Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/228

 the ears of an ass. King Midas has the ears of an ass."

And all summer long, whenever a breeze swept over the field, the rushes murmured, "King Midas has the ears of an ass."

And when the hair-dresser heard it, he wrung his hands in despair, and said, "Not even the rushes of the field can keep a secret."

Hold Fast, Tom

The sun was setting over the island of St. Helena on a spring evening in 1673, and in its red glow the vast black cliffs stood out like the walls of a fortress above the great waste of lonely sea that lay around them as far as the eye could reach. Very quiet and very lonesome did it appear, that tiny islet of St. Helena, far away in the heart of the boundless ocean.

But there was one part of the island that was busy and noisy enough, and that was the spot where the low white houses and single church-spire of Jamestown, half buried in clustering leaves, nestled in a deep gully close to the water's edge, walled in by two mighty precipices nearly a thousand feet in height.