Poor Fritz! he felt that parting sorely. In vain Beruna begged him to come with them.

'Not yet,' he said, though my heart yearns to penetrate beyond the hills. I must learn a trade first and grow a man, and then I shall come, Beruna, and shall seek thee, and thou must be my little wife. Wilt thou?' 'I shall look out for thee,' she answered. Come soon.' 'And thou wilt keep this stone for my sake, Beruna,' he said. 'I found it the day I found thee. Granny says that garnets denote constancy in every engagement. I promise to come to thee by this stone; if thou keepest it, I shall come. Adieu.' And he kissed the little girl, and ran away suddenly that he might not betray himself, and show that he was about to weep unmanly tears.

The children both felt the parting sorely. The meeting had been a new era for each. Fritz had hardly ever before spoken to a little girl, and Beruna had till then never come in close contact with any but gipsies. She trudged on thoughtfully beside her parents, and Fritz pursued his way home with a heavy heart. But the impressions of seven years old are more easily effaced than those of ten, and soon every passing butterfly, every stone, every flower, exercised its charm once more over the little girl, and she was as gay and light-hearted as before.

Only the stone prevented her from forgetting Fritz.

She wore it round her neck sewn into a bit of brightcoloured silk she had once picked up at a fair, and she never went without it night or day. As she got older, she began almost to forget why she wore it, but it had become habit with her. She would have been unhappy without it.

So time sped on with the two, and they grew up. Morgana died. He had grown gradually weaker and weaker; he never quite recovered from the shock of Beruna's loss. The baby died, too, and then the mother gave up her solitary wandering, and joined a troop of gipsies who had a chief to command them. They travelled through town and country, and were present at many a fair to perform, dance, sing, and tell fortunes. It was an ever-varying existence. Beruna was not strong; she had inherited something of her father's physique. Perhaps it was that made her long at times to rest in one place, a feeling rarely dreamed of by gipsies. At those times she faintly remembered the home she had once lived in for a few days, and wondered if her friends still thought of her.

One of them did certainly, even if the others did not. More than ever, after the little gipsy child with her dark, pale face, and flashing, wonderful eyes had left them, Fritz's strong longing to see the world strengthened. When he had been confirmed, and it was time

for him to choose his future trade, he chose to be a carpenter. He was then sixteen. After he had been apprenticed his due time, he was to go his wandering tour, that he might gain experience of how carpenters worked in other towns. His expenses he was expected to cover by doing jobs on the road. He set off full of joy, his heart beating high. Now at last he should get to see that world beyond the mountains of which he had heard so much; and now, too, he could seek out little Beruna. Should he find her? Would she be altered? Would she have the garnet still?

From village to village he wandered on. He was somewhat amazed to find the world so big a place, and began to fear he should not find Beruna after all. He had rather a hard struggle sometimes to make both ends meet in his hand-to-mouth existence; but he was joyous, and not easily to be depressed.

The time of his wandering was drawing to a close, and he was already on his way homeward, when, one afternoon, he turned into the journeyman's inn of a little Bohemian village. It was kirmess, and all the people were out on the green, seeing the prize shooting and visiting the booths that had been erected. Fritz left his bundle at the inn, where he met an old comrade.

'You are just in time,' cried the latter, 'to see the gipsies.'

'The gipsies?' repeated Fritz, and his heart beat high, as it always did when he heard them mentioned. 'Yes; and there is one girl amongst them who dances divinely. She's as graceful as a kitten.'

'Let us go and see them.'

The young girl did indeed dance well; but even more than with her dancing, Fritz was struck with her appearance. She was so like Beruna, and yet unlike, for she was taller than he had ever dreamed her, and thinner too, and yet for all that like her. This girl had those same wonderful deep dark eyes.

When the performance was ended Fritz stole to the back of the booth, and asked a gipsy man, who stood by, if he knew the name of the dancer.

'Beruna,' said the man. 'Do you wish her to tell you your fortune?'

'Yes,' said Fritz, taking advantage of the proffered chance of seeing her.

The gipsy clapped his hands and called Beruna. She came out, looking flushed with dancing. Her dark beauty was heightened by the unwonted colour in her cheeks.

'May I tell your fortune, pretty gentleman?' she asked.

'Yes; but alone,' he answered, significantly. ‘I do not want all the world to hear it.'

The gipsy man took the hint.

'Where is something with which to cross your hand?' asked the girl, according to her wonted form.

Fritz extended his firm brown palm. 'It is for thee to place it there,' he said. 'Is not thy name Beruna? and dost thou not possess a garnet that I gave thee once ?'

'Fritz! Is it Fritz?' cried the girl, and in a moment she had thrown her arms round his neck.

'Then thou hast not forgotten me?'

'Forgotten thee! oh, no. I had forgotten what thou lookedst like; at least,, I should not have known thee again,' she said, mustering the tall, fair lad who stood before her. 'How was it thou knewest me?'

'I knew thy eyes, Beruna; I have never seen their like before or since.'

She blushed, and dropped her lashes.

'So they often say.'

'Who says so?' he asked, jealously.

'Oh, many youths who speak to me.'

'Art thou happy in thy life, Beruna? It seems a weary existence for a young girl to lead, with no home, no abiding-place.'

'I have my mother,' she answered; 'and for the rest, I have not been used otherwise.'

'Yet dost thou not wish it otherwise?'

C