"Oh King!" he cried. "I am only a cripple, and small, and I can easily
be killed. I have no flowers at all. When I opened my package of seeds I
was so glad that I forgot the wind was blowing, and suddenly a great
gust carried them all away forever and I had not even one left. I was
afraid to tell anybody."

And then he cried so that he could not speak.

"Go on," said the young King gently. "What did you do?"

"I could do nothing," said the little cripple. "Only I made my garden
neat and kept away the weeds. And sometimes I asked other people to let
me dig a little for them. And always when I went out I picked up the
ugly things I saw lying about--the bits of paper and rubbish--and I dug
holes for them in the earth. But I have broken your Law."

Then the people gasped for breath, for King Amor dismounted from his
horse and lifted the little cripple up in his arms and held him against
his breast.

"You shall ride with me today," he said, "and go to my castle on the
mountain crag and live near the stars and the sun. When you kept the
weeds from your bare little garden, and when you dug for others and hid
away ugliness and disorder, you planted a Blue Flower every day. You
have planted more than all the rest, and your reward shall be the
sweetest, for you planted without the seeds."

And then the people shouted until the world seemed to ring with their
joy, and somehow they knew that King Mordreth's Land had come into fair