THE MOORISH GOLD.
cakes or quartern loaves, just exactly that shape, and certainly no bigger.'
His master was disappointed to find that Richard's comparison was queer enough to make both the other gentlemen laugh—not, however, at the footman, but at his master, for expecting him to relish the scenery. They soon rose from their lunch. It was a sin, they said, to waste the sweet weather in that nook; they should go higher; but Richard might stay behind, if he liked, and pack the baskets; if he had not had enough to eat either, his master said he was to help himself.
'Thank you, sir, I'm sure,' said Richard, gratefully.
Accordingly, when they were gone, he did pack the baskets, regaling himself with many a tit-bit meanwhile. This pleasing duty fulfilled, he stretched himself under the steep sandstone walls of his roofless room, basked in the hot sun, looked up into the glowing sky, whistled, and fanned himself with some twigs of broom, which were covered thick with flowers like yellow butterflies.
A thicket of broom bushes grew against the side of the rock, and as he stretched out his hand to one of them to pull off another bough, the bush swung back to its place, and a bird flew out so close to him that she swept his forehead with her wings.
He peeped into the bush. Yes, it was, as he had thought, a nest—as pretty as moss and feathers could make it; and with four pink eggs in it, quite warm and half transparent; he parted the thick branches of the broom, and as he held them so, a sunbeam struck between them, and showed a little hole in the rock
