Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/94

 and tumbled at their feet. Strange to say out of this wave there rolled a little naked child, and Merlin picked it up and cried, "The King! The King! An heir for Uther!" Then the long wave swept up the beach, wrapped about the old man and flashed like fire. After which there was a calm, and the stars came out, and the elves and fairies blew their horns from cliff to cliff.

Merlin gave the little child to an old woman to nurse. He was given the name of Arthur, and as the years passed by he grew into a beautiful boy with blue eyes and golden hair. Merlin, who was a very wise old man, became the boy's teacher.

But let me tell you a story about the boy. One day, as Arthur was walking out all alone in the sunny fields, he came upon a little girl sitting upon a bank of heath, weeping as if her heart would break, and saying: "I hate this fair world and all that's in it." She had been beaten for a fault of which she was not guilty. When she looked up there stood the boy, Arthur. Whether he could walk unseen like his old teacher Merlin, who was something of a wizard, she did not know, but there he stood smiling at her. He dried her tears,