TAYLOR'S LAKE. 95 



sight, although both of them were aware their mutual 

 appreciation was hopeless, owing to the fact that so- 

 cietywhich was just as severe and hard in those 

 primeval times as now^-forbade a maid of high degree 

 to wed any suitor below the rank of a burgher. 



The old man grew rapidly worse, dozens of physi- 

 cians attended him night and day, and one afternoon 

 after a consultation of six hours' duration they an- 

 nounced to the weeping Mary Anne that unless some 

 delicacy of marvelous epicurean choiceness could be 

 found, with which to tempt the old man's appetite, he 

 would certainly starve to death. That evening Mary 

 Anne met her lover in the little copse just outside the 

 castle gate, and distractedly weeping huge, two-carat 

 tears upon the bosom of his leather jerkin pictured to 

 the sympathetic Lym her poor Pa's sad plight. 



Now Lym was a youth of quick parts* and ingenious 

 faculties; so, bidding Mary Anne cheer up, he made her 

 promise to meet Him at the same spot the next evening. 

 Lym went home, and while restlessly tossing on his 

 hard pallet that night, his mind tortured by the sorrows 

 of his sweet little mistress, his big toe struck againgt 

 something hard at the foot of the bed. Getting up he 

 struck a light, and discovered a small parcel lying on 

 the floor of his hut, which evidently had been dislodged 

 by his toe a few moments before. He picked it up, and 

 after unwrapping it found a small piece of cheese, 

 which he recognized as the contents of a small pack- 

 age he had hooked up when fishing for carp in the ad- 

 joining lake some five years previously, had tucked it 

 into the foot of his bed for safe keeping and then had 

 forgotten all about it. Lym took it up carelessly and 

 commenced to turn it in his warm hand. The cheese 

 began to emit a faint, cheesy odor, which gradually 

 increased in strength until Ljm was obliged to open 

 the window. The longer Lym handled the cheese the 

 stronger it became, until at last, through sheer inability 

 to stand its pungent odor any longer, he clapped his 

 fingers to his nose and held it tight. Now whether a 



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