Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been.  It had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and for faith no fulfilment.

All their lives they had been together, and in their deaths they were not divided; for when they were found the arms of the boy were folded too closely around the dog to be severed without violence, and the people of their little village, contrite and ashamed, implored a special grace for them, and, making them one grave, laid them to rest there side by side—­forever!

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THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER.

By John Ruskin.

I.

In a secluded and mountainous part of Styria, there was, in old time, a valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility.  It was surrounded, on all sides, by steep and rocky mountains, rising into peaks, which were always covered with snow, and from which a number of torrents descended in constant cataracts.  One of these fell westward, over the face of a crag so high that, when the sun had set to everything else, and all below was darkness, his beams still shone full upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of gold.  It was, therefore, called by the people of the neighborhood the Golden River.  It was strange that none of these streams fell into the valley itself.  They all descended on the other side of the mountains, and wound away through broad plains and by populous cities.  But the clouds were drawn so constantly to the snowy hills, and rested so softly in the circular hollow, that, in time of drought and heat, when all the country round was burnt up, there was still rain in the little valley; and its crops were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its grapes so blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it was a marvel to every one who beheld it, and was commonly called the Treasure Valley.

The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers, called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck.  Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers, were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small, dull eyes, which were always half shut, so that you couldn’t see into them, and always fancied they saw very far into you.  They lived by farming the Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were.  They killed everything that did not pay for its eating.  They shot the blackbirds, because they pecked the fruit; and killed the hedgehogs, lest they should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen; and smothered the cicadas, which used to sing all summer in the lime-trees.  They worked their servants without any wages, till they would not work any more, and then quarrelled