A PAINTER was selling pictures at the fair; followed by servants, there passed the son of a minister who in youth had cheated this painter's father so that he had died of a broken heart.

        The boy lingered before the pictures and chose one for himself. The painter flung a cloth over it and said he would not sell it.

        After this the boy pined heart-sick till his father came and offered a large price. But the painter kept the picture unsold on his shop-wall and grimly sat before it, saying to himself, 'This is my revenge.'

 

The sole form this painter's worship took was to trace an image of his god every morning.

        And now he felt these pictures grow daily more different from those he used to paint.

        This troubled him, and he sought in vain for an explanation till one day he started up from work in horror, the eyes of the god he had just drawn were those of the minister, and so were the lips.

        He tore up the picture, crying, 'My revenge has returned on my head!'