One day as they stood on the top of a high mountain they saw a very strange sight. A great sea lay shining in the distance, sparkling and glittering in gold and blue. It washed the shores of magnificent valleys and rich gardens. Fruits and flowers grew in abundance, but the strange sight lay in the fact that the valleys and fruit gardens stretching out so broadly suddenly stopped at a line of yellow sand,—stopped so abruptly that it seemed almost a straight line, it was so clean cut,—and the sand covered hundreds and hundreds of miles of the Earth.
“How queer it looks!” they said among themselves; “not a blade of grass, not a tree, on the barren waste! We have never seen anything like it before. What is it?”
“It will take two stories to explain that wonderful view lying before us,” replied the guide.
“Oh, do tell them!” cried the Moon people in chorus; “we love stories”; and they settled themselves to listen.
“Well,” began the guide, “the first relates to the Princess Ethelda.”
“To me?” asked the Princess in astonishment.
“Yes,” answered the messenger; “look closely at the sea beach and tell me what you see.”
“Why, great shining jewels seem strewn over the yellow sands,” said the Princess, perfectly amazed; and in turn each of the Moon people saw the same.
“Well,” continued the messenger, turning to the Princess, “when her Imperial Majesty of the Moon consented to your coming to visit the Earth on your bridal trip, she ordered many wedding presents for you, and in finishing the loveliest that she gave you, it came about that that beach was formed. But I will begin the story of the Jewelled Beach.
“The Moon was shining through a turquoise-blue sky. Now and then a baby cloud passed before her face, but it was so white and airy that it did not even hide the dazzling lights of her silver palace. One could see them perfectly well, shining through the handsome windows.
“Serenely beautiful the Moon Queen moved through her star-studded pathway. She was calm and majestic. As she swung around the celestial circle that night she leaned down lower to watch the golden gleam of a small star shining far in the distance. For many reasons that particular star had occupied her mind of late, and that evening she seemed even more intent upon it than ever. How beautiful it was! Of all the millions of glittering points embroidered on the sky, that small one stood out the brightest. In bold relief its dancing lights sped out over the heavens in friendly twinkle toward the Moon.