which he should see his bride wear them. That bride was Jeanie's
grandmother; and when she died last year, she said, "Let little Jeanie
have my lamour beads, and keep them as long as she lives."

But what puzzled Jeanie was, how the amber came to be on the seashore;
and, most of all, how the bees and mosses came inside of it. Should you
like to know? If you would, that is one of Mother Nature's stories, and
she will gladly tell it. Hear what she answers to our questions:--

"I remember a time, long, long before you were born,--long, even, before
any men were living upon the earth; then these Scotch Highlands, as you
call them, where little Jeanie lives, were covered with forests. There
were oaks, poplars, beeches, and pines; and among them one kind of pine,
tall and stately, from which a shining yellow gum flowed, just as you
have seen little drops of sticky gum exude from our own pine-trees. This
beautiful yellow gum was fragrant; and, as the thousands of little
insects fluttered about it in the warm sunshine, they were attracted by
its pleasant odor,--perhaps, too, by its taste,--and once alighted upon
it, they stuck fast, and could not get away; while the great yellow
drops oozing out surrounded, and at last covered, them entirely. So,
too, wind-blown bits of moss, leaves, acorns, cones, and little sticks
were soon securely imbedded in the fast-flowing gum; and, as time went
by, it hardened and hardened more and more. And this is amber."

"That is well told, Mother Nature; but it does not explain how Kenneth's
lump of amber came to be on the seashore."

"Wait, then, for the second part of the story.

"Did you ever hear that, in those very old times, the land sometimes