him, rebellious at the thought of pity from one in whose sight he fain would be all that is strong and comely.  Looking down upon his twisted limbs, the pain that racked him was greater torture than mere flesh can feel.  Although ’twas casting heaven from him, he drew his mantle closer, hiding his disfigured form, and prayed with groans and writhings that she might never look on him again.  So days went by.

There came a time when, even through his all-absorbing thought of self, there pierced the consciousness that he no longer could impose upon the goat-herds’ bounty.  Food was scarce within the hut, and even though he groaned to die, the dawns brought hunger.  So at the close of day he dragged him down the mountainside, thinking that under cover of the dusk he would steal into the village and seek a chance to earn his bread.

But as he neared the little town and the sound of evening bells broke on his ear, and lighted windows marked the homes where welcome waited other men, he winced as from a blow.  This was the village he had thought to enter in the midst of loud acclaims, its brave deliverer from the Province Terror.  Then every window in the hamlet would have blazed for him.  Then every door would have been set wide to welcome Aldebaran, the royal son of kings, fittest to bear the Sword of Conquest.  And now Aldebaran was but the crippled makeshift of a man, who could not even draw that Sword from out its scabbard; at whose wry features all must turn away in loathing, and some perchance might even set the dogs to snarling at his heels, in haste to have him gone.

“In all the world,” he cried in bitterness, “there breathes no other man whom Fate hath used so cruelly!  Emptied of hope, robbed of my all, life doth become a prison-house that dooms me to its lowest dungeon!  Why struggle any longer ’gainst my lot?  Why not lie here and starve, and thus force Death to turn the key, and break the manacles which bind me to my misery?”

While he thus mused, footsteps came up the mountainside, a lusty voice was raised in song, and before he could draw back into cover, a head in a fantastic cap appeared above the bushes.  It was the village Jester capering along the path as if the world were thistledown and every day a holiday.  But when he saw Aldebaran he stopped agape and crossed himself.  Then he pushed nearer.

Now those who saw the Jester only on a market day or at the country fair plying his trade of merriment for all ’twas worth knew not a sage was hid behind that motley or that his sympathies were tender as a saint’s.  Yet so it was.  The motto written deep across his heart was this:  "To ease the burden of the world!" It was beyond belief how wise he’d grown in wheedling men to think no load lay on their shoulders.  Now he stood and gazed upon the prostrate man who turned away his face and would not answer his low-spoken words:  “What ails thee, brother?”