Saxe Holm's Stories, Second Series. Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson

and the head of the shadowy maiden of Ischl still wreathed with edelweiss blossoms.

      ​"I love her, my Karl. She told me that thou wert not dead. She is glad of thy joy each hour," Margaret often says.

      On the right hand of the portrait of Königsee, framed in velvet and ivory, and also wreathed by edelweiss blossoms, hangs an oval of soft gray surface, on which is a tiny and faded and crumpled clover, "the four leaf of clover;"—"which saved my papa's life," little Karl says, pointing to it with his chubby finger, "my papa says so." When little Karl is older he will understand better. This too is wreathed with edelweiss blossoms, fresher and whiter than the others. Margaret also has sailed with Karl on the Königsee, and she gathered these edelweiss flowers on the edge of the Watzman glacier.

      Above these hangs a quaint old bit of heraldry. It is the coat of arms of the Whitson family, and belonged to Margaret's grandmother, who was a Whitson, and well-to-do, years ago in England. It is an odd thing, and to some minds much more than an odd thing, that this old coat of arms should be an oak tree in a clover field, and that there should be a tale how once when a sorely pressed king of England was escaping from his pursuers he came to a field of purple clover, with an oak tree in its centre; and that a churl Whitson, to whom the field belonged, and who chanced to be mowing it that day, helped the king up into the oak tree, and lied bravely to the pursuers, saying ​that no man had passed that way; so the king, grateful for his life, gave lands to the churl, and the right to a crest bearing the oak and the clover.

      This, I say, is an odd thing, and to some people more than an odd thing. To Karl Reutner, for instance, who is so impressed by it, that he has had garlands of oak and clover leaves carved on the cradle in which all his babies sleep; garlands of oak and clover leaves carved over the doors and windows of his wife's room; garlands of oak and clover leaves wrought on silver and on glass to hold choice fruits and wines; and wrought of gold and gems in many a dainty device for his wife to wear. And those who look closely at these garlands find that there is not one without a four-leaved clover.