THE GOLDEN TREE

      The room in which our story begins was very plain and bare. Against the whitewashed walls, whose only adornment was a pair of landscapes yellow with age, stood two small beds, a bookcase, and a clothes-press, on the top of which rested a terrestrial globe. A long table, covered with ink-stains, occupied the middle of the room, and two boys about twelve years of age were sitting by it on hard wooden stools.
      The light-haired boy was puzzling over a difficult passage in Cornelius Nepos, and he sighed as he turned the leaves of the heavy lexicon; the boy with brown hair was trying to extract the cubic root of a number with nine figures. The Latin student was named Hans, the mathematician Heinz.
      >From time to time the boys raised their heads and looked longingly towards the open window, where the flies buzzed in and out. In the garden, the golden sunshine lay on the trees and bushes, and the branch of a blossoming elder-bush looked scornfully into the two young fellows' study. The poor youths had still an hour to sit and bear the heat before they could go out-doors, and the minutes crept along like the snails on the gooseberry-bushes in the garden. Any escape from work before the time was not to be thought of, for in the next room, at his desk, sat Dr. Schlagen, who had charge of the boys' education and morals, and the door stood open, so that the Doctor could at any time assure himself of the presence of his charges, and overlook whatever they were doing.
      “Hannibal could not have done anything more prudent than to cross the Alps,” snarled Hans; and “nine times eighty-one are seven hundred and twenty-nine,” muttered Heinz, in a dull voice. Then both looked up from their work, looked at one another and yawned.
      Suddenly they heard a loud buzzing. A rose-bug which must have alighted on the elderberry-bush, had strayed into the room. Three times it flew around the boys' heads, in a circle, and then it fell plump into the inkstand.
      “It really served him right,” said Heinz; “why didn't he stay where he was well off? But to be drowned in ink - that is too wretched a death! Wait a minute, my friend, I will save you.”
      He was going to help the struggling bug with his penholder, but Hans accomplished the rescue more quickly with his finger. And then the boys dried the poor little rascal gently with the blotting-paper, and watched him make his toilet with his forelegs.
      “He has a red spot on his breast, and black horns,” said Hans, as he wiped his ink-stained fingers on his hair. “It is the king of the rose-bugs. He dwells in a castle built of jasmine flowers and shingled with rose-leaves. Crickets and locusts are his musicians, and the glowworms are his torch-bearers.”
      “Oh, nonsense!” said Heinz.
      “And whoever meets the king of the rose-bugs,” continued Hans, “is a lucky fellow. Take heed, Heinz, something is going to happen - an adventure or something extraordinary, and besides, to-day is May-day, so there is a special reason for expecting wonders. See how he beckons to us with his feelers, and lifts his wings. Now he is going to be changed before us into an elf wearing a king's mantle and a golden helmet on his head.”
      “He is going to fly away,” said Heinz, laughing. “Buzz - there he goes.”
      The boys went to the window and looked after the bug. The bright little jewel made a wide circle as he flew through the air and disappeared the other side of the garden wall. Just at this moment a hemming was heard in the next room, and the two scholars hurried back to their books.
      “There is our wonder,” whispered Hans to his companion, and pointed to the inkstand.
      Out of the inkstand rose a green shoot that grew while they were looking at it, and mounted to the ceiling.
      “We are dreaming,” said Heinz, rubbing his eyes.
      “No; it is a fairy tale,” said Hans, exultingly; “a living fairy tale, and we are in it.”
      And the shoot grew larger and put forth branches and twigs with leaves and blossoms. The top of the room disappeared, the walls vanished, and the astonished boys found themselves in the midst of a dim wood.
      “Come along!” cried Hans, pulling the reluctant Heinz away with him. “Now comes the adventure.”
      The blossoming shrubs separated of themselves and made a path for the boys. The broken sunlight looked through the latticed roof of the trees and painted a thousand golden spots on the moss, and out of the moss grew star-flowers of glowing colors, and green curling tendrils twined about their mossy stems. Above in the branches fluttered singing birds with bright feathers, and stags, roebucks, and other game leaped gayly about among the bushes.
      Now the woods grew light, and something like firelight shone between the trunks of the trees, and Hans whispered to his companion, “Now it is coming!”
      They came to a meadow in the wood, in the midst of which stood a single tree. But it was no ordinary tree; it was the magic tree of which Hans had so often heard, -the tree with golden leaves. The boys stood still in amazement.
      Out from behind the trunk stepped a dwarf no larger than a child of three years, but not with the large head and flat feet dwarfs usually have, but slender and graceful. He wore a green cloak and a golden helmet, and the boys knew who he was.
      The dwarf advanced two steps and made a low bow. “The enchanted princess is waiting for her deliverer,” he said; “which of you will undertake the hazardous task?”
      “I,” said Hans, in a joyful voice. And the dwarf immediately led out a little milk-white steed, champing a golden bit.
      “Don't do it, Hans!” cried Heinz, in distress; but Hans was already seated in the saddle. The magic horse rose, neighing, into the air, then he threw back his head and ran with flying mane into the woods. A bright rose-bug flew along ahead as a guide. Once only Hans turned his head and looked at his comrade standing beneath the golden tree; then both tree and friend were lost from sight.
      That was a merry ride. Hans sat as safe and sure in the saddle as though he had been on his accustomed wooden stool instead of the horse's back. When he thought how only an hour ago he had been groaning over Cornelius Nepos and trembling before Doctor Schlagen, he had to laugh. The little schoolboy in a short jacket had become a stately huntsman with waistcoat and mantle, sword and golden spear. So away he flew through the magic forest.
      Now his little steed neighed gladly. The woods grew light. A leap or two more, and horse and rider stopped before a shining castle. Gay banners waved from the towers, horns and trumpets were sounding, and on the balcony stood the princess waving a white handkerchief. She looked exactly like the neighbor's little Helen, with whom Hans the Knight used to play when he was a little boy, and still at school, only she was larger and a thousand times more beautiful.
      Hans sprang from the saddle, and with clinking spurs hastened up the marble steps. In the open doorway stood a man, probably the marshal of the princess' household, who had a very familiar look to our Hans.
      And the house-marshal reached out his hand, seized Hans the Knight by the ear, and cried: -
      “The scoundrel has gone to sleep. Just wait till i-” That broke the spell. Hans was sitting once more by the ink-stained table; before him lay Cornelius Nepos and the Latin lexicon; opposite him sat Heinz with a squeaking pen; and near him stood Doctor Schlagen, looking sternly through his spectacles at the dreamer.
      When the hour at last struck for their release, and the two boys were eating their evening meal out in the garden under the elder-tree, Hans told his friend what he had dreamed.
      “That is strange,” said Heinze, when Hans had finished; “very strange. For I had the same dream myself, only the ending was different; no magic castle came into my dream-”
      “Tell me about it!” urged Hans.
      “As far as the golden tree, my dream was exactly like yours. You mounted the white horse and rode away to release the princess. But I -”
      “Well?” said Hans, impatiently.
      “I remained behind, shook the tree, and filled all my pockets with the golden leaves. Then the stupid old doctor woke me up, and then the splendid dream was over.”
      “Heinz,” said Hans, solemnly, seizing his friend by the hand, “if two people have the very same dream, then it will surely come true. The dream was a prophecy. Remember what I say.”
      Then the boys ate the rest of their supper and went to play ball.
      Was the dream of the boys ever fulfilled? Yes. Hans became a poet, and drove his steed through the green forest of fairyland. But Heinz, who shook the golden tree in the dream, became his publisher.