closed, and the blinds drawn darkly down. The servants ran about the courtyard as if distracted, throwing up their arms in despair.

"What does this mean?" exclaimed the eldest prince. "Some one is dangerously ill-perhaps dead!"

"We shall soon see," said the second prince; and he desired to behold his parents and Libena. They looked in the glass; they saw the king, the queen, and their beloved one-alas! they were all upon the point of death!

"Let us fly to them!" exclaimed the youngest brother. The princes sprang into the wonderful carriage, and in an instant they found themselves before the palace. The youngest of them immediately ran to his father, his mother, and to Libena; gave to each of them an apple, and begged them to eat it. They did as he desired, and, oh, wonder of wonders! before you could count one hundred they were so far recovered as to be able to rise. Every one praised the youngest prince to the utmost; more especially the doctors, who had used all their skill in vain, and were driven to despair. The king embraced his youngest son, and cried, with tears of joy in his

eyes,

"Now is Libena yours! Without your help, we should all have died."

"Not so, father," said the second prince. "Had it not

been for my looking-glass we should not have known of your illness. Libena therefore belongs to me."

"No!" cried the eldest prince. "She is mine! Without my carriage you would have died before we could have reached home."

Upon this a violent dispute arose as to which of the princes had won Libena. The king and his courtiers could not but acknowledge the evenly-balanced right of each of the princes to the prize; but that did not help the case, as only one of them could marry Libena. As they could not agree, the king called all the learned men of the kingdom together in his palace, that they might settle the question.

The learned men were soon assembled. They sat whole days together, and carried on the dispute even at meal times, but all to no purpose; they could not agree, and consequently arrived at no satisfactory conclusion. At last the king grew wearied of the delay, and thinking to hasten the settlement, announced his intention of being present at their next debate. The learned men prepared themselves for the occasion; and they came to dispute so vigorously in the king's presence, that at last he clapped his hands to his ears and ran out of the room. And no wonder; for an ordinary man of common sense, had he stayed to hear them but a single day, must certainly have become crazed by their interminable talk.

"Your Majesty," said the Lord Chamberlain, “we shall never come to an end with these gentlemen. They are so comfortable here, that they will stay and dispute to the day of their death."

"You are right," answered the king, "we shall never finish with such fellows. This is what you shall do: issue a proclamation to the effect that any of my subjects is at liberty to come forward and decide the question."

Two days afterwards the hall where the learned men. disputed was thrown open to everybody. The king, the queen, and Libena sat on the throne. Near it were the princes; the eldest with his little carriage, the second with the looking-glass, the youngest empty-handed. Around the hall sat the men of learning who disputed with, if possible, even more violence than usual; not even the presence of the king restrained them. At intervals there appeared several people—some rich, in fine clothes, some poor, in humble apparel-and expressed their opinions of the case; but they had much better have stopped at home.

At last the king grew angry, and was about to leave the hall, when there appeared a little old man, with hair as white as milk, who, having bowed to the king, addressed the princes,―

"How vain is this long dispute! You all three are

equally deserving; but how does the matter stand?One of you has a miraculous little carriage; another a wonderful looking-glass; but the third has nothing, because his magic apples are eaten. Therefore it is only just that he, who has nothing else, should receive Libena."

The king, full of joy, sprang to his feet. He embraced the old man, exclaiming,

"You have made a wise decision; and it shall be as you say."

The learned gentlemen were ready to faint with surprise and vexation; they never expected so much sense under so common-place a dress. They sat as dumb and still as wood until the king told them that the marriage would be celebrated on the following day, and that they were invited to the ceremony. This seemed to bring them to their senses. They began then to praise, and . to express their wonder at the little old man.

The two elder princes were fain to be satisfied with the decision, and Libena was happy with the youngest prince for her husband.

TWARDOWSKI.

(FROM THE POLISH.)

TWARDOWSKI was by birth a nobleman. He desired to be wiser than other, honest folks, and to discover an elixir against death; for of all things he feared to die. He had learnt in an old book the art of calling demons into his presence. He left Cracow, in which city he was a doctor of medicine, secretly at midnight, and came to Podgorze, where he began his magical arts to summon the demon from the deep. The evil spirit soon appeared. As was customary in those days, the two entered into a covenant. The demon knelt on the ground and wrote out a bond, which Twardowski signed with his own blood, squeezed out of the third finger of his left hand. The chief condition of the covenant was this: the demon should have no power over the body or soul of Twardowski unless he could catch him in Rome.

By virtue of the bond executed between them,