faded and crumpled clover, "the four leaf of clover;"—"which saved my papa's life," little Karl says, pointing to it with his chubby finger, "my papa says so." When little Karl is older he will understand better. This too is wreathed with edelweiss blossoms, fresher and whiter than the others. Margaret also has sailed with Karl on the Königsee, and she gathered these edelweiss flowers on the edge of the Watzman glacier.

Above these hangs a quaint old bit of heraldry. It is the coat of arms of the Whitson family, and belonged to Margaret's grandmother, who was a Whitson, and well-to-do, years ago in England. It is an odd thing, and to some minds much more than an odd thing, that this old coat of arms should be an oak tree in a clover field, and that there should be a tale how once when a sorely pressed king of England was escaping from his pursuers he came to a field of purple clover, with an oak tree in its centre; and that a churl Whitson, to whom the field belonged, and who chanced to be mowing it that day, helped the king up into the oak tree, and lied bravely to the pursuers, saying