“His poor shrunken heart fluttered with rage and disappointment.  ’I will go to the wise hermit,’ he said.  So he went far through the woods to the hut of the wise hermit, and he told him the same gruesome things about the difficulties that beset the road out of the Valley of Vain Regret, and said that one’s only hope lay in tunneling beneath them.

“So the old man hired a large number of miners, and, setting their faces eastward, they burrowed down into the earth, and blasted and dug a way which the man followed, a greater and greater eagerness possessing him with each step of progress; but just when his hopes were highest, the miners broke through into an underground cavern, bottomless and black, from which they all started back, barely in time to save themselves.  It was impossible to go farther, and the whole company returned by the way they had come, and the miners were very glad to breathe the air of the upper world again; but the man’s disappointment was bitter.

“‘It is of no use,’ he said, when again he stood on the terrace in front of his castle.  ’It is of no use to struggle.  I am imprisoned for life in the Valley of Vain Regret.’”

* * * * *

Jewel’s father paused.  She had listened attentively.  Now she turned to her grandfather.

“Is that the way you think the story went, grandpa?”

Mr. Evringham nodded.  “I think it did,” he replied.

“Then go on, please, father, because I like a lot of happiness in my stories, and I want that man to hurry up and know that—­that error is cheating him.”

“Your mother to the rescue, then,” replied Harry Evringham, smiling.

Jewel turned to look at her mother, and, rising again, picked up her hassock and carried it to the steamer chair in which Mrs. Evringham was reclining.

Her mother looked into her serious eyes and nodded reassuringly as she began:—­

* * * * *

“As that sorry old man stood there on the terrace, things had never looked so black to him.  He was so tired, so tired of hating.  He longed for a thousand things, he knew not what, but he was sure they were to be found at the Castle of True Delight; but he was shut in!  There was no way out.  As he was thinking these despairing thoughts and looking about on the scenes which had grown hateful to him, he saw something that made him start.  The great iron gates leading out of his grounds opened as once before, and a little girl in white garments came in and moved toward him.  His heart leaped at the sight,—­and it swelled a bit, too!

“Instead of ordering her off, he hurried toward her and, although he scowled in his eagerness, she smiled and lifted dark eyes that beamed lovingly.

“‘I cannot find my way to your country nor to the Castle of True Delight,’ said the man, ’and I need you to show me.  Since you have found your road hither twice, surely you can go back again.’