A DOORWAY IN FAIRYLAND 


This selection of fairy-tales is 
reprinted from the following 
original editions^ now out of 
print : 

A Farm in Fairyland (1894) 
The House of Joy (1895) 

The Field of Closer (1898) 
The Blue Moon (1904) 



























































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• £HlT T ’r T *ri ru"pr trn-iivrrrytr it rvr i hium w v itt 


y A DOORWAY IN FAIRYLAND § 

BY LAURENCE HOUSMAN 

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NEW YORK HARCOURT. BRACE & COMPANY 


CNGRAVCD BY 
CLCMCNCe HOUSMAN 









































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Made and 

Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., 
London and Aylesbury. 


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CONTENTS 


The Blue Moon ' 

PAGE 

13 

The Wishing-Pot ‘ 

21 

The Way of the Wind 

33 - 

The Bound Princess : / 


The Fire-Eaters 

S3 

The Galloping Plough 

59 

The Thirsty Well 

66 

The Princess Melilot 

74 

The Burning Rose 

82 

The Camphor-Worm 

90 

The Rat-Catcher’s Daughter * 

97 


The Traveller’s Shoes 108 

The Rooted Lover 133 

The Wooing of the Maze ‘4 147 

The Moon-Flower 156 

The White King i8i-< 

The Passionate Puppets 192 


Knoonie in the Sleeping Palace 

11 


211 



THE BLUE MOON 


N r ILLYWILL and Hands-pansy were the 
most unimportant and happy pair of lovers 
the world has ever gained or lost. With 
them it had been a case of love at first blindness 
since the day when they had tumbled into each 
other’s arms in the same cradle. And Hands-pansy, 
when he first saw her, did not discover that Nillywill 
was a real princess hiding her birthright in the home 
of a poor peasant; nor did Nillywill, when she first 
saw Hands, see in him the baby-beginnings of the 
most honest and good heart that ever sprang out of 
poverty and humble parentage. So from her end of 
their little crib she kicked him with her royal rosy 
toes, and he from his kicked back and laughed : 
and thus, as you hear, at first blindness they fell 
head over ears in love with one another. 

Nothing could undo that; for day by day earth 
and sun and wind came to rub it in deeper, and 
water could not wash it off. So when they had been 
seven years together there could be no doubt that 
they felt as if they had been made for each other 
in heaven. And then something very big and sad 
came to pass; for one day Nillywill had to leave off 
being a peasant child and become a princess once 
more. People very grand and grown-up came to 
the woodside where she flowered so gaily, and caught 
her by the golden hair of her head and pulled her 
up by her dear little roots, and carried her quite 
away from Hands-pansy to a place she had never 

13 




been in before. They put her into a large palace, 
with woods and terraces and landscape gardens on 
all sides of it; and there she sat crying and pale, 
saying that she wanted to be taken back to Hands- 
pansy and grow up and marry him, though he was 
but the poor peasant boy he had always been. 

Those that had charge of Nillywill in her high 
station talked wisely, telling her to forget him. 
“ For,” said they, “ such a thing as a princess 
marrying a peasant boy can only happen once in a 
blue moon ! ” 

When she heard that, Nillywill began every night 
to watch the moon rise, hoping some evening to see 
it grow up like a blue flower against the dusk and 
shake down her wish to her like a bee out of its 
deep bosom. 

But night by night, silver, or ruddy, or primrose, 
it lit a place for itself in the heavens; and years 
went by, bringing the Princess no nearer to her 
desire to find room for Hands-pansy amid the 
splendours of her throne. 

She knew that he was five thousand miles away and 
had only wooden peasant shoes to walk in ; and when 
she begged that she might once more have sight of 
him, her whole court, with the greatest utterable 
politeness, cried “ No ! ” 

The Princess’s memory sang to her of him in a 
thousand tunes, like woodland birds carolling ; but 
it was within the cage which men call a crown 
that her thoughts moved, fluttering to be out of it 
and free. 

So time went on, and Nillywill had entered gently 
into sweet womanhood—the comeliest princess that 

H 


ever dropped a tear ; and all she could do for love 
was to fill her garden with dark-eyes pansies, and walk 
among their humble upturned faces which reminded 
her so well of her dear Hands—Hands who was a 
long five thousand miles away. “ And, oh ! ” she 
sighed, watching for the blue moon to rise, “ when 
will it come and make me at one with all my 
wish ? ” 

Looking up, she used to wonder what went on 
there. She and Hands had stolen into the woods, 
when children together, and watched the small 
earth-fairies at play, and had seen them, when the 
moon was full, lift up their arms to it, making, 
perhaps, signals of greeting to far-off moon-brothers. 
So she thought to herself, “ What kind are the 
fairies up there, and who is the greatest moon-fairy 
of all who makes the blue moon rise and bring good¬ 
will to the sad wishers of the human race ? Is it,” 
thought Nillywill, “ the moon-fairy who then opens 
its heart and brings down healing therefrom to the 
lovers of earth ? ” 

And now, as happens to all those who are captives 
of a crown, Nillywill learned that she must wed with 
one of her own rank who was a stranger to her save 
for his name and his renown as the lord of a neigh¬ 
bouring country ; there was no help for her, since she 
was a princess, but she must wed according to the 
claims of her station. When she heard of it, she 
went at nightfall to her pansies, all lying in their beds, 
and told them of her grief. They, awakened by her 
tears, lifted up their grave eyes and looked at her. 

“ Do you not hear ? ” said they. 

“ Heamwhat ? ” asked the Princess. 

IS 


a 


u 


We are low in the ground : we hear ! ” said the 
pansies. “ Stoop down your head and listen ! ” 
The Princess let her head go to the ground ; and 
click, click,” she heard wooden shoes coming 
along the road. She ran to the gate, and there 
was Hands, tall and lean, dressed as a poor peasant, 
with a bundle tied up in a blue cotton handker¬ 
chief across his shoulder, and five thousand miles 
trodden to nothing by the faithful tramping of his 
old wooden shoes. 

“ Oh, the blue moon, the blue moon ! ” cried the 
Princess; and running down the road, she threw 
herself into his arms. 

How happy and proud they were of each other ! 
He, because she remembered him and knew him so 
well by the sight of his face and the sound of his feet 
after all these years; and she, because he had come 
all that way in a pair of wooden shoes, just as he was, 
and had not been afraid that she would be ashamed to 
know him again. 

“ I am so hungry ! ” said Hands, when he and 
Nillywill had done kissing each other. And when 
Nillywill heard that, she brought him into the palace 
through the pansies by her own private way ; then 
with her own hands she set food before him, and 
made him eat. Hands, looking at her, said, “ You 
are quite as beautiful as I thought you would 
be! ” 

“ And you—so are you ! ” she answered, laughing 
and clapping her hands. And “ Oh, the blue moon,” 
she cried—“ surely the blue moon must rise to¬ 
night ! ” 

Low down in the west the new moon, leaning on 

16 


its side, rocked and turned softly in its sleep ; and 
there, facing the earth through the cleared night, 
the blue moon hung like a burning grape against 
the sky. Like the heart of a sapphire laid open, the 
air flushed and purpled to a deeper shade. The 
wind drew in its breath close and hushed, till not a 
leaf quaked in the boughs; and the sea that lay out 
west gathered its waves together softly to its heart, 
and let the heave of its tide fall wholly to slumber. 
Round-eyed, the stars looked at themselves in the 
charmed water, while in a luminous azure flood the 
light of the blue moon flowed abroad. 

Under the light of many tapers within drawn cur¬ 
tains of tapestry, and feasting her eyes upon the 
happiness of Hands, the Princess felt the change that 
had entranced the outer world. “ I feel,” she said, 
“ I do not know how—as if the palace were standing 
siege. Come out where we can breathe the fresh 
air ! ” 

The light of the tapers grew ghostly and dim, as, 
parting the thick hangings of the window, they 
stepped into the night. 

“ The blue moon ! ” cried Nillywill to her heart; 
“ oh, Hands, it is the blue moon ! ” 

All the world seemed carved out of blue stone ; 
trees with stems dark-veined as marble rose up to 
give rest to boughs which drooped the altered hues 
of their foliage like the feathers of peacocks at roost. 
Jewel within jewel they burned through every 
shade from beryl to onyx. The white blossoms of a 
cherry-tree had become changed into turquoise, 
and the tossing spray of a fountain as it drifted and 
swung was like a column of blue fire. Where a long 


B 



inlet of sea reached in and touched the feet of the 
hanging gardens the stars showed like glow-worms, 
emerald in a floor of amethyst. 

There was no motion abroad, nor sound : even 
the voice of the nightingale was stilled, because 
the passion of his desire had become visible before 
his eyes. 

“ Once in a blue moon ! ” said Nillywill, waiting 
for her dream to become altogether true. “ Let 
us go now,” she said, “ where I can put away my 
crown ! To-night has brought you to me, and the 
blue moon has come for us : let us go ! ” 

“ Where shall we go ? ” asked Hands. 

“ As far as we can,” cried Nillywill. “ Suppose 
to the blue moon ! To-night it seems as if one 
might tread on water or air. Yonder across the sea, 
with the stars for stepping-stones, we might get to 
the blue moon as it sets into the waves.” 

But as they went through the deep alleys of the 
garden that led down to the shore they came to a 
sight more wonderful than anything they had yet 
seen. 

Before them, facing toward the sea, stood two 
great reindeer, their high horns reaching to the over¬ 
head boughs; and behind them lay a sledge, long 
and with deep sides like the sides of a ship. All 
blue they seemed in that strange light. 

There, too, but nearer to hand, was the moon-fay 
himself waiting—a great figure of lofty stature, clad 
in furs of blue fox-skin, and with heron’s wings 
fastened above the flaps of his hood ; and these 
lifted themselves and clapped as Hands and the 
Princess drew near. 


18 


kC Are you coming to the blue moon ? ” called the 
fay, and his voice whistled and shrilled to them like 
the voice of a wind. 

Hands-pansy gave back answer stoutly: “Yes, 
yes, we are coming ! ” And indeed what better 
could he say ? 

“ But,” cried Nillywill, holding back for a moment, 
“ what will the blue moon do for us ? ” 

“ Once you are there,” answered the moon-fay, 
“ you can have your wish and your heart’s desire ; 
but only once in a blue moon can you have it. Are 
you coming ? ” 

“We are coming ! ” cried Nillywill. “ Oh, let 
us make haste ! ” 

“ Tread softly,” whispered the moon-fay, “ and 
stoop well under these boughs, for if anything 
awakes to behold the blue moon, the memory of it 
can never die. On earth only the nightingale of all 
living things has beheld a blue moon ; and the 
triumph and pain of that memory wakens him ever 
since to sing all night long. Tread softly, lest others 
waken and learn to cry after us; for we in the blue 
moon have our sleep troubled by those who cry for 
a blue moon to return.” He looked towards Nilly¬ 
will, and smiled with friendly eyes. “ Come ! ” he 
said again, and all at once they had leapt upon the 
sledge, and the reindeer were running fast down 
towards the sea. 

The blue moon was resting with its lower rim upon 
the waters. At that sight, before they were clear 
of the avenues of the garden, one of the reindeer 
tossed up his great branching horns and snorted 
aloud for joy. With a soft stir in the thick boughs 

l 9 


overhead, a bird with a great trail of feathers moved 
upon its perch. 

The sledge, gliding from land, passed out over 
the smoothed waters, running swiftly as upon ice ; 
and the reflection of the stars shone up like glow¬ 
worms as Niliywill and Hands-pansy, in the moon- 
fay’s company, sped away along its bright surface. 

The still air whistled through the reindeers’ 
horns; so fast they went that the trees and the 
hanging gardens and the palace walls melted away 
from view like wreaths of smoke. Sky and sea be¬ 
came one magic sapphire drawing them in towards 
the centre of its life, to the heart of the blue moon 
itself. 

When the blue moon had set below the sea, then 
far behind them upon the land they had left the 
leaves rustled and drew sharply together, shuddering 
to get rid of the stony stillness, and the magic hues 
in which they had been dyed ; and again the night¬ 
ingale broke out into passionate triumph and com¬ 
plaint. 

Then also, from the bough which the reindeer 
had brushed with its horns, a peacock threw back its 
head and cried in harsh lamentation, having no 
sweet voice wherewith to acclaim its prize. And so 
ever since it cries, as it goes up into the boughs to 
roost, because it shares with the nightingale its grief 
for the memory of departed beauty which never 
returns to earth save once in a blue moon. 

But Niliywill and Hands-pansy, living together 
in the blue moon, look back upon the world, if now 
and then they choose to remember, without any 
longing for it or sorrow. 


20 


THE WISHING-POT 


T ulip was the son of a poor but prudent 
mother ; from the moment of his birth she 
had trained him to count ten before ever he 
wanted or asked for anything. An otherwise reck¬ 
less youth, he acquired an intrinsic value through 
the practice of this habit. Only once, just as he was 
reaching, but had not quite reached, years of dis¬ 
cretion, did his habit of precaution fail him ; and 
this same failure became in the end the opening of 
his fortunes. 

Bathing one day in the river, to whose banks the 
woods ran down in steep terraces, he heard a voice 
come singing along one of the upper slopes ; and 
looking up under the boughs of cedar and sycamore, 
he saw a pair of green feet go dancing by, up and 
down like grasshoppers on the prance. 

There was such rhythm in them, and such sweet¬ 
ness in the voice, that his heart was out of him before 
he could harness it to the number ten, and he came 
out of the water the most natural and forlorn of 
lovers. 

Before he was dressed the green feet and the voice 
were gone, and before he got home his health and 
his appetite seemed to have gone also. He pined 
industriously from day to day, and spent all his 
hours in searching among the woods by the river 
side for his lady of the dear green feet. He did not 
know so much as the size or colour of her face ; the 
sound of her voice alone, and the running up and 


21 


down of her feet, had, as he told his mother, “ decim¬ 
ated his affections.” 

In his trouble he could think of only one possible 
remedy, and that he counted well over, knowing 
its risk. Away in the loneliest part of the forest 
there lived a wise woman, to whom, now and then, 
folk went for help when everything else had failed 
them. So he had heard tell of a certain Wishing- 
Pot that was hers in which people might see the 
thing they desired most, and into which for a fee 
she allowed lovers and other poor fools of fortune to 
look. One thing, however, was told against the 
virtues of this Wishing-Pot, that though many had 
had a sight of it, and their wishes revealed to them 
therein, others had gone and had never again returned 
to their homes, but had vanished altogether from 
men’s sight, nor had any news ever been heard of 
them after. There were some wise folk who held 
that they had only gone elsewhere to seek the fortune 
that the Wishing-Pot had shown to them. Never¬ 
theless, for the most part, the wise woman and her 
Wishing-Pot had an ill name in that neighbourhood. 

To a lover’s heart risk gives value ; so one fine 
morning Tulip kissed his mother, counted ten, and 
set out for the woods. 

Towards evening he came to the house of the 
witch and knocked at the door. “ Good mother,” 
said he, when she opened to him, “ I have brought 
you the fee to buy myself a wish over the Wishing- 
Pot.” “ Ay, surely,” answered the crone, and drew 
him in. 

In one corner of the room stood a great crystal 
bowl. Nearly round it was, and had a small opening 

22 


at the top, to which a man might place his eye and 
look in. To Tulip, as he looked at it, it seemed all 
coloured fires and falling stars, and a soft crackling 
sound came from it, as though heat burned in its 
veins. It threw long shapes and lustres upon the 
walls, and within innumerable things writhed, and 
ran, and whiffed in the floating of its vapours. 

“ You may have two wishes, 5 ’ said the old witch, 
“ a one and a two.” And she said the spell that 
undid the secret of the Pot to the wisher. 

Then Tulip bent down his head and looked in, 
counting softly to himself, and at ten, he let the 
wish go to his lady of the dear green feet. 

The colours changed and sprang, as though stirred 
and fed with fresh fuel; and down in the depths of 
the Wishing-Pot he saw the feet of his Beloved go 
by in twinkling green slippers. 

As soon as he saw that he began counting ten in 
great haste for the second wish. “ O to be inside the 
Wishing-Pot with her ! ” was his thought now. He 
had got to nine, and the wish was almost on his 
tongue, when he caught sight of the old woman’s 
eye looking at him. And the eye had become like 
a large green spider, with great long limbs that kept 
clutching up and out again ! 

His heart queegled to a jelly at the sight; but 
the green feet lured him so, that he still thought how 
to get to them and yet be safe. Surely, to be in the 
Wishing-Pot and out by the sound of the next 
Angelus became the shape of his wish. He shut his 
eyes, cried ten upon the venture, and was in the 
Wishing-Pot ! 

The little green feet were trebling over the glass 

23 


with a sound like running water ; and he himself 
began running at full speed, shot off into theWishing- 
Pot like a pellet from a pop-gun. Nothing could he 
see of his dear but her wee green feet. But above 
them as they ran he heard showery laughter, and he 
knew that his lady was there before him, though in¬ 
visible to the eye. 

The Pot, now he was in it, seemed bigger than the 
biggest dome in the world ; to run all round it took 
him two or three minutes. Away in the centre of its 
base stood a great opal knob, like the axle to a wheel 
round which he and the green feet kept circling. 

However much he wished and wished, the green 
feet still kept their distance, for now he was in the 
Wishing-Pot wishes availed him nothing. The 
green feet flew faster than his; the light laugh rang 
further and further away ; right across to the other 
side of the hall his lady had passed from him now. 

The magic fires of the crystal leaped and crackled 
under his tread ; now it seemed as if his feet ran on 
a green lawn, out of which broke crocuses and daffo¬ 
dils, and now roses reddened in the track, and now 
the purple of grapes spurted across the path like 
spilled wine. The sound of the green feet and the 
running of overhead laughter, as they distanced him 
in front, came nearer and nearer behind him from 
across the hall. He felt that he must follow and not 
turn, however beaten he might be. 

Presently a voice, that he knew was his Beloved’s, 
cried,— 

“ Heart that would have me must hatch me ! 

Feet that would find me must catch me ! 

Man that would mate me must match me ! ” 


24 


Oh, how ? wondered spent feet, and failing heart, 
and reeling brain. He stumbled slower and slower 
in the race, till presently with quick innumerable 
patterings the green feet grew closer, and were over¬ 
taking him from the rear. 

Warm breath was in his hair,—lips and a hand ; 
he turned, open armed, to snatch the mischievous 
morsel, but all that he clasped was a gust of air ; and 
he saw the green feet scudding out and away on a 
fresh start before him. 

Again, with laughter, the voice cried,— 

“ Lap for lap you must wind me : 

Equal, before you can find me ! 

You are a lap behind me ! ” 

Where they raced the surface of the glass sloped 
slightly to the upward rise of its walls; Tulip 
shifted his ground, and ran where the footing was 
leveller towards the centre, and the circle began to 
go smaller. So he began to gain, till the green slip¬ 
pers, seeing how the advantage had come about, 
shifted also in their turn. 

Thus they ran on ; there were no inner posts to 
mark the course, only the great opal standing in the 
centre of all formed the pivot of the race, and round 
and round it, a great way off, they ran. 

All at once a big thought came into Tulip’s head ; 
he waited not to count ten, but, before Green Slip¬ 
pers knew what he was after, he had reached the opal 
centre, and was circling it. Then quickly all the 
laughter stopped ; the green feet came twinkling 
sixteen to the dozen, so as to get round the post 
before him and away. 

One lap, he was before her ; two laps, he turned 

25 


again to her coming, and found her falling into his 
arms. She blossomed into sight at his touch : from 
top to toe she was there ! All rosy and alive he had 
her in his clasp, laughing, crying, clinging, yet strug¬ 
gling to be free. She made a most endless handful, 
till Tulip had caught her by the hair and kissed her 
between the eyes. 

All round and overhead the magic crystal reared 
up arches of fire, to a roof that dropped like rain, 
while Tulip and his prize sank down exhausted on the 
great hub of opal to rest. As he touched it all the 
secret wonders of the YVishing-Pot were opened and 
revealed to his gaze. 

Crowds and crowds of faces were what he most 
saw ; everywhere that he turned he saw old friends 
and neighbours who, he thought, had been dead 
and gone, looking sadly, and shaking long sorrowful 
faces at him. “ You here too, Tulip ? ” they 
seemed for ever to be saying. “ Always another, 
and another ; and now you here too ! ” 

There was the dairyman’s wife, who had waited 
seven years to have a child, holding a little will-o’-the 
wisp of a thing in her arms. Now and then for a 
while it would lie still, and then suddenly it would 
leap up and dart away ; and she, poor soul, must up 
and after it, though the chase were ever so long ! 

There also was Miller Dick with his broad thumbs, 
counting over a rich pile of gold, which, ever and 
anon, spun up into the air, and went strewing itself 
like dead leaves before the wind. Then he too must 
needs up and after it, till it was all caught again, and 
added together, and made right. 

There were small playmates of Tulip’s childhood, 

26 






























each with its little conceit of treasure : one had a toy, 
and another a lamb, another a bird ; and all of them 
hunted and caught the thing they loved, and kissed 
it and again let go. So it went on, over and over 
again, more sad than the sight of a quaker as he 
twiddles his thumbs. 

Whenever they were at peace for a moment, they 
turned their eyes his way. “ What, you here too, 
Tulip ? ” was always the thing they seemed to be 
saying. 

While Tulip sat looking at them, and thinking of 
it all, suddenly his lady disappeared, and only her 
green feet darted from his side and began running 
round and round in a circle. Then was he just 
about to set off running after them, when he felt 
himself caught up to the coloured fires of the roof 
and sent spinning ungovernably through space. 
Suddenly he was dumped to the ground, and just 
as his feet were gathering themselves up under him 
he heard the Angelus bell ringing from the village 
below the slopes of the wood. 

He was standing again by the side of the Wishing- 
Pot, and the old woman sat cowering, and blinking 
her spider eye at him, too much astonished to speak 
or move. 

Tulip looked at her with a pleasant and engaging 
air. “ Oh, good mother, what a treat you have 
given me ! ” he said. “ How I wish I had money 
for another wish ! what a pity it was ever to have 
wished myself back again ! ” 

When the old witch heard that she thought still 
to entrap him, and answered joyfully, “ Why, kind 
Sir, surely, kind Sir, if you like it you shall look 

29 


again ! Take another wish, and never mind about 
the money.” So she said the spell once more which 
opened to him the wonders of the Wishing-Pot. 

Then cried Tulip, clapping his hands, “ What 
better can I wish than to have you in the Wishing- 
Pot, in the place of all those poor folk whom you 
have imprisoned with their wishes ! ” 

Hardly was the thing said than done; all the 
children who had been Tulip’s playmates, and 
Miller Dick with his broad thumbs, and the dairy¬ 
man’s wife, were every one of them out, and the 
old witch woman was nowhere to be seen. 

But Tulip put his eye to the mouth of the Wish¬ 
ing-Pot ; and there down below he saw the old 
witch, running round and round as hard as she 
could go, pursued by a herd of green spiders. And 
there without doubt she remains. 

And now everybody was happy except Tulip 
himself ; for the children had all of them their 
toys, and the old miller his gold, and as for the 
dairyman’s wife, she found that she had become 
the mother of a large and promising infant. But 
Tulip had altogether lost his lady of the dear green 
feet, for in thinking of others he had forgotten to 
think of himself. All the gratitude of the poor 
people he had saved was nothing to him in that 
great loss which had left him desolate. For his 
part he only took the Wishing-Pot up under his 
arm, and went sadly away home. 

But before long the noise of what he had done 
reached to the king’s ears; and he sent for Tulip 
to appear before him and his Court. Tulip came, 
carrying the Wishing-Pot under his arm, very down- 

30 


cast and sad for love of the lady of the dear green 
feet. 

At that time all the Court was in half mourning ; 
for the Princess Royal, who was the king’s only 
child, and the most beautiful and accomplished of 
her sex, had gone perfectly distraught with grief, 
of which nothing could cure her. All day long she 
sat with her eyes shut, and tears running down, and 
folded hands and quiet little feet. And all this 
came, it was said, from a dream which she could not 
tell or explain to anybody. 

The king had promised that whoever could rouse 
her from her grief, should have the princess for his 
wife, and become heir to the throne ; and when he 
heard that there was such a thing in the world as 
a Wishing-Pot, he thought that something might 
be done with it. 

From Tulip he learned, however, that no one knew 
the spell which opened the resources of the Wishing- 
Pot save the old witch woman who was shut up fast 
for ever in its inside. So it seemed to the king that 
the Pot could be of no use for curing the princess. 

But it was so beautiful, with its shooting stars 
and coloured fires, that, when Tulip brought it, 
they carried it in to show to her. 

After three hours the princess was prevailed upon 
to open her eyes; and directly they fell upon the 
great opal bowl, all at once she started to her feet 
and began laughing and dancing and singing. 

These are the words that they heard her sing,— 

“ Lap for lap I must wind you ; 

Equal, before I can find you ; 

I am a lap behind you ! ” 

31 


Tulip, as soon as he heard the sweetness of that 
voice, and the words, pushed his way past the king 
and all his court, to where the princess was. And 
there over the heads of the crowd he saw his lady 
of the dear green feet laughing and opening her 
white arms to him. 

As she set eyes on his face the dream of the prin¬ 
cess came true, and all her unhappiness passed from 
her. So they loved and were married, to the 
astonishment and edification of the whole court; 
and lived to be greatly loved and admired by all 
their grandchildren. 


32 


THE WAY OF THE WIND 


W HERE the world breaks up into islands 
among the blue waves of an eastern sea, 
in a little house by the seashore, lived 
Katipah, the only child of poor parents. When 
they died she was left quite alone and could not 
find a heart in the world to care for her. She was 
so poor that no man thought of marrying her, and 
so delicate and small that as a drudge she was worth 
nothing to anybody. 

Once a month she would go and stand at the 
temple gate, and say to the people as they went in 
to pray, “ Will nobody love me ? ” And the people 
would turn their heads away quickly and make 
haste to get past, and in their hearts would wonder 
to themselves : “ Foolish little Katipah ! Does she 
think that we can spare time to love anyone so 
poor and unprofitable as she ? ” 

On the other days Katipah would go down to 
the beach, where everybody went who had a kite 
to fly—for all the men in that country flew kites, 
and all the children,—and there she would fly a 
kite of her own up into the blue air ; and watching 
the wind carrying it farther and farther away, would 
grow quite happy thinking how a day might come 
at last when she would really be loved, though her 
queer little outside made her seem so poor and 
unprofitable. 

Katipah’s kite was green, with blue eyes in its 
square face ; and in one corner it had a very small 

33 


c 


pursed-up red mouth holding a spray of peach- 
blossom. She had made it herself ; and to her it 
meant the green world, with the blue sky over it 
when the spring begins to be sweet; and there, 
tucked away in one corner of it, her own little warm 
mouth waiting and wishing to be kissed : and out 
of all that wishing and waiting the blossom of hope 
w 7 as springing, never to be let go. 

All round her were hundreds of others flying 
their kites, and all had some wish or prayer to For¬ 
tune. But Katipah’s wish and prayer were only 
that she might be loved. 

The silver sandhills lay in loops and chains round 
the curve of the blue bay, and all along them flocks 
of gaily coloured kites hovered and fluttered and 
sprang. And, as they went up into the clear air, 
the wind sighing in the strings was like the crying 
of a young child. “ Wahoo ! wahoo ! 55 every kite 
seemed to cradle the wailings of an invisible infant 
as it w r ent mounting aloft, spreading its thin apron 
to the wind. 

“ Wahoo ! wahoo ! ” sang Katipah’s blue-and- 
green kite, “ shall I ever be loved by anybody ? ” 
And Katipah, keeping fast hold of the string, would 
watch where it mounted and looked so small, and 
think that surely some day her kite would bring her 
the only thing she much cared about. 

Katipah’s next-door neighbour had everything 
that her own lonely heart most wished for : not 
only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well. 
Yet she was such a jealous, cross-grained body that 
she seemed to get no happiness out of the fortune 
Heaven had sent her. Husband and child seemed 

34 






















































both to have caught the infection of her bitter 
temper ; all day and night beating and brawling 
went on ; there seemed no peace in that house. 

But for all that the woman, whose name was 
Bimsha, was quite proud of being a wife and a 
mother : and in the daytime, when her man was 
away, she would look over the fence and laugh at 
Katipah, crying boastfully, “ Don’t think you will 
ever have a husband, Katipah : you are too poor 
and unprofitable ! Look at me, and be envious ! ” 

Then Katipah would go softly away, and send up 
her kite by the seashore till she heard a far-off, 
sweet, babe-like cry as the w r ind blew through the 
strings high in air. 

“ Shall I ever be loved by anybody ? ” thought 
she, as she jerked at the cord ; and away the kite 
flew higher than ever, and the sound of its call 
grew fainter. 

One morning, in the beginning of the year, 
Katipah went up on to the hill under plum-boughs 
white with bloom, meaning to gather field-sorrel 
for her midday meal; and as she stooped with all 
her hair blowing over her face, and her skirts knot¬ 
ting and billowing round her pretty brown ankles, 
she felt as if someone had kissed her from behind. 

“ That cannot be,” thought Katipah, with her 
fingers fast upon a stalk of field-sorrel; “ it is 

too soon for anything so good to happen.” So she 
picked the sorrel quietly, and put it into her basket. 
But now, not to be mistaken, arms came round her, 
and she was kissed. 

She stood up and put her hands into her breast, 
quite afraid lest her little heart, which had grown 

37 


so light, should be caught by a puff of wind and 
blown right away out of her bosom, and over the 
hill and into the sea, and be drowned. 

And now her eyes would not let her doubt; there 
by her side stood a handsome youth, with quick- 
fluttering, posy-embroidered raiment. His long 
dark hair was full of white plum-blossoms, as though 
he had just pushed his head through the branches 
above. His hands also were loaded with the same, 
and they kept sifting out of his long sleeves when¬ 
ever he moved his arms. Under the hem of his 
robe Katipah could see that he had heron’s wings 
bound about his ankles. 

“ He must be very good,” thought Katipah, “ to 
be so beautiful! and indeed he must be very good 
to kiss poor me ! ” 

“ Katipah,” said the wonderful youth, “ though 
you do not know me, I know you. It is I who so 
often helped you to fly your green kite by the 
shore. I have been up there, and have looked into 
its blue eyes, and kissed its little red mouth which 
held the peach-blossom. It was I who made songs 
in its strings for your heart to hear. I am the West 
Wind, Katipah—the wind that brings fine weather. 
‘ Gamma-gata ’ you must call me, for it is I who 
bring back the wings that fly till the winter is over. 
And now I have come down to earth, to fetch you 
away and make you my wife. Will you come, 
Katipah ? ” 

“ I will come, Gamma-gata ! ” said Katipah, and 
she crouched and kissed the heron-wings that bound 
his feet; then she stood up and let herself go into 
his arms. 


38 


“ Have you enough courage ? ” asked the West 
Wind. 

“ I do not know,” answered Katipah, “ for I have 
never tried.” 

“ To come with me,” said the Wind, “ you need 
to have much courage ; if you have not, you must 
wait till you learn it. But none the less for that 
shall you be the wife of Gamma-gata, for I am the 
gate of the wild geese, as my name says, and my 
heart is foolish with love of you.” Gamma-gata 
took her up in his arms, and swung with her this 
way and that, tossing his way through blossom and 
leaf ; and the sunlight became an eddy of gold 
round her, and wind and laughter seemed to become 
part of her being, so that she was all giddy and dazed 
and glad when at last Gamma-gata set her down. 

“ Stand still, my little one ! ” he cried—“ stand 
still while I put on your bridal veil for you ; then 
your blushes shall look like a rose-bush in snow ! ” 
So Katipah stood with her feet in the green sorrel, 
and Gamma-Gata went up into the plum-tree and 
shook, till from head to foot she was showered with 
white blossom. 

“ How beautiful you seem to me! ” cried 
Gamma-gata when he returned to ground. 

Then he lifted her once more and set her in the 
top of a plum-tree, and going below, cried up to 
her, “ Leap, little Wind-wife, and let me see that 
you have courage ! ” 

Katipah looked long over the deep space that lay 
between them, and trembled. Then she fixed her 
eyes fast upon those of her lover, and leapt, for in 
the laughter of his eyes she had lost all her fear. 

39 


He caught her half-way in air as she fell. “ You 
are not really brave/’ said he ; “ if I had shut my 
eyes you would not have jumped.” 

“ If you had shut your eyes just then,” cried 
Katipah, “ I would have died for fear.” 

He set her once more in the tree-top, and disap¬ 
peared from her sight. “ Come down to me, 
Katipah ! ” she heard his voice calling all round 
her. 

Clinging fast to the topmost bough, “ Oh, 
Gamma-gata,” she cried, “ let me see your eyes, 
and I will come.” 

Then with darkened brow he appeared to her 
again out of his blasts, and took her in his arms and 
lifted her down a little sadly till her feet touched 
safe earth. And he blew away the beautiful veil of 
blossoms with which he had showered her, while 
Katipah stood like a shamed child and watched it 
go, shredding itself to pieces in the spring sunshine. 

And Gamma-gata, kissing her tenderly, said : 
“ Go home, Katipah, and learn to have courage ! 
and when you have learned it I will be faithful and 
will return to you again. Only remember, however 
long we may be parted, and whatever winds blow 
ill-fortune up to your door, Gamma-gata will 
watch over you. For in deed and truth you are 
the wife of the West Wind now, and truly he loves 
you, Katipah ! ” 

“ Oh, Gamma-gata ! ” cried Katipah, “ tell the 
other winds, when they come, to blow courage into 
me, and to blow me back to you : and do not let 
that be long ! ” 

“ I will tell them,” said Gamma-gata ; and sud- 

40 


denly he was gone. Katipah saw a drift of white 
petals borne over the tree-tops and away to sea, and 
she knew that there went Gamma-gata, the beau¬ 
tiful windy youth who, loving her so well, had 
made her his wife between the showers of the 
plum-blossom and the sunshine, and had promised 
to return to her as soon as she was fit to receive 
him. 

So Katipah gathered up her field-sorrel, and went 
away home and ate her solitary midday meal with 
a mixture of pride and sorrow in her timid little 
breast. “ Some day, when I am grown brave,” she 
thought, “ Gamma-gata will come back to me; 
but he will not come yet.” 

In the evening Bimsha looked over the fence and 
jeered at her. “ Do not think, Katipah,” she cried, 
“ that you will ever get a husband, for all your soft 
looks ! You are too poor and unprofitable.” 

Katipah folded her meek little body together like 
a concertina when it shuts, and squatted to earth 
in great contentment of spirit. “ Silly Bimsha,” 
said she, “ I already have a husband, a fine one ! 
Ever so much finer than yours ! ” 

Bimsha turned pale and cold with envy to hear 
her say that, for she feared that Katipah was too 
good and simple to tell her an untruth, even in 
mockery. But she put a brave face upon the 
matter, saying only, “ I will believe in that fine 
husband of yours when I see him ! ” 

“ Oh, you will see him,” answered Katipah, “ if 
you look high enough ! But he is far away over 
your head, Bimsha ; and you will not hear him 
beating me at night, for that is not his way ! ” 

4 1 


At this soft answer Bimsha went back into her 
house in a fury, and Katipah laughed to herself. 
Then she sighed, and said, “ Oh, Gamma-gata, 
return to me quickly, lest my word shall seem false 
to Bimsha, who hates me ! ” 

Every day after this Bimsha thrust her face over 
the fence to say : “ Katipah, where is this fine 

husband of yours ? He does not seem to come 
home often.” 

Katipah answered slyly: “ He comes home late, 
when it is dark, and he goes away very early, almost 
before it is light. It is not necessary for his happi¬ 
ness that he should see you .” 

“ Certainly there is a change in Katipah,” thought 
Bimsha : “ she has become saucy with her tongue.” 
But her envious heart would not allow her to let 
matters be. Night and morning she cried to 
Katipah, “ Katipah, where is your fine husband ? ” 
And Katipah laughed at her, thinking to herself : 
“ To begin with, I will not be afraid of anything 
Bimsha may say. Let Gamma-gata know that ! ” 
And now every day she looked up into the sky 
to see what wind was blowing; but east, or north, 
or south, it was never the one wind that she looked 
for. 

The east wind came from the sea, bringing rain, 
and beat upon Katipah’s door at night. Then 
Katipah would rise and open, and standing in the 
downpour, would cry, “ East wind, east wind, go 
and tell your brother Gamma-gata that I am not 
afraid of you any more than I am of Bimsha ! ” 
One night the east wind, when she said that, 
pulled a tile off Bimsha’s house, and threw it at 

42 


her ; and Katipah ran in and hid behind the door 
in a great hurry. After that she had less to say 
when the east wind came and blew under her gable 
and rattled at her door. “ Oh, Gamma-gata,” she 
sighed, “ if I might only set eyes on you, I would 
fear nothing at all! ” 

When the weather grew fine again Katipah re¬ 
turned to the shore and flew her kite as she had 
always done before the love of Gamma-gata had 
entered her heart. Now and then, as she did so, 
the wind would change softly, and begin blowing 
from the west. Then little Katipah would puil 
lovingly at the string, and cry, “ Oh, Gamma-gata, 
have you got fast hold of it up there ? ” 

One day after dusk, when she, the last of all the 
flyers, hauled down her kite to earth, there she found 
a heron’s feather fastened among the strings. 
Katipah knew who had sent that, and kissed it a 
thousand times over ; nor did she mind for many 
days afterwards what Bimsha might say, because 
the heron’s feather lay so close to her heart, warm¬ 
ing it with the hope of Gamma-gata’s return. 

But as weeks and months passed on, and Bimsha 
still did not fail to say each morning, “ Katipah, 
where is your fine husband to-day ? ” the timid 
heart grew faint with waiting. “ Alas ! ” thought 
Katipah, “ if Heaven would only send me a child, 
I would show it to her ; she would believe me easily 
then ! However tiny, it would be big enough to 
convince her. Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing 
that I ask ! ” 

L And now every day and all day long she sent up 
her kite from the seashore, praying that a child 

43 


might be born to her and convince Bimsha of the 
truth. Everyone said : “ Katipah is mad about 
kite-flying ! See how early she goes and how late 
she stays : hardly any weather keeps her indoors.” 

One day the west wind came full-breathed over 
land and sea, and Katipah was among the first on 
the beach to send up her messenger with word to 
Gamma-gata of the thing for which she prayed. 
“ Gamma-gata,” she sighed, “ the voice of Bimsha 
afflicts me daily; my heart is bruised by the 
mockery she casts at me. Did I not love thee under 
the plum-tree, Gamma-gata ? Ask of Heaven, 
therefore, that a child may be born to me—ever so 
small let it be—and Bimsha will become dumb. 
Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I am 
asking ! ” 

All day long she let her kite go farther up into 
the sky than all the other kites. Overhead the 
wind sang in their strings like bees, or like the thin 
cry of very small children ; but Katipah’s was so 
far away she could scarcely see it against the blue. 
“ Gamma-gata,” she cried ; till the twilight drew 
sea and land together, and she was left alone. 

Then she called down her kite sadly; hand over 
hand she drew it bv the cord, till she saw it flutter- 
ing over her head like a great moth searching for 
a flower in the gloom. “ Wahoo ! wahoo ! ” she 
could hear the wind crying through its strings like 
the wailing of a very small child. 

It had become so dark that Katipah hardly knew 
what the kite had brought her till she touched the 
tiny warm limbs that lay cradled among the strings 
that netted the frame to its cord. Full of wonder 

44 



and delight, she lifted the windling out of its nest, 
and laid it in her bosom. Then she slung her kite 
across her shoulder, and ran home, laughing and 
crying for joy and triumph to think that all Bimsha’s 
mockery must now be at an end. 

So, quite early the next morning, Katipah sat 
herself down very demurely in the doorway, with 
her child hidden in the folds of her gown, and waited 
for Bimsha’s evil eye to look out upon her happi¬ 
ness. 

She had not long to wait. Bimsha came out of 
her door, and looking across to Katipah, cried, 
“ Well, Katipah, and where is your fine husband 
to-day ? ” 

“ My husband is gone out,” said Katipah, “ but 
if you care to look you can see my baby. It is ever 
so much more beautiful than yours.” 

Bimsha, when she heard that, turned green and 
yellow with envy; and there, plain to see, was 
Katipah holding up to view the most beautiful 
babe that ever gave the sunlight a good excuse for 
visiting this wicked earth. The mere sight of so 
much innocent beauty and happiness gave Bimsha 
a shock from which it took her three weeks to re¬ 
cover. After that she would sit at her window and 
for pure envy keep watch to see Katipah and the 
child playing together—the child which was so 
much more beautiful and well-behaved than her own. 

As for Katipah, she was so happy now that the 
sorrow of waiting for her husband’s return grew 
small. Day by day the west wind blew softly, and 
she knew that Gamma-gata was there, keeping watch 
over her and her child. 


45 



Every day she would say to the little one, “ Come, 
my plum-petal, my wind-flower, I will send thee up 
to thy father that he may see how fat thou art 
getting, and be proud of thee ! ” And going down 
to the shore, she would lay the child among the 
strings of her kite and send it up to where Gamma- 
gata blew a wide breath over sea and land. As it 
went she would hear the child crow with joy at 
being so uplifted from earth, and laughing to herself, 
she would think, “ When he sees his child so pat¬ 
terned after his own heart, Gamma-gata will be too 
proud to remain long away from me.” 

When she drew the child back to her out of the 
sky, she covered it with caresses, crying, “ Oh, my 
wind-blown one, my cloudlet, my sky-blossom, my 
little piece out of heaven, hast thou seen thy father, 
and has he told thee that he loves me ? ” And the 
child would crow with mysterious delight, being too 
young to tell anything it knew in words. 

Bimsha, out of her window, watched and saw r all 
this, not comprehending it : and in her evil heart a 
wish grew up that she might by some means put an 
end to all Katipah’s happiness. So one day towards 
evening, when Katipah, alone upon the shore, had 
let her kite and her little one go up to the fleecy 
edges of a cloud through which the golden sunlight 
was streaming, Bimsha came softly behind and with 
a sharp knife cut the string by winch alone the kite 
was held from falling. 

“ Oh, silly Bimsha ! ” cried Katipah, “ what have 
you done that for ? ” 

Up in air the kite made a far plunge forward, 
fluttered and stumbled in its course, and came shoot- 


ing headlong to earth. “ Oh dear ! ” cried Katipah, 
“ if my beautiful little kite gets torn, Bimsha, that 
will be your fault ! 55 

When the kite fell, it lay unhurt on one of the soft 
sandhills that ringed the bay ; but no sign of the 
child was to be seen. Katipah was laughing when 
she picked up her kite and ran home. And Bimsha 
thought, “ Is it witchcraft, or did the child fall into 
the sea ? ” 

In the night the West Wind came and tapped at 
Katipah’s window ; and rising from her bed, she 
heard Gamma-gata’s voice calling tenderly to her. 
When she opened the window to the blindness of 
the black night, he kissed her, and putting the little 
one in her arms, said, “ Wait only a little while 
longer, Katipah, and I will come again to you. 
Already you are learning to be brave.” 

In the morning Bimsha looked out, and there sat 
Katipah in her own doorway, with the child safe and 
sound in her arms. And, plain to see, he had on a 
beautiful golden coat and little silver wings were 
fastened to his feet, and his head was garnished with 
a wreath of flowers the like of which were never seen 
on earth. He was like a child of noble birth and 
fortune, and the small motherly face of Katipah 
shone with pride and happiness as she nursed him. 

“ Where did you steal those things ? ” asked 
Bimsha, “ and how did that child come back ? I 
thought he had fallen into the sea and been 
drowned.” 

“ Ah ! ” answered Katipah slyly, “ he was up in 
the clouds when the kite left him, and he came down 
with the rain last night. It is nothing wonderful. 

47 


You were foolish, Bimsha, if you thought that to 
fall into the clouds would do the child any harm. 
Up there you can have no idea how beautiful it is— 
such fields of gold, such wonderful gardens, such 
flowers and fruits : it is from there that all the 
beauty and wealth of the world must come. See 
all that he has brought with him ! and it is all your 
doing, because you cut the cord of my kite. Oh, 
clever Bimsha ! ” 

As soon as Bimsha heard that, she ran and got a 
big kite, and fastening her own child into the strings, 
started it to fly. “ Do not think,” cried the 
envious woman, “ that you are the only one whose 
child is to be clothed in gold ! My child is as good 
as yours any day ; wait, and you shall see ! ” 

So presently, when the kite was well up into the 
clouds, as Katipah’s kite had been, she cut the cord, 
thinking surely that the same fortune would be for 
her as had been for Katipah. But instead of that, 
all at once the kite fell headlong to earth, child and 
all; and when she ran to pick him up, Bimsha 
found that her son’s life had fallen forfeit to her own 
enviousness and folly. 

The wicked woman went green and purple with 
jealousy and rage ; and running to the chief magis¬ 
trate, she told him that while she was flying a kite 
with her child fastened to its back, Katipah had 
come and cut the string, so that by her doing the 
child was now dead. 

When the magistrate heard that, he sent and 
caused Katipah to be thrown into prison, and told 
her that the next day she should certainly be put to 
death. 


48 


Katipah went meekly, carrying her little son in 
one hand and her blue-and-green kite in the other, 
for that had become so dear to her she could not 
now part from it. And all the way to prison Bimsha 
followed, mocking her, and asking, “ Tell us, 
Katipah, where is your fine husband now ? ” 

In the night the West Wind came and tapped at 
the prison window, and called tenderly, “ Katipah, 
Katipah, are you there ? ” And when Katipah got 
up from her bed of straw and looked out, there was 
Gamma-gata once more, the beautiful youth whom 
she loved and had been wedded to, and had heard 
but had not seen since. 

Gamma-gata reached his hands through the bars 
and put them round her face. “ Katipah,” he said, 
“ you have become brave : you are fit now to become 
the wife of the West Wind. To-morrow you shall 
travel with me all over the world ; you shall not stay 
in one land any more. Now give me our son ; for 
a little while I must take him from you. To prove 
your courage you must find your own way out of 
this trouble which you have got into through making 
a fool of Bimsha.” So Katipah gave him the child 
through the bars of her prison window, and when 
he was gone lay down and slept till it became light. 

In the morning the chief magistrate and Bimsha, 
together with the whole populace, came to Katipah’s 
cell to see her led out to death. And when it was 
found that her child had disappeared, “ She is a 
witch ! ” they cried ; “ she has eaten it! ” And 
the chief magistrate said that, being a witch, instead 
of hanging she was to be burned. 

“ I have not eaten my child, and I am no witch,” 

49 


D 


said Katipah, as, taking with her her blue-and-green 
kite she trotted out to the place of execution. When 
she was come to the appointed spot she said to the 
chief magistrate, “ To every criminal it is permitted 
to plead in defence of himself ; but because I am 
innocent, am I not also allowed to plead ? ” The 
magistrate told her she might speak if she had any¬ 
thing to say. 

“ All I ask,” said Katipah, “ is that I may be al¬ 
lowed once more to fly my blue-and-green kite as I 
used to do in the days when I was happy; and I 
will show you soon that I am not guilty of what is 
laid to my charge. It is a very little thing that I 
ask.” 

So the magistrate gave her leave ; and there before 
all the people she sent up her kite till it flew high over 
the roofs of the towm. Gently the West Wind took 
it and blew it away towards the sea. “ Oh, Gamma- 
gata,” she whispered softly, “ hear me now, for I am 
not afraid.” 

The wind blew hard upon the kite, and pulled as 
though to catch it away, so Katipah twisted the cord 
once or twice round her waist that she might keep 
the safer hold over it. Then she said to the chief 
magistrate and to all the people that were assembled : 
“ I am innocent of all that is charged against me ; 
for, first, it was that wicked Bimsha herself who 
killed her own child.” 

“ Prove it! ” cried the magistrate. 

“ I cannot,” replied Katipah. 

“ Then you must die ! ” said the magistrate. 

“ In the second place,” went on Katipah, “ I did 
not eat my own child.” 


So 


“ Prove it ! ” cried the chief magistrate again. 

“ I will,” said Katipah ; “ O Gamma-gata, it is 
a very little thing that I ask.” 

Down the string of the kite, first a mere speck 
against the sky, then larger till plain for all to see 
came the missing one, slithering and sliding, with his 
golden coat, and the little silver wings tied to his 
ankles, and handfuls of howlers which he threw into 
his mother’s face as he came. “ Oh ! cruel chief 
magistrate,” cried Katipah, receiving the babe in 
her arms, “ does it seem that I have eaten him ? ” 

“ You are a witch ! ” said the chief magistrate, “ or 
how do you come to have a child that disappears and 
comes again from nowdiere ! It is not possible to 
permit such things to be : you and your child shall 
both be burned together ! ” 

Katipah drew softly upon the kite-string. “ Oh, 
Gamma-gata,” she cried, “ lift me up now very high, 
and I will not be afraid ! ” 

Then suddenly, before all eyes, Katipah was lifted 
up by the cord of the kite which she had wound 
about her waist; right up from the earth she was 
lifted till her feet rested above the heads of the 
people. 

Katipah, with her babe in her arms, swung softly 
through the air, out of reach of the hands stretched 
up to catch her, and addressed the populace in these 
words : 

“ Oh, cruel people, who will not believe innocence 
when it speaks, you must believe me now ! I am 
the wife of the West Wind—of Gamma-gata, the 
beautiful, the bearer of fine weather, who also brings 
back the wings that fly till the winter is over. Is 

5 1 


it well, do you think, to be at war with the West 
Wind ? 

“ Ah, foolish ones, I go now, for Gamma-gata calls 
me, and I am no longer afraid : I go to travel in 
many lands, whither he carries me, and it will be 
long before I return here. Many dark days are 
coming to you, when you shall not feel the west 
wind, the bearer of fine weather, blowing over you 
from land to sea ; nor shall you see the blossoms 
open white over the hills, nor feel the earth grow 
warm as the summer comes in, because the bringer 
of fair weather is angry with you for the foolishness 
which you have done. But when at last the west 
wind returns to you, remember that Katipah the 
poor and unprofitable one, is Gamma-gata’s wife, 
and that she has remembered, and has prayed for 
you.” 

And so saying, Katipah threw open her arms and 
let go the cord of the kite which held her safe. “ Oh, 
Gamma-gata,” she cried, “ I do not see your eyes, 
but I am not afraid ! ” And at that, even while she 
seemed upon the point of falling to destruction, 
there flashed into sight a fair youth with dark hair 
and garments full of a storm of flying petals, who, 
catching up Katipah and her child in his arms, 
laughed scorn upon those below, and roaring over 
the roofs of the town, vanished away seawards. 

When a chief magistrate and his people, after 
flagrant wrong-doing, become thoroughly cowed 
and frightened, they are apt also to be cruel. Poor 
Bimsha ! 


52 


THE BOUND PRINCESS 


I 

THE FIRE-EATERS 

A LONG time ago there lived a man who had 
the biggest head in the world. Into it he 
had crammed all the knowledge that might 
be gathered from the four corners of the earth. 
Everyone said he was the wisest man living. “ If 
I could only find a wife,” said the sage, “ as wise for 
a woman as I am for a man, what a race of head- 
pieces we could bring into the world ! ” 

He waited many years before any such mate 
could be found for him : yet, at last, found she was— 
one into whose head was bestowed all the wisdom 
that might be gathered from the four quarters of 
heaven. 

They were both old, but kings came from all sides 
to their wedding, and offered themselves as god¬ 
parents to the first-born of the new race that was 
to be. But, to the grief of his parents, the child, 
when he arrived, proved to be a simpleton ; and no 
second child ever came to repair the mistake of 
the first. 

That he was a simpleton was evident ; his head 
was small and his limbs were large, and he could run 
long before he could talk or do arithmetic. In the 
bitterness of their hearts his father and mother 
named him Noodle, without the aid of any royal 
god-parents; and from that moment, for any care 

S3 


they took in his bringing-up, they washed their wise 
hands of him. 

Noodle grew and prospered, and enjoyed life in 
his own foolish way. When his father and mother 
died within a short time of each other, they left him 
alone without any friend in the world. 

For a good while Noodle lived on just what he 
could find in the house, in a hand-to-mouth sort of 
way, till at last only the furniture and the four bare 
walls were left to him. 

One cold winter’s night he sat brooding over the 
fire, wondering where he should get food for the 
morrow, when he heard feet coming up to the door, 
and a knock striking low down upon the panel. 
Outside there was a faint chirping and crackling 
sound, and a whispering as of fire licking against the 
woodwork without. 

He opened the door and peered forth into the 
night. There, just before him, stood seven little 
men huddled up together ; three feet high they were, 
with bright yellow faces all shrivelled and sharp, 
and eyes whose light leaped and sank like candle 
flame before a gust. 

When they saw him, they shut their eyes and 
opened famished mouths at him, pointing inwards 
with flickering finger-tips, and shivering from head 
to foot with cold, although it seemed to the youth 
as if the warmth of a slow fire came from them. 
“ Alas ! ” said Noodle, in reply to these signs of 
hunger, “ I have not left even a crust of bread in the 
house to give you ! But at least come in and make 
yourselves warm! ” He touched the foremost, 
making signs for them all to enter. “ Ah,” he cried, 

54 

























■ 




I 


























“ what is this, and what are you, that the mere touch 
of you burns my finger ? ” 

Without answer they huddled tremblingly across 
the threshold ; but so soon as they saw the fire burn¬ 
ing on the hearth, they yelped all together like a 
pack of hounds, and, throwing themselves face 
forwards into the hot embers, began ravenously to 
lap up the flames. They lapped and lapped, and the 
more they lapped the more the fire sank away and 
died. Then with their flickering finger-tips they 
stirred the hot logs and coals, burrowing after the 
thin tapes and swirls of vanishing flame, and fetching 
them out like small blue eels still wriggling for 
escape. 

After each blue wisp had been gulped down, they 
sipped and sucked at their fingers for any least 
tricklet of flavour that might be left; and at the last 
seemed more famished than when they began. 

“ More, more, O wise Noodle, give us more ! ” 
they cried ; and Noodle threw the last of his fuel 
on the embers. 

They breathed round it, fanning it into a great 
blaze that leaped and danced up to the rafters; then 
they fell on, till not a fleck or a flake of it was left. 
Noodle, seeing them still famished, broke up a stool 
and threw that on the hearth. And again they 
flared it with their breath and gobbled off the flame. 
When the stool was finished he threw in the table, 
then the dresser, and after that the oak-chest and 
the window-seat. 

Still they feasted and were not fed. Noodle 
fetched an axe, and broke down the door ; then he 
wrenched up the boards from the floor, and pulled 

57 


the beams and rafters out of the ceiling ; yet, even 
so, his guests were not to be satisfied. 

“ I have nothing left,” he said, “ but the house 
itself ; but since you are still hungry you shall be 
welcome to it ! ” 

He scattered the fire that remained upon the 
hearth, and threw it out and about the room ; and 
as he ran forth to escape, up against all the walls 
and right through the roof rose a great crackling 
sheaf of flame. In the midst of the fire, Noodle 
could see his seven guests lying along on their bellies, 
slopping their hands in the heat, and lapping up the 
flames with their tongues. “ Surely,” he thought, 
“ I have given them enough to eat at last! ” 

After a while all the fire was eaten away, and only 
the black and smouldering ruins were left. Day 
came coldly to light, and there sat Noodle, without 
a home in the world, watching with considerate eye 
his seven guests finishing their inordinate repast. 

They all rose to their feet together, and came to¬ 
wards him bowing ; as they approached he felr the 
heat of their bodies as it had been seven furnaces. 

“ Enough, O wise Noodle ! ” said they, “ we have 
had enough ! ” “ That,” answered Noodle, “ is 

the least thing left me to wonder at. Go your ways 
in peace ; but first tell me, who are you ? ” They 
replied, “ We are the Fire-eaters : far from our own 
land, and strangers, you have done us this service ; 
what, now, can we do to serve you ? ” “ Put me 

in the way of a living,” said Noodle, “ and you will 
do me the greatest service of all.” 

Then the one of them who seemed to be chief 
took from his finger a ring having for its centre a 

58 


great firestone, and threw it into the snow, saying, 
“ Wait for three hours till the ring shall have had 
time to cool, then take it, and wear it; and what¬ 
ever fortune you deserve it shall bring you. For this 
ring is the sweetener of everything that it touches : 
bread it turns into rich meats, water into strong wine, 
grief into virtue, and labour into strength. Also, 
if you ever need our help, you have but to brandish 
the ring, and the gleam of it will reach us, and we will 
be with you wherever you may be.” 

With that they bowed their top-knots to the 
ground and departed, inverting themselves swiftly 
till only the shining print of seven pairs of feet re¬ 
mained, red-hot, over the place where they had been 
standing. 

Noodle waited for three hours ; then he took up 
the firestone ring, and putting it on his finger set 
out into the world. 

At the first door he came to, he begged a crust of 
bread, and touching it with the ring found it tasted 
like rich meats, well cooked and delicately flavoured. 
Also, the water which he drew in the hollow of his 
hand from a brook by the roadside tasted to him like 
strong wine. 


II 

THE GALLOPING PLOUGH 


N r OODLE went on many miles till he came 
near to a rich man’s farm. Though it was 

__ the middle of winter, all the fields showed 

crops of corn in progress; here it was in thin blade, 
and here green, but in full ear ; and here it was ripe 





and ready for harvest. “ How is this,” he said to 
the first man he met, “ that you have corn here 
in the middle of winter ? ” “ Ah ! ” said the man, 

“ you have not heard of the Galloping Plough ; 
you too have to fall under bondage to my master.” 
“ What is your master ? ” inquired Noodle, “ and 
in what bondage does he bind men ? ” “ My 

master, and your master that shall soon be,” an¬ 
swered the old man, “ is the owner of all this land and 
the farmer of it. He is rich and sleek and fat like 
his own furrows, for he has the Galloping Plough 
as his possession. Ah, that ! his a very miracle, a 
wonder, a thing to catch at the heartstrings of all 
beholders; it shines like a moonbeam, and is better 
than an Arab mare for swiftness; it warms the very 
ground that it enters, so that seeds take root and- 
spring, though it be the middle of winter. No man 
sees it but what he loses his heart to it, and sells 
his freedom for the possession of it. All here are 
men like myself who have become slaves because 
of that desire. You also, when you see it, will be- 
..come slave to it.” 

Noodle went on through the summer and the 
spring corn, till he came to bare fields. Ahead of 
him on a hill-top he saw the farmer himself, sleek 
and rosy, and of full paunch, lolling like a lord at 
his ease ; yet with a working eye in the midst of 
his leisure. 

To and fro, up to him and back, shot a silver 
gleam over the purple brown of the fields ; and 
Noodle’s heart gave a thump at the sight,, for the 
spell of the Galloping Plough was on him. 

Now and then he heard a clear sound that 

60 


startled him with its note. It was like the sweet 
whistling cry of a bird many times multiplied. Ever 
when the silver gleam of the Plough had run its 
farthest from the farmer, the cry sounded ; and at 
the sound the gleam wavered and stayed and flew 
back dartingly to the farmer’s side. So Noodle 
understood how this was the farmer’s signal for the 
Plough to return ; and the Plough knew it as a 
horse its master’s voice, and came so fast that the 
wind whistled against its silver side. 

As he watched, Noodle’s heart went down into 
the valley and up the hillside, following in the track 
of the Galloping Plough. “ I can never be happy 
again,” thought he; “ either I must possess it, or 
must die.” 

He came to the farmer where he sat calling his 
Plough to him and letting it go ; and the farmer 
smiled, the wide indulgent smile of a man who 
knows that a bargain is about to fall his way. 

“ What is the price,” asked Noodle, “ of yonder 
Galloping Plough, that runs like an Arab mare, and 
returns to you at your call ? ” 

Said the farmer, “ A year’s service; and if the 
Plough will follow you, it is yours; if not, then you 
must be my bondman until you die ! ” 

Noodle looked once the way of the Galloping 
Plough, and his heart flapped at his side like a sail 
which the wind drops and lets go ; and he had no 
thought or will left in him but to be where the 
Galloping Plough was. So he closed hands on the 
bargain, to be the farmer’s servant either for a year, 
or for his whole life. 

For a year he worked upon the farm, and all the 

61 


while plotted how he might win the Galloping 
Plough to himself. The farmer kept no watch 
upon it, nor put it under lock and key, for the 
Plough recognised no voice but his own, nor went 
nor came save at his bidding. In the night Noodle 
would go down to the shed or field where it lay, 
and whistle to it, trying to put forth notes of the 
same magical power as those which came through 
the farmer’s lips. 

But no sound that came from his lips ever stroked 
life into its silver sides. The year was nearly run 
out, and Noodle was in despair. 

Then he remembered the firestone ring, the 
Sweetener. “ Maybe,” said he, “ since it changes 
to sweetness whatever I eat and drink, it will 
sweeten my voice also, so that the Plough will 
obey.” So he put the ring between his lips and 
whistled; and at the sound his heart turned a 
somersault for joy, for he felt that out of his mouth 
the farmer’s magic had been over-topped and con- 

The Galloping Plough stirred faintly from the 
furrow where it lay, breaking the ground and 
marring its smooth course. Then it shook its head 
slowly, and returned impassively to rest. 

In the morning the farmer came and saw the 
broken earth close under the Plough’s nose. Noodle, 
hiding among the corn hard by, heard him say, 
“ What hast thou heard in the night, O my moon¬ 
beam, my miracle, that thy lily-foot has trodden 
up the ground ? Hast thou forgotten whose hand 
feeds thee, whose corn it is thou lovest, whose 
heart’s care also cherishes thee ? ” 

62 



























* 


The farmer went away, and presently came back 
bearing a bowl of corn; and Noodle saw the 
Plough lift its head to its master’s palm, and feed 
like a horse on the grain. 

Then Noodle, gay of heart, waited till it was 
night, and surely his time was short, for on the 
morrow his wages were to be paid, and the Plough 
was to be his, or else he was to be the farmer’s bond- 
servant for the rest of his life. He took with him 
three handfuls of corn, and went down to where 
the Plough stood waiting by the furrow. Shaping 
his lips to the ring, he whistled gently like a lover, 
and immediately the Plough stirred, and lifted up 
its head as if to look at him. 

“ O my moonbeam, my miracle,” whispered 
Noodle, “ wilt thou not come to the one that feeds 
thee ? ” and he held out a handful of corn. But 
the Plough gave no regard to him or his grain : 
slowly it moved away from him back into the 
furrow. 

Then Noodle laughed softly and dropped his 
ring, the Sweetener, into the hand that held the 
grain ; and barely had he offered the corn before 
he felt the silver Plough nozzling at his palm, 
and eating as a horse eats from the hand of its 
master. 

Then he whistled again, placing the Sweetener 
back between his lips ; and the Galloping Plough 
sprang after him, and followed at his heels like a 
dog. 

So, finding himself its master, he bid it stay for 
the night ; and in the morning he said to the 
farmer, “ Give me my wages, and let me go ! ” 

e 6 s 


And the farmer laughed, saying, “ Take your wages, 
and go ! ” 

Then Noodle took off his ring, the Sweetener, 
and laid it between his lips and blew through it; 
and up like a moonbeam, and like an Arab mare, 
sprang the Galloping Plough at his call. So he 
leaped upon its back, crying, “ Carry me away out 
of this land, O thou moonbeam, and miracle of 
beauty, and never slacken nor stay except I bid 
thee ! ” 

Vainly the farmer, borne down on a torrent of 
rage and amazement, whistled his best, and threw 
corn and rice from the rear ; for the whistling of 
Noodle was sweeter to the ear, and his corn sweeter 
to the taste, and he nearer to the heart of the 
Galloping Plough than was the old master whom 
it left behind. 


Ill 

THE THIRSTY WELL 

S O they escaped, slitting the swift hours with 
ungovernable speed. The furrow they two 
made in the world that day, as they went 
shooting over the round of it, was called in after 
times the Equator, and men still know it by the 
heat of it, though it has since been covered over 
by the dust of ages. 

To Noodle, as he went careering round it, the 
whole world’s circuit ran in a line across his brain, 
entering his vision and passing through it as a 
thread through the needle’s eye. Nor would he 

66 


of his own will ever have stopped his galloping, but 
that at the completion of the first round a mighty 
thirst took hold of him. “ O my moonbeam,” he 
said, choking behind parched lips, and sick at heart, 
“ check me, or I faint! ” And the Galloping 
Plough stopped at once, and set him to earth in a 
green space under the shadow of overhanging 
boughs. 

He found himself in a richly grown garden, a 
cool paradise for a traveller to rest in. Close at 
hand and inviting to the eye was a well with a 
bucket slung ready to be let down. Noodle had 
little thought of seeking for the owner of the garden 
to beg for a drink, since water is an equal gift to 
all and the right of any man ; but as he drew near 
he found the means to it withheld from him, the 
lid being fast locked. He went on in search of 
the owner, till at length he came upon the same 
lying half asleep under a thorn-bush with the key 
in her hand. She was an old woman, so withered 
and dry, she looked as if no water could have ever 
passed her lips. 

When Noodle asked for a drink from the well, 
she looked at him bright and sharp, and said : “ Be¬ 
fore any man drinks of my water he must make 
a bargain with me.” “ YVhat is the bargain ? ” 
asked Noodle ; and she led him down to the well. 

Then she unlocked the lid and bade him look in ; 
and at the sight Noodle knew for a second time 
that his heart had been stolen from him, and that 
to be happy he must taste that water or die. 

Again he asked, with his eyes intent upon the 
blue wrimpling of the water in the well’s depth, 

67 


“ What is the bargain ? ” And the old woman 
answered, “ If you fail to draw water out of the 
well you must fling yourself into it.” For answer 
Noodle swung down the bucket, lowering it as fast 
as it would go ; then he set both hands to the 
windlass and wound. 

He heard the water splashing off the sides of the 
bucket all the way up, as the shortening rope 
brought it near ; but when he drew it over the 
well’s brink wonder and grief held him fast, for the 
bucket was as empty as vanity. From behind him 
came a noise of laughter, and there was the old 
witch running round and round in a circle; and 
everywhere a hedge of thorns came shooting up to 
enclose him and keep him fast for her. 

“ What a trap I am in ! ” thought Noodle ; but 
once more he lowered the bucket, and once more 
it returned to him empty. 

The old woman climbed up into the thorn-hedge, 
and sat on its top, singing : 

“ Overground, underground, round-about spell; 

The Thirsty has come to the Thirsty Well! ” 

Again Noodle let down the bucket; and this 
time as he drew it up he looked over into the well’s 
heart, and saw all the way up the side a hundred 
blue arms reaching out crystal scallops and draw¬ 
ing water out of the bucket as hard as they could 
go. He saw thick lips like sea-anemones thrust out 
between the crevices of the wall, sucking the crystals 
dry as fast as they were filled. “ Truly,” he said 
to himself, “ this is a thirsty well, but myself am 
thirstier ! ” 


68 
























When he had drawn up the bucket empty for 
the third time, he stood considering ; and at last 
he fastened to it the firestone ring, the Sweetener, 
and lowered it once more. Then he laughed to 
himself as he drew up, and felt the bucket lightening 
at every turn till it touched the surface of things. 

Empty he found it, with only his firestone hang- 
ing by the rim, and once again he let it down to be 
refilled. But this time as he wound up, nothing 
could keep him from letting a curious eye go over 
the brink, to see how the Well-folk fared over their 
wine ; and in what he beheld there was already 
comfort for his soul. 

The blue arms went like oars out of unison ; like 
carpet-beaters stricken in the eyes and throat with. 
dust, they beat foolishly against the sides and bottom 
of the bucket, shattering and letting fall their 
goblets in each unruly attempt. And because 
Noodle wound leniently at the rope, willing that 
they should have their fill, at the last gasp they 
were able to send the bucket empty to the top. It 
was the last staving off of destiny that lay in their 
power to make ; thereafter wine conquered them. 

Quickly Noodle drew out the ring, and sent the 
bucket flying on its last errand. It smacked the 
water, heeled over, and dipped under a full draught. 
Then Noodle spun the windlass with the full pinch 
of his energies, calling on the bucket to ascend. 
He heard the water spilling from its sides, and knew 
that the blue arms were there, battling to arrest it 
as it flew, and to pay him back once more with 
emptiness and mockery. Yet in spite of them the 
bucket hasted and lightened not, but was drawn 

7 1 


up to the well’s head brimming largely, and wink¬ 
ing a blue eye joyously to the light of day. 

Over head and ears Noodle plunged for the 
quenching of his thirst, nor stayed nor drew back 
till his head had smitten upon the bottom of the 
bucket in his pursuit of the draught. Then it was 
apparent that only a third of the water remained, 
the rest having obeyed the imperative suction of 
his throat, and that the thirsty well had at last 
found a master under the eye of heaven. 

In the depth of the bucket the water flashed like 
a burning sapphire and swung circling, curling and 
coiling, tossing this way and that, as if struggling 
to get out. At last with a laugh it threw down the 
bucket, and tore back into the well with a crash 
like thunder. 

Up from the well rose a chant of voices : 

“ Under Heaven, over Hell, 

You have broken the spell, 

You are lord of the Well.” 

Noodle stepped over the brink of his new realm, 
calling the Well-folk to reach hands for him and 
bear him down. All round, the blue arms started 
out, catching him and handing him on from one to 
another ladderwise, down, and down, and down. 
As he went, anemone lips came out of the crannies 
in the wall, and kissed his feet and hands in token 
of allegiance. * c You are lord of the well! ” they 
said, as they passed him each one to the next. 

He came to the bottom of the well; under his 
feet, wherever he stepped upon its waters, hands 
came up and sustained him. The knowledge of 

7 2 


everything that was there had become his. “ Give 
me,” he said, “ the crystal cup that is for him who 
holds kingship over you ; so shall I be lord of you 
in all places wherever I go.” 

A blue arm reached down and drew up from the 
water a small crystal, that burned through the 
darkness w T ith a blue fire, and gave it to Noodle. 
“ Now I am your king, however far from you ! ” 
said Noodle. And they answered, chanting : 

“ Under Heaven, over Hell, 

You have broken the spell. 

You are lord of the Well.” 


“ Lift me up ! ” said he ; and the blue arms 
caught him and lifted him up; from one to 
another they passed him in ascending circles, till 
he came to the mouth of the well. 

There overhead was the old witch, crouching and 
looking in to know what had become of him ; and 
her hair hung far down over her eyes into the well. 
He caught her to him by it over the brink. “ Old 
witch,” he said, “ you must change places with me 
now ! ” and he tossed her dowm to the bottom of 
the well. 

She went like a falling shuttlecock, shrieking as 
she fell; and as she struck the water, the drowned 
bodies of the men she had sent there came to the 
surface, and caught her by the feet and hair, and 
drew her down, making an end of her, as she also 
had made of them. 


73 


IV 

THE PRINCESS MELILOT 


W HEN Noodle, carrying the crystal with 
him, set foot once more upon dry land, 
straightway he was again upon the back 
of the Galloping Plough, with the world flying 
away under him. But now weariness came over 
him, and his head weighed this way and that, so 
that earth and sky mixed themselves before his gaze, 
and he was so drugged with sleep that he had no 
wits to bid the Plough slacken from its speed. 
Therefore it happened that as they passed a wood, 
a hanging bough caught him, and brushed him like 
a feather from his place, landing him on a green 
bosom of grass, where he slept the sleep of the 
weary, nor ever lifted his head to see the Plough 
fast disappearing over hill and valley and plain, out 
of sound of his voice or sight of his eye. 

When Noodle awoke and found that the Plough 
was gone, he was bitter against himself for his folly. 
“ So poor a use to make of so noble a steed ! ” he 
cried ; “ no wonder it has gone from me to seek 
for a worthier master ! If by good fortune I find 
it again, needs must I do great things by its aid to 
be worthy of its service.” So he set out, follow¬ 
ing the furrow of its course, determined, however 
far he must seek, to journey on till he found it. 

For a whole year he travelled, till at length he 
came, footsore and weary, to a deserted palace 
standing in the midst of an overgrown garden. 
The great gates, which lay wide open, were overrun 

74 


with creepers, and the paths were green with weeds. 
That morning he had thought that he saw far 
away on the hills the gleam of his silver Plough, and 
now hope rose high, for he could see by its track 
that the Plough had passed before him into the 
garden of the palace. “ O my moonbeam,” he 
thought, “ is it here I shall find you at last ? ” 
Within the garden there was a sound of cross 
questions and crooked answers, of many talking 
with loud voices, and of one weeping apart from 
the rest. When he got quite close, he was struck 
still with awe, and joy, and wonder. For first there 
lay the Galloping Plough in the middle of a green 
lawn, and round it a score of serving-men, tugging 
at it and trying to make it move on. Near by 
stood an old woman, wringing her hands and beg¬ 
ging them to leave it alone : “ For,” cried she, 
“ if the Plough touches but the feet of the Prin¬ 
cess, she will be uprooted, and will presently wither 
away and die. Of what use is it to break one, if the 
other enchantments cannot be broken ? ” 

In the centre of the lawn grew a bower of roses, 
and beneath the bower stood the loveliest princess 
that ever eye beheld ; but she stood there motion¬ 
less, and without sign of life. She seemed neither 
to hear, nor see, nor breathe ; her feet were rooted 
to the ground ; though they seemed only to rest 
lightly under her weight upon the grass, no man, 
nor a hundred men, could stir her from where she 
stood. And, as the spell that held her fast bound 
to the spot, even so was the spell that sealed her 
senses,—no man might lift it from her. When 
Noodle set eyes upon her he knew that for the third 

75 


time his heart had been stolen from him, and that 
to be happy he must possess her, or die. 

He ran quickly to the old woman, w T ho, unre¬ 
garded by the serving-men, stood weeping and 
wringing her hands. “ Tell me,” said Noodle, 
“ who is this sleeper who stands enchanted and 
rooted like a flow T er to earth ? And who are you, 
and these others who work and cry at cross pur¬ 
poses ? ” 

The old woman cried from a wide mouth : “ It 
is my mistress, the honey-jewel of my heart, whom 
you see here so grievously enchanted. All the gifts 
of the fairies at her christening did not prevent 
what was foretold of her at her birth. In her 
seventeenth year, as you see her now, so it was told 
of her that she should be.” 

“ Does she live ? ” asked Noodle ; “ is she 

asleep ? She is not dead ; when will she wake ? 
Tell me, old woman, her history, and how this fate 
has come upon her.” 

“ She was the daughter of the king of this country 
by his first wife,” said the old woman, “ and heir 
to the throne after his death ; but w T hen her mother 
died the king married again, and the three daughters 
he had by his second wdfe were jealous of the 
beauty, and charm, and goodness which raised their 
sister so high above them in the estimation of all 
men. So they asked their mother to teach them 
a spell that should rob Melilot of her charms, and 
make them useless in the eyes of men. And their 
mother, who was wise in such arts, taught to each 
of them a spell, so that together they might work 
their will. 


76 



JmSm 

Hn \ v l*L' ■. \ m 

iff,' It li 
W f v 

§1 i A 

m m 

\ V. 



V m 
























“ One day they came running to Melilot, and 
said, ‘ Come and play with us a new game that 
our mother has taught us ! ’ Then they began 
turning themselves into flowers. 4 I will be a 
hollyhock ! ’ said one. ‘ And I will be a colum¬ 
bine ! ’ said another; and saying the spell over 
each other they became each the flower they had 
named. 

“ Then they unloosed the spells, and became 
themselves again. 4 Oh, it is so nice to be a 
flower ! 9 they cried, laughing and clapping their 
hands. But Melilot knew no spell. 

“ At last, seeing how her sisters turned into 
flowers, and came back safe again, ‘ I will be a 
rose ! ’ she cried ; ‘ turn me into a rose and out 
again ! 5 

“ Then her three sisters joined their tongues to¬ 
gether, and finished the spell over her. And so 
soon as she had become a rose-tree, the three sisters 
turned into three moles, and went down under the 
earth and gnawed at the roots. 

“ Then they came up, and took their own forms 
again, and sang,— 


“ ‘ Sister, sister, here you are now, 

Till the ploughman come with the Galloping Plough ! ’ 


“ Then they turned into bees, and sucked out 
the honey from the roses, and coming to them¬ 
selves again they sang,— 


Sister, here you must doze and doze, 

Till they bring you a flower of the Burning Rose !’ 

79 


u t 


“ Then they shook the dewdrops out of her eyes, 
crying — 

“ ‘ Sister, your brain lies under our spell, 

Till water be brought from the Thirsty Well! ’ 


“ Then they took the top blossom of all, and broke 
it to pieces, and threw the petals away as they cried,— 

“ ‘ Sister, your life goes down for a term, 

Till they bring you breath from the Camphor-Worm ! ’ 

“ And when they had done all this, they turned 
her back into her true shape, and left her standing 
even as you see her now, without warmth, or sight, 
or memory, or motion, dead saving for her beauty, 
that never changes or dies. And here she must 
stand till the spells which have been fastened upon 
her have been unloosed. No long time after, the 
wickedness of the three sisters and of their cruel 
mother was discovered to the king, and they were all 
put to death for the crime. Yet the ill they had 
done remained; and the king’s grief became so 
great to see his loved daughter standing dead before 
him that he removed with his court to another place, 
and left this palace to the care of only a few serving- 
men, and myself to keep watch and guard over the 
Princess. 

“ So now four-fold is the spell that holds her, 
and to break the lightest of them the water of the 
Thirsty Well is needed ; with two of its drops laid 
upon her eyes memory will come back to her, and 
her mind will remember of the things of the past. 
And for the breaking of the second spell is needed 

80 



a blossom of the Burning Rose, and the plucking of 
that no man’s hand can achieve ; but when the Rose 
is laid upon her breast, her heart will belong to the 
world once more, and' will beat again under her 
bosom. And for the breaking of the third spell 
one must bring the breath of the Camphor-Worm 
that has lain for a whole year inside its body, and 
breathe it between her lips ; then she will breathe 
again, and all her five senses will return to her. And 
for the last spell only the Galloping Plough can 
uproot her back to life, and free her feet for the 
ways of earth. Now, here we have the Galloping 
Plough with no man who can guide it, and what aid 
can it be ? If these fools should be able to make it 
so much as but touch the feet of my dear mistress, 
she will be mown down like grass, and die presently 
for lack of earth ; for only the three other charms 
I have told you of can put whole life back into her.” 

“ As for the mastery of the Plough,” said Noodle, 
“ I will fetch that from them in a breath. See, in 
a moment, how marvellous will be the uplifting of 
their eyes ! ” He put to his lips the firestone ring— 
the Sweetener—and blew but one note through it. 
Then in a moment the crowd divided hither and 
thither, with cries of wonder and alarm, for the 
Plough turned and bounded back to its master 
quickly, as an Arab mare at the call of her owner. 

The old woman, weeping for gladness, cried : 
“ Thou art master of the Plough ! art thou master 
of all the other things as well ? ” 

He said : “ Of one thing only. Tell me of the 
Burning Rose and the Camphor-Worm ; what and 
where are they ? For I am the master of the ends 

81 


F 


of the earth by reason of the speed with which this 
carries me ; and I am lord of the Thirsty Well, and 
have the Fire-eaters for my friends.” 

The old woman clapped her hands, and blessed 
him for his youth, and his wisdom, and his courage. 
“ First,” she said, “ restore to the Princess her mem¬ 
ory by means of the water of the Thirsty Well; then 
I will show you the way to the Burning Rose, for 
the easier thing must be done first.” 

Then Noodle drew out the crystal and breathed 
in it, calling on the Well-folk for the two drops of 
water to lay on Princess Melilot’s eyes. Immediately 
in the bottom of the cup appeared two blue drops of 
water, that came climbing up the sides of the glass 
and stood trembling together on the brim. And 
Noodle, touching them with the firestone ring 
to make the memory of things sweet to her, bent 
back the Princess’s face, and let them fall under her 
closed lids. 

“ Look ! ” cried the faithful nurse, “ light trembles 
within those eyes of hers ! In there she begins to 
remember things; but as yet she sees and hears noth¬ 
ing. Now it is for you to be swift and fetch her 
the blossom of the Burning Rose. Be wise, and you 
shall not fail! ” 


V 

THE BURNING ROSE 

S HE told him how he was to go, across the desert 
southward, till he found a giant, longer in 
length than a day’s journey, lying asleep upon 
the sand. Over his head, it was told, hung a cloud, 

82 


covering him from the heat and resting itself against 
his brows; within the cloud was a dream, and within 
the dream grew the garden of the Burning Rose. 
Than this she knew no more, nor by what means 
Noodle might gain entrance and become possessor 
of the Rose. 

Noodle waited for no more; he mounted upon 
the Galloping Plough, and pressed away over the 
desert to the south. For three days he travelled 
through parched places, refreshing himself by the 
way with the water of the Thirsty Well, calling on 
the Well-folk for the replenishment of his crystal, 
and turning the draught to wine by the sweetness 
of his magic ring. 

At length he saw a cloud rising to him from a 
distance ; like a great opal it hung motionless be¬ 
tween earth and heaven. Coming nearer he saw 
the giant himself stretched out for a day’s journey 
across the sand. His head lay under the colours of 
the dawn, and his feet were covered with the dusk 
of evening, and over his middle shone the noonday 
sun. 

Under the giant’s shadow Noodle stopped, and 
gazed up into the cloud ; through the outer covering 
of its mists he saw what seemed to be balls of fire, 
and knew that within lay the dream and the garden 
of the Burning Rose. 

The giant laughed and muttered in his sleep, for 
the dream was sweet to him. “ O Rose,” he said, 

“ O sweet Rose, what end is there of thy sweetness ? 
How innumerable is the dance of the Roses of my 
Rose-garden ! ” 

Noodle caught hold of the ropes of the giant’s 

83 


hair, and climbed till he sat within the hollow of his 
right ear. Then he put to his lips the ring, the 
Sweetener, and sang till the giant heard him in his 
sleep ; and the sweet singing mixed itself with the 
sweetness of the Rose in the giant’s brain, and he 
muttered to himself, saying : “ O bee, O sweet bee, 
O bee in my brain, what honey wilt thou fetch for 
me out of the roses of my Rose-garden ? ” 

So, more and more, Noodle sweetened himself 
to the giant, till the giant passed him into his brain 
and into the heart of the dream, even into the 
garden of the Burning Rose. 

Far down below the folds of the cloud, Noodle 
remembered that the Galloping Plough lay waiting 
a call from him. “ When I have stolen the Rose,” 
thought he, “ I may need swift heels for my flight.” 
And he put the Sweetener to his lips and whistled 
the Plough up to him. 

It came, cleaving the encirclement of clouds like 
a silver gleam of moonlight, and for a moment, 
where they parted, Noodle saw a rift of blue sky, 
and the light of the outer world clear through their 
midst. 

The giant turned uneasily in his sleep, and the 
garden of the Burning Rose rocked to its foundations 
as the edge of things real pierced into it. 

“ While I stay here there is danger,” thought 
Noodle. “ Surely I must make haste to possess my¬ 
self of the Rose and to escape ! ” 

All round him was a garden set thick with rose- 
trees in myriads of blossom, rose behind rose as far 
as the eye could reach, and the fragrance of them lay 
like a heavy curtain of sleep upon the senses. Noodle, 

84 




















beginning to feel drowsy, stretched out his hand in 
haste to the nearest flower, lest in a little while he 
should be no more than a part of the giant’s dream. 
“ O beloved Heart of Melilot! ” he cried, and crushed 
his fingers upon the stem. 

The whole bough crackled and sprang away at his 
touch ; the Rose turned upon him, screaming and 
spouting fire ; a noise like thunder filled all the air. 
Every rose in the garden turned and spat flame at 
where he stood. His face and his hands became 
blistered with the heat. 

Leaping upon the back of his Plough, he cried, 
“ Carry me to the borders of the garden where there 
are open spaces ! The price of the Princess is upon 
my head ! ” 

The Plough bounded this way and that, searching 
for some outlet by which to escape. It flew in spirals 
and circles, it leaped like a flea, it burrowed like a 
mole, it ploughed up the rose-trees by the roots. 
But so soon as it had passed they stood up unharmed 
again, and to whatever point of refuge the Plough 
fled, that way they all turned their heads and darted 
out vomitings of fire. 

In vain did Noodle summon the Well-folk to his 
aid ; his crystal shot forth fountains of water that 
turned into steam as they rose, and fell back again, 
scalding him. 

Then with two deaths threatening to devour him, 
he brandished the ring, calling upon the Fire-eaters 
for their aid. 

They laughed as they came. “ Here is food for 
you ! ” he cried. “ Multiply your appetites about 
me, or I shall be consumed in these flames! ” 

87 


“ Brandish again ! ” cried they—the same seven 
whom he had fed. “ We are not enough ; this fire 
is not quenchable.” 

Noodle brandished till the whole garden swarmed 
with their kind. One fastened himself upon every 
rose, a gulf opposing itself to a torrent. All sight 
of the conflagration disappeared ; but within there 
went a roaring sound, and the bodies of the Fire 
eaters crackled, growing large and luminous the 
while. 

“ Do your will quickly and begone ! ” cried the 
Fire-eaters. “ Even now we swell to bursting with 
the pumping in of these fires ! ” 

Noodle seized on a rose to which one hung, 
sucking out its heats. He tugged, but the strong 
fibres held. Then he locked himself to the back 
of the Plough, crying to it and caressing its speed 
with all names under heaven, and beseeching it in 
the name of Melilot to break free. And the Plough 
giving but one plunge, the Rose came away into 
Noodle’s hand, panting and a prisoner. All blushing 
it grew and radiant, with a soft inner glow, and an 
odour of incomparable sweetness. He seemed to see 
the heart of Melilot beating before him. 

But now there came a blast of fire behind him, for 
the Fire-eaters had disappeared, and all was whirling 
and shaken before his eyes; and the Plough sped 
desperately over earthquake and space. For the 
plucking of the Rose had awakened the giant from 
his sleep ; and the dream shrivelled and spun away 
in a whirl of flame-coloured vapours. Leaping into 
clear day out of the unravelment of its mists, Noodle 
found himself and his Plough launching over an edge 

88 


of precipice for a downward dive into space. The 
giant’s hair, standing upright from his head in the 
wrath and horror of his awakening, made a forest 
ending in his forehead that bowered them to right 
and to left. Quitting it they slid ungovernably 
over the bulge of his brow, and went at full spurt 
for the abyss. 

Dexterously the Plough steered its descent, catch¬ 
ing on the bridge and furrowing the ridge of the 
nose ; nine leagues were the duration of a second. 

The giant, thinking some venomous parasite was 
injuring his flesh, aimed, and a moment too late had 
thumped his fist upon the place. But already the 
Plough skirting the amazed opening of his mouth was 
lost in the trammels of his beard. Thence, as it 
escaped the rummaging of his fingers, it flew scouring 
his breast, and inflicted a flying scratch over the re¬ 
gions of his abdomen. Then, still believing it to be 
the triumphal procession of a flea, he pursued it to 
his thigh, and mistaking the shadow for the sub¬ 
stance allowed it yet again to escape. At his knee¬ 
cap there was but a hair’s-breadth between Noodle 
and the weight of his thumb ; but thereafter the 
Plough out-distanced his every effort, and, with 
Noodle preserved whole and alive, sped fast and far, 
bearing the Burning Rose to the heart of the beloved 
Melilot. 

The crone was aware of his coming before she 
heard him, or saw the gleam of his Plough running 
beam-like over the land. From her seat by the 
Princess’s bower she clapped her hands, and spring¬ 
ing to his neck ere he alighted : “ A long way off, 
and a long time off,” she cried, “ I knew what for- 

89 


tune was with you ; for when you plucked off the 
Rose, and bore it out of the heart of the dream, 
the scent of it filled the world ; and I felt the sweet¬ 
ness of youth once more in my blood.” 

Then she led him to the Princess, and bade him 
lay the Rose in her breast, that her heart might be 
won back into the world. Looking at her face again, 
Noodle saw how memory had made it more beautiful 
than ever, and how between her lips had grown the 
tender parting of a smile. Then he laid the Rose 
where the movement of the heart should be ; and 
presently under the white breast rose the music of 
its beating. 

“ Ah ! ” cried the old nurse, weeping for happiness, 
“ now her heart that loved me is come back, and I 
can listen all day to the sound of it ! You have 
brought memory to her, you have brought love ; 
now bring breath, and the awakening of her five 
senses. Surely the light of her eyes will be your 
reward ! ” 

VI 

THE CAMPHOR-WORM 

“ f | ^ELL me quickly of the Camphor-Worm,” 
cried the youth as he feasted his eyes on 
JL the Princess’s loveliness, made more unen¬ 
durable by the awakening within of love. “ Where 
and what is it ? ” “ It is not so far as was the way 

to the Burning Rose,” answered the crone ; “ an 
hour on the back of the Plough shall bring it near to 

90 


you ; but the danger and difficulty of this quest is 
more, not less. For to reach the Camphor-Worm 
you need to be a diver in deep waters, whose weight 
crushes a man ; and to touch its lips you must 
master the loathing of your nature ; and to carry 
away its breath you must have strength of will and 
endurance beyond what is mortal.” “ You trouble 
me with things I need not know,” cried Noodle. 
“ Tell me,” he said, “ how I may reach the Camphor- 
Worm ; and of it and its ways.” 

“ By this path, and by that,” said the old woman, 
pointing him, “ go on till you come to the thick 
waters of the Bitter Lake; they are blacker than 
night, and their weight is heavier than lead, and in 
the depths dwells the Camphor-Worm. Once a 
year, when the air is sweetest with the scents of 
summer, she rises to breathe, lifting her black snout 
through the surface of the waters. Then she draws 
fresh air into her lungs, flavoured with leaves and 
flowers, and after she has breathed it in she lets go the 
last bubble of the breath she drew from the summer 
of the year before; and it is this bubble of breath 
alone that will give back life to the five senses 
of Princess Melilot. But the Worm’s time for 
rising is far ; and how you shall bear the weight 
in the depths of those waters, or make the Worm 
give up the bubble before her time, or at last bear 
back the bubble to lay it on the lips of the Princess 
so that she may wake,—these are things I know not 
the way of, for to my eyes they seem dark with 
difficulty and peril.” 

Then Noodle, opening the petals of the Burning 
Rose as it lay upon the heart of Melilot, drew out 

9 1 


honey from its centre, filling his hand with the golden 
crumblings of fragrance ; and he leapt upon the 
Galloping Plough, urging it in the way the Princess’s 
nurse had pointed out to him. As they went he 
caressed it with all the names under heaven, stroking 
it with his hand and praising it for the delicacy of 
its steering : saying, “ O my moonbeam, if thou 
wouldst save the life of thy master, or restore the 
five senses of the Princess Melilot, thou must surpass 
thyself to-day. Listen, thou heaven-sent limb, 
thou miracle of quicksilver, and have a long mind 
to my words; for in a short while I shall have no 
speech left in me till the thing be done, and the 
deliverance, from head to feet, of my Beloved 
accomplished.” 

Even while he spoke they came to the edge of the 
Bitter Lake—a small pool, but its waters were blacker 
than night, and its heart heavier than lead. Then 
Noodle leapt down from the Plough, and caressed 
it for the last time, saying : “ Set thy face for the 
garden where the Princess Melilot is; and when I am 
come back to thee speechless out of the Lake and 
am striding thee once more, then wait not for a word 
but carry me to her with more speed than thou hast 
ever mustered to my aid till now ; go faster than 
wind or lightning or than the eye of man can see ! 
So, by good fortune, I may live till I reach her lips ; 
but if thou tarry at all I am a dead man. And when 
thou art come to Melilot set thy share beneath the 
roots of her feet, and take her up to me out of the 
ground. Do this tenderly, but abate not speed till 
it be done ! ” 

Then the youth put into his mouth the honey of 

92 


the Burning Rose, and into his lips the Sweetener, 
and stripped himself as a bather to the pool. And 
the Plough, remembering its master’s word, turned 
and set its face to where lay the garden with Melilot 
waiting to be relieved of her enchantment. Where¬ 
at Noodle, bowing his head, and blessing it with lips 
of farewell, turned shortly and slid down into the 
blackness of the lake. 

The weight of that water was like a vice upon his 
limbs, and around his throat, as he swam out into the 
centre of the pool. As he went he breathed upon the 
water, and the scent of the honey of the Burning Rose 
passing through the Sweetener made an incompar¬ 
able fragrance, gentle, and subtle, and wooing to the 
senses. 

When he came to the middle of the lake he 
stayed breathing full breaths, till the air deepened 
with fragrance around him. Presently underneath 
him he felt the movement of a great thing coming 
up from the bottom of the pool. It touched his 
feet and came grazing along his side ; and all at once 
shuddering and horror took hold upon him, for his 
whole nature was filled with loathing of its touch. 

Out of the pool’s surface before him rose a great 
black snout, that opened, showing a round hole. 
Then he thought of Melilot and her beauty laid fast 
under a charm, and drawing a full breath he laid his 
lips containing the ring, the Sweetener, to the lips 
of the Worm. 

The Worm began to breathe. As the Worm 
drank the air out of him, he drew in more through his 
nostrils, and more and more, till the great gills were 
filled and satisfied. 


93 


Then the Worm let go the last bubble of air which 
remained from the year before, and had lain ever 
since in its body, by which alone life could be given 
back to the five senses of Melilot. Then drawing in 
its head it lowered itself once more to the bottom of 
the pool; and Noodle, feeling in his mouth the 
precious globule of air, fastened his lips upon it and 
shot out for shore. 

Against the weight of those leaden waters a long- 
ing to gasp possessed him ; but he knew that with 
the least breath the bubble would be lost, and all his 
labour undone. Not too soon his feet caught hold 
of the bank, and drew him free to land. He cast 
himself speechless across the back of the Galloping 
Plough and clung. 

The Plough gathered itself together and sprang 
away through space. Remembering its master’s 
word it showed itself a miracle of speed ; like light¬ 
ning became its flight. 

The eye of Noodle grew blind to the passing of 
things; he could take no count of the collapsing 
leagues. More and more grew the amazingness of 
the Plough’s leaps, things only to be measured by 
miles, and counted as joltings on the way; while 
fast to the back of it clung Noodle, and endured, 
praying that shortness of breath might not over¬ 
master him, or the check of his lungs give way and 
burst him to the emptiness of a drum. His senses 
rocked and swayed ; he felt the gates of his resolve 
slackening and forcing themselves apart; and still 
the Galloping Plough plunged him blindly along 
through space. 

But now the shrill crying of the crone struck in 

94 


upon his ears, and he stretched open his arms for 
the accomplishment of the deliverance. Even in 
that nick of time was the end of the thing brought 
about ; for the Plough, guiding itself as a thread 
to the needle’s eye, gave the uprooting stroke to 
the white feet of Melilot ; and Noodle, swooning 
for the last gasp, saw all at once her beauty swaying 
level to his gaze and her body bending down upon 
his. 

Then he fastened his lips upon hers, and loosed 
the bubble from his mouth ; and panting and sob¬ 
bing themselves back to life they hung in each 
other’s arms. She warmed and ripened in his em¬ 
brace, opening upon him the light of her eyes; 
and the greatness and beauty of the reward abashed 
him and bore him down to earth. 

He heard the old crone clucking and crowing, 
like a hen over its egg, of the happiness that had 
come to her old years; till recognising the youth’s 
state she covered him over with a cloak amid ex¬ 
clamations of astonishment. 

The Princess saw nothing but her lover’s face 
and the happy feasting of his eyes. She bent her 
head nearer and nearer to his, and the story of 
what he had done became a dream that she remem¬ 
bered, and that waking made true. “ O you 
Noodle,” she said, laughing, “ you wise, wise 
Noodle ! ” And then everything was finished, for 
she had kissed him ! 

So Noodle and the Princess were married, and 
came to the throne together and reigned over a 
happy land. The Fire-eaters were their friends, 
and the gifts of fortune were theirs. The Gallop- 

95 


ing Plough made all the waste places fertile ; and 
the water of the Thirsty Well rose and ran in rivers 
through the land; and over the walls of their 
palace, where they had planted it, grew the flower 
of the Burning Rose. 



9 6 








THE RAT-CATCHER’S DAUGHTER 


O NCE upon a time there lived an old rat¬ 
catcher who had a daughter, the most 
beautiful girl that had ever been born. 
Their home was a dirty little cabin ; but they were 
not so poor as they seemed, for every night the 
rat-catcher took the rats he had cleared out of one 
house and let them go at the door of another, so 
that on the morrow he might be sure of a fresh job. 

His rats got quite to know him, and would run 
to him when he called ; people thought him the 
most wonderful rat-catcher, and could not make 
out how it was that a rat remained within reach of 
his operations. 

Now anyone can see that a man who practised 
so cunning a roguery was greedy beyond the inten¬ 
tions of Providence. Every day, as he watched his 
daughter’s beauty increase, his thoughts were: 
“ When will she be able to pay me back for all the 
expense she has been to me ? ” He would have 
grudged her the very food she ate, if it had not 
been necessary to keep her in the good looks which 
were some day to bring him his fortune. For he 
was greedier than any gnome after gold. 

Now all good gnomes have this about them : they 
love whatever is beautiful, and hate to see harm 
happen to it. A gnome who lived far away under¬ 
ground below where stood the rat-catcher’s house, 
said to his fellows : “ Up yonder is a man who has 
a daughter ; so greedy is he, he would sell her to 

97 


G 


the first coiner who gave him gold enough ! I am 
going up to look after her.” 

So one night, when the rat-catcher set a trap, 
the gnome went and got himself caught in it. 
There in the morning, when the rat-catcher came, 
he found a funny little fellow, all bright and golden, 
wriggling and beating to be free. 

“ I can’t get out! ” cried the little gnome. 
“ Let me go ! ” 

The rat-catcher screwed up his mouth to look 
virtuous. “ If I let you out, what will you give 
me ? ” 

“ A sack full of gold,” answered the gnome, 
“ just as heavy as myself—not a pennyweight less ! ” 

“ Not enough ! ” said the rat-catcher. “ Guess 

• 155 

again ! 

“ As heavy as you are ! ” cried the gnome, begin¬ 
ning to plead in a thin, whining tone. 

“ I’m a poor man,” said the rat-catcher; “ a 

poor man mayn’t afford to be generous! ” 

“ What is it you want of me ? ” cried the gnome. 

“ If I let you go,” said the rat-catcher, “ you 
must make me the richest man in the world ! ” 
Then he thought of his daughter : “ Also you must 
make the king’s son marry my daughter ; then I 
will let you go.” 

The gnome laughed to himself to see how the 
trapper was being trapped in his own avarice as, 
with the most melancholv air he answered : “ I 

4 

can make you the richest man in the world ; but 
I know of no way of making the king’s son marry 
your daughter, except one.” 

“ What w r ay ? ” asked the rat-catcher. 

98 


“ Why,” answered the gnome, “ for three years 
your daughter must come and live with me under¬ 
ground, and by the end of the third year her skin 
will be changed into pure gold like ours. And do 
you know any king’s son who would refuse to marry 
a beautiful maiden who was pure gold from the 
sole of her foot to the crown of her head ? ” 

The rat-catcher had so greedy an inside that he 
could not believe in any king’s son refusing to marry 
a maiden of pure gold. So he clapped hands on 
the bargain, and let the gnome go. 

The gnome went down into the ground, and 
fetched up sacks and sacks of gold, until he had 
made the rat-catcher the richest man in the world. 
Then the father called his daughter, whose name 
was Jasome, and bade her follow the gnome down 
into the heart of the earth. 

It was all in vain that Jasome begged and im¬ 
plored ; the rat-catcher was bent on having her 
married to the king’s son. So he pushed, and the 
gnome pulled, and down she went; and the earth 
closed after her. 

The gnome brought her down to his home under 
the hill upon which stood the town. Everywhere 
round her were gold and precious stones ; the very 
air was full of gold dust, so that when she remained 
still it settled on her hands and her hair, and a soft 
golden down began to show itself over her skin. 
So there in the house of the gnome sat Jasome, and 
cried ; and, far away overhead, she heard the days 
come and go, by the sound of people walking and 
the rolling of wheels. 

The gnome was very kind to her ; nothing did 

99 


he spare of underground commodities that might 
afford her pleasure. He taught her the legends of 
all the heroes that have gone down into earth, and 
been forgotten, and the lost songs of the old poets, 
and the buried languages that once gave wisdom 
to the world : down there all these things are 
remembered. 

She became the most curiously accomplished and 
wise maiden that ever was hidden from the light 
of day. “ I have to train you,” said the gnome, 
“ to be fit for a king’s bride ! ” But Jasome, though 
she thanked him, only cried to be let out. 

In front of the rat-catcher’s house rose a little 
spring of salt water with gold dust in it, that gilded 
the basin where it sprang. When he saw it, he 
began rubbing his hands with delight, for he guessed 
well enough that his daughter’s tears had made 
it; and the dust in it told him how surely now she 
was being turned into gold. 

And now the rat-catcher was the richest man 
in the world : all his traps were made of gold, and 
when he went rat-hunting he rode in a gilded coach 
drawn by twelve hundred of the finest and largest 
rats. This was for an advertisement of the busi¬ 
ness. He now caught rats for the fun of it, and the 
show of it, but also to get money by it ; for, though 
he was so rich, ratting and money-grubbing had 
become a second nature to him ; unless he were at 
one or the other, he could not be happy. 

Far below, in the house of the gnome, Jasome 
sat and cried. When the sound of the great bells 
ringing for Easter came down to her, the gnome 
said : “ To-day I cannot bind you ; it is the great 

loo 





















rising day for all Christians. If you wish, you 
may go up, and ask your father now to release you.” 

So Jasome kissed the gnome, and went up the 
track of her own tears, that brought her to her 
father’s door. When she came to the light of 
day, she felt quite blind ; a soft yellow tint was all 
over her, and already her hair was quite golden. 

The rat-catcher was furious when he saw her 
coming back before her time. “ Oh, father,” 
she cried, “ let me come back for a little while to 
play in the sun ! ” But her father, fearing lest the 
gilding of her complexion should be spoiled, drove 
her back into the earth, and trampled it down over 
her head. 

The gnome seemed quite sorry for her when she 
returned ; but already, he said, a year was gone— 
and what were three years, when a king’s son would 
be the reward ? 

At the next Easter he let her go again ; and now 
she looked quite golden, except for her eyes, and 
her white teeth, and the nails on her pretty little 
fingers and toes. But again her father drove her 
back into the ground, and put a heavy stone slab 
over the spot to make sure of her. 

At last the third Easter came, and she was all 
gold. 

She kissed the gnome many times, and was 
almost sorry to leave him, for he had been very 
kind to her. And now he told her about her father 
catching him in the trap, and robbing him of his 
gold by a hard bargain, and of his being forced to 
take her down to live with him, till she was turned 
into gold, so that she might marry the king’s son. 

103 


“ For now,” said he, “ you are so compounded of 
gold that only the gnomes could rub it off you.” 

So this time, when Jasome came up once more 
to the light of day, she did not go back again to her 
cruel father, but went and sat by the roadside, and 
played with the sunbeams, and wondered when 
the king’s son would come and marry her. 

And as she sat there all the country-people who 
passed by stopped and mocked her ; and boys came 
and threw mud at her because she was all gold 
from head to foot—an object, to be sure, for all 
simple folk to laugh at. So presently, instead of 
hoping, she fell to despair, and sat weeping, with 
her face hidden in her hands. 

Before long the king’s son came that road, and 
saw something shining like sunlight on a pond; 
but when he came near, he found a lovely maiden 
of pure gold lying in a pool of her own tears, with 
her face hidden in her hair. 

Now the king’s son, unlike the country-folk, knew 
the value of gold ; but he was grieved at heart for 
a maiden so stained all over with it, and more, when 
he beheld how she wept. So he went to lift her 
up ; and there, surely, he saw the most beautiful 
face he could ever have dreamed of. But, alas ! so 
discoloured—even her eyes, and her lips, and the 
very tears she shed were the colour of gold ! When 
he could bring her to speak, she told him how, 
because she was all gold, all the people mocked at 
her, and boys threw mud at her ; and she had 
nowhere to go, unless it were back to the kind 
gnome who lived underground, out of sight of the 
sweet sun. 


104 


So the prince said, “ Come with me, and I will 
take you to my father’s palace, and there nobody 
shall mock you, but you shall sit all your days in 
the sunshine, and be happy.” 

And as they went, more and more he wondered 
at her great beauty—so spoiled that he could not 
look at her without grief—and was taken with in¬ 
creasing wonder at the beautiful wisdom stored in 
her golden mind ; for she told him the tales of the 
heroes which she had learned from the gnome, and 
of buried cities ; also the songs of old poets that 
have been forgotten ; and her voice, like the rest 
of her, was golden./ 

The prince said to himself, “ I shut my eyes, 
and am ready to die loving her ; yet, when I open 
them, she is but a talking statue ! ” 

One day he said to her, “ Under all this disguise 
you must be the most beautiful thing upon earth ! 
Already to me you are the dearest ! ” and he 
sighed, for he knew that a king’s son might not 
marry a figure of gold. 

Now one day after this, as Jasome sat alone in 
the sunshine and cried, the little old gnome stood 
before her, and said, “ Well, Jasome, have you 
married the king’s son ? ” 

“ Alas ! ” cried Jasome, “ you have so changed 
me : I am no longer human ! Yet he loves me, 
and, but for that, he would marry me.” 

“ Dear me ! ” said the gnome. “ If that is all, 
I can take the gold off you again : why, I said so ! ” 

Jasome entreated him, by all his former kindness, 
to do so for her now. 

“ Yes,” said the gnome, “ but a bargain is a 

105 


bargain. Now is the time for me to get back my 
bags of gold. Do you go to your father, and let 
him know that the king’s son is willing to marry 
you if he restores to me my treasure that he took 
from me ; for that is what it comes to.” 

Up jumped Jasome, and ran to the rat-catcher’s 
house. “ Oh, father,” she cried, “ now you can 
undo all your cruelty to me; for now, if you will 
give back the gnome his gold, he will give my own 
face back to me, and I shall marry the king’s son ! ” 
But the rat-catcher was filled with admiration at 
the sight of her, and would not believe a word she 
said. “ I have given you your dowry,” he an¬ 
swered ; “ three years I had to do without you to 
get it. Take it away, and get married, and leave 
me the peace and plenty I have so hardly earned ! ” 
Jasome went back and told the gnome. “ Really,” 
said he, “ I must show this rat-catcher that there 
are other sorts of traps, and that it isn’t only rats 
and gnomes that get caught in them ! I have 
given him his taste of wealth ; now it shall act as 
pickle to his poverty ! ” 

So the next time the rat-catcher put his foot out 
of doors the ground gave way under it, and, snap ! 
—the gnome had him by the leg. 

“ Let me go ! ” cried the rat-catcher ; “ I can’t 
get out! ” 

“ Can’t you ? ” said the gnome. “ If I let you 
out, what will you give me ? ” 

“ My daughter ! ” cried the rat-catcher ; “ my 
beautiful golden daughter ! ” 

“ Oh no ! ” laughed the gnome. “ Guess 

* I 33 

again ! 


106 


“ My own weight in gold ! ” cried the rat¬ 
catcher, in a frenzy ; but the gnome would not 
close the bargain till he had wrung from the rat¬ 
catcher the promise of his last penny. 

So the gnome carried away all the sacks of gold 
before the rat-catcher’s eyes ; and when he had 
them safe underground, then at last he let the old 
man go. Then he called Jasome to follow him, 
and she went down willingly into the black earth. 

For a whole year the gnome rubbed and scrubbed 
and tubbed her to get the gold out of her composi¬ 
tion ; and when it was done, she was the most 
shiningly beautiful thing you ever set eyes on. 

When she got back to the palace, she found her 
dear prince pining for love of her, and wondering 
when she would return. So they were married the 
very next day ; and the rat-catcher came to look 
on at the wedding. 

He grumbled because he was in rags, and because 
he was poor ; he wept that he had been robbed 
of his money and his daughter. But gnomes and 
daughters, he said, were in one and the same box ; 
such ingratitude as theirs no one could beat. 


107 


THE TRAVELLER’S SHOES 


A LONG while ago there lived a young 
cobbler named Lubin, who, when his father 
died, was left with only the shop and the 
shoe-leather out of which to make his fortune. 
From morning to night he toiled, making and mend¬ 
ing the shoes of the poor village folk ; but his 
earnings were small, and he seemed never able to 
get more than three days ahead of poverty. 

One day, as he sat working at his window-bench, 
the door opened, and in came a traveller. He had 
on a pair of long red shoes with pointed ends; but 
of one the seams had split, so that all his toes were 
coming out of it. 

The stranger, putting up one foot after the 
other, took off both shoes, and giving that one 
which wanted cobbling to Lubin, he said : “ To¬ 
night I shall be sleeping here at the inn ; have 
this ready in good time to-morrow, for I am in 
haste to go on ! ” And having said this he put 
the other shoe into his pocket, and went out of 
the door barefoot. 

“ What a funny fellow,” thought Lubin, “ not 
to make the most of one shoe when he has it ! ” 
But without stopping to puzzle himself he took up 
the to-be-mended shoe and set to work. When it 
was finished he threw it down on the floor behind 
him, and went on working at his other jobs. He 
meant to work late, for he had not enough money 
yet to get himself his Sunday’s dinner ; so when 

108 


darkness shut in he lighted a rushlight and cobbled 
away, thinking to himself all the while of the roast 
meat that was to be his reward. 

It came close on midnight, and he was just put¬ 
ting on the last heel of the last pair of shoes when 
he was aware of a noise on the floor behind him. 
He looked round, and there was the red shoe with 
the pointed toe, cutting capers and prancing about 
by itself in the middle of the room. 

“ Peace on earth 1 ” exclaimed Lubin. “ I never 
saw a shoe do a thing so tipsy before ! ” He went 
up and passed his hand over it and under it, but 
there was nothing to account for its caperings ; on 
it went, up and down, toeing and heeling, skipping 
and sliding, as if for a very wager. Lubin could 
even tell himself the name of the reel and the tune 
that it was dancing to, for all that the other foot 
was missing. Presently the shoe tripped and 
toppled, falling heel up upon the floor; nor, 
although Lubin watched it for a full hour, did it 
ever start upon a fresh jig. 

Soon after daybreak, when Lubin had but just 
opened his shutters and sat himself down to work, 
in came the traveller, limping upon bare feet, with 
the shoe’s fellow pointing its red toe out of his 
pocket. “ Oh, so,” he said, seeing the other shoe 
ready mended and waiting for him, “ how much 
am I owing you for the job ? ” 

“ Just a gold piece,” said Lubin, carelessly, 
carrying on at his work. 

“ A gold piece for the mere mending of a shoe ! ” 
cried the stranger. “ You must be either a rogue 
or a funny fellow.” 

109 


“ Neither ! ” said Lubin, “ and for mending a 
shoe my charge is only a penny; but for mending 
that shoe, and for all the worry and temptation 
to make it my own and run off with it—a gold 
piece ! ” 

“ To be sure, you are an honest fellow,” said the 
traveller, “ and honesty is a rare gift; though, had 
you made off with it, I should have soon caught 
you. Still, you were not so wise as to know that, 
so here’s your gold piece for you.” He pulled out 
a big bag of gold as he spoke, pouring its contents 
out on to the window bench. 

“ That is a lot of money for a lonely man to 
carry about,” said Lubin. “ Are you not afraid ? ” 

“ Why, no,” answered the man. “ I have a 
way, so that I can always follow it up even if I lose 
it.” He took two of the gold pieces, and dropped 
one into the sole of each shoe as he was putting 
them on. “ There ! ” said he, “ now, if any man 
steal my money, I need only wait till it is midnight; 
and then I have but to say to my shoes 4 Seek ! ’ 
and up they jump, with me in them, and carry me 
to where my stolen property is, were it to the 
world’s end. It is as if they had the nose and 
sagacity of a pair of bloodhounds. Ah, son of a 
cobbler, had you run off with the one I should have 
very soon caught you with the other ; for if one 
walks the other is bound to follow. But, as you 
were honest, we part friends; and I trust God 
may bring you to fortune.” Then the traveller 
did up his bag of gold, nodded to the cobbler from 
the doorway, and was gone. 

Lubin laid down his work, and went off to the 


no 


inn. “ Did anything happen here last night ? ” 
he asked. 

“ Nothing of much note,” answered the inn¬ 
keeper. “ Three travelling fiddlers were here, and 
afterwards a man came in barefoot, but with a red 
shoe sticking out of his pocket. I thought of turn¬ 
ing the fellow away, till he let me see the colour 
of his gold. Presently the fiddlers started to play 
and the other man to drink. At first when they 
called on him to dance he excused himself for his 
feet’s sake ; but presently, what with the music 
and the liquor, he got so lively in his head that he 
pulled on his one shoe and danced like three ordinary 
men put togethei.” 

“ What time was that ? ” asked Lubin. 

“ Getting on for midnight,” answered the inn¬ 
keeper. 

“ Ah ! ” said Lubin, and went home thinking 
much on the way. 

Towards evening he found that he had run out 
of leather, and must go into the town, ten miles 
off, to buy more. “ Now my gold piece comes in 
handy,” thought he ; so he locked up the house, put 
the key in his pocket, and set out. 

Though it was the season of long days it was grow¬ 
ing dark when he came to a part of the road that 
led through the wood ; but being so poor a man he 
had no fear, nor thought at all about the robbers who 
were said to be in those parts. But as he went, he 
saw all at once by the side of the road two red spikes 
sticking up out of a ditch, their bright -colour making 
them plain to the eye. He came quite near and saw 
that they were two red shoes with pointed toes; 

ill 


and then he saw more clearly that along with them 
lay the traveller, his wallet empty and with a dagger 
stuck through his heart. 

The cobbler’s son was as sorry as he could be. 
“ Alas, poor soul,” thought he, “ what good are 
the shoes to you now ? Now that thieves have 
killed you and taken away your gold, surely I do no 
harm if I give an honest man your shoes ! ” He 
stooped down, and was about taking them off when he 
saw the eyes of the dead man open. The eyes looked 
at him as if they would remind him of something ; 
and at once, when he loosed hold of the shoes, they 
seemed satisfied. Then he remembered, and 
thought to himself, “ The world has many marvels 
in it; I will wait till midnight and see.” 

For over three hours he kept watch by the dead 
man’s side. “ Only last night,” he said to himself, 
“ this poor fellow was dancing as merry a measure 
as ever I saw, for the half of it surely I saw ; and 
now ! ” Then he judged that midnight must be 
come, so he bent over the shoes and whispered to 
them but one word. 

The dead man stood up in his shoes and began 
running. Lubin followed close, keeping an eye on 
him, for the shoes made no sound on the earth. 
They ran on for two hours, till they had come to the 
thickest part of the forest; then some way before 
them Lubin began to see a light shining. It came 
from a small square house in a court-yard, and round 
the court-yard lay a deep moat ; only one narrow 
plank led over and up to the entrance. 

The red shoes, carrying the dead man, walked over, 
and Lubin followed them. When they were at the 

112 , 


other side they turned, facing towards the plank'that 
they had crossed, and Lubin seemed to read in the 
dead man’s eye what he was to do. 

Then he turned and lifted the plank away from 
over the moat, so that there was no longer any 
entrance or exit to the place. Through the window 
of the house he could see the three fiddlers quarrel¬ 
ling over the dead man’s gold. 

The red shoes went on, carrying their dead owner, 
till they got to the threshold, and there stopped. 
Then Lubin came and clicked up the latch, and 
pushed open the door, and in walked the dead man 
with the dagger sticking out of his heart 

The three fiddlers, when they saw that sight, 
dropped their gold and leapt out of the window; 
and as they fled, shrieking, thinking to cross the 
moat by the plank-bridge that was no longer there, 
one after the other they fell into the water, 
and, clutching each other by the throat, were 
drowned. 

But the red shoes stayed where they were, and, 
tilting up his feet, let the traveller go gently upon the 
ground ; and when Lubin held down the lantern to 
his face, on it lay a good smile, to tell him that the 
dead man thanked him for all he had done. 

So in the morning Lubin went and fetched a 
priest to pray for the repose of the traveller’s soul, 
and to give him good burial; and to him he gave all 
the dead man’s money, but for himself he took the 
red shoes with the pointed toes, and set out to make 
his fortune in the world. 

Walking along he found that however far he went 
he never grew tired. When he had gone on for more 

H 113 


than a hundred miles, he came to the capital where 
the King lived with his Court. 

All the flags of the city were at half-mast, and 
all the people were in half-mourning. Lubin asked 
at the first inn where he stopped what it all meant. 

“ You must indeed be a stranger,” said his host, 
“ not to know, for J tis now nearly a year since this 
trouble began ; and this very night more cause for 
mourning becomes due.” 

“ Tell me of it, then,” said Lubin, “ for I know 
nothing at all.” 

“ At least,” returned the innkeeper, “ you will 
know how, a little more than a year ago, the Queen, 
who was the most beautiful woman in the world, 
died, leaving the King with twelve daughters, who, 
after her, were reckoned the fairest women on earth, 
though the King says that all their beauty rolled into 
one would not equal that of his dead wife ; and, 
indeed, poor man, there is no doubt that he loved her 
devotedly during her life, and mourns for her con¬ 
tinually now she is dead.” 

“ Only a small part of all this have I known,” said 
Lubin. 

“ Well, but at least,” said the innkeeper, “you 
will have heard how the Princesses were famed for 
their hair ; so beautiful it was, so golden, and so 
long ! And now, at every full moon, one of them 
goes bald in a night ; and bald her head stays as a 
stone, for never an inch of hair grows on it again ; 
and with her hair all her beauty goes pale, so that 
she is but the shadow of her former self—a thin- 
blooded thing, as if a vampire had come and sucked 
out half her life. Yes; ten months this has hap- 

114 


pened, and ten of the Princesses have lost their 
looks and their hair as well; and now only the Prin¬ 
cess Royal and the youngest of all remain untouched ; 
and doubtless one of them is to lose her crop to¬ 
night.” 

“ But how does it happen ? ” cried Lubin. “ Is 
no one put to keep watch, to guard them from the 
thing being done ? ” 

“ Ah ! you talk, you talk ! ” said the innkeeper. 
“ How ? The King has offered half his kingdom to 
anyone wLlo can tell him how the mischief is done ; 
and the other half to the man w T ho will put an end 
to it. To put it shortly, if you believe yourself a 
clever enough man, you may have the King for your 
father-in-law, with the pick of his daughters for your 
bride, and be his heir and lord of all when he dies ! ” 

“ For such a reward,” said Lubin, “ has no man 
made the attempt ? ” 

“ Aye, one a month ; every time there has been 
some man fool enough to think himself so clever ; 
and he has been turned out of the palace next day 
with his ears cropped.” 

“ I will risk having my ears cropped,” said Lubin ; 
for his heart was sorry for the young Princesses, and 
the vanishing of their beauty. So he went up and 
knocked at the gates of the palace. 

They went and told the King that a new man had 
come willing and wanting to have his ears cropped 
on the morrow. “ Well, well,” said the King, “ let 
the poor fool in ! ” for indeed he had given up all 
hope. From the King Lubin heard the whole 
story over again. The old man sighed so it took 
him whole hours to tell it. 

115 


“ I would be glad to be your son,” said Lubin, 
when the King had ended ; “ but I would like better 
to make you rid of your sorrow.” 

“ That is kind of you,” said the King. “ Perhaps 
I will only crop one of your ears to-morrow.” 

When may one see the Princesses ? ” asked 
Lubin. 

“ They will be down to supper, presently,” an¬ 
swered the King ; “ then you shall see them, what 
there is left of them.” 

Though it was reckoned that the next day Lubin 
would have to be drummed out of the palace with 
his ears cropped short, on this day he was to be 
treated like an honoured guest. When they went in 
to supper the King made him sit upon his right hand. 

The twelve Princesses came in, their heads 
bowed down with weeping ; all were fair, but ten 
of them were thin and pale, and wore white wimples 
over their heads like nuns ; only the Princess Royal, 
who was the eldest, and Princess Lyneth, who was 
the youngest, had gold hair down to their feet, and 
were both so shiningly beautiful that the poor cob¬ 
bler was altogether dazzled by the sight of them. 

The King looked out of the window and said : 
“ Heigho ! There is the full moon beginning to 
rise.” Then they all said grace and sat down. 

But when the viands were handed round, all the 
Princesses sat weeping into their plates, and seemed 
unable to eat anything. For the pale and thin ones 
said : “ To-night another of our sisters will lose her 
golden hair and her good looks, and be like us ! ” 
Therefore they wept. 

And Lyneth said : “ To-night, either my dear 

ii 6 


sister or myself will fall under the spell! ” There¬ 
fore she wept more than the other ten. But the 
Princess Royal sat trembling, and crying : 

“ To-night I know that the curse is to fall upon 
me, and me only ! ” Therefore she wept more than 
all. 

Lubin sat, and watched, and listened, with his 
head bent down over his golden plate. “ Which of 
these two shall I try most to save ? ” he thought. 
“ How shall I test them, so as to know ? If I could 
only tell which of them was to lose her hair to-night, 
then I might do something.” 

He saw that the youngest sister cried so much 
that she could eat nothing ; but the Princess Royal, 
between her bursts of grief, picked up a morsel now 
and again from her plate, and ate it as though courage 
or despair reminded her that she must yet strive 
to live. 

When the meat-courses were over, the King said 
to the Princesses : “I wish you would try to eat a 
little pudding ! Here is a very promising youth, 
who is determined by all that is in him that harm 
shall happen to none of you to-night.” 

“ To-morrow he will be sent away with his ears 
cut short ! ” said Princess Lyneth ; and her tears, 
as she spoke, ran down over the edge of her plate on 
to the cloth. 

When supper was over the Princess Royal came up 
to Lubin, and said : “ Do not be angry with my 
sister for what she said ! It has only been too true 
of many who came before ; to-night, unless you do 
better than them all, I shall lose my hair. It has 
been a wonder to me how I have been spared so long, 

117 . 


seeing that I am the eldest, and, as some will have it, 
the fairest. Will you keep a good guard over me to¬ 
night, as though you knew for certain that I am to 
be the one this time to suffer ? ” 

“ I will guard you as my own life,” said Lubin, 
“ if you will but do as I ask you.” 

“ Pledge yourself to me, then, in this cup ! ” said 
she, and lifted to his lips a bowl of red wine. Over 
the edge of it her eyes shone beautifully ; he drank 
gazing into their clear depth. 

“ Where am I to be for the night,” he asked of the 
King, “so that I may watch over the two Princesses ? ” 
The King took him to a chamber with two further 
doors that opened out of it. “ Here,” said the 
King, “ you are to sleep, and in the inner rooms 
sleep the Princess Royal and the Princess Lyneth. 
There is no entrance or exit to them but through 
this; therefore, when you are here with your door 
bolted, one would suppose that you had them safe. 
Alas ! ten other men have tried like you to ward 
off the harm, and have failed ; and so to-day I have 
ten daughters with no looks left to them, and no 
hair upon their heads.” 

As they were speaking, the two Princesses, with 
their sisters, came up to bed. And the pale ones, 
wearing their white wimples, came and kissed the 
golden hair of the other two, crying over it, and 
saying, “ To one of you we are saying good-bye ; to¬ 
morrow one of you will be like us ! ” Then they 
went away to their sleeping-place, and the Princess 
Royal and Lyneth kissed each other, and parted 
weeping, each into her own chamber. 

“ Watch well over us ! ” said Lyneth to Lubin, 

118 


















































as she passed through. “ Watch over me ! ” said 
the Princess Royal. And then the two doors were 
closed. 

Lubin said to the King, “ Could I now see the 
two Princesses, without being seen by them, it would 
help me to know what to do.” 

“ Come down to my cabinet,” said the King. 
“ I have an invisible cap there, that I can lend you 
if you think you can do any good with it.” So they 
went; and the King reached down the cap from the 
wall and gave it to Lubin. 

“ Now, good-night, your Majesty,” said Lubin ; 
“ I will do for you all I can.” 

The King answered, “ Either you shall be my 
son-in-law to-morrow, or you shall have no ears. 
My wishes are with you that the former state may 
be yours.” 

Lubin went into his chamber and closed and 
bolted the door ; then he put the bed up against it. 
“ Now, at least,” he thought, “ there are three of 
us, and no more ! ” He put on his invisible cap, 
and going softly to the Princess Royal’s door, opened 
it and peeped in. 

She stood up before her glass, combing out her 
long gold hair, and smiling proudly because of its 
beauty. She gathered it up by all its ends and kissed 
it; then, letting it fall, she went on combing as 
before. 

Lubin went out, closing the door again ; then 
he took off his cap and knocked, and presently he 
heard the Princess Royal saying, “ Come in ! ” 
She was lying down upon the bed, squeezing her 
eyes with her hands. 


121 


“ Princess,” he said, “ I will watch over you like 
my own life, if you will do what I bid you. I am 
but a poor man, and the best that I can do is but 
poor ; but I think, if you will, I can save your head 
from becoming as bare as a billiard ball.” 

The Princess asked him how. 

“ You know,” said he, “ that to-night something 
is to happen to one of you ” (“ To me ! ” said the 
Princess), “ and all your hair will be stolen in such 
a way that nothing will ever make it grow again. 
See, here I have a pair of common scissors; let me 
but cut your hair close off all over your head, and 
then who can steal it ? For a few months you will 
be a fright, but it can grow again.” 

“ I think you are a silly fellow ! ” said the Prin¬ 
cess. “ Better for you to get to bed, and have 
your ears cropped quietly in the morning ! After 
all, it may be my sister’s turn to lose her hair, not 
mine. I shall not make myself a fright for a year 
of my life in order to save you.” 

“ If you think so poorly of my offer,” said Lubin, 
“ I had better go to bed and sleep, and not trouble 
the Princess Lyneth at all with it.” 

“ No, indeed ! ” said the Princess Royal. “ Go 
to bed and sleep, poor fool! ” And, in truth, 
Lubin was feeling so sleepy that he could hardly 
keep open his eyes. 

Then he left her, and, pulling the invisible cap 
once more over his head, crept softly into Princess 
Lyneth’s chamber. 

She was standing before her glass with all her 
beautiful hair flowing down from shoulders to feet; 
and tears were falling fast out of her eyes as she 


122 


kept drawing her hair together in her hands, kissing 
and moaning over it. 

Then Lubin went out again, and, taking off his 
cap, knocked softly at the door. 

“ Come in ! ” said the Princess; and when he 
went in she was still standing before the glass 
weeping and moaning for her beautiful hair, that 
might never see another day. On the bed was 
lying a white wimple, ready for her to put on when 
her head was become bald. 

“ Princess,” said Lubin, very humbly, “ will you 
help me to save your beautiful hair, by doing what 
I ask ? ” 

“ What is it that you ask ? ” said she. 

“ Only this,” he answered ; “ I am a poor man, 
and cannot do much for you, but only my best. 
To-night you or your sister must lose your hair ; 
and we know that afterwards, if that happen, it 
can never grow again. Now, come, here I have a 
common pair of scissors; if I could cut your hair 
quite short, in a few months it will grow again, 
and there will be nothing to-night that the Fates 
can steal. Will you let me do this for you in true 

* 5 5 } 

service r 

The Princess looked at him, and looked at her 
glass. “ Oh, my hair, my hair ! ” she moaned. 
Then she said, “ What matters it ? You mean to 
be good to me, and a month is the most that my 
fortune can last. If I do not lose it to-night, I 
lose it at the next full moon ! ” Then she shut 
her eyes and bade him take off all he wished. When 
he had finished, she picked up the wimple and 
covered her head with it ; but Lubin took up 

123 


the long coil of gold hair and wound it round his 
heart. 

He knelt down at her feet. “ Princess,” he said, 
“ be sure now that I can save you ! Only I have 
one other request to make.” 

“ What is that ? ” asked the Princess. 

He took off one of his red shoes with the pointed 
toes. “ Will you, for a strange thing, put on this 
shoe and wear it all to-night in your sleep ? And 
in the morning I will ask you for it again.” 

The Princess promised faithfully that she would 
do so. Even before he had left the room she had 
put foot in it, promising that only he should take 
it off again. 

Lubin’s eyes were shut down with sleep as he 
groped his way to bed ; he lay down with the other 
red shoe upon his foot. “ Watch for your fellow ! ” 
he said to it; and then his senses left him and he 
was fast asleep. 

In the middle of the night, while he was deep 
in slumber, the red shoe caught him by the foot 
and yanked him out of bed ; he woke up to find 
himself standing in the middle of the room, and 
there before him stood the two doors of the inner 
chambers open; through that of the Princess 
Royal came a light. He heard the Princess Lyneth 
getting very softly out of her bed, and presently 
she stood in the doorway, with her hands out and 
her eyes fast shut; and the red shoe was on one 
foot, and the white wimple on her head. Little 
tears were running down from under her closed lids; 
and she sighed continually in her sleep. “ Have 
pity on me ! ” she said. 

124 


She crossed slowly from one door to the other ; 
and Lubin, putting on his invisible cap, crept softly 
after her. The Princess Royal’s chamber was 
empty, but her glass was opened away from the 
wall like a door, and beyond lay a passage and steps. 
At the top of the steps was another door, and 
through it light came, and the sound of a soft 
voice singing. 

Princess Lyneth, knowing nothing in her sleep, 
passed along the passage and up the steps till she 
came to the further doorway. Looking over her 
shoulder Lubin saw the Princess Royal sitting 
before a loom. In it lay a great cloth of gold, like 
a bride’s mantle, into which she was weaving the 
last threads of her skein. Close to her side lay a 
pair of great shears that shone like blue fire ; and 
while she sang they opened and snapped, keeping 
time to the music she made. 

Without ever turning her head the Princess 
Royal sat passing her fingers along the woof and 
crying : 

“ Sister, sister, bring me your hair, 

Of our Mother’s beauty give me your share. 

You must grow pale, while I must grow fair ! ” 


And while she was so singing, Lyneth drew nearer 
and nearer, with her eyes fast shut, and the white 
wimple over her head. “ Have pity on me ! ” she 
said, speaking in her sleep. 

As soon as the Princess Royal heard that she 
laughed for joy, and catching up the great flaming 
shears, turned herself round to where Lyneth was 

I2 5 


standing. Then she opened the shears, and took 
hold of the wimple, and pulled it down. 

All in a moment she was choking with rage, for 
horrible was the sight that met her eye. “ Ah ! 
cobbler’s son,” cried she, “ you shall die for this ! 
To-morrow not only shall you have your two ears 
cropped, but you shall die : do not be afraid ! ” 

Lubin looked at her and smiled, knowing how 
little she thought that he heard her words. “ Ah ! 
Princess Royal,” he said to himself, “ there is an¬ 
other who should now be afraid, but is not.” 

Then for very spite the Princess began slapping 
her sister’s face. “ Ah ! wicked little sister,” she 
cried, “ you have cheated me this time ! But go 
back and wait till your hair has grown, and then 
my gown of gold shall be finished, although this 
once you have been too sly ! ” She threw down the 
shears, and drove her sister back by stair and passage, 
and through the looking-glass door at the other end. 

Lubin following, stayed first to watch how by a 
secret spring the Princess Royal closed the mirror 
back into the wall; then he slipped on before, and 
taking his cap off, lay down on his bed pretending 
to be fast asleep. He heard Princess Lyneth re¬ 
turn to her couch, and then came the Princess 
Royal and ground her teeth at him in the darkness. 

Presently she, too, returned to her bed and lay 
down ; and an hour after Lubin got up very softly 
and went into her chamber. There she lay asleep, 
with her beautiful hair all spread out upon the 
pillow; but Lubin had Princess Lyneth’s hair 
wound round his heart. He touched the secret 
spring, so that the mirror opened to him, and he 

126 


passed through toward the little chamber where 
stood the loom. 

There hung the cloth of gold, all but finished ; 
beside it the shears opened and snapped, giving out 
a blue light. He took up the shears in his hand, 
and pulled down the gold web from the loom, and 
back he w r ent, closing the mirror behind him. 

Then he came to the Princess Royal as she lay 
asleep ; and first he laid the cloth of gold over her, 
and saw how at once she became ten times more 
fair than she was by rights, as fair almost as her 
dead mother, lacking one part only. But her 
beauty did not win him to have pity on her. 

“ There can be thieves, it seems, in high places ! ” 
he said ; and with that he opened the shears over 
her head and let them snap : then all her long hair 
came out by the roots, and she lay white and 
withered before his eyes, and as bald as a stone. 

He gathered up all her hair with one hand, and 
the cloth of gold with the other, and went quietly 
away. Then, hiding the shears in a safe place, 
first he burnt the Princess Royal’s hair, till it became 
only a little heap of frizzled cinders; and after that 
he went to the chamber of the ten Princesses, 
whose hair and whose sweet youth had been stolen 
from them. There they lay all in a row in ten beds, 
with pale, gentle faces, asleep under their white 
wimples. 

He went to the first, and, laying the cloth of 
hair over her, cried : 

“ Sister, sister, I bring you your hair, 

Of your Mother’s beauty I give you your share. 

One must grow pale, but you must grow fair ! ” 

127 


And as he said the words one part of the cloth 
unwove itself from the rest, and ran in ripples up 
the coverlet, and on to the pillow where the Prin¬ 
cess’s head lay. There it coiled itself under the 
wimple, a great mass of shining gold, and the face 
of the Princess flushed warm and lovely in her 
sleep. 

Lubin passed on to the next bed, and there 
uttered the same words; and again one part of 
the web came loose, and wound itself about the 
sleeper’s face, that grew warm and lovely at its 
touch. So he went from bed to bed, and when he 
came to the end there was no more of the web 
left. 

He went back into his own chamber, laughing 
in his heart for joy, and there he dropped him¬ 
self between the sheets and fell into a sound 
slumber. 

He was awakened in the morning by the King 
knocking and trying to get into the room. Lubin 
pulled back the bed, and in came the King with a 
mournful countenance. 

“ Which of them is it ? ” said he. 

“ Go and ask them ! ” said Lubin. 

The King went over and knocked at the Prin¬ 
cess Royal’s door : the knocking opened her eyes. 
Lubin heard her suddenly utter a yell. “ Ah! 
now she has looked at herself in the glass,” thought 
he. 

“ What is the matter ? ” called the King. 
“ Come out and let me look at you ! ” But the 
Princess Royal would not come out. She ran quick 
to her mirror, and touched the secret spring. “ At 

128 


least,” she thought, “ though fiends have robbed 
me of all my beauty, I can get it back by wearing 
the cloth woven from my sisters’ hair ! ” She 
skipped along the passage and up the steps to the 
little chamber where the loom was. 

The King, getting no answer, went across and 
knocked at Lyneth’s door ; she came out, all fresh in 
her beauty, but wearing upon her head the wimple. 
a Ah ! ” said the King dolorously; and he snipped 
his fingers at Lubin. 

Lubin laughed out. “ But look at her face ! ” 
he said. “ Surely she is beautiful enough ? ” 

The Princess lifted up her wimple, and showed 
the King her hair all shorn beneath. That was 
my doing,” said Lubin ; “ ’twas the way of saving 


“ What a Dutchman’s remedy! ” cried the 
King; and just then the Princess Royal’s door 
flew open. 

She came out tearing herself to pieces with rage ; 
her face was pale and thin, and her head was as bare 
as a billiard ball. “ Have that clown of a cobbler 
killed ! ” she cried in a passion. “ That fool, that 
numbskull, that cheat ! Have him beheaded, I 
say ! ” 

“ No, no, I am only to have one of my ears 
cropped off ! ” said Lubin, looking hard at her all 
the time. 

“ I am not at all sure,” said the King. “ You 
have done foolishly and badly, for not only have 
you let the disease go on, but your very remedy 
is as bad. Two heads of hair gone in one night ! 
You had better have kept away. If the Prin- 


i 


129 


cesses wish it, certainly I will have you put to 
death.” 

“ Will you not see the other Princesses too ? ” 
asked Lubin. “ Let them decide between them 
whether I am to live or die ! ” 

The King was just going to call for them, when 
suddenly the ten Princesses opened the door of their 
chamber, and stood before him shining like stars, 
with all their golden hair running down to their 
feet. 

“ Now put me to death ! ” said Lubin ; and all 
the time he kept his eye upon the Princess Royal, who 
turned flame-coloured with rage. 

“ No, indeed ! ” cried the King. “ Now you must 
be more than pardoned ! You see, my dears,” he 
said to Lyneth and the Princess Royal, “ though you 
have suffered, your sisters have recovered all that they 
lost. They are ten to two ; and I can’t go back on 
arithmetic ; I am bound to do even more than 
pardon him for this.” 

“ Indeed and indeed yes ! ” replied the Princess 
Lyneth. “ He has done ten times more than we 
thought of asking him ! ” And she went from one 
to another of her recovered sisters, kissing their 
beautiful long hair for pure gladness of heart. But 
when she came to the Princess Royal, she kissed her 
many times, and stooped down her face upon her 
shoulder, and cried over her. 

“ Tell me now,” said the King to Lubin, “ for 
you are a very wonderful fellow, how did it all 
happen ? ” 

Lubin looked at the Princess Royal; after all he 
could not betray a lady’s secret. “ I cannot tell 

130 


you/’ he said ; “ if I did, there would be a death in 
the family.” 

“ Well,” said the King, “ however you may 
have done it, I own that you have earned your re¬ 
ward. You have only to choose now which of my 
daughters is to make you my son-in-law. From 
this day you shall be known as my heir.” He 
ranged all the Princesses in line, according to their 
ages. “ Now choose,” said the King, “ and choose 
well! ” 

Lubin went up to the Princess Royal. “ I won’t 
have you ! ” he said, looking very hard at her ; and 
the Princess Royal dropped her eyes. Then he went 
on to the next. “ Sweet lady,” he said, “ I dare not 
ask one with such beautiful hair as yours to marry 
me, who am a poor cobbler’s son.” But all the while 
he had the Princess Lyneth’s hair bound round his 
heart. 

He went on from one to another, and of each he 
kissed the hand saying that she was too fair to marry 
him. 

He came to Lyneth and knelt down at her feet. 
“ Lyneth,” he said, “ will you give the poor cobbler 
back his shoe ? ” 

Lyneth, looking in his eyes, saw all that he meant. 
“ And myself in it,” she said, “ for you love me 
dearly ! ” She put her arms round his neck, and 
whispered, “ You marry me because I am a fright, 
and have no hair ! ” 

But Lubin said, “ I have your hair all wound round 
my heart, making it warm ! ” 

So they were married, and lived together more 
happily than cobbler and princess ever lived in the 

131 


world before. And the cobbler dropped mending 
shoes : only his wife’s shoes he always mended. 
Very soon Lyneth’s hair grew again, more shining 
and beautiful than before; but the Princess Royal 
remained pale, and thin, and was bald to the day of 
her death. 


132 


THE ROOTED LOVER 


M ORNING and evening a ploughboy went 
driving his team through a lane at the 
back of the palace garden. Over the hedge 
the wind came sweet with the scents of a thousand 
flowers, and through the hedge shot glimpses of all 
the colours of the rainbow, while now and then 
went the sheen of silver and gold tissue when the 
Princess herself paced by with her maidens. Also 
above all the crying and calling of the blackbirds 
and thrushes that filled the gardens with song, 
came now and then an airy exquisite voice flood¬ 
ing from bower to field ; and that was the voice of 
the Princess Fleur-de-lis herself singing. 

When she sang all the birds grew silent; new 
flowers came into bud to hear her and into blossom 
to look at her ; apples and pears ripened and dropped 
down at her feet; her voice sang the bees home as if 
it were evening : and the ploughboy as he passed 
stuck his face into the thorny hedge, and feasted his 
eyes and ears with the sight and sound of her beauty. 

He was a red-faced boy, red with the wind and the 
sun : over his face his hair rose like a fair flame, but 
his eyes were black and bold, and for love he had the 
heart of a true gentleman. 

Yet he was but a ploughboy, rough-shod and 
poorly clad in a coat of frieze, and great horses went 
at a word from him. But no word from him might 
move the heart of that great Princess ; she never 
noticed the sound of his team as it jingled by, nor 

133 



saw the dark eyes and the bronzed red face wedged 
into the thorn hedge for love of her. 

“ Ah ! Princess / 5 sighed the ploughboy to himself, 
as the thorns pricked into his flesh, “ were it but a 
thorn-hedge which had to be trampled down, you 
should be my bride to-morrow ! 55 But shut off 
by the thorns, he was not a whit further from 
winning her than if he had been kneeling at her feet. 

He had no wealth in all the world, only a poor hut 
with poppies growing at the door ; no mother or 
father, and his own living to get. To think at all of 
the Princess was the sign either of a knave or a fool. 

No knave, but perhaps a fool, he thought himself 
to be. “ I will go , 55 he said at last, “ to the wise 
woman who tells fortunes and works strange cures, 
and ask her to help me . 55 

So he took all the money he had in the world and 
went to the wise woman in her house by the dark 
pool, and said, “ Show me how I may win Princess 
Fleur-de-lis to be my wife, and I will give you every¬ 
thing I possess . 55 

“ That is a hard thing you ask , 55 said the wise 
woman ; “ how much dare you risk for it ? 55 

“ Anything you can name , 55 said he. 

“ Your life ? 55 said she. 

“ With all my heart , 55 he replied ; “ for without 
her I shall but end by dying . 55 

“ Then , 55 said the wise woman, “ give me your 
money, and you shall take your own risk . 55 

Then he gave her all. 

“ Now , 55 said she, “ you have but to choose any 
flower you like, and I will turn you into it; then, 
in the night I will take you and plant you in the 

*34 

































palace garden ; and if before you die the Princess 
touches you with her lips and lays you as a flower in 
her bosom, you shall become a man again and win 
her love ; but if not, when the flower dies you will 
die too and be no more. So if that seem to you a 
good bargain, you have but to name your flower, and 
the thing is done.” 

“ Agreed, with all my heart ! ” cried the plough- 
boy. “ Only make me into some flower that is 
like me, for I would have the Princess to know what 
sort of a man I am, so that she shall not be deceived 
when she takes me to her bosom.” 

He looked himself up and he looked himself down 
in the pool which was before the wise woman’s 
home ; at his rough frieze coat with its frayed edges, 
his long supple limbs, and his red face with its black 
eyes, and hair gleaming at the top. 

“ I am altogether like a poppy,” he said, “ what 
with my red head, and my rough coat, and my life 
among fields which the plough turns to furrow. 
Make a poppy of me, and put me in the palace garden 
and I will be content.” 

Then she stroked him down with her wand full 
couthly, and muttered her wise saws over him, for 
she was a wonderful witch-woman ; and he turned 
before her very eyes into a great red poppy, and his 
coat of frieze became green and hairy all over him, 
and his feet ran down into the ground like roots. 

The wise woman got a big flower-pot and a spade ; 
and she dug him up out of the ground and planted 
him in the pot, and having watered him well, waited 
till it was quite dark. 

As soon as the pole-star had hung out its light she 

137 


got across her besom, tucked the flower-pot under 
her arm, and sailed away over hedge and ditch till 
she came to the palace garden. 

There she dug a hole in a border by one of the 
walks, shook the ploughboy out of his flower-pot, 
and planted him with his feet deep down in the 
soil. Then giving a wink all round, and a wink up 
to the stars, she set her cap to the east, mounted her 
besom, and rode aw T ay into thin space. 

But the poppy stood up where she had left him 
taking care of his petals, so as to be ready to show 
them off to the Princess the next morning. He did 
not go fast asleep, but just dozed the time away, 
and found it quite pleasant to be a flower, the night 
being warm. Now and then small insects ran up 
his stalks, or a mole passed under his roots, reminding 
him of the mice at home. But the poppy’s chief 
thought was for the morning to return ; for then 
would come the Princess walking straight to where 
he stood, and would reach out a hand and gather 
him, and lay her lips to his and his head upon her 
bosom, so that in the shaking of a breath he could 
turn again to his right shape, and her love would 
be won for ever. 

Morning came, and gardeners with their brooms 
and barrows went all about, sweeping up the leaves, 
and polishing off the slugs from the gravel-paths. 
The head gardener came and looked at the poppy. 
“ Who has been putting this weed here ? ” he cried. 
And at that the poppy felt a shiver of red ruin go 
through him ; for what if the gardener were to weed 
him up so that he could never see the Princess again ? 

All the other gardeners came and considered him, 

us 


twisting wry faces at him. But they said, “ Perhaps 
it is a whim of the Princess’s. It’s none of our plant¬ 
ing.” So after all they let him be. 

The sun rose higher and higher, and the gardeners 
went carrying away their barrows and brooms; 
but the poppy stood waiting with his black eye 
turned to the way by which the Princess should 
come. 

It was a long waiting, for princesses do not rise 
with the lark, and the poppy began to think his 
petals would be all shrivelled and old before she 
came. But at last he saw slim white feet under the 
green boughs andheard voices and shawm-likelaughter 
and knew that it was the Princess coming to him. 

Down the long walks he watched her go, pausing 
here and there to taste a fruit that fell or to look 
at a flower that opened. To him she would come 
shortly, and so bravely would he woo her with his 
red face, that she would at once bend down and press 
her lips to his, and lift him softly to her bosom. 
Yes, surely she would do this. 

She came ; she stopped full and began looking at 
him : he burned under her gaze. “ That is very 
beautiful! ” she said at last. “ Why have I not seen 
that flower before ? Is it so rare, then, that there 
is no other ? ” But, “ Oh, it is too common ! ” 
cried all her maids in a chorus; “ it is only a common 
poppy such as grows wild in the fields.” 

“ Yet it is very beautiful,” said the Princess ; and 
she looked at it long before she passed on. She half 
bent to it. “ Surely now,” said the poppy, “ her 
lips to mine ! ” 

“ Has it a sweet smell ? ” she asked. But one of 

' *39 


her maids said, “ No, only a poor little stuffy smell, 
not nice at all! ” and the Princess drew back. 

“ Alas, alas,” murmured the poor poppy in his 
heart, as he watched her departing, “ why did I 
forget to choose a flower with a sweet smell ? then 
surely at this moment she would have been mine.” 
He felt as if his one chance were gone, and death 
already overtaking him. But he remained brave ; 
“ At least,” he said, “ I will die looking at her ; I 
will not faint or wither, till I have no life left in me. 
And after all there is to-morrow.” So he went to 
sleep hoping much, and slept late into the morning 
of the next day. 

Opening his eyes he was aware of a great blaze of 
red in a border to his right. Ears had been attentive 
to the words of Princess Fleur-de-lis, and a whole 
bed of poppies had been planted to gratify her latest 
fancy. There they were, in a thick mass burning 
the air around them with their beauty. Alas ! 
against their hundreds what chance had he ? 

And the Princess came and stood by them, lost 
in admiration, while the poppy turned to her his 
love-sick eye, trying to look braver than them all. 
And she being gracious, and not forgetful of what 
first had given her pleasure, came and looked at him 
also, but not very long ; and as for her lips, there 
was no chance for him there now. Yet for the de¬ 
light of those few moments he was almost contented 
with the fate he had chosen—to be a flower, and to 
die as a flower so soon as his petals fell. 

Days came and went ; they were all alike now, 
save that the Princess stayed less often to look at 
him or the other poppies which had stolen his last 

140 


chance from him. He saw autumn changes coming 
over the garden ; flowers sickened and fell, and were 
removed, and the nights began to get cold. 

Beside him the other poppies were losing their 
leaves, and their flaming tops had grown scantier ; 
but for a little while he would hold out still; so 
long as he had life his eye should stay open to look 
at the Princess as she passed by. 

The sweet-smelling flowers were gone, but the loss 
of their fragrant rivalry gave him no greater hopes : 
one by one every gorgeous colour dropped away; 
only when a late evening primrose hung her lamp 
beside him in the dusk did he feel that there was 
anything left as bright as himself to the eye. And 
now death was taking hold of him, each night twist¬ 
ing and shrivelling his leaves ; but still he held up 
his head, determined that, though but for one more 
day, his eye should be blessed by a sight of his Prin¬ 
cess. If he could keep looking at her he believed he 
should dream of her when dead. 

At length he could see that he was the very last 
of all the poppies, the only spot of flame in a garden 
that had gone grey. In the cold dewy mornings 
cobwebs hung their silvery hammocks about the 
leaves, and the sun came through mist, making them 
sparkle. And beautiful they were, but to him they 
looked like the winding-sheet of his dead hopes. 

Now it happened just about this time that the 
Prince of a neighbouring country was coming to the 
Court to ask Princess Fleur-de-lis 5 hand in marriage. 
The fame of his manners and his good looks had 
gone before him, and the Princess being bred to the 
understanding that princesses must marry for the 

I 4 I 


good of nations according to the bidding of their 
parents, was willing, since the King her father 
wished it, to look upon his suit with favour. All 
that she looked for was to be wooed with sufficient 
ardour, and to be allowed time for a becoming 
hesitancy before yielding. 

A great ball was prepared to welcome the Prince 
on his arrival; and wffien the day came, Princess 
Fleur-de-lis went into the garden to find some flower 
that she might wear as an adornment of her loveli¬ 
ness. But almost everything had died of frost, and 
the only flower that retained its full beauty was the 
poor bewitched poppy, kept alive for love of her. 

“ How wonderfully that red flower has lasted ! ” 
she said to one of her maidens. “ Gather it for me, 
and I will wear it with my dress to-night.” 

The poppy, not knowing that he was about to 
meet a much more dangerous rival than any flower, 
thrilled and almost fainted for bliss as the maid 
picked him from the stalk and carried him in. 

He lay upon Princess Fleur-de-lis’ toilet-table 
and watched the putting on of her ballroom array. 
“ If she puts me in her breast,” he thought, “ she 
must some time touch me with her lips; and then ! ” 

And then, when the maid was giving soft finishing 
touches to the Princess’s hair, the beloved one her¬ 
self took up the poppy and arranged it in the meshes 
of gold. “ Alas ! ” thought the poppy, even while 
he nestled blissfully in its warm depths, “ I shall 
never reach her lips from here ; but I shall dream of 
her when dead ; and for a ploughboy, that surely 
is enough of happiness.” 

So he went down with her to the ball, and could 

142 


feel the soft throbbing of her temples, for she had 
not yet seen this Prince who was to be her lover, 
and her head was full of gentle agitation and excite¬ 
ment to know what he would be like. Very soon 
he was presented to her in state. Certainly he was 
extremely passable : he was tall and fine and had a 
pair of splendid mustachios that stuck out under his 
nostrils like walrus-tusks, and curled themselves like 
ram’s horns. Beyond a slight fear that these might 
sweep her away when he tried to kiss her, she 
favoured his looks sufficiently to be prepared to ac¬ 
cept his hand when he offered it. 

Then music called to them invitingly, and she was 
led away to the dance. 

As they danced the Prince said : “ I cannot tell 
how^ it is, I feel as if someone were looking at me.” 

“ Half the world is looking at you,” said the 
Princess in slight mockery. “ Do you not know you 
are dancing with Princess Fleur-de-lis ? ” 

“ Beautiful Princess,” said the Prince, “ can I ever 
forget it ? But it is not in that way I feel myself 
looked at. I could swear I have seen somewhere a 
man with a sunburnt face and a bold black eye 
looking at me.” 

“ There is no such here,” said the Princess; and 
they danced on. 

When the dance was over the Prince led her to a 
seat screened from view by rich hangings of silken 
tapestry ; and Princess Fleur-de-lis knew that the 
time for the wooing was come. 

She looked at him ; quite clearly she meant to 
say “ Yes.” Without being glad, she was not sorry. 
If he wooed well she would have him. 

H3 


“ It is strange,” said the Prince, “ I certainly feel 
that I am being looked at.” 

The Princess was offended. “ I am not looking at 
you in the least,” she said slightingly. 

“ Ah ! ” replied the other, “ if you did, I should 
lose at once any less pleasant sensation ; for when 
your eyes are upon me I know only that I love you— 
you, Princess, who are the most beautiful, the most 
radiant, the most accomplished, the most charming 
of your sex ! Why should I waste time in laying 
my heart bare before you ? It is here ; it is yours. 
Take it ! ” 

“ Truly,” thought the Princess, “ this is very 
pretty wooing, and by no means ill done.” She 
bent down her head, and she toyed and she coyed, 
but she would not say “ Yes ” yet. 

But the poppy, when he heard the Prince’s words, 
first went all of a tremble, and then giving a great 
jump fell down at the Princess’s feet. And she, 
toying and coying, and not wishing to say “ Yes ” 
yet, bent down and taking up the poppy from where 
it had fallen, brushed it gently to and fro over her 
lips to conceal her smiles, and then tucking her chin 
down into the dimples of her neck began to arrange 
the flower in the bosom of her gown. 

As she did so, all of a sudden a startled look came 
over her face. “ Oh ! I am afraid ! ” she cried. 
“ The man, the man with the red face, and the 
strong black eyes! ” 

“ What is the matter ? ” demanded the Prince, 
bending over her in the greatest concern. 

“ No, no ! ” she cried, “ go away ! Don’t touch 
me! I can’t and I won’t marry you ! Oh, dear ! 

H4 


oh, dear ! what is going to become of me ? ” And 
she jumped up and ran right away out of the ball¬ 
room, and up the great staircase, where she let the 
poppy fall, and right into her own room, where she 
barred and bolted herself in. 

In the palace there was the greatest confusion : 
everybody was running about and shaking heads at 
everybody else. “ Heads and tails! has it come to 
this . cried the King, as he saw a party of serving- 
men turning out a ploughboy who by some un- 
heaid of means had found his way into the palace. 
Then he went up to interview his daughter as to her 
strange and sudden refusal of the Prince. 

# The Princess wrung her hands and cried : she 
didn’t know why, but she couldn’t help herself: 
nothing on earth should induce her to marry him. 

Then the King was full of wrath, and declared 
that if she were not ready to obey him in three days’ 
time, she should be turned out into the world like a 
beggar to find a living for herself. 

So for three days the Princess was locked up and 
kept on nothing but bread and water j and every 
day she cried less, and was more determined than ever 
not to marry the Prince. 

“ Whom do you suppose you are going to marry 
then ? ” demanded the King in a fury. 

I don’t know,” said the Princess, “ I only know 
he is a dear ; and has got a beautiful tanned face and 
bold black eyes.” 

The King felt inclined to have all the tanned 
faces and bold black eyes in his kingdom put to death: 
but as the Princess’s obstinacy showed no signs of 
abating, he ended by venting all his anger upon her. 

K H5 


So on the third day she was clothed in rags, and had 
all her jewellery taken off her, and was turned out of 
the palace to find her way through the world alone. 

And as she went on and on, crying and wondering 
what would become of her, she suddenly saw by the 
side of the road a charming cottage with winter 
poppies growing at the door. And in the doorway 
stood a beautiful man, with a tanned face and bold 
black eyes, looking as like a poppy as it was possible 
for a man to look. 

Then he opened his arms : and the Princess 
opened her arms : and he ran, and she ran. And 
they ran and they ran and they ran, till they were 
locked in each other’s arms, and lived happily ever 
after. 


146 


THE WOOING OF THE MAZE 


O NCE upon a time there lived a beautiful 
Princess named Rosemary who had all she 
wanted in the world but freedom. She had 
riches, and power, and glory without end; but 
above and beyond all these things, her beauty was 
like the sound of a trumpet. 

If she lifted the veil from her face, or looked out 
from her window at morning as she combed her 
bright hair, the whole plain at her feet became like an 
army of banners, and the hillsides dark with the 
galloping of her suitors. 

Rejected potentates went clamouring to the four 
winds of heaven, of her charm and of her cruelty ; 
and the saying went that she had paved the floor of 
her palace with the hearts which she had broken. 

But she was weary, was weary of saying “ No ” to 
wooers she did not love ; and often when alone she 
would cry that her riches and her power and her 
glory might vanish away from her, and her beauty 
too, save so much of it as would win her the heart 
of the one man she loved, and leave her to be tended 
by his hands, as was her sweet namesake rosemary. 

One day at noon, when it was the middle of sum¬ 
mer, she was lying on a couch in the palace watching 
how the flies’ wings threw a network on the air as 
they made love to each other and played. It seemed 
to her so like the net that the swarm of her suitors 
threw round her day by day, that she caught one of 
the flies, and to make it more like herself, sprinkled 

H7 


it with gold dust so that it shone ; then she let it go. 
But to her surprise all the other flies avoided it, and 
the gilded one went about solitary and alone. 

“ Oh ! why then,” she cried, “ am I not left free 
like yonder fly sprinkled with gold ? ” 

Just then under the window a young gardener at 
his work among the flowers began singing; and 
this is what he sang : 

“ What will I do for my rose of the roses ? 

Build her a window that looks at the sky; 

Fashion her bower with a door that so closes, 

No man shall open or enter but I.” 

The Princess waited till the words of the song 
were ended ; then a smile broke over her face ; she 
took up her guitar, and with musically skilled fingers 
played over the air as it had been sung. One by 
one the clear notes sprang through the open win¬ 
dow and fell upon the ears of the listener on the 
green lawn below. Also her voice took up the air 
and sang : 

“ Thus, in her heart, saith thy rose of the roses, 

‘ Build me a window with heaven for its brow ; 

Fashion my bower with a door that so closes, 

No man shall open or enter but thou.’ ” 


That same day the Princess, sitting upon her 
throne and having crown and sceptre in her hands, 
caused the gardener to be called into her presence. 
The courtiers thought it was very strange that the 
Princess should have a thing of such importance to 
make known to a gardener that it was necessary for 

148 


her to receive him with crown and throne and 
sceptre, as if it were an affair of state. 

To the gardener, when he stood before her, she 
said, “ Gardener, it is my wish that there should 
be fashioned for me a very great maze, so intricate 
and deceitful that no man who has not the secret 
of it shall be able to penetrate therein. Inmost is 
to be a little tower and fountains, and borders of 
sweet-smelling flowers and herbs. But the man 
who fashions this maze and has its secret must 
remain in it for ever lest he should betray his know¬ 
ledge to others. So it is my will that you should 
devise such a maze for my delight, and be yourself 
the prisoner of your own craft when it is accom¬ 
plished.” 

The gardener lifted his head where he knelt, and 
saw the Princess sitting with eyes fast shut and hard¬ 
bitten lips, and hands down loose on either side of 
her, from which had fallen the crown and sceptre 
they had held. Then he answered her, “ Princess, 
by all the might of my craft I will be, and it shall 
be so as you wish.” 

Now the Princess gave it out to the world that, 
being so wooed, she was minded to put all men 
who required her hand to a great test, that so he 
who deserved her most might win her. Therefore 
at such and such a time she made it to be known that 
she would withdraw herself from all men’s eyes to 
the centre of a great maze strongly knit round by 
magic, and that whoever desired her beauty and 
could penetrate through all the deceits and dangers 
of that maze should possess herself and her lands 
and her power, and live in glory of his achievement. 

H9 


Day by day, out of her palace window, she 
watched the great maze as it grew. Wondrously it 
wound like a huge serpent, gathering into its fold 
many miles of country—wood and hill and valley, 
and great pits and caverns. And far within rose a 
small round tower about which stood fountains like 
silver willows blown bv the wind ; but the door 
no man could see, for mighty hedges and walls 
circled all ways about, cutting off what was below 
the eye, so that the inner garden lay hidden like a 
skylark’s nest in the corn. 

One day when the Princess asked, “ How strong 
is this maze to be ? ” the gardener answered, “ As 
strong as love.” And when she asked, “ How hard 
will its way be to find ? ” he answered, “ As hard 
as is the foolishness of the kings and princes who 
shall seek thee therein.” Then she laughed and 
was comforted in her heart when the day approached 
on which all the world was to be parted from her. 

On that day a hundred suitors had gathered to 
the Court, eager to prove their prowess and win 
the most beautiful woman in all the world for a 
bride. At night the palace was ablaze from floor 
to roof, for there a great feast was held, at which 
sat Princess Rosemary, magnificent in her beauty 
and the splendour of her robes and crown. And 
all the kings and princes and lords bent round her 
with love and worship. 

When the clocks struck midnight she rose, and 
all her jewels shone in the fashion of a star, so thickly 
clustered the eye might not discern one from other ; 
but from heel to crown they clothed her as in a 
sheet of fire. She passed down the midst of the 

X S° 


hall, bowing both ways to the assembly in gracious 
farewell, and her train as it went from floor to floor 
was as a great retinue following her when she her¬ 
self had passed forth. 

She went from terrace to terrace of garden under 
great trees where torches and trombones hung, 
blown by the wind, till she came to the entrance 
of the maze. Then she drew out of her breast a 
small chart, and gazing thereon went as though 
fate-led out of sight and sound. And all the crowd 
standing without watched the mysterious jewelled 
train of her robe passing in after she was gone, as 
though itself knew the way it had to go and the 
windings that led into the very heart of the maze. 
A whispered tale went from mouth to mouth that 
he who had devised and fashioned the maze had 
disappeared—was dead, lest the secret should be 
betrayed. Some said “ Poison 55 ; some said noth¬ 
ing, but shook their heads darkly and seemed 
wise. 

At the first dawn of day the hundred kings, 
princes, and knights went forth to the wooing of 
the maze, for there were many paths, and each one 
went his own way. 

For many days the doors remained sealed and 
silent as a tomb, and the crowds that gathered daily 
to watch began dwindling away, and went back to 
resume their neglected trades. At last the coun¬ 
tries whose kings did not return sent ambassadors 
with messages that became more and more urgent 
in demanding their presence. They spoke of the 
balance of thrones, and the encroachments of neigh¬ 
bouring powers, and the deaths of relatives. These 


ambassadors went down to the various entrances 
at which their masters had been seen to go in, and 
thence shot arrows at a venture with the urgent 
messages attached to them. But yet none came 
to answer. 

Then the ambassadors were summoned away, for 
new kings had seized on the vacant thrones, and the 
return of their predecessors became no longer 
expedient. People almost forgot at last to trouble 
their heads, save when fresh suitors came desirous 
of joining in the great wooing of the maze, the more 
by reason of its apparent dangers. Then indeed 
for a time gossips would wait and talk, but after¬ 
wards they went away. 

Many years went by, and at last there came forth 
a knight with grizzled hair and bowed head. He 
walked in loops and circles, and his eyes slid from 
right to left over the ground at his feet. He seemed 
crazed, and stuttered when he spoke. They asked 
him how he had fared. He showed them many 
badges of other knights fastened about his shield 
and helmet. “ I overthrew these,” he said, “ till 
I met one who said, ‘ I am Old Age : turn 
back ! ’ ” 

They watched after him with his middle-aged 
stoop, till he had stumbled his way into his own 
country. Some remembered him as a gallant young 
knight fifteen years ago. 

Yet the story went that the wondrous beauty 
of the Princess did not fade; and the people 
became proud of a legend that spread so great a 
distinction for their land, and would point to the 
maze and the far-off fountains, and say, “ There 

152 


waits our beautiful Princess till one come worthy 
to woo her.” 

Twenty years had gone by when one day a 
goodly young Prince, with a smiling countenance, 
and two long lances slung over his back, made his 
appearance at the palace and demanded admittance 
to the maze. Half the population streamed out to 
meet him, for it was many years since the last wooer 
had come and vanished never to return. The 
country remembered its importance, and gave him 
a great welcome. “ Look what long lances he has ! ” 
shouted the crowd. And then the doors of the 
maze closed on him, and they went back to their 
work. 

When the Prince had made some way into the 
maze, he fastened his horse to a tree, took down 
his lances and—chopped off their points. Lo, and 
behold ! he had turned them into stilts, great high 
stilts, so that by mounting them he could see far 
away over the windings of the maze into the very 
heart of it. 

Far off he could see the silver glint of fountains 
like grey willows blown slantwise in the wind. That 
way with a pleasant tune in his heart he straddled 
merrily along. If he found himself in a blind alley, 
or being carried back by the windings of the road, 
he stood on one stilt and went “ leg over ” with 
the other ; thus his goings prospered. 

Here and there, he came upon dead men lying 
in their armour ; some of them were quite old, 
others had long lances by their sides ; they must 
have been hard of understanding and foolish. He 
passed them all by. 


153 


For the whole long day he travelled, till towards 
evening he came upon a little wood, and saw 
through the tree-boles the grey stones of the little 
tower, and felt on his face the spray of the foun¬ 
tains carried by the wind. Also he heard the 
sound of pleasant voices, and the stroke of a spade 
in the earth. 

Free of the wood the path led straight on, till 
at the end of it, over a high hedge, lay a dainty 
bright garden. A man and a woman were bending 
together over a border of flowers. Their faces were 
close together, full of smiles as their hands gathered 
sprays of rosemary ; their hair was wet with the 
drift of the fountains. 

Both were in the early middle-age of life, the 
woman tall and broad-bosomed, her hair like a 
plaited crown of gold. 

The man, as her face brushed his, laughed and 
began singing : 

“ What shall I do for my rose of the roses ? 

Build her a window that looks at the sky, 

Fashion a door to her bower that so closes, 

No man shall open or enter but I.” 

The Prince came and looked over the hedge ; at 
the end of the song the gardener and his wife had 
raised themselves ; the woman had her face rest¬ 
ing on the man’s shoulder, and her arms about his 
waist. As she stood, her eyes came straight upon 
the intruder, who hung a laughing head and shoul¬ 
ders over the garden hedge. Her mouth and eyes 
went wide open, but breath was wanting for 
speech. She pinched her husband to make him 
look round. 


*5+ 


The Prince smiling, addressed them with the 
utmost courtesy, “ Good Sir and Madam, can you 
tell me whether the Princess is at home ? ” As he 
spoke he lifted a stilt and planted it down on the 
flower-bed inside. One more stride and he was in. 
There was a sudden clapping of hands. “ He’s a 
humorist ! ” cried the gardener’s wife. 

“ Please,” said he, as he climbed down from his 
height and stood once more on his own feet, “ please, 
I am come for the Princess; and I hope she is not 
tired of waiting, and is as beautiful, and as young, 
as report has led me to believe.” 

The gardener’s wife laughed and ran into the 
tower. Presently from roof to floor it was filled 
with a great rustling sound, and all the windows 
shone with the colour of fire. Then out of the 
door came a lovely girl blazing with jewels and 
drawing behind her a wonderful great train. “ Here 
is your Princess,” said her mother. How beautiful 
she was, how radiant, how young ! She came 
softly towards the Prince, laughing and holding out 
her hand. He took it, and as he did so the whole 
of the maze disappeared, and only the little tower 
with its fountains remained. So the young couple 
went back to the palace and were married, but the 
other couple stayed at home ; and there they lived 
happily ever after.- 


155 


J L* Xl 


THE MOON-FLOWER 

P RINCESS BERENICE sat by a window of 
her father’s palace, looking out of the Me on. 
In her hand she held a great white pearl, and 
smiled, for it was her mother’s birthday gift. The 
chamber in which she sat was of pure silver, and 
in the floor was a small window by which she could 
see out of the Moon and right down on to the 
Earth, where the moonbeams were going. There 
it lay like a great green emerald ; and wherever 
the clouds parted to let the moonbeams go through, 
she could see the tops of the trees, and broad fields 
with streams running by. 

“ Yonder is the land of the coloured stones,” 
she said to herself, “ that the merchants go down 
the moonbeams and bring home and sell.” And 
as she bent lower and lower and gazed with curious 
eyes, the great pearl rolled from her hand and fell 
out of the Moon, and went slipping and sliding 
down a moonbeam, never stopping till it got to the 
Earth. 

“ My mother’s pearl ! ” cried the Princess, “ the 
most beautiful of all her pearls that she gave me. 

I must run down and bring it back ; for if I wait 
it will be lost. And as to-night is the full-moon 
down there upon Earth, I can return before any¬ 
one finds out that I am gone.” 

The Earth was sparkling a brighter green under 
the approach of night. “ Oh, land of the coloured 
stones ! ” cried the Princess ; and, slipping through 

156 


the w^dow, she stepped out of the Moon, and 
went running down the same moonbeam by which 
the pearl had fallen. 

Night came ; and the Earth and the Moon lay 
looking at each other in the midst of heaven, like 
an emerald and a pearl; but through the palace, 
ar d within, over all its gardens and terraces there 
began to be callings on the Princess Berenice ; and 
presently there were heart-searchings and fear, for 
they found the empty room with its open window : 
and the Princess Berenice was not there. 

Now, not long before this, upon our own Earth 
there had lived and died a King who had four sons, 
but only three kingdoms. So when he came to 
die he gave to each of his three eldest sons a king¬ 
dom apiece ; but to the youngest, having nothing 
else left to give, he gave only a pair of travelling 
shoes, and said : “ Wear these, and some day they 
will take you to fortune ! ” 

So, when the King was dead, the young Prince 
wore the shoes night and day, hoping that some 
time or another they would take him to fortune. 
His brothers laughed at him, and said : “ Our 

father was wise to play those old shoes off upon 
you ! If it had been either of us we would have 
gone and bought ourselves an army and fought for 
a just share in the inheritance. But you seem 
pleased, so we ought to be.” 

Now one day the Prince went out hunting in 
the forest, and there, having become separated from 
all his friends, he thoroughly lost his way. Wher¬ 
ever he turned the wood seemed to grow denser, 
the thickets higher, and the solitude more than he 

l 57 


ever remembered before. Night came on, and, 
there being nothing else that he could do, he lay 
down and wrapped himself in his cloak and slept. 

When he awoke it was day, but the woods were 
as still as death ; no bird sang, and not a cricket 
chirped among the grass. As he sat up he noticed 
that the shoe was gone from his left foot, nor could 
he see it anywhere near. “ ’Tis the half of my in¬ 
heritance gone ! ” he said to himself, and got up 
to search about him. But still no shoe could he 
find. At last he gave up the search as useless, and 
set off walking without it. Then as it seemed to 
him so ridiculous to go limping along with only one 
shoe on, he took off the remaining one, and threw 
it away, saying : “ Go, stupid, and find your 

fellow ! ” 

To the Prince’s great astonishment, it set off at 
a rapid pace through the wood, all of its own 
accord. The Prince, barefoot except for his stock¬ 
ings, began to run after it. 

Presently he found that he was losing his breath. 
“ Hie, hie ! ” he called out, “ not quite so fast, 
little leather-skins! ” But the shoe paid him no 
heed and went on as before. It skipped through 
the grass and brushwood, as if a young girl’s foot 
were dancing inside it ; and whenever it came to 
a fallen tree, or a boulder of rock it was up and 
over with a jump like a grasshopper. 

Before long the Prince’s stockings were nothing 
but holes and tatters; as he ran they fluttered from 
his legs like ribbons. He had lost his hat, and his 
cloak was torn-into patterns, and he felt from head 
to foot like a house all doors and windows. He 

158 


was almost on his last gasp when he saw that the 
shoe was making straight for a strange little house 
of green bronze, shut in bv a high wall, and showing 
no windows ; and in the middle of the wall was a 
bronze door shut fast. As he came near he found 
that outside, on the doorstep, stood his other shoe 
as if waiting to be let in. “ So it was worth 
running for ! ” thought he ; and then, putting 
on both shoes again, he began knocking at the 
door. 

As he knocked the door opened. It opened in 
such a curious way, flat down like a swing-bridge 
or like the lid of a box. For some time he was 
half afraid to walk in on the top of it. Presently, 
however, he summoned up his courage and stepped 
across it. 

The door closed behind him like a trap, and he 
found himself in a beautiful house ; all its walls 
were hung with gold and precious stones, but 
everywhere was the emptiness and the silence of 
death. 

He went from room to room seeking for any 
that lived there, but could see no one. In one 
place he found thrown down a fan of white feathers 
and pearl; and in another flowers, fresh plucked, 
lying close by a cushion dinted and hollowed, as 
though the weight of a head or arm had rested 
there. But beyond these there was no sign of a 
living thing to be found. 

Through the windows he saw deep bowery 
gardens hemmed in by high walls, within which 
grew flowers of the loveliest kinds. All the paths 
were of smooth grass, and everywhere were the 

l 59 


traces of gentle handiwork ; but still not a soul 
was to be seen. 

It seemed to the Prince now and then that there 
was something in the garden which moved, dis¬ 
tinct from the flowers, and shifting with a will of 
its own. Though the sun shone full down, casting 
clear shadows across the lawns, this that he saw 
was altogether misty and faint. Now it seemed 
like a feather blown to and fro in the wind, and now 
like broken gossamer threads, or like filmy edges of 
clouds melting away in the heat. Where it went 
the flowers moved as though to make way for it, 
swaying apart and falling together again as it passed. 

The Prince watched and watched. He tired his 
eyes with watching, yet he could see no more ; and 
no way could he find to the garden, for all the doors 
leading to it were locked fast and barred. 

There was another strange thing he noticed 
which seemed to him to have no meaning. All 
over the garden, between the trees and the sky, 
was stretched a silver net, so fine that it showed 
only as a faint film against the blue ; but a net for 
all that. Here and there, the light of the sun 
catching it, hung sparkling in its silver meshes. It 
was like the net that a gardener throws over straw¬ 
berry beds or currant bushes to keep off the birds 
from the fruit. So was it with this net; through 
it no bird could enter the garden, and no bird that 
was in the garden could leave it. 

All day the Prince had these two things before 
his eyes to wonder about, till the sun went down 
and it began to get dusk. 

At the moment when the sun sank below the 

160 



L 



































N 


earth there was a sound of opening doors all over 
the house. The Prince ran and found one of the 
doors leading into the garden wide open, and through 
it he could see the stir of leaves, and the deep 
colours of the flowers growing deeper in the dusk ; 
only the evening primroses were lighting their soft 
lamps. 

From a distant part of the garden came the 
sound of falling water, and a voice singing. As he 
approached he saw something shining against the 
dark leaves higher than the heads of the flowers; 
and before he well knew what he saw, he found 
before his eyes the most lovely woman that the 
mind of man could believe in. 

In her hand hung a watering-can, with the 
water falling from it in sprays on to the flower beds 
beneath. Her head was bent far down, yet how 
she looked slender and tall! She was very pale, 
yet a soft light seemed to grow from her, the light 
of a new moon upon a twilight sky. And now the 
Prince heard clearly the sweet voice, and the words 
that she was singing : 

“ Listen, listen, listen, 

O heart of the sea ! 

I am the Pearl of pearls 
I am the Mother of pearls, 

And the Mother of thee. 

Glisten, glisten, glisten, 

O bed of the sea ! 

Lost is the Pearl of pearls, 

And all the divers for pearls 
Are drowning for me.” 

He stood enchanted to hear her; but the words 

163 


of the song ended suddenly in a deep sigh. The 
singer lifted her head ; her eyes moved like grey 
moths in the dusk, amid the whiteness of her face. 
At sight of him they grew still and large, widening 
with a quiet wonder. Then the beautiful face broke 
into smiles, and the Princess stretched out her 
hands to him and laughed. 

“ Have you come,” she said, “ to set me free ? ” 

“ To set you free ? ” asked the Prince. 

“ I am a prisoner,” she told him. 

“ Alas, then ! ” answered the Prince, “ I am a 
prisoner also, and can free no one; but were I now 
free to go wherever I would, I should be a prisoner 
still, for I have seen the face of the loveliest heart 
on earth ! ” 

“Alas!” she sighed, “and can you not set me 
free ? ” 

“ Tell me,” he said, “ what makes you a prisoner 
here ? ” 

She pointed to the net over their heads, to the 
walls that stood on all sides of them, and to the 
ground beneath their feet. “ That,” she said, 
“ and that, and this.” 

“ Who are you ? ” he asked, “ and where do you 
come from ? and whose power is it that now holds 
you captive ? ” 

She led him on to a terrace, from which they 
could see out towards the west; and there lay the 
new Moon, low down in the sky. “ Yonder,” she 
said, pointing to it, “ is my home ! ” She wept. 
“ Shall I ever return to it ? ” 

The Prince, gazing at her in wonder, cried, 
“ Are you one of a Fairy race ? ” 

164 


“ No, oh, no ! ” she sighed. “ I am but mortal 
like yourself ; only my home is there, while yours 
is here. We, who dwell in the Moon, are as you 
are, but the sun has greater power over us ; the 
light of it falling on us makes us pale and unsub¬ 
stantial, so that we weigh not so much as a gossamer 
and become transparent as thin fleeces of cloud. 
Then we can go where you cannot go, treading 
the light as it flies ; but at sunset we regain our 
strength, and our bodies come to us again ; and 
we are as you see me now—no different from your¬ 
selves, the inhabitants of the Earth.” 

“ Tell me,” said the Prince, “ of yourself, and the 
dwellers in the Moon ! Is it not cold there, and 
barren ? ” 

She answered smiling, for the memory of her home 
was sweet to her, “ Outside, the Moon is cold and 
barren ; but within it is very warm and rich and 
fertile ; more beautiful than any place I have seen on 
earth. It is there we live ; and we have flocks, and 
herds, and woods, and rivers, and harbours, and seas. 
Also we have great cities built inside the Moon’s 
crust, for the Moon is a great hollow shell, and we 
walk upon its inner surface and are warm. The 
sunlight comes to us through craters and clefts in 
the ground ; and the beams of it are like solid pillars 
of gold that quiver and sway as they shoot upwards 
into the opal twilight of our world ; and the shine 
and the warmth of it come to us, and colour the air 
above our heads ; but we are safe from its full light 
falling on us, for the ground is between us and it. 
Only when we pass through to the outer side do we 
become pale and faint, a mere whisper of our former 


selves. And then we are so light that if we step upon 
a moonbeam it will bear our weight ; and the moon¬ 
beam carries us swiftly as its own light travels, till it 
reaches the Earth : so we come. But to return there 
is another way.” 

And when the Prince asked her, she told him of 
the other way back into the Moon. 

“ When we wish to return,” she went on “ (for 
the falling light of a moonbeam cannot carry us 
back), we must go where there is a pool of still water 
and wait for the reflection of the Moon to fall on it; 
and when the Moon is full, and throws its image into 
the water, then we dive down, and with our lips 
touch the reflection of its face, crying, ‘ Open, open 
to me, for I am a Moon-child ! ’ And the Moon will 
open her face like a door of pearl, and let us pass in ; 
and when she draws her reflection out of the pool, 
we find ourselves once again among our own people 
and in our own land. Many of us have so come and 
so returned,” she sighed deeply, “ but I fear that I 
shall never again return.” 

Then the Prince asked her further whose power 
it was that held her captive ; and she told him how 
she had dropped the pearl that her mother had given 
her, and had come down seeking it. Then she said, 
“ In the Moon we have many jewels, for we have 
opals and onyxes, and peails and moonstones, but 
we have no rubies, or emeralds, or sapphires, or stones 
of a single colour, such as you have. Therefore, we 
have a passion for these things, and our merchants 
come down and bring them back to us at a great 
price. 

“ Now it chanced that in my search I came upon 

166 


a gnome who had dealings with our merchants and 
had many jewels to sell, and he, seeming to be kind, 
helped me until my pearl was found. Then he took 
me to see his own treasures ; and, alas, while my eyes 
were feasting on the colours of the stones he showed 
to me, my poor beauty inflamed the avarice of his 
evil heart, and the desire to have me for his wife be¬ 
came great. So when I asked him the price of his 
jewels, he vowed that the only price at which he 
would let them go was that of my own hand in mar¬ 
riage. Alas, I am young and innocent, and without 
subtlety, nor did I know how great was his power 
and wickedness. As I laughed at his request his 
face grew dark with rage, and I saw that I had in¬ 
curred the undying enmity of his cruel heart. And 
now for a whole year he has held me in his enchant¬ 
ment, striving to break me to his will by the length 
and weariness of my captivity; and lest search or 
any help should come for me from my father’s people, 
he has covered me in with a net, and surrounded me 
with walls ; and here there is no pool into which the 
full Moon may fall, and at the mere touch of my lips 
upon its face, open and draw me free from my en¬ 
chantment, and back into the heart of my own land. 
Only yonder, in the corner of the garden is a deep 
well, where the Moon never shines; so there is no 
way here left for me by which I may get free.” 

“ Does not the gnome ever come to see you in 
your captivity ? ” asked the Prince. “ If so, I may 
by some means be able to entrap him, and force him 
to let you go.” 

“ Twice in the year he has visited me,” answered 
the Princess. “ He comes up out of the ground 

167 


in the form of a Red Mole ; but he looks at me 
wickedly and cunningly with the eyes of a man, 
seeming to say, ‘ Will you have me yet ? ? And 
when I shake my head he burrows under again, and 
is gone till another six months shall be past.” 

The Prince thought for a while and said, “ I do 
not know whether I have the power or the wit to 
make you free ; if love only were needed for the work, 
to-morrow would see you as free as a bird.” 

The Princess, between smiles and sighs, said, “ I 
have been most lonely here ; already you make my 
imprisonment seem less.” Then she led him within 
doors, from room to room, showing him the splen¬ 
dours of her prison. Wherever they went, out of the 
floor before them rose burning jewels that hung 
hovering over their heads to light them as they 
passed ; and when she struck her hands together, 
up from the ground rose a table covered with fruit 
and dainties of all sorts ; and when she and the 
Prince had eaten, she clapped her hands again, and 
they disappeared by the same way that they had 
come. 

The Prince was struck with admiration at the 
delicacy of these marvels. “ When I think of the 
Red Mole, they sicken me ! ” said the Moon-Princess. 
The good youth used all his arts to cheer her, 
promising to devote himself, and if need be his life, 
to the task of setting her free. And now and then 
she laughed and was almost merry again, forgetting 
the walls that still held her spell-bound from her own 
people and her own land. 

She showed the Prince a chamber where he might 
sleep ; and so soft and warm was the couch after 

168 


his last hard night on the ground, that it was full 
day before he awoke. The Princess Berenice ap¬ 
peared before him misty and faint, for the sunlight 
threw a veil upon her beauty ; but still as he looked 
at her he did not love her less, and it still seemed to 
him that hers was the face of the loveliest heart on 
earth. 

All day he watched her drifting about the garden, 
seeming to feed herself on the scent of the flowers. 
In the evening, when the sun set, her body grew 
strong and her face shone out to him like the new 
Moon upon a twilight sky. 

Then he drew water for her from the well, and 
watched her as she watered the flowers which were 
her only delight. Presently he said, “ There is 
much water in the well, for the rope goes down into it 
many fathoms; and yet I find no bottom.” 

“ Yes,” answered the Princess, “ I doubt not that 
the well is deep.” 

“ Before many days are over,” said the Prince, 
“ the well shall become a pool.” 

The Princess wondered to hear him. “ Is there,” 
he went on, “ no such thing as a spade for me to dig 
with ? ” Then she led him to a shed, where lay 
all the needed implements for gardening. So his eyes 
brightened, while he cried, “ O, beautiful Princess 
Berenice, as I love you, before many weeks are over 
you shall be free ! ” 

The next morning he arose very early, and in the 
centre of the garden, where the ground hollowed 
somewhat, he marked out a space and set to work to 
dig. 

All day the Princess went to and fro, faint and pale 

169 


as a mist, watching him at his work. At dusk her 
beauty shone full upon him, and she said, ‘‘ What is 
this that you are doing ? ” He answered, “ What 
I am making shall presently become a pool; then 
when the pool is full, and the full Moon comes and 
shines on it, you shall go down into the water, and 
shall kiss the face of its reflection with your lips, and 
be free from your enchantment.” 

Princess Berenice looked long at him, and her eyes 
clung to his like soft moths in the gloom. “ But 
you ? ” she said, “ You are no Moon-child, and this 
will never set you free.” 

“ Ever since I saw you,” said the Prince, “ I have 
not thought of freedom ; my dearest wish is but to 
set you free.” 

The Princess gave him her hand. “ And mine,” 
she said, “ my dearest wish henceforth is to set 
you free also. Yet I know but one way, and I can¬ 
not name it.” She smiled tenderly on him, and 
bowed her face into the shadow of her hair. 

The Prince caught her in his arms, “ One way 
is my way ! ” he cried. “ Your way,” she said, “ is 
my way.” Then, when he had finished kissing her, 
she said, “ Look, on my finger is a ring ; this ring is 
for him to whom I give myself in marriage. Surely, 
it opens to him the heart of my own people, and he 
becomes one of us, a child of the Moon.” She showed 
him an opal ring, full of fires. “ If your way is my 
way,” she said, “ draw this off my finger, and put 
it upon your own, and take me to be your wife ! ” 

So the Prince drew off the ring from her finger, 
and set it upon his own ; and as he did so he felt 
indeed the heart of the Moon-people become his 

170 


own, and the love of the Moon strike root in him. 
Yet did the love of the Earth remain his as well, 
making it seem as if all the love in his heart had but 
doubled itself. 

So he and the most beautiful Berenice were 
married there by the light of the new Moon, and all 
thought of sorrow or danger from the encirclement 
that bound them was lost in their great jo y. 

During the whole of the next day the Prince 
went on with his digging, making a broad shallow 
in the ground. “ Before the full Moon comes,” he 
said, “ I will make it deep.” And he worked on, 
refusing to take any rest. 

The Princesss loved him more and more as she 
watched him ; and his love for her daily increased, 
for every day, while the Moon grew full, her beauty 
shone in greater perfection and splendour. “ Here,” 
she said to him, “ the coming of the full Moon is 
like the coming of Spring to me : I feel it in my 
blood. After the full Moon my beauty will wane 
and grow paler. But in my own land I do not feel 
these changes, for there it is always the full Moon.” 
The Prince answered her, “ To me your beauty, 
though it grows more, will not ever grow less.” 

At last, on the day before that of the full Moon, 
the pit which he had dug was broad and deep ; 
then he began to fill it with water from the well. 
“ To-morrow,” he said to his wife, when the pool 
was nearly full, as she came and stood by his side at 
sunset in the full blaze of her beauty, “ to-morrow 
we shall be free ; and you will carry me away with 
you into your own land.” 

“ I do not know,” said the Princess; “ I begin to 

171 


be afraid ! ” and she sighed heavily. “ Any day the 
Red Mole may come : one day is not too soon for 
him to be here.” 

“ But why need you fear him now ? ” asked the 
Prince. “ Since you are married to me, you cannot 
be married to him.” 

“ As to that,” said she, “ I fear that to have out¬ 
witted him will but make his malice all the greater 
against us! ” Then she walked softly among the 
moonbeams, bathing her hands in them, and letting 
them fall upon the loveliness of her face ; and as she 
stood in their light, tears rained down out of her 
eyes. 

In the morning it seemed as if her happiness 
had returned. The Prince, as he toiled under the 
blazing sun, carrying water from the well to the 
pool, felt her moving by his side, and heard her light 
shadowy laughter when, just before sunset, the water 
flowed level to the pool’s brink. And when dusk 
rose out of the grass, there she stood glowing with 
the full Moon of her beauty and leaning in all the 
light of her loveliness towards him. 

The happy night drew round them ; out of the 
East came the glow of the full Moon as it rose ; soon, 
soon it would cross the tops of the trees and rest 
its face upon the quiet waters of the pool. They 
clung in each other’s arms, entranced. “ My 
beautiful,” said the Prince, “ shall we not take to 
your mother some of those jewels she loves—the 
green, and the red, and the blue, and the pearl which 
was hers, the quest of which has cost you so much ?” 
He ran into one of the jewelled chambers where lay 
the pearl, and caught from the walls the largest 

172 


stones he could find. Quickly he went and returned, 
for the Moon was now fast cresting the avenues of 
the garden. He came bearing the jewels in his 
hands. 

Princess Berenice stood no longer by the brink 
of the pool, though therein lay the image of the 
Moon’s face, a circle of pale gold upon the water. 
“ Berenice,” called the Prince, and ran through the 
garden searching for her. “ Berenice ! ” he cried 
by the well; but she was not there. “ Berenice ! ” 
His voice grew trembling and weak, and quick fear 
took hold of him. “ O, my beautiful, my beloved, 
where are you ? ” 

Only the silence stood up to answer him. Under 
his feet ran a Red Mole. 

It scampered across the grass, and disappeared 
through a burrow in the ground. Then the Prince 
knew that the worst had surely come, and that his 
Princess had been taken away from him. Where 
she was he could not know; within her former 
prison she was nowhere to be seen. 

All night the Prince lay weeping by the brink 
of the pool, where she had last stood before his 
sight; the print of her dear feet still lay on the 
lawn where she had stayed waiting with him so 
long. “ O, miserable wretch that I am! ” he 
cried, kissing the trodden grass. “ Now never 
again may I hope to behold you, or hear your dear 
voice ! 

All the day following he wandered like a ghost 
from place to place, filling the empty garden with 
memories of her presence, and sighing over and 
over again the music of her name. All the flowers 

U3 


glowed round him in their accustomed beauty; 
new buds came into life, and full blooms broke and 
fell; not a thing seemed to sorrow for her loss 
except himself. As for the flowers, he paid them 
little heed. 

In his sleep that night a dream came to him, a 
dream as of something that whispered and laughed 
in his ear. Over and over again it seemed to be 
saying, “ The Red Mole came, and the full Moon 
came, and the Princess jumped down into the 
water ! ” Then his heart knocked so loud for joy 
that he started aw T ake, and saw the Red Mole scuffling 
away to its borrow in the ground. 

Then he feared that the dream was but a thing 
devised to cheat his fancy, and get rid of him by 
making him go away and search for his Princess 
in the land of the Moon, by the way that she had 
told him. But he thought to himself, “ If the 
Red Mole wants so much to get me away, it means 
that my beloved is somewhere near at hand. Is 
she in the well ? ” he began wondering ; and as 
soon as it was light he went to where lay the well 
in its corner under the shadow of the wall. But 
though he searched long and diligently, there was 
no trace of her that he could find. 

Yet every time he came near to the well sorrow 
seemed to take hold of him, and, mixed with it, 
a kind of joy, as though indeed the heart of his 
beloved beat in this place. Near to the well stood 
a tall flower with bowed head. It seemed to him 
the only one in the whole garden that had any 
share in his sorrow : he wondered if the flower had 
grown up to mark the sad place of her burial. 

m 


“ O, my beloved Berenice, art thou near me 
now ? ” he murmured, heart-broken, one day as 
he passed by : then it seemed to him that all at 
once the flower stirred. He turned to look at it; 
it was like a sunflower, but white even to its centre, 
and its head kept drooping as if for pure grief. 
“ Berenice, Berenice ! ” he wept, passing it. 

At dusk he returned again ; and now the flower’s 
head was lifted up, and shone with a strange lustre. 
The Prince, as he went by on his way to the well, 
saw the flower turn its head, bending its face ever 
towards where he was. Then grief and joy stirred 
in his heart. “ The flower knows where she is ! ” 
he said. 

So he bent, whispering, “ Where, then, is Bere¬ 
nice ? ” and the flower lifted its head, and hung 
quite still, looking at him. 

Then the Prince whispered again, “ The Red 
Mole came, and the full Moon came, and the Prin¬ 
cess jumped down into the water ? ” 

But the flower swayed its head from side to 
side, and the Prince found that it had answered 
“ No.” 

Then he had it in his mind to ask of it further 
things; but, as he was about to speak, he beheld its 
face all brimming over with tears, that suddenly 
broke and fell down in a shower over its leaves. 

At that his heart leaped, and his voice choked 
as he cried, “ Art thou my beloved, my Berenice ? ” 
And all at once the flower swayed down, and leaned, 
and fell weeping against his breast. 

So at last he knew ! And joy and grief struggled 
together in him for mastery. 

175 


All that night he knelt with the flower’s head 
upon his heart, stroking its soft leaves, and letting 
it rest between his hands; till, towards dawn, it 
seemed to him that peace was upon it and sleep. 

All through the day it hung faint upon its stem ; 
but when evening came it lifted its head and shone 
in moon-like beauty; and so deep for it was the 
Prince’s love and compassion that he could hardly 
bear to be absent from its side one moment of the 
day or night. 

And, when he was very weary, he lay down 
under its shadow to sleep ; and the Moon-flower 
bent down and rested its head upon his face. 

All night long in dreams Berenice came back to 
him. He seemed to hear how the Red Mole had 
come, and changed her to a rooted shape, lest the 
full Moon in the water should carry her away from 
him back into her own land. Yet it was only a 
dream, and the Prince could learn nothing there of 
the way by which he might set her free. 

A month went by, and he said to his Flower, 
“ To-night is the night of the full Moon : now, if 
I drew you from the ground, and carried you 
down, and called for the Moon’s face to open to 
us, would you not be free from the enchantment, 
when you were come again to your own people ? ” 
But the Moon-flower shook its head, as if to bid 
him still wait and w^atch patiently. 

Now, as the Prince came and went day by day, 
he began to notice that the Moon-flower had its 
roots in a small green mound, no bigger than a 
mole-hill; and he thought to himself, “ surely 
that mound was not there at first : the Red Mole 

176 


must be down below at work ! ” So he watched 
it from day to day ; and at last he knew for certain 
that, as time went on, the mound grew larger. 

Month by month the mound upon which the 
Moon-flower had root increased in size ; yet the 
Flower thrived, and its beauty shone brighter as 
each full Moon approached, so that at last the 
Prince’s fear lest the Red Mole were working mis¬ 
chief against its life, passed away. 

Once, on the night of a full Moon, as the Prince 
lay with his head upon Earth, and the Moon-flower 
bowed over his face, he heard under the mound a 
peal of silvery laughter ; and at the sound of it the 
Moon-flower started, and stood erect, and a stir of 
delight seemed to take hold of its leaves. Again 
the laughter came, and the soft earth moved at the 
sound of it. 

The Prince started up, and ran and fetched a 
spade, and struck it down under the loose soil of 
the mound. When he lifted up the earth, out 
sprang a tiny child like a lobe of quicksilver, laughing 
merrily with its first leap into the light. But even 
then its laughter changed into a cry ; for out after 
it darted the Red Mole, with fury in its whiskers, 
and wrath flashing out of its eyes. 

The quicksilver child sprang away, darting 
swiftly over the grass towards the margin of the 
pool. There lay the full Moon’s image upon the 
clear stillness of the water ; and the child leapt 
down the bank, and laughed as it sprang safely 
away. Then there followed a tiny splash ; and the 
Prince, amid the rings upon the water’s surface, 
saw, like a door of pearl, the Moon’s face open and 

177 


M 


close again. And the Red Mole went down into 
the earth gnashing its teeth for rage. 

The Prince ran back to the Moon-flower, and 
found it bent forwards and trembling with fear. 
Then he drew its head towards his heart, and whis¬ 
pered “ The Red Mole came, and the full Moon 
came, and the silver child jumped down into the 
water ! ” And at that the Flower lifted its head 
and began clapping its leaves for joy. 

A month went by, and the green mound had 
disappeared from beneath the Moon-flower’s roots ; 
and still every night the Prince lay down under the 
shadow of its leaves; and the Flower bent over 
him, and laid its head against his face. 

As he lay so, one night, and watched the full 
Moon travelling high overhead, he saw a shadow 
begin to cross over it; and he knew that it was 
the eclipse, which is the shadow of the Earth 
passing over the face of the Moon ; then he rose 
softly, leaving the Moon-flower asleep, and went 
and stood by the brink of the pool. 

Up in the Moon the silver child felt the shadow 
of the Earth fall upon the face of the Moon ; and 
he came and touched the Earth’s shadow with his 
lips, crying, “ Open, open to me, for I am an 
Earth-child! ” Then the Earth’s shadow that 
was upon the Moon opened, and the silver child 
sprang through. 

The Prince, watching the veiled image of the 
Moon’s face in the water, saw the Earth’s shadow 
open like a door, so that for an instant the bright¬ 
ness of the Moon shone through, and out sprang 
the quicksilver child, up to the surface of the pool. 

178 


He leapt laughing up the bank, and went run¬ 
ning over the grass to where the Moon-flower was 
standing. He reached up his arms, and caught 
the Flower by the head. 

“ O mother, mother, mother ! ” he cried as he 
kissed it. 

And at the touch of his lips the Moon-flower 
opened and changed, growing wondrously tall and 
fair ; and the flower turned into a face, and the 
leaves disappeared, till it was the beautiful Princess 
Berenice herself, who stooped down and took the 
quicksilver child up into her arms. 

She cried, fondling him, “ Did they give you 
your name ? ” 

And the child laughed. “ They call me Gam- 
melyn,” he said. 

The Prince caught them both together in his 
arms. “ Come, come ! ” he shouted and laughed, 
“ for yonder is the full Moon waiting for us ! ” 
And, lifting them up, he ran with them to the 
borders of the pool. 

And the Red Mole came, and the full Moon 
came ; and the Prince, and the Princess, and the 
silver child jumped down into the water. 

Then the Prince laid his lips against the reflec¬ 
tion of the Earth’s shadow, crying, “ Open, open 
to me, for I am a child of the Earth ! ” And the 
shadow opened like a door to let them pass through. 
Then they pressed their lips against the reflection 
of the Moon’s face crying, “ Open, open to us, for 
we are Moon-children ! ” And the Moon opened 
her face like a door of pearl, so that they sprang 
through together, and were safe. 

179 


And when the Moon drew its reflection out of 
the pool, they found themselves in the land of the 
Moon, in the silver chamber with the round win¬ 
dow, in the palace of Princess Berenice’s father. 

Looking out through the window, down at the 
end of a long moonbeam they saw the Red Mole 
gnashing his whiskers for rage. Then the Prince 
took off his shoes, and threw them with all his 
might down the moonbeam at the Mole. 

As the shoes fell, they went faster, and faster, 
and faster, till they came to earth ; and they struck 
the Mole so hard upon the head that he died. 

Now as for Gammelyn and the shoes we may 
hear of them again elsewhere ; but as for the Prince 
and his beautiful Princess Berenice, the happiness 
in which they lived for the rest of their days is too 
great even to be told. 


180 


THE WHITE KING 


M ANY years ago there lived a Queen who 
could not keep count of the countries over 
which she ruled. Her wealth and her won¬ 
derful beauty made her an apple of discord to all the 
kings who lived round about her borders. For love 
of her they waged perpetual war upon one another, 
and every King who proved victorious made a gift 
to the Queen of the country of the one whom he 
had conquered, in the hopes of thereby strengthen¬ 
ing his claim to her favour. Thus it came about 
that she could no longer keep count of the lands 
which had fallen under her rule ; yet still of all her 
suitors she chose none. 

Now at this time there was one King, and only 
one, who had not succeeded in losing his heart to 
the Queen’s majesty, in spite of her wealth and 
power, and all her wonderful beauty. And so, 
during a long time, since his fancy was thus free, he 
was left in undisturbed peace and prosperity, while 
other kings fought out their jealous battles, and 
stole away each other’s lands. And because his reign 
was so quiet and his country in such rest, his people 
for a pet-name and for their pride in him, named 
him the White King. 

Now after a time the Queen took it as an insult 
that anyone should be so indifferent to the power 
of her charms, and she began to threaten him with 
war for this reason and for that, wishing thereby 
to cajole him into becoming her suitor. But the 

181 



White King saw through all the disguises with which 
she covered her meaning, and understood the arro¬ 
gance of her claim ; so one day he sent to her as a 
gift a statue of himself with his sword sheathed, and 
all his armour covered over with the cloak of peace. 
Round the base of it was written 

“ When a heart in stone doth move, 

Then your lover I may prove ; 

But until the marvel’s done, 

Fruitlessly your wars are won.” 

The Queen looked once at the statue, and for a 
long time after never looked away ; and when at last 
she did her heart had been taken captive. Then she 
looked at the words beneath, and the red flush that 
rose to her face was not gone when the last of her 
army passed out of the city gates to carry war into 
the country of the man who had dared thus to speak 
scorn of her. 

For a whole year the White King fought with the 
forces she sent against him ; but when all the other 
kings came to her aid, then, stronghold by stronghold, 
all his cities were taken, and his lands were laid waste 
and their villages burnt, and nothing but defeat and 
ruin remained. 

Yet in the last battle, when his enemies thought 
to have him a safe prisoner, all of a sudden they found 
that the White King had disappeared. 

Back came the Queen’s armies in triumph with 
their allies, and the conquered territory was added 
as one more to the many that formed her realm. But 
the Queen sighed as she looked at the White King’s 
statue, and her triumph grew bitter to her. Day 

182 


by day, as she looked at the calm marble face, her 
love for it increased, and she owned sadly to herself, 
“ He whom I have conquered has conquered me ! ” 

Of the lost King himself no tidings could be 
learned, though search was made far and wide. 
Minstrels came to the court, and sang of his great 
deeds in fighting against odds, but of his end they 
sang variously. Some sang that he lay buried be¬ 
neath the thickest of the slain ; others that from his 
last battle he had been carried by good fairies, and 
that after he had been healed of his wounds, he would 
return in a hundred years and recover his kingdom. 

One minstrel came to stay at the court who sang 
of ruined homes and wasted fields, and a happy land 
laid desolate, and how its King wandered friendless 
and unknown through the world, hiding himself in 
disguise, sometimes in the cottages of the poor, and 
sometimes in the dwellings of the rich. But from 
no one could the Queen learn any news that satisfied 
her or gave hope that he would at last bend down 
his pride, and come and sue to her for forgiveness. 

Wishing to have a hiding place for her grief, she 
caused the statue to be set up in a green glade in the 
most lonely part of the gardens; and there often 
she would go and gaze on the calm noble face (whose 
closed eyes seemed even now to disdain her love), 
and would wonder how long a queen’s heart took to 
break. 

But after a time she thought, “ Though I may 
never win the love of the White King for my own, 
is there no way by which my passion can assuage 
itself, when by lifting my finger I can summon half 
fairyland to my aid ? ” 


183 


So she called to her the most powerful fairy she 
knew, and taking her into the green glade, began 
sighing and weeping in front of the White King’s 
statue. “ This,” she said, “ is the image of the only 
man on earth I can love ! But the man himself is 
lost, gone I know not where ; and my heart is break¬ 
ing for grief ! Give this statue a life and a heart, 
and teach it to love me, else soon I shall surely be 
dead ! ” 

The Fairy said to her, “ All the might of Fairy¬ 
land could not do so much ; but a little of it I can 
do ; and if Fate is kind to you, Fate may bring the 
rest of it to pass.” 

“ How much can you do ? ” asked the Queen. 

“ This only,” said the Fairy, u but even that you 
must do for yourself. I can but show you the way. 
Stone is stone, and out of stone I cannot make a 
heart; but a heart may grow into it, and this is the 
way to compass it. 

“ You must find first a man who is loved, but does 
not love (for if he loves, the statue’s heart when it 
wakes will turn from you) ; and him you must kill 
with your own hand, and take out his heart and bury 
it beneath the feet of the statue. Then I will work 
my charms, and gradually, as a flower draws its life 
out of the ground, so the statue will draw life out of 
the human heart buried below. And after a little 
time you will see it move, and in a little time more 
its senses will come, and it will be able to hear, and 
see, and speak. But full life will not come to it until 
it has learned to love. Then, so soon as it learns to 
love, it will become no longer stone, but a human 
being.” 


184 


But the Queen said, “ Supposing its love were 
to turn from me to another, where should I be 
then ? ” 

“ Surely,” said the Fairy, “ the secret will be your 
own, and the watching of its life as it grows will be 
yours. Your voice it will hear, your face it will see ; 
whom, then, will it learn to love more than you ? ” 
“ Wait, then, till I have found the man,” said the 
Queen, “ and we will do this thing between us ! ” 
She searched long among her court for some man 
whose heart was whole, but who was himself loved. 
Generally, however, she found it was all the other 
way. There was not a man at the court who was 
not in love, or did not think himself so ; and if 
there were one who had no thought of love, he was 
too poor and mean for the love of any woman to be 
his. 

But one day the Queen heard a minstrel in the 
palace courtyard singing and making merry against 
love. It was that same minstrel who sang only sad 
songs of the White King’s lands laid waste and him¬ 
self a wanderer : a fellow with a dark sunburnt face, 
and thick hair hanging over his eyes. And as he 
sang and rattled his jests at the courtiers who stood 
by to listen, the Queen noticed one of her waiting- 
women looking out of a small lattice, who, as she 
watched the singer’s face, and listened to his words, 
had tears running fast down out of her eyes. 

“ Is this a case,” thought the Queen, “ of a man 
who is loved but who does not love ? ” 

She sent for the minstrel, and said to him, when 
he stood bending his head before her, “ Is this pretty 
scorn that you cast on love earnest or jest ? ” 

185 


“ Nay,” he answered, “ I jest in good earnest; 
for to speak of love in earnest is to jest about it.” 

“ So,” said the Queen, “ you are heart-whole ? 5 

“ Why,” said the minstrel, “ I doubt if a mouse 
could find its way in ; and if I am heart-whole in 
your presence, I ought to be safe from all the world ! ” 

“ Now,” thought the Queen, “ if only my wait¬ 
ing-woman answers the test, here is the heart I will 
have out ! ” 

Then she bade the minstrel follow her to where 
stood the White King’s statue, bidding him sit down 
under it and sing her more of his rhymes about love. 

So the minstrel crossed his legs in the long grass 
and sang. His song became bitter to the Queen’s 
ears, for he took the words that w r ere round the 
statue, and rhymed them and chimed them, and 
threw them laughing in the Queen’s face. She 
hated him so that she could have poisoned him ; 
but she remembered that his life was necessary for 
her experiment to reach its end. So she sent in¬ 
stead for a sleepy wine, which she gave him to drink, 
and presently his voice grew thick and his head 
dropped down upon his breast, and his legs slid out 
and brought him down level with the grass. When 
night came on she left him soundly sleeping with 
his head between the feet of the White King’s 
statue. 

Then she sent for the waiting-woman and said, 
“ Go down to the White King’s statue, and find for 
me my handkerchief which I have dropped there.” 
But as the girl went, the Queen stole secretly after 
her, and watched her come to where the minstrel 
lay asleep. 

186 


























































And when the waiting-maid saw him lying so, 
with his face thrown back, she knelt down in the 
grass by his side, and putting her arms softly about 
him, kissed him upon the lips over and over again as 
though she could never come to an end ; and her 
tears dropped down on to his face, and, as if her mind 
were gone mad for love of him, the Queen heard her 
sighing, “ Oh, White King, my White King, my 
Beloved, whom I love, but who loves me not ! ” 

As soon as the waiting-maid was gone, the Queen 
came softly to the place, and with a sharp knife she 
cut out the minstrel’s heart and buried it at the base 
of the statue. 

In the morning the minstrel was found lying dead 
with his heart gone ; and when they washed the 
dead face and put back the hair that covered the 
eyes, they found that it was the White King himself. 

That day, and for many days after, there were two 
women weeping in the palace : one was the Queen 
and the other was the waiting-woman. But the 
body of the White King they buried close by the 
statue in the green glade. 

Now presently, when the first violence of her grief 
was over, the Queen came to look at the place ; and, 
sure enough, the Fairy had been there with her 
spells. When the wind blew the statue swayed 
gently like a tree in the wind. 

The Queen caused gates and barriers to be put 
up so that no one should enter the glade but herself ; 
only Love found a way, and at night, when all the 
world was asleep, the waiting-woman crept through 
a loose pale in the barriers, and came to moan over 
the place where her lover had been slain. 

189 


All night she would lie with her arms round the 
feet of the White King’s statue, and dream of the 
dead minstrel whom she had loved and known 
through all his disguise. And all night long her 
lips would murmur his name, and whisper over and 
over again the sad story of her love. 

And presently, as the statue drew life from the 
heart buried beneath its feet, its ears were opened 
and it heard. 

In the daytime the Queen would come and sit 
before it and whisper words of love, offering it all 
the gifts of riches and power that are in the hands 
of kings to give ; but at night came the waiting- 
woman and offered it only love. 

Out of the ground the Queen saw grow a small 
plant, that began to creep upwards and to wind 
itself round the base of the statue ; and when she 
saw that its flower was the deadly nightshade, her 
heart trembled and her conscience made her afraid. 

But the waiting-maid, when she saw it, picked 
the sad blossoms and made a crown for the statue’s 
head as of pale amethyst and gold : for she said to 
herself, “ Down below my dear lies dead, and the 
roots of this flower are in his hair.” 

One day as the Queen came into the glade, she 
heard the dead minstrel’s voice, and her heart shook 
with terror as she saw the statue open its white 
lips and sing, and recognised the tune and the 
words as those which had made her heart feel so 
bitter against him ; for she thought, “ What if he 
knows that it is I who have slain him ? ” 

Now that she saw that the stone had its five 
senses, and could see and speak and hear, she 

190 


pleaded to it all day out of the greatness of her 
grief and her love. But the statue never returned 
her a word. 

At night, lying with her face bowed between the 
White King’s statue’s feet, the waiting-woman knew 
nothing of all this change; only the statue heard 
and saw and knew. And at last one day as her tears 
dropped on them, she felt the feet grow warm 
between her hands; and a voice over her head 
that she remembered and loved, said, “ Little 
heart, why are you weeping so ? ” 

In the morning the Queen came and found the 
statue gone. There on the pedestal was only the 
print of his feet, half covered by the deadly night¬ 
shade which had climbed up to his knees and fallen. 
There it lay heavy and half-withered, clasping the 
hollows where his feet had been. 

The Queen knelt down and caught the bare 
stone pedestal in her arms. “ Oh, Love,” she 
cried, “ have you left me ? Oh, White King, my 
White King, have you betrayed me ? ” And as 
she clung there weeping, her lips touched the 
deadly nightshade; and the nightshade thrilled, 
and felt joy give new life down into its roots. 

It reached up and laid its arms about the Queen, 
about her throat, and about her feet and about 
her waist. “ Dearly, dearly we love each other,” 
said the nightshade, “ do we not ? ” 

At night the courtiers came, and found only a 
dead Queen lying, and the statue gone. 

But the White King had gone home to his own 
land to marry the waiting-woman. 


THE PASSIONATE PUPPETS 


W HEN the long days of summer began, 
Killian, the cow-herd, was able to lead 
his drove up into the hills, giving them 
the high pastures to range. Then from sunrise to 
sunset he was alone, except when, early each morn¬ 
ing, Grendel and the other girls came up to carry 
down the milk to the villages. 

All day long the cow-bells sounded in his ears, 
but still the time of his wedding was a long way 
off ; it would be five years before he and Grendel 
could afford to set up a house and farm, with cows 
of their own. 

The great stretch of w r orld that lay out under 
him, like a broad map coloured blue and green, 
made him full of a restless longing to try his fortune 
Yonder he could pick out the towns with 
their spires and glittering roofs, and the overhead 
mists, that gave token of crowded life below. It 
was there that wealth could be got; and with 
wealth men married soon, and were at ease. Some¬ 
where, he had heard, lived kings and queens, wear¬ 
ing rich robes and gold crowns on the top of their 
heart’s desire. For kings and queens, he supposed, 
loved as did he and Grendel, regarding nothing else 
as much in the world besides. 

So Killian, putting heart into his deft hands, 
set to work. 

One evening Grendel came up from the valley, 
after her day’s work, to have a look at her lover ; 

192 


she had brought him some brown cakes and a bottle 
of wine. But Killian, who had caught sight of her 
eyes over the green rise at his feet, was hiding 
something behind his back. 

“ Whatever have you there ? ” she asked, as she 
saw chips, and tools, and bits of bright foil, lying 
scattered about the ground. Yet for three days he 
would show her nothing, only he said, “ What I 
do is because we love each other so.” 

At the end of that time, he showed her what 
he had done. There she saw a little king and 
queen, about six inches high ; he was in blue, and 
she in white ; and they were both as dear as they 
were small. The king was partly like a cow-herd, 
having a crown over his broad-brimmed hat, with 
thick wooden shoes, and leather-bound legs; and 
the queen was like Grendel, with great long plaits 
past her waist, and a gold-worked bodice, such as 
Grendel had for Sunday wear. “ Aye, aye,” cried 
Grendel, “ why, it is you and me ! ” 

Then Killian showed her how the joints of the 
little puppets moved on delicate wires, and how 
four strings ran up, one from each limb, to be fas¬ 
tened to the player’s fingers, so that he might 
make them act as though life were in them. 

“ I shall take these down with me to the valley,” 
said Killian. “ First I shall go about among the 
villages; then, when I can do better, I shall go to 
the towns. After that no doubt the kings and 
queens will hear of me, and will send for me to 
play before them, and I shall become rich. Then 
I shall come home and marry you.” 

Grendel thought her lover the most wonderful 

x 93 


N 


man in the world, and it is the truth he was very 
clever ; she kissed him a hundred times, and the 
little marionettes also. “ Ah,” she said, “ now we 
shall not have to wait five years ! in five months 
you will come back rich and famous, and we shall 
marry, and live happily.” 

How Killian had loved her while making his 
puppets, only she knew as well as he. Truly, he 
had put his heart into them, so that they were like 
living beings,—and so small that their very small¬ 
ness made them a marvel. Being a lover, he had 
put inside each breast a little heart, and, for the 
luck of the thing, had christened them with a drop 
of his own blood, and a drop of Grendel’s; so each 
heart had in it one little drop of blood. Now he 
was to go out, and try his fortune. 

He found a lad to come and take his place and 
see after the cows; then he said good-bye to Gren- 
del, and set off on a round of all the villages of the 
plain. 

At every inn where he put up, he called the 
country folk together to the sound of his shepherd’s 
bag-pipes, and showed them his play. It was only 
himself and Grendel, no story at all, merely lovers 
parting and meeting again, each believing the other 
dead, and in the end living happily to the sound 
of cow-bells, that showed how rich they were in 
herds. 

And the villagers laughed and cried, and gave 
him pence, and a night’s lodging, and food ; so 
that presently he was able to make himself a little 
travelling-stage, and hire a piper to play dance- 
music for him. But it was always the one story 

194 


of himself and Grendel, and no other, though the 
two puppets wore crowns upon their heads. 

The little marionettes had hearts. That was the 
beginning of things : they remembered nothing 
else. When their eyes had grown open to the fact, 
then for them life had begun. After that they 
lived like bee and blossom, only that the bee 
never flew away, and the honey remained in the 
blossom. 

How this came to pass was a question they never 
asked ; why they loved each other they did not 
know. If they had had to think of it they would 
have said, “ It is because we cannot help it.” And 
every day one same thing happened to them that 
they could not help, the most beautiful thing in 
life. It came to them by instinct, taking hold of 
them from head to feet and saying, “ Love, love, 
love,” in all sorts of wonderful ways. 

Whenever this thing happened they began to 
move about softly, going to and fro, and round and 
round, dancing, and holding each other by the 
hand, putting their cheeks so close together that 
their eyelids brushed, and sometimes their little 
hearts that heaved. And all the while music from 
somewhere was giving a meaning to these things ; 
and over and over again, “ Love, love, love ” was 
what it kept saying to them. 

Their happiness was so great, that they would 
begin playing with it, pretending that it was all 
turned into grief. First he would kiss her from 
forehead to chin, and into the hollow of her little 
throat ; and then all down each dear arm, even to 

l 9S 


the finger-tips; and last of all her feet; and again 
last of all her lips, and again last of all her breast. 
And then he would go away, walking backwards 
most of the time, or if not, still turning round and 
round to take another look at her. Then when he 
was altogether out of sight, she would sit down 
and cry, though all the while he would be peeping 
at her from his hiding-place, to let her know that 
he was not really gone. Then she would lie down, 
and cry more, and at last leave off crying and stay 
almost still on a little bed, that seemed to come to 
her from nowhere, just when she was ready to fall 
on it. Then, at last, she would shut her eyes, and 
cover her face up very slowly with a sheet, and lie 
so still that he would grow quite frightened, and 
come running from his hiding-place, and lift the 
sheet, and look at her ; then he would fall down as 
if his legs had been cut from under him ; then he 
would get up and throw flowers over her, and at 
last catch her up and begin to carry her ; and at 
that she would wake up all at once and kiss him, to 
a sound of bells. 

They did not know why they did this; it was 
so beautiful they could not have thought of it for 
themselves, and yet it said everything of life that 
they wanted to say. For love was the beginning 
and the end of it; and always, as they came to the 
sad part, they had tender tremblings for fear the 
other should think the sorrow was real: he, lest 
she should think he had really gone away and left 
her, never to return; and she, lest he should 
believe that she always meant to lie so cruelly still, 
with a sheet over her eyes. Yet the kissings that 

196 


came after made the fearfulness almost the sweetest 
thing in their prayer-sayings to each other. 

For to them this was a daily prayer, the most 
solemn thing in their lives ; heart praying to heart, 
and hand reaching to hand ; and from somewhere 
overhead gentle monitions as to what they must do 
next coming to them, so that they knew how to 
pray best, now by lifting a hand, or now by turning 
the head, or now by running fast with both feet. 
And all this beautiful worship of love their bodies 
learned to do more perfectly day by day; yet the 
little quaking of fear was still in the centre of it all. 

Killian’s fingers grew nimble ; and yet he often 
wondered to see how true to life his puppets were, 
how they sighed, how they embraced and clung, as 
if their hearts were coming in two when the parting 
drew near. How lingeringly the little queen drew 
up the sheet over her face, when her lover did not 
return, and let it fall to cover her with a quiet sigh. 
Often he cried when she did that part, so like 
Grendel was it,—the tender waiting, and the last 
giving in ! And then, how the little king shud¬ 
dered as he drew the cloth from her face ; and how 
he threw the flowers, as if there were not enough 
in the world to express his grief ! And yet it was 
only a play, made by the twitching of the strings 
tied to his fingers, with love as the beginning and 
end of it. 

Killian was getting quite rich in copper coin, so 
he sent some of it home to Grendel, that she might 
buy stock for the home that was so soon to be theirs. 
And presently he made bold to go into the towns, 

197 



where, instead of copper, he might gain silver. He 
built a bigger stage, and had more music to go to the 
dance ; but still it was the story of himself and Gren- 
del, with crowns upon their heads, and nothing more. 

And now, indeed, people began to cry, “ Here is 
a wonderful new actor ! He has it all at the ends 
of his fingers ! What a pity he has no better play 
in which to show himself off ! ” But Killian said, 
“ It is the only play I know how to do.” 

Presently there came a sharp fellow to him, who 
said : “ If you will go shares with me I will make your 
fortune. We have only to put our heads together, 
and the thing is done. I will write the plays for 
you, and you shall play them on the strings. What 
is wanted is a little more real life.” 

Killian was a simple fellow, who believed all the 
world to be wiser than himself. He was glad enough 
to meet with a clever fellow who could write plays 
for him. His partner wanted him to make new 
dresses for the marionettes, to suit their new parts ; 
but to that Killian would not agree. So whatever 
they were they still wore their broad hats and crowns, 
and their wooden shoes, that still he might watch 
in his own mind himself and Grendel making their 
way to fortune and happiness. 

The marionettes grew bewildered with their new 
taking ; they did not understand the meaning of 
all the coarse things they had to do. So in the 
middle of a play, the little queen would fail now and 
then in her part, and move awkwardly, wondering 
what her lover meant when he sprawled to and fro, 
and seemed trying to find in the air more feet than 
he had upon the ground. 

198 


Yet the crowd found her bashful fear so irresistibly 
funny, that it roared again. Also, when the little 
cow-herd with the crown on his head, lifted his 
hand or foot towards his partner, and then shrank 
trembling away, it roared yet more at the poltroon 
manner of the thing. 

Killian’s partner said, “ You alter all my plays, 
but the way you do them is something to marvel 
at. Only, why do you always bring them round 
again to that silly lovers’ ending ? ” 

“ I cannot help it,” said Killian ; “ often now, 
with these new plays, I can’t get the strings to work 
properly. I think the poor puppets are getting 
worn out.” 

His partner began examining the puppets, and 
watching how Killian played them, with more atten¬ 
tion ; and presently he knew that there was more in 
it than met the eye. “ It is the puppets who are 
the marvel, not the man,” he said to himself. “ I 
could work them better myself, if I had practice.” 

Soon after this he proposed that they should set 
off for another town ; it was the chief town of all, 
where they hoped at last to be allowed to show their 
plays to the queen herself. “ It must be a real 
play this time,” said the partner, “ a tragedy; but 
it wants a third person. You must make another 
puppet, while I write the play ! ” 

So Killian set to work. But he had no love for the 
third puppet, which was neither himself nor Grendel, 
and he put no heart inside it, and no little drop of 
blood. So the new marionette was but limbs, and 
a head drawn on wires. 

“ Soon,” thought Killian, “ I shall be rich enough 

199 


to go home and marry Grendel. Then I will throw 
this stupid third one away ; but the other two we 
will always keep close to the niche with the statue 
of Our Lady, to help to make us thankful for the 
good things God gives us in this world.” 

It was beautiful late spring weather when he and 
his companion set out for the capital. On the way 
Killian’s partner told him the play that would have 
to be played before the queen, and said, “ In case 
three should be too much for you to manage, you 
had better teach me also to handle the strings.” 
So Killian began to teach him, with the two little 
marionettes alone, the first play which he had 
brought down with him from the mountains,— that 
being the easiest of all to learn, and the one he loved 
best to teach. 

The partner was surprised to find how wonder¬ 
fully the puppets followed the leading-strings; in 
spite of his clumsiness the story acted itself to 
perfection. 

Simple-hearted Killian was charmed. “ Ah ! 
you clever townsman,” said he, “ see how at first 
trial you equal poor me, who have been at it for 
months ! It had better be you, after all, to do the 
play when it is called for at the court.” And this 
Killian proposed truly out of pure modesty, but also 
because he did not like the play his partner had made 
for him. “ It is too cruel a one !” he said. “ After 
they have played it together so long, I feel as if my 
two puppets can do nothing else so well as love each 
other, and live happily.” 

“ Ah, but,” said his partner, “ the queen would 
find that very dull! ” Killian could not see why; 

200 


but he believed that the townsman was wiser than 
himself, and gave in. All he wanted now was to 
get money enough to run back home with, and throw 
himself into his dear GrendePs arms for life. 

So they journeyed on, and at last, one day, they 
came in sight of the capital. But it had been such 
a long way to come that when they reached the gates 
they found them shut. 

The night was warm, and a high moon was over¬ 
head. “ Come,” said Killian, “ and let us lie down 
in one of these orchards that are outside the walls ! ” 
So they left the high road, and went and lay down. 

First they ate some food that they carried with 
them. Then Killian opened the case in which lay 
the two marionettes, and looked them over to see 
that they were in working order. His partner took 
up the odd number, and began practising it; but 
Killian’s attention all went to the little king-cowherd 
and his queen. 

He fondled them gently with his hands, and as 
he looked at them his heart went up into the moun¬ 
tains to pray for his dear Grendel. 

Presently he began dreaming to himself like Jacob, 
only his dream was just of the simple things of earth. 
D own the great green uplands came troops of white 
cattle; but to him they seemed to be bridesmaids 
coming to GrendePs wedding day, and the ringing 
of the cow-bells was as sweet to him as the songs of 
angels. Before he was fast asleep the two mario¬ 
nettes had slipped off his knee and lay in the deep 
grass looking up at the sky. 

They had never seen so beautiful a sight before, 

201 


for never had they spent a night in the sweet open 
air till now. Over their heads swung dusky clusters 
of blossom, that would look white by day ; and over 
them the moon went kissing its way from star to 
star. 

Now and then single blossoms dropped as if they 
had something to say to the little cow-herd and his 
queen, lying there in the cool grass. 

But the marionettes said nothing; their hearts 
were very full; now, at last, they found their old 
happiness return to them. Their prayers, that they 
used to say to each other so tenderly, had been going 
wrong for quite a long time; sudden starts and 
tremblings of fear had taken hold of their light¬ 
hearted deceptions of each other ; and every day 
things had been going worse. But now they felt 
like entering upon a long rest. 

As they lay, their hands met together. The little 
cow-herd could count her fingers across the palm 
of his hand, and never once did she pretend to be 
drawing them away. How good it all seemed ! 

Close by them the odd man was strutting in stiff, 
ungainly attitudes, cricking his neck and elbows, and 
tossing up his toes. How foolish he seemed to them 
in their innocent wisdom! They knew he was 
nothing to them, for he had no heart; he was noth¬ 
ing but a trick on springs. Yet they wished he would 
go away, and give them room to be alone, while the 
moon was making a white dream over their lives. 

The partner grumbled to himself at the awkward 
ways of the new puppet. Instead of obeying, it 
kicked at the leading strings, and did everything like 


202 



m&m 


















a stick, all angles and corners. Presently lie put it 
back into its box ; and then he saw the little king and 
queen lying together on the damp grass. He picked 
them up, growling at Killian as a simpleton, for 
leaving them there to get rusty with the dew. Then 
he put them also away, and curled himself up to 
dream about the success of his play on the 
morrow. 

Quite early in the morning he and Killian went 
into the city, and set up their stage in a corner of 
the market-place. The wonderful acting of the 
little king and queen, compared with the ungainly 
hobblings and jerkings of the odd man, threw the 
townspeople into ecstasies of laughter. They 
declared they had never seen so funny a sight 
in their lives as the beautiful nervous acting of the 
pair, side by side with the stiff-jointed awkwardness 
of the other. 

Presently, sure enough, the queen heard tell of 
this new form of entertainment, and sent word for 
the mummers to appear at the palace. 

Killian said to his partner : 44 There is something 
the matter with the puppets to-day; they want 
careful handling. I am glad we settled that you 
are to do the new play; for, before the queen and 
her great ladies, I am likely to lose my head.” 

All the court was gathered together to watch the 
puppet-play, while behind the scenes the partner 
took all the leading strings into his own hands. 

The two marionettes opened their eyes, and saw 
daylight; they began moving to and fro softly; 
every now and then they put their faces together 

205 


and kissed. The stupid odd man seemed to have 
gone ; they were so glad to be left alone. 

Soon the little king lay down, pretending to be 
tired, but it was only that he might put his head 
in the queen’s lap. She bent over him, and laid 
her fingers on his eyes, seeming to say, “ Go to 
sleep, then ! I will shut your eyes for you.” How 
pretty it was of her ! 

Then she covered his face over with her hand¬ 
kerchief ; and all at once in came the odd man, 
walking on the points of his toes. The little king, 
now that the handkerchief was over his face, opened 
his eyes, and looked through it, to see what his 
dear queen would be doing now. The odd man 
had his arms round her neck, and was kissing her, 
and the queen looked as if she were going to kiss 
him back; but all at once she had pushed away 
the odd man so hard that he fell down with his 
heels in the air ; and then she snatched the hand¬ 
kerchief from the king’s face, and began trembling, 
and kissing him. 

The whole of the court shouted, first with 
laughter at the odd man’s fall, and then with 
admiration at the wonderful acting of the little 
queen. 

Behind the scenes the partner began grumbling 
to Killian : “ They are going all wrong ! It’s all 
your doing, leaving them to lie in the damp grass 
last night! ” 

But still the whole court shouted and applauded. 
So the play went on ; and now, more and more, 
the showman had cause to grumble. Whenever he 
came to a part where the play required that the 

20 6 


queen should turn from her own cow-herd to the 
ugly odd man, everything went wrong. “ Very 
well , 55 thought he at last, “ she may be as innocent as 
Desdemona but it will all come to the same at the 
last ! 55 

And so, still more, as the play went on, the little 
marionettes trembled and shook with fear. They 
wished the silly odd man would go away, and not 
come interrupting their prayers; and all the while 
they loved each other so ! No idea of jealousy 
ever entered the little king’s head; and as for the 
queen, if the odd man came and put his arms round 
her neck and kissed her, could she help it ? All 
she could do was to run and put her arms round her 
own lover when he reappeared ; and how the court 
shouted and applauded, when she went so quick 
from one to the other. 

At last the final act was begun ; the king came 
running in with a sword in his hand, why, he did 
not know, until he saw his poor little queen strug¬ 
gling in the arms of the odd man. “ Ah , 55 thought 
he, “ it is to drive him away ! Then we shall be by 
ourselves again, and happy . 55 

No one ever fought so wonderfully on a stage 
before as the little cow-herd. All the court started 
to their feet, shouting; and still, while they 
shouted, they laughed to see the impossible odd 
man scooping about with his sword, and jerking 
head over heels, and high up into the air, to get 
away from the little king’s sword-play. The 
partner had to keep snatching him up out of harm’s 
way, for fear of a wrong ending. Then, suddenly 
he let him come down with a jump on the little 

207 


king’s head. And at that the king fell back upon 
the ground, and felt a sharp pain go through his 
heart. 

The odd man drew out his sword and laughed ; 
on the end of it was a tiny drop of blood. The poor 
little queen ran up, and bent down to look in her 
lover’s face, to know if he were really hurt. And 
then a terrible thing happened. 

Three times the little king raised his sword and 
pointed it at her heart, and dropped it again. And 
all the time the partner was tugging at the strings, 
and swearing by all the worst things he knew. 

The little king felt himself growing weak ; he 
was very frightened. He felt as if he were going 
away altogether, and leaving her to think he did 
not love her any more. And still his arm went up 
and down, pointing the sword at her heart. 

The showman tugged angrily; then there was 
the sound of a wire that snapped—the king had 
thrown away his sword. 

He reached up his two arms, and laid them fast 
round the queen’s neck. “ Now at last she knows 
that I have not left off loving her.” He felt her 
drawing herself away, he held her more and more 
tightly to his breast; and now her little face lay 
close against his. Nothing can take her away from 
him now ! 

The showman pulled violently with all his might, 
to get her away; there was a snapping of strings, 
and then—the queen reached out two weak little 
hands, and laid them under her lover’s head. 

They lay quite still, quite still for a long time, 
and never moved. “ The play is over ! ” said the 

208 


showman, disgusted and angry at the wreck of his 
plot. 

Suddenly the whole stage became showered with 
gold ; the great queen and all her court threw out 
showers of it like rain. It fell all over the two 
marionettes, covering them where they lay, just 
as the babes in the wood when they died were 
covered over with leaves. 

Killian dropped his head on to the boards of the 
little stage, and sobbed. The partner let down the 
curtain, and began gathering up the gold. 

And still, from without, the queen and her court 
clapped, and cried their applause; and still within 
lay Killian with his head upon the stage, sobbing 
for the two little marionettes, lying still with all 
the springs and strings of their bodies quite broken. 
Inside, though he could not see them, their hearts 
were broken also. “ Now,” he thought, “ I must 
go back to Grendel, or I too shall die ! ” 

Later, in the middle of the night, the partner 
went away, carrying with him all the gold that 
the little marionettes had earned by their deaths. 
And these, indeed, he left, seeing that they 
were useless any more. But to Killian, when 
he woke the next morning, they were the only 
things left him in the world, to take back to Grendel. 

He took them just as they were, locked in each 
other’s arms, and went back all the long way to 
Grendel, up into the hills of his home, as poor in 
money as when he first started. 

But Grendel saw that he had come back rich ; 
for his face was grown tender and wise. And for 
five years they waited very patiently together, till 

209 


o 


by cow-keeping he had earned enough for them to 
keep some cows of their own, and to live in married 
happiness. 

The little marionettes they put on a shelf, be¬ 
neath the cross, and the statue of our Lady; and 
there, locked in each other’s arms, those two dis¬ 
ciples and martyrs of love lie at peace, feeling no 
pain any more in their broken hearts. 


210 


KNOONIE IN THE SLEEPING PALACE 


J UST when the palace fell into its deep sleep, 
the porter’s son had run out to follow a swarm 
of bees which had flown over the fish-ponds into 
the woods lying outside the royal demesne. In the 
very minute after he had climbed the wood-pales, 
to the time when the shifty swarm came swinging 
its long bright tangle for home, calling on him to 
retrace his pursuit, sleep had clapped down like a 
great eyelid over the whole palace. 

Knoonie made a clear leap over the palings into 
the royal clover ; and then felt something hurting 
his heart, he could not know what or why, very 
strange, very frightening ; it was like waking up all 
alone in the middle of a dark night, and feeling 
that something was standing quite still in the silence 
beforehim—quitestill, becausehehimself had moved. 
He took one step forward, and at that sprang aside as 
if a snake were under him : his foot had made no 
sound in the clover ! Then, thinking his ears must 
have deceived him, he tried once more. Ah ! now 
it was so frightful that his courage went utterly : 
“ Help, help ! ” he cried with all the force of his 
lungs : but his voice gave no sound. The dead 
silence that weighed on his struggles to cry, drove 
him wild with terror. 

He set off running as if Death were after him : 
running like a blind thing; and knew nothing 
more till he fell half-stunned and bleeding into the 
gateway of the palace-courtyard. 

211 


He sprang, and tapped with his hand on the 
porter’s wicket. “ Father, dear father, open 
quick ! ” he cried. But the words fell mute, and 
the wicket did not open. Then he began beating 
with his fists on the bronze panels, and, seizing hold 
of the knocker, battered for dear life. For dear 
life! But dear reason almost died in the attempt. 
The great bronze knocker beat without making a 
sound. He stopped his ears with his fingers to get 
rid of the stillness which was so terrible : and then 
at last he began to think that while in the wood he 
must have gone stone-deaf. But he was frightened ; 
though he was deaf, others surely should hear him : 
again he beat and beat upon the knocker, throwing 
his whole weight upon it, and cried with the tears 
running down his face for his father to come to him. 

Surely somebody must come. No, all was quite 
still as well as silent : nothing moved : everywhere it 
was the same. There was a sentry on guard over the 
gate : Knoonie could see his helmet and the top of 
his halbert shining in the sun. He cried to him to 
come down and let him in ; but the man stood so 
still that he began to think he must truly have lost 
the power of speech as well as of hearing. He 
stooped down, and taking up a stone, threw it at 
the soldier to make him turn round ; moving away 
from the wall so as to get a better aim, he was able to 
see more of him. The sentry stood very strangely; 
he must be asleep or sun-struck, for a small green 
paroquet had come and perched on his shoulder. 

The fifth stone Knoonie threw (for fear had made 
his hand tremble) hit the soldier on the head ; and 
yet he did not wake up, and the strange little 

212 


paroquet remained as if stuffed and glued to its 
perch. 

Then Knoonie, casting his eyes all round for any¬ 
thing to help, saw a new sight. All down the broad 
avenues of the park a movement was taking place 
from the earth upwards : it came nearer and nearer : 
it was like a green army on the march : it waved long 
prickly spears and many-pointed crests, and sent 
green things like lizards swarming into the high trees 
that stood in its way. Up and up, closer and higher 
to the very gates of the palace it came—a wall of 
thistles, magic in strength and stature, over-ranked 
by beetling heads of hemlock, and under-run by 
long snakey loops of bramble, that writhed in and 
out of the earth like huge worms. 

“ I must be dreaming ! ” thought Knoonie for a 
way out of his distress. “ It’s all one horrid dream 
which will come to an end just as the worst thing 
happens.” But the giant thistles came crowding 
close, reaching hungry hands at him. He caught 
hold of the knocker, and dragging himself up was 
able in his terror to force open the wicket, and work 
his small body through, just as the first thistle caught 
him by the leg. He escaped shoeless and with all 
his hose torn into ribands from the knee. Inside 
he came upon his father, sitting in his accustomed 
niche, keys in hand, sitting quite still with head 
bent and closed eyes. 

The child began to tremble and cry; he forgot 
any longer to think it was a dream ; a remembrance 
like the touch of dead lips chilled his heart : the 
remembrance that while his father had been sitting 
there almost within reach of his hand, he, Knoonie, 

213 


had cried and beaten with all his force upon the door, 
and had not been heard. He threw his arms round his 
father’s neck, and clinging close to the deaf face he 
loved : “ Father, father,” he cried, “ wake ! ” But 
his words had no sound, and the porter made no 
sound or stir. 

Dead, dead ! Knoonie threw up his hands, and 
trying vainly to utter one call for help, darted into 
the palace. 

After a long time, he came out again with a white 
face, looking dazed into the sunlight : what was it 
he had seen in there ? Beautiful lords and ladies, 
still as death, smiling and bending over golden plates 
and half-tasted wine; serving men who stood up¬ 
right and still as death, carrying dishes and tilting 
out the wine into great tankards; and, over all, the 
yellow sunlight streaming in licked the dead faces as 
a beast licks carrion. 

He ran tottering over the marble pavement, as 
fast as fear would send him ; to get away out of the 
palace and fetch help for all these dead or dying 
people : for there must still be somebody left some¬ 
where. But when he came to the porter’s lodge, 
there was a sight in the wicket that stopped him : 
the small square aperture was bulged through by 
thistle and bramble, in the midst of which his little 
shoe hung trussed and skewered ; the hard grasp of 
the thistles had bent it out of shape, and the thorns 
of the bramble had cut into the leather like the steel 
teeth of a trap. Looking through, he could see noth¬ 
ing but one dense forest of thistles, made the more 
impassable by a thick mesh of creepers that clung 
about their stems. He climbed up on to the walls : 

214 


everywhere was the same ; those death’s heads of 
hemlock had grown higher than the trees of the 
park, and threw their shadows over the whole palace. 

Slowly, the meaning of the horror which had first 
been so impossible for his mind to take in grew clear to 
his imagination. The sleeping palace, that whispered 
tale of his childhood, was embodied before him ; 
and of all those who had heard it told, and laughed 
it lightly away because every day brought sameness 
of life to each sense, he alone was left awake to drink 
the full cup of this sleep of doom, he alone, amid 
others unconscious of their arrested life, with all 
the ways of knowledge closed from him by an over¬ 
whelming silence, he and he only must live and move, 
and endure this living tomb, till the Prince Rescuer 
should come, of whom the same tale gave promise. 
The great palace where he had been such a little 
thing at everybody’s beck and call, one for the 
grooms to tease, and for maids and serving-men to 
harry, was his own possession now, to do in what he 
would ; but no joy came to him with this growing 
sense of a strange liberty. He went from place to 
place, tiptoeing at first, hardly daring to enter those 
grand chambers where the king and his great lords 
were sitting in state ; but the lords-in-waiting stood 
making way for him with closed eyes; and he might 
see and touch and taste whatever he chose. 

He went and stood behind great ladies, and stroked 
their shining hair, and touched their white wondrous 
throats, and the strong hands of the knights, the 
King’s even, with its gold signet ring; but there 
was no joy in any of these things. And when hunger 
came on him he put out his hand and helped himself 

215 


from the King’s plate : yet though he had tasted no 
such delicacies in his life before, they gave him no 
pleasure now. He looked at all the beautiful ladies 
with their sweet-smiling lips, and remembered how 
he had thought that to be kissed by them would be 
almost death, so great must be the delight. Now 
he climbed up to the sweetest of them all, and tried 
to imagine her as the mother he had never known ; 
yet when he kissed, and saw how the lips went smiling 
on, it was such bitterness that the tears burst from 
his eyes, and fell into the velvet lap of her dress. He 
caught up a napkin, “ For when she wakes up she 
will see what a mess I have made and be angry,” he 
thought : then he remembered the hundred years, 
and cried still more. 

At last, when it began to get dark, weary with 
sorrow, and drawn thither by a growing fear of his 
loneliness, he went back to the gate, and there, 
kissing him, lay down with his head on his father’s 
knee, and clinging to the hand that had hold of the 
keys of his prison, wept himself to sleep. Ah ! how 
happy would he be if sleep would join his lot to 
theirs, and his eyes never open again till the whole 
day of deliverance was come. Alas ! that the bees 
should have led him beyond reach of the charm 
which would have brought sleep, and only back to 
be enclosed in the impenetrable embrace of that 
thorny fastness. 

The next day’s sun shone down and opened 
Knoonie’s eyes; and he rose up into the life-long 
silence that encompassed him; and, kissing his 
father’s face, went forth into the joyless splendours 
of his prison-house. 


216 


This day he climbed all the towers, and strained 
his eyes for a glimpse of the great unsleeping world 
beyond. But high and far the forest of thorns had 
stretched itself ; and he could only see here and there 
the blue of the most distant hills through gaps of 
thicket. 

Then he went down, and sought out all his old 
acquaintances, the stable-boys who played with 
him, the grooms who bullied, and the maids who 
teased. He came face to face with the terrible 
head-cook, who had so many times threatened to beat 
him to a jelly; now Knoonie could have boxed the 
tyrant’s head off, and no hand would be there to 
stay him ; but he only stood and looked at the big 
grim face and the closed eyes, and longed hungrily 
for a blow from that coarse red fist. 

He went on to the stables; and now who was there 
to forbid him his heart’s desire to climb on to the 
back of the King’s great charger, who stood sleeping 
with beautifully arched neck : yet when he had 
clambered his way up by the manger, it was no 
pride to him to be there : he only bowed his face 
down into the black mane and wept. 

That same day he found the Princess sleeping 
in her chamber ; oh ! so beautiful she was with her 
little white hand laid on the spinning-wheel, a small 
prick of scarlet showing on the delicate skin. So 
beautiful she was, he dared not kiss her yet, for he did 
not know that anyone who could win entrance into 
the sleeping palace, could by kissing the Princess 
break the charm and gain her for his bride. Already 
more than one brave knight had entered that vast 
forest of thorns and thrown away his life in striving 

217 


to get to those lips which were Knoonie’s for a little 
stooping. But he was a child and he did not under¬ 
stand. 

The days went by, the weeks went by, and the 
child fell in with ever deepening sadness to the loneli¬ 
ness of his environment. His wistful face grew 
beautiful and pure in that still air, and the picture 
of courtly life that encircled his lent him an uncon¬ 
scious grace. Yet he stayed humble and sad, and 
every night, leaving beds of down and pillows of lace 
untouched, went back to kiss his father’s face and 
lie with his head on his knee. As for food, that 
great palace held stores which would suffice him 
through many lives; and during the magic sleep 
nothing changed or decayed : even the milk stayed 
fresh through the many years to come ; a hundred 
shining pails of it standing in the king’s dairy. 

The weeks, the months, even the years went by ; 
but the child forgot the passing of time ; and the 
less and less of a child, retained the child’s heart still, 
lonely and sad ; with a child’s will and brain, with 
the memory of its childish prattle dying away, and 
no words or thoughts of a growing man to take its 
place; and amid that sleep of dreamless men, 
where even the thought of evil did not enter, his 
heart was left to him, gentle, simple, and pure. 

Every night at his father’s knee Knoonie knelt 
and said his evening prayer, and slept well, with the 
porter’s hand in his. Years made his body fair and 
of a slender strength, and through the deep silence 
he grew tall. And he would go and look at the 
sweet-faced women, and wonder why he sighed, and 
why it was so sad to kiss their lips that smiled and 

218 


yet cared nothing—so sad that as years went on he 
left off from that which seemed to put a double 
silence on his life, the pain being too keen for his 
heart. And then he would go and look at the 
Princess whose lips he had never kissed : and that 
seemed the saddest thing of all. 

Still years went on, and his mild mute life bore 
him very slowly on to age : and still night by night, 
a young man once, and then a man in his full prime, 
and then a man with grey hair showing on his head, 
and then a man beginning to bend down with age, 
went and said his childish prayer, and kissed his 
father’s face, and slept with his head against his 
father’s knee. 

Very gently had life cradled him to age when a 
hundred years came round : he had lost all knowledge 
or thought of speech, save that one form of daily 
use, and his silver-grey face was a reflection of the 
spirit that brooded over the sleeping palace. 

The great day came when all the palace clocks, 
and the sounds of speech and laughter woke back 
to life. The thorns and thistles had disappeared, 
dropping a child’s shoe for luck over the palace 
threshold : the Prince had come and broken the 
spell. The cook was screaming that a hundred cats 
had been at the cream. 

In a far-off corner of the palace Knoonie heard, 
and knew what these sounds meant, and his heart 
trembled for joy : but it was so very terrible ! To 
him the pain, the bewilderment, the multitude of 
sights and sounds made this renewed life an agony 
past knowing ; he was so giddy he could only creep 
hand over hand along the wall towards the gate where 

219 


his father sat. Now his one thought was to see his 
father. 

As he came under the archway, the porter took 
him by the shoulder roughly, and turned him out 
of doors. “ We want no naked old mendicants 
here.” 

Knoonie found no words to say; he just walked 
on and on, a beautiful bowed down old man, be¬ 
spoken of none, until one night he knocked at a 
doorway in fairyland, and there with me found 
contentment and a home. 


Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., 
London and Aylesbury. 









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