don't help it." Then he looked closer and closer at it, and its eye turned on him so mournfully that he could not stand it. "Confound the King and his gold, too!" said Gluck; and he opened his flask, and poured all the water into the dog's mouth.

The dog sprang up and stood on its hind legs. Its tail disappeared; its ears became long, longer, silky golden; its nose became very red; its eyes became very twinkling. In three seconds the dog was gone, and before Gluck stood his old acquaintance the King of the Golden River.

"Thank you," said the monarch; "but don't be frightened, it's all right." For Gluck showed manifest symptoms of consternation at this unlooked-for reply to his last observation. "Why didn't you come before," continued the dwarf, "instead of sending me those rascally brothers of yours for me to have the trouble of turning into stones? Very hard stones they make, too!"

Oh, dear me!" said Gluck, "have you really been so cruel ?”

"Cruel!" said the dwarf. They poured unholy water into my stream; do you suppose I'm going to allow that?"

"Why," said Gluck, "I am sure, sir your Majesty, I mean-they got the water out of the church font.'

Very probably," replied the dwarf ; "but," and his countenance grew stern as he spoke," the water which has been refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint in heaven; and the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled with corpses."

So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew at his feet. On its white leaves there hung three drops of clear dew. And the dwarf shook them into the flask which Gluck held in his hand. Cast these into the river," he said, "and descend on the other side of the mountains into the Treasure Valley. And so good speed!"

As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The playing colours of his robe formed themselves into a mist of dewy light: he stood for an instant veiled with them as with the belt of a broad rainbow. The colours

grew faint, the mist rose into the air; the monarch had evaporated.

And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River, and its waves were as clear as crystal and as brilliant as the sun. And, when he cast the three drops of dew into the stream, there opened, where they fell, a small circular whirlpool, into which the waters descended with a musical noise.

Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed, because not only the river was not turned into gold, bu its waters seemed much diminished in quantity. Yet he obeyed his friend the dwarf, and descended the other side of the mountains, towards the Treasure Valley; and, as he went, he thought he heard the noise of water working its way under the ground. And, when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley, behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft of the rocks above it, and was flowing in innumerable streams among the dry heaps of red sand.

And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the new streams, and creeping plants grew, and climbed among the moistening soil. Young flowers opened suddenly along the river sides, as stars leap out when twilight is deepening, and thickets of myrtle and tendrils of vine cast lengthening shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had been lost by cruelty, was regained by love.

And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the poor were never driven from his door; so that his barns became full of corn, and his house of treasure. And, for him, the river had, according to the dwarf's promise, become a River of Gold.

And, to this day, the inhabitants of the valley point out the place where the three drops of holy dew were cast into the stream, and trace the course of the Golden River under the ground, until it emerges in the Treasure Valley.

And at the top of the cataract of the Golden River are still to be seen two black stones, round which the waters howl mournfully every day at sunset; and these stones are still called by the people of the valley

THE BLACK BROTHERS. The next Stories begin on page 1685.

ALFRED THE GREAT,

one of the noblest kings who ever ruled

over England, never saw a clock. He used to allow himselt eight hours for work, eight hours for pleasure, and eight hours for sleep. When he wanted to fix the time like this, he had to have candles made which took a certain time to burn away, and so told him how the hours were passing.

Even that was better than many men were able to do. They knew how long a year was, because it takes the earth a year to go round the sun. They knew how long a month was, because it takes a month for the moon to go round the earth. They knew how long the day and the night were, because it takes just a day and a night, all but a few odd minutes, for the earth to turn once round. But all sorts of things had to be used before clocks were made to tell how an hour passed, and some of these ways of telling time are shown in pictures in the following pages.

But there is nothing so simple and so good as a clock, which tells us the time at a glance as soon as we have learned to understand it.

There are many different sorts of clocks. Some will go for years, once they have been wound up. Others will go for eight days; others need winding up every day. But, no matter how often they need winding up, and no matter how they are made to go, the thing they have to do is the

same in all. A certain number of wheels have to be made to go round

so regularly that it will always take them a certain time to do their work. When you wind up what is called a grandfather's clock, you wind strings on to a sort of barrel. At the end of the strings heavy weights are fixed. These weights hang down and are always pulling. The pulling makes the wheels go round, just as the pulling of a horse makes the cart go. The wheels have cogs, or teeth, and fit into the cogs of other wheels, and all have to go round at the same time, though not all as fast as one another. Some wheels have a lot of teeth, others have not so many. So while one wheel turns round in sixty seconds, or one minute, another wheel takes sixty minutes, or one hour, in which to turn round. All this twisting and turning is simply to make the hands work round and round over the face.

There are many parts always at work. There is the pendulum swinging, and there is the part which prevents the clock from doing its work too quickly or too slowly. If the clock goes too quickly, or gains time, as we say, we unwind a little screw at the bottom of the pendulum. This lets the weight at the end of the pendulum slip down a little, and causes the pendulum to swing more slowly. If the clock loses time, we wind the screw up a little. This makes the pendulum shorter, and causes it to swing a little

faster. Some clocks have no pendulum. They work with a spring. Then, instead of altering the pendulum, we have to move a little pointer. If we push it to the right, that makes the spring tighter, and makes the watch or clock go a little faster. If we push the pointer to the left, it makes the spring looser, and so causes the watch to go more slowly. But whether it be a clock with heavy weights, or a clock with a big strong spring, or ever so tiny a watch with a little spring just like a thread of steel, the work done is always the same. The long hand has to hop, little by little, round the face of the clock, from minute to minute. The hour hand goes from hour to hour.

THE

CLOCK THAT RINGS A BELL TO TELL TIME IN THE DARK

Some clocks not only tell the time with their hands, but strike the hour. When the long minute hand points to the figure twelve, and the short hour hand points to one, a little hammer at the back of the clock gives one blow on a bell which is fixed at the top of the clock. This tells us that it is one o'clock, without our having to look. Some clocks strike as each quarter of an hour passes; others play a tune at the end of each hour.

Clocks and watches can be made to do very wonderful things. One watch, called the repeater watch, can be made to tell you what time it is even when you are in the dark. You have simply to press a knob, and a little bell rings out the number of the hour, and the number of the quarter-hours that have passed since that hour was reached. Then there is the alarum clock, which rings a bell at the hour for which you have set it.

CLOCK THAT SAVED A MAN'S LIFE

TBY MAKING A MISTAKE

So through day and night, week after week, year after year, the faithful clock goes on telling us the time. Some clocks last hundreds of years. The editor of this book has heard a tune played in Holland by a clock which was ticking when Napoleon was alive, and another in an old church in England which has lasted more than three hundred years. Both these clocks still tell the time as correctly as if they had been made only a year ago. But nothing is perfect in this world,

not even a clock. Once a man was saved from a cruel death by a mistake made by a clock. A sentinel, who was supposed to keep awake all night at the king's palace, was said to have fallen asleep while on duty, at twelve o'clock at night. Now, if they had been able to prove that he had been asleep, that poor soldier would have been shot, so he was very anxious to show that he was awake.

"I can prove that I was not asleep," the man said. "I heard Great Tom of Westminster strike thirteen."

At first they thought that this was a stupid story, because clocks do not strike more than twelve; but when inquiries were made it was found that what the man said was true. The clock had got something the matter with it that night, and it struck thirteen instead of twelve. That little mistake of the clock saved the soldier's life.

Great Tom of Westminster was the clock which Edward I. put up over the old Houses of Parliament. For 400 years it rang out the hours of day and night. It has gone now, and since 1858 Big Ben has reigned in its stead. BEN TELEGRAPHS HIS TIME BIG GREENWICH TWICE A DAY

ΤΟ

Big Ben has had a smooth career for many years, but it was not always so. The first Big Ben weighed 16 tons. Soon after it had been hung in its place, it cracked. The hammer was too heavy for it; the jarring had smashed it. That was taken down and the new one made, two years after the other.

The

The same thing happened again. The second Big Ben cracked, and for a long time the bell hung silent. At last they twisted Big Ben round in his tower, so as to make the hammer strike a part which had not been cracked. Then they got a smaller hammer, and for the last thirty years Big Ben has been ringing old days out and new days in, none the worse for the split in his side. clock and its bells cost £22,000. Twice a day its works set going a machine which telegraphs Big Ben's time to Greenwich to see that it corresponds with the time there. So that day and night Big Ben is right. It can be seen from far and near when the sun is up, and at night the lights behind its face shine through the dials to tell the dark city what the hour is.

This picture of the inside of a clock shows us how the wheels go round. It is not the pendulum that makes the clock go; it is either a weight or a spring. In this grandfather's clock it is a weight. The weight is on a cord which passes round a broad wheel, called a barrel, marked A in the picture. The heavy weight pulls the cord downwards, and the cord, being wound round the barrel, pulls the barrel round. The edge of this barrel has teeth which work into the teeth of another wheel, marked B, so that both wheels go round. This second wheel causes the top wheel, marked C, to go round, and so all the wheels are set to work. But if that were all, the wheels would run round too quickly, and they must be made to run slowly and regularly. At the top is a curved piece of metal with a catch at each end; it is called the escapement, and is marked D. This swings to and fro, and every time it swings, it catches the top wheel and prevents it from going round more than one tooth.

This picture shows how the wheels make the hands go round. The three wheels shown in front of the clock, marked B, E, and F, are really behind the face. B, E, and F are necessary for the hands. Wheel F goes round once every hour, and as the minute hand is fixed to it, the wheel carries the minute hand round with it. Now wheel F touches wheel E with its edge, making it go round also. E is a double wheel, having near the centre a small wheel fixed to it with only six teeth; it is really on the other side of wheel E, but is shown in the picture in front for clearness. Each tooth in it fits into a tooth in wheel B, thus making that wheel go round. As wheel E goes round once in an hour, the six teeth in its centre carry round one-twelfth of wheel B, which has seventy-two teeth. The hour hand is fixed to wheel B, so while F is going once round, it makes wheel E drive B one-twelfth of its journey. Thus wheel F, with the minute hand, turns twelve times while wheel B, with the hour hand, turns once.