Fairy Tales: A Legacy

Fairy Tales: A Legacy is a book by various authors.
==THE CRANE'S RETURN OF FAVOR==
Long, long ago in a far off land there lived a young man. One day, while working on his farm, a brilliant white crane came swooping down and crashed to the ground at his feet. The man noticed an arrow pierced through one of its wings. Taking pity on the crane, he pulled out the arrow and cleaned the wound. Thanks to his care the bird was soon able to fly again. The young man sent the crane back to the sky, saying, “Be careful to avoid hunters.” The crane circled three times over his head and let out a cry as if in thanks, before it flew away. 
As the day grew dark the young man made his way home. When he arrived, he was surprised by the sight of a beautiful woman whom he had never seen before standing by the doorway. “Welcome home. I am your wife,” said the woman. The young man was stunned and said, “I am very poor, and cannot support you.” The woman answered, pointing to a small sack, “Donʼt worry, I have plenty of rice,” and she began preparing dinner. The young man was puzzled, but he let her stay and the two began a happy life together. And the rice sack, mysteriously, always remained full. 
One day the wife asked the young man to build her a weaving room. When it was complete, she said, “You must promise never to look inside.” With that, she shut herself up in the room. The young man waited patiently for her to come out. Finally, after seven days, the sound of the weaving machine stopped and his wife, who had become very thin, stepped out of the room holding the most beautiful cloth he had ever seen. “Take this cloth to the marketplace and it will sell for a high price,” said the wife. The next day the young man took it to town and, just as she said, it sold for many coins. Happy, he returned home.
His wife returned to the room and resumed weaving. Curiosity began to overtake the man who wondered, “How can she weave such beautiful cloth without any thread?” Soon he could stand it no longer and, desperate to know his wifeʼs secret, peeked into the room. To his great shock, his wife was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a crane sat at the loom weaving intently, plucking out its own feathers for thread.
At that moment, the bird noticed the young man peeking in and said, “I am the crane that you saved. I wanted to repay you so I became your wife, but now that you have seen my true form I cannot stay here any longer.” Then, handing the man the finished cloth, it said, “I leave you this to remember me by.” The crane then flew off into the sky and disappeared forever. 
==MY LORD BAG OF RICE==
Long, long ago there lived, in Japan a brave warrior known to all as Tawara Toda, or “My Lord Bag of Rice.” His true name was Fujiwara Hidesato, and there is a very interesting story of how he came to change his name.
One day he sallied forth in search of adventures, for he had the nature of a warrior and could not bear to be idle. So he buckled on his two swords, took his huge bow, much taller than himself, in his hand, and slinging his quiver on his back started out. He had not gone far when he came to the bridge of Seta-no-Karashi spanning one end of the beautiful Lake Biwa. No sooner had he set foot on the bridge than he saw lying right across his path a huge serpent-dragon. Its body was so big that it looked like the trunk of a large pine tree and it took up the whole width of the bridge. One of its huge claws rested on the parapet of one side of the bridge, while its tail lay right against the other. The monster seemed to be asleep, and as it breathed, fire and smoke came out of its nostrils.
At first Hidesato could not help feeling alarmed at the sight of this horrible reptile lying in his path, for he must either turn back or walk right over its body. He was a brave man, however, and putting aside all fear went forward dauntlessly. Crunch, crunch! he stepped now on the dragon’s body, now between its coils, and without even one glance backward he went on his way.
He had only gone a few steps when he heard some one calling him from behind. On turning back he was much surprised to see that the monster dragon had entirely disappeared and in its place was a strange-looking man, who was bowing most ceremoniously to the ground. His red hair streamed over his shoulders and was surmounted by a crown in the shape of a dragon’s head, and his sea-green dress was patterned with shells. Hidesato knew at once that this was no ordinary mortal and he wondered much at the strange occurrence. Where had the dragon gone in such a short space of time? Or had it transformed itself into this man, and what did the whole thing mean? While these thoughts passed through his mind he had come up to the man on the bridge and now addressed him:
“Was it you that called me just now?”
“Yes, it was I,” answered the man: “I have an earnest request to make to you. Do you think you can grant it to me?”
“If it is in my power to do so I will,” answered Hidesato, “but first tell me who you are?”
“I am the Dragon King of the Lake, and my home is in these waters just under this bridge.”
“And what is it you have to ask of me?” said Hidesato.
“I want you to kill my mortal enemy the centipede, who lives on the mountain beyond,” and the Dragon King pointed to a high peak on the opposite shore of the lake.
“I have lived now for many years in this lake and I have a large family of children and grand-children. For some time past we have lived in terror, for a monster centipede has discovered our home, and night after night it comes and carries off one of my family. I am powerless to save them. If it goes on much longer like this, not only shall I lose all my children, but I myself must fall a victim to the monster. I am, therefore, very unhappy, and in my extremity I determined to ask the help of a human being. For many days with this intention I have waited on the bridge in the shape of the horrible serpent-dragon that you saw, in the hope that some strong brave man would come along. But all who came this way, as soon as they saw me were terrified and ran away as fast as they could. You are the first man I have found able to look at me without fear, so I knew at once that you were a man of great courage. I beg you to have pity upon me. Will you not help me and kill my enemy the centipede?”
Hidesato felt very sorry for the Dragon King on hearing his story, and readily promised to do what he could to help him. The warrior asked where the centipede lived, so that he might attack the creature at once. The Dragon King replied that its home was on the mountain Mikami, but that as it came every night at a certain hour to the palace of the lake, it would be better to wait till then. So Hidesato was conducted to the palace of the Dragon King, under the bridge. Strange to say, as he followed his host downwards the waters parted to let them pass, and his clothes did not even feel damp as he passed through the flood. Never had Hidesato seen anything so beautiful as this palace built of white marble beneath the lake. He had often heard of the Sea King’s palace at the bottom of the sea, where all the servants and retainers were salt-water fishes, but here was a magnificent building in the heart of Lake Biwa. The dainty goldfishes, red carp, and silvery trout, waited upon the Dragon King and his guest.
Hidesato was astonished at the feast that was spread for him. The dishes were crystallized lotus leaves and flowers, and the chopsticks were of the rarest ebony. As soon as they sat down, the sliding doors opened and ten lovely goldfish dancers came out, and behind them followed ten red-carp musicians with the koto and the samisen. Thus the hours flew by till midnight, and the beautiful music and dancing had banished all thoughts of the centipede. The Dragon King was about to pledge the warrior in a fresh cup of wine when the palace was suddenly shaken by a tramp, tramp! as if a mighty army had begun to march not far away.
Hidesato and his host both rose to their feet and rushed to the balcony, and the warrior saw on the opposite mountain two great balls of glowing fire coming nearer and nearer. The Dragon King stood by the warrior’s side trembling with fear.
“The centipede! The centipede! Those two balls of fire are its eyes. It is coming for its prey! Now is the time to kill it.”
Hidesato looked where his host pointed, and, in the dim light of the starlit evening, behind the two balls of fire he saw the long body of an enormous centipede winding round the mountains, and the light in its hundred feet glowed like so many distant lanterns moving slowly towards the shore.
Hidesato showed not the least sign of fear. He tried to calm the Dragon King.
“Don’t be afraid. I shall surely kill the centipede. Just bring me my bow and arrows.”
The Dragon King did as he was bid, and the warrior noticed that he had only three arrows left in his quiver. He took the bow, and fitting an arrow to the notch, took careful aim and let fly.
The arrow hit the centipede right in the middle of its head, but instead of penetrating, it glanced off harmless and fell to the ground.
Nothing daunted, Hidesato took another arrow, fitted it to the notch of the bow and let fly. Again the arrow hit the mark, it struck the centipede right in the middle of its head, only to glance off and fall to the ground. The centipede was invulnerable to weapons! When the Dragon King saw that even this brave warrior’s arrows were powerless to kill the centipede, he lost heart and began to tremble with fear.
The warrior saw that he had now only one arrow left in his quiver, and if this one failed he could not kill the centipede. He looked across the waters. The huge reptile had wound its horrid body seven times round the mountain and would soon come down to the lake. Nearer and nearer gleamed fireballs of eyes, and the light of its hundred feet began to throw reflections in the still waters of the lake.
Then suddenly the warrior remembered that he had heard that human saliva was deadly to centipedes. But this was no ordinary centipede. This was so monstrous that even to think of such a creature made one creep with horror. Hidesato determined to try his last chance. So taking his last arrow and first putting the end of it in his mouth, he fitted the notch to his bow, took careful aim once more and let fly.
This time the arrow again hit the centipede right in the middle of its head, but instead of glancing off harmlessly as before, it struck home to the creature’s brain. Then with a convulsive shudder the serpentine body stopped moving, and the fiery light of its great eyes and hundred feet darkened to a dull glare like the sunset of a stormy day, and then went out in blackness. A great darkness now overspread the heavens, the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, and the wind roared in fury, and it seemed as if the world were coming to an end. The Dragon King and his children and retainers all crouched in different parts of the palace, frightened to death, for the building was shaken to its foundation. At last the dreadful night was over. Day dawned beautiful and clear. The centipede was gone from the mountain.
Then Hidesato called to the Dragon King to come out with him on the balcony, for the centipede was dead and he had nothing more to fear.
Then all the inhabitants of the palace came out with joy, and Hidesato pointed to the lake. There lay the body of the dead centipede floating on the water, which was dyed red with its blood.
The gratitude of the Dragon King knew no bounds. The whole family came and bowed down before the warrior, calling him their preserver and the bravest warrior in all Japan.
Another feast was prepared, more sumptuous than the first. All kinds of fish, prepared in every imaginable way, raw, stewed, boiled and roasted, served on coral trays and crystal dishes, were put before him, and the wine was the best that Hidesato had ever tasted in his life. To add to the beauty of everything the sun shone brightly, the lake glittered like a liquid diamond, and the palace was a thousand times more beautiful by day than by night.
His host tried to persuade the warrior to stay a few days, but Hidesato insisted on going home, saying that he had now finished what he had come to do, and must return. The Dragon King and his family were all very sorry to have him leave so soon, but since he would go they begged him to accept a few small presents (so they said) in token of their gratitude to him for delivering them forever from their horrible enemy the centipede.
As the warrior stood in the porch taking leave, a train of fish was suddenly transformed into a retinue of men, all wearing ceremonial robes and dragon’s crowns on their heads to show that they were servants of the great Dragon King. The presents that they carried were as follows:
First, a large bronze bell.
Second, a bag of rice.
Third, a roll of silk.
Fourth, a cooking pot.
Fifth, a bell.
Hidesato did not want to accept all these presents, but as the Dragon King insisted, he could not well refuse.
The Dragon King himself accompanied the warrior as far as the bridge, and then took leave of him with many bows and good wishes, leaving the procession of servants to accompany Hidesato to his house with the presents.
The warrior’s household and servants had been very much concerned when they found that he did not return the night before, but they finally concluded that he had been kept by the violent storm and had taken shelter somewhere. When the servants on the watch for his return caught sight of him they called to every one that he was approaching, and the whole household turned out to meet him, wondering much what the retinue of men, bearing presents and banners, that followed him, could mean.
As soon as the Dragon King’s retainers had put down the presents they vanished, and Hidesato told all that had happened to him.
The presents which he had received from the grateful Dragon King were found to be of magic power. The bell only was ordinary, and as Hidesato had no use for it he presented it to the temple near by, where it was hung up, to boom out the hour of day over the surrounding neighborhood.
The single bag of rice, however much was taken from it day after day for the meals of the knight and his whole family, never grew less—the supply in the bag was inexhaustible.
The roll of silk, too, never grew shorter, though time after time long pieces were cut off to make the warrior a new suit of clothes to go to Court in at the New Year.
The cooking pot was wonderful, too. No matter what was put into it, it cooked deliciously whatever was wanted without any firing—truly a very economical saucepan.
The fame of Hidesato’s fortune spread far and wide, and as there was no need for him to spend money on rice or silk or firing, he became very rich and prosperous, and was henceforth known as My Lord Bag of Rice.
== THE TONGUE-CUT SPARROW==
Long, long ago in Japan there lived an old man and his wife. The old man was a good, kind-hearted, hard-working old fellow, but his wife was a regular cross-patch, who spoiled the happiness of her home by her scolding tongue. She was always grumbling about something from morning to night. The old man had for a long time ceased to take any notice of her crossness. He was out most of the day at work in the fields, and as he had no child, for his amusement when he came home, he kept a tame sparrow. He loved the little bird just as much as if she had been his child.
When he came back at night after his hard day’s work in the open air it was his only pleasure to pet the sparrow, to talk to her and to teach her little tricks, which she learned very quickly. The old man would open her cage and let her fly about the room, and they would play together. Then when supper-time came, he always saved some tit-bits from his meal with which to feed his little bird.
Now one day the old man went out to chop wood in the forest, and the old woman stopped at home to wash clothes. The day before, she had made some starch, and now when she came to look for it, it was all gone; the bowl which she had filled full yesterday was quite empty.
While she was wondering who could have used or stolen the starch, down flew the pet sparrow, and bowing her little feathered head—a trick which she had been taught by her master—the pretty bird chirped and said:
“It is I who have taken the starch. I thought it was some food put out for me in that basin, and I ate it all. If I have made a mistake I beg you to forgive me! tweet, tweet, tweet!”
You see from this that the sparrow was a truthful bird, and the old woman ought to have been willing to forgive her at once when she asked her pardon so nicely. But not so.
The old woman had never loved the sparrow, and had often quarreled with her husband for keeping what she called a dirty bird about the house, saying that it only made extra work for her. Now she was only too delighted to have some cause of complaint against the pet. She scolded and even cursed the poor little bird for her bad behavior, and not content with using these harsh, unfeeling words, in a fit of rage she seized the sparrow—who all this time had spread out her wings and bowed her head before the old woman, to show how sorry she was—and fetched the scissors and cut off the poor little bird’s tongue.
“I suppose you took my starch with that tongue! Now you may see what it is like to go without it!” And with these dreadful words she drove the bird away, not caring in the least what might happen to it and without the smallest pity for its suffering, so unkind was she!
The old woman, after she had driven the sparrow away, made some more rice-paste, grumbling all the time at the trouble, and after starching all her clothes, spread the things on boards to dry in the sun, instead of ironing them as they do in England.
In the evening the old man came home. As usual, on the way back he looked forward to the time when he should reach his gate and see his pet come flying and chirping to meet him, ruffling out her feathers to show her joy, and at last coming to rest on his shoulder. But to-night the old man was very disappointed, for not even the shadow of his dear sparrow was to be seen.
He quickened his steps, hastily drew off his straw sandals, and stepped on to the veranda. Still no sparrow was to be seen. He now felt sure that his wife, in one of her cross tempers, had shut the sparrow up in its cage. So he called her and said anxiously:
“Where is Suzume San (Miss Sparrow) today?”
The old woman pretended not to know at first, and answered:
“Your sparrow? I am sure I don’t know. Now I come to think of it, I haven’t seen her all the afternoon. I shouldn’t wonder if the ungrateful bird had flown away and left you after all your petting!”
But at last, when the old man gave her no peace, but asked her again and again, insisting that she must know what had happened to his pet, she confessed all. She told him crossly how the sparrow had eaten the rice-paste she had specially made for starching her clothes, and how when the sparrow had confessed to what she had done, in great anger she had taken her scissors and cut out her tongue, and how finally she had driven the bird away and forbidden her to return to the house again.
Then the old woman showed her husband the sparrow’s tongue, saying:
“Here is the tongue I cut off! Horrid little bird, why did it eat all my starch?”
“How could you be so cruel? Oh! how could you so cruel?” was all that the old man could answer. He was too kind-hearted to punish his be shrew of a wife, but he was terribly distressed at what had happened to his poor little sparrow.
“What a dreadful misfortune for my poor Suzume San to lose her tongue!” he said to himself. “She won’t be able to chirp any more, and surely the pain of the cutting of it out in that rough way must have made her ill! Is there nothing to be done?”
The old man shed many tears after his cross wife had gone to sleep. While he wiped away the tears with the sleeve of his cotton robe, a bright thought comforted him: he would go and look for the sparrow on the morrow. Having decided this he was able to go to sleep at last.
The next morning he rose early, as soon as ever the day broke, and snatching a hasty breakfast, started out over the hills and through the woods, stopping at every clump of bamboos to cry:
“Where, oh where does my tongue-cut sparrow stay? Where, oh where, does my tongue-cut sparrow stay!”
He never stopped to rest for his noonday meal, and it was far on in the afternoon when he found himself near a large bamboo wood. Bamboo groves are the favorite haunts of sparrows, and there sure enough at the edge of the wood he saw his own dear sparrow waiting to welcome him. He could hardly believe his eyes for joy, and ran forward quickly to greet her. She bowed her little head and went through a number of the tricks her master had taught her, to show her pleasure at seeing her old friend again, and, wonderful to relate, she could talk as of old. The old man told her how sorry he was for all that had happened, and inquired after her tongue, wondering how she could speak so well without it. Then the sparrow opened her beak and showed him that a new tongue had grown in place of the old one, and begged him not to think any more about the past, for she was quite well now. Then the old man knew that his sparrow was a fairy, and no common bird. It would be difficult to exaggerate the old man’s rejoicing now. He forgot all his troubles, he forgot even how tired he was, for he had found his lost sparrow, and instead of being ill and without a tongue as he had feared and expected to find her, she was well and happy and with a new tongue, and without a sign of the ill-treatment she had received from his wife. And above all she was a fairy.
The sparrow asked him to follow her, and flying before him she led him to a beautiful house in the heart of the bamboo grove. The old man was utterly astonished when he entered the house to find what a beautiful place it was. It was built of the whitest wood, the soft cream-colored mats which took the place of carpets were the finest he had ever seen, and the cushions that the sparrow brought out for him to sit on were made of the finest silk and crape. Beautiful vases and lacquer boxes adorned the tokonoma of every room.
The sparrow led the old man to the place of honor, and then, taking her place at a humble distance, she thanked him with many polite bows for all the kindness he had shown her for many long years.
Then the Lady Sparrow, as we will now call her, introduced all her family to the old man. This done, her daughters, robed in dainty crape gowns, brought in on beautiful old-fashioned trays a feast of all kinds of delicious foods, till the old man began to think he must be dreaming. In the middle of the dinner some of the sparrow’s daughters performed a wonderful dance, called the “suzume-odori” or the “Sparrow’s dance,” to amuse the guest.
Never had the old man enjoyed himself so much. The hours flew by too quickly in this lovely spot, with all these fairy sparrows to wait upon him and to feast him and to dance before him.
But the night came on and the darkness reminded him that he had a long way to go and must think about taking his leave and return home. He thanked his kind hostess for her splendid entertainment, and begged her for his sake to forget all she had suffered at the hands of his cross old wife. He told the Lady Sparrow that it was a great comfort and happiness to him to find her in such a beautiful home and to know that she wanted for nothing. It was his anxiety to know how she fared and what had really happened to her that had led him to seek her. Now he knew that all was well he could return home with a light heart. If ever she wanted him for anything she had only to send for him and he would come at once.
The Lady Sparrow begged him to stay and rest several days and enjoy the change, but the old man said he must return to his old wife—who would probably be cross at his not coming home at the usual time—and to his work, and there-fore, much as he wished to do so, he could not accept her kind invitation. But now that he knew where the Lady Sparrow lived he would come to see her whenever he had the time.
When the Lady Sparrow saw that she could not persuade the old man to stay longer, she gave an order to some of her servants, and they at once brought in two boxes, one large and the other small. These were placed before the old man, and the Lady Sparrow asked him to choose whichever he liked for a present, which she wished to give him.
The old man could not refuse this kind proposal, and he chose the smaller box, saying:
“I am now too old and feeble to carry the big and heavy box. As you are so kind as to say that I may take whichever I like, I will choose the small one, which will be easier for me to carry.”
Then the sparrows all helped him put it on his back and went to the gate to see him off, bidding him good-by with many bows and entreating him to come again whenever he had the time. Thus the old man and his pet sparrow separated quite happily, the sparrow showing not the least ill-will for all the unkindness she had suffered at the hands of the old wife. Indeed, she only felt sorrow for the old man who had to put up with it all his life.
When the old man reached home he found his wife even crosser than usual, for it was late on in the night and she had been waiting up for him for a long time.
“Where have you been all this time?” she asked in a big voice. “Why do you come back so late?”
The old man tried to pacify her by showing her the box of presents he had brought back with him, and then he told her of all that had happened to him, and how wonderfully he had been entertained at the sparrow’s house.
“Now let us see what is in the box,” said the old man, not giving her time to grumble again. “You must help me open it.” And they both sat down before the box and opened it.
To their utter astonishment they found the box filled to the brim with gold and silver coins and many other precious things. The mats of their little cottage fairly glittered as they took out the things one by one and put them down and handled them over and over again. The old man was overjoyed at the sight of the riches that were now his. Beyond his brightest expectations was the sparrow’s gift, which would enable him to give up work and live in ease and comfort the rest of his days.
He said: “Thanks to my good little sparrow! Thanks to my good little sparrow!” many times.
But the old woman, after the first moments of surprise and satisfaction at the sight of the gold and silver were over, could not suppress the greed of her wicked nature. She now began to reproach the old man for not having brought home the big box of presents, for in the innocence of his heart he had told her how he had refused the large box of presents which the sparrows had offered him, preferring the smaller one because it was light and easy to carry home.
“You silly old man,” said she, “Why did you not bring the large box? Just think what we have lost. We might have had twice as much silver and gold as this. You are certainly an old fool!” she screamed, and then went to bed as angry as she could be.
The old man now wished that he had said nothing about the big box, but it was too late; the greedy old woman, not contented with the good luck which had so unexpectedly befallen them and which she so little deserved, made up her mind, if possible, to get more.
Early the next morning she got up and made the old man describe the way to the sparrow’s house. When he saw what was in her mind he tried to keep her from going, but it was useless. She would not listen to one word he said. It is strange that the old woman did not feel ashamed of going to see the sparrow after the cruel way she had treated her in cutting off her tongue in a fit of rage. But her greed to get the big box made her forget everything else. It did not even enter her thoughts that the sparrows might be angry with her—as, indeed, they were—and might punish her for what she had done.
Ever since the Lady Sparrow had returned home in the sad plight in which they had first found her, weeping and bleeding from the mouth, her whole family and relations had done little else but speak of the cruelty of the old woman. “How could she,” they asked each other, “inflict such a heavy punishment for such a trifling offense as that of eating some rice-paste by mistake?” They all loved the old man who was so kind and good and patient under all his troubles, but the old woman they hated, and they determined, if ever they had the chance, to punish her as she deserved. They had not long to wait.
After walking for some hours the old woman had at last found the bamboo grove which she had made her husband carefully describe, and now she stood before it crying out:
“Where is the tongue-cut sparrow’s house? Where is the tongue-cut sparrow’s house?”
At last she saw the eaves of the house peeping out from amongst the bamboo foliage. She hastened to the door and knocked loudly.
When the servants told the Lady Sparrow that her old mistress was at the door asking to see her, she was somewhat surprised at the unexpected visit, after all that had taken place, and she wondered not a little at the boldness of the old woman in venturing to come to the house. The Lady Sparrow, however, was a polite bird, and so she went out to greet the old woman, remembering that she had once been her mistress.
The old woman intended, however, to waste no time in words, she went right to the point, without the least shame, and said:
“You need not trouble to entertain me as you did my old man. I have come myself to get the box which he so stupidly left behind. I shall soon take my leave if you will give me the big box—that is all I want!”
The Lady Sparrow at once consented, and told her servants to bring out the big box. The old woman eagerly seized it and hoisted it on her back, and without even stopping to thank the Lady Sparrow began to hurry homewards.
The box was so heavy that she could not walk fast, much less run, as she would have liked to do, so anxious was she to get home and see what was inside the box, but she had often to sit down and rest herself by the way.
While she was staggering along under the heavy load, her desire to open the box became too great to be resisted. She could wait no longer, for she supposed this big box to be full of gold and silver and precious jewels like the small one her husband had received.
At last this greedy and selfish old woman put down the box by the wayside and opened it carefully, expecting to gloat her eyes on a mine of wealth. What she saw, however, so terrified her that she nearly lost her senses. As soon as she lifted the lid, a number of horrible and frightful looking demons bounced out of the box and surrounded her as if they intended to kill her. Not even in nightmares had she ever seen such horrible creatures as her much-coveted box contained. A demon with one huge eye right in the middle of its forehead came and glared at her, monsters with gaping mouths looked as if they would devour her, a huge snake coiled and hissed about her, and a big frog hopped and croaked towards her.
The old woman had never been so frightened in her life, and ran from the spot as fast as her quaking legs would carry her, glad to escape alive. When she reached home she fell to the floor and told her husband with tears all that had happened to her, and how she had been nearly killed by the demons in the box.
Then she began to blame the sparrow, but the old man stopped her at once, saying:
“Don’t blame the sparrow, it is your wickedness which has at last met with its reward. I only hope this may be a lesson to you in the future!”
The old woman said nothing more, and from that day she repented of her cross, unkind ways, and by degrees became a good old woman, so that her husband hardly knew her to be the same person, and they spent their last days together happily, free from want or care, spending carefully the treasure the old man had received from his pet, the tongue-cut sparrow.
== THE STORY OF URASHIMA TARO, THE FISHER LAD==
Long, long ago in the province of Tango there lived on the shore of Japan in the little fishing village of Mizu-no-ye a young fisherman named Urashima Taro. His father had been a fisherman before him, and his skill had more than doubly descended to his son, for Urashima was the most skillful fisher in all that country side, and could catch more Bonito and Tai in a day than his comrades could in a week.
But in the little fishing village, more than for being a clever fisher of the sea was he known for his kind heart. In his whole life he had never hurt anything, either great or small, and when a boy, his companions had always laughed at him, for he would never join with them in teasing animals, but always tried to keep them from this cruel sport.
One soft summer twilight he was going home at the end of a day’s fishing when he came upon a group of children. They were all screaming and talking at the tops of their voices, and seemed to be in a state of great excitement about something, and on his going up to them to see what was the matter he saw that they were tormenting a tortoise. First one boy pulled it this way, then another boy pulled it that way, while a third child beat it with a stick, and the fourth hammered its shell with a stone.
Now Urashima felt very sorry for the poor tortoise and made up his mind to rescue it. He spoke to the boys:
“Look here, boys, you are treating that poor tortoise so badly that it will soon die!”
The boys, who were all of an age when children seem to delight in being cruel to animals, took no notice of Urashima’s gentle reproof, but went on teasing it as before. One of the older boys answered:
“Who cares whether it lives or dies? We do not. Here, boys, go on, go on!”
And they began to treat the poor tortoise more cruelly than ever. Urashima waited a moment, turning over in his mind what would be the best way to deal with the boys. He would try to persuade them to give the tortoise up to him, so he smiled at them and said:
“I am sure you are all good, kind boys! Now won’t you give me the tortoise? I should like to have it so much!”
“No, we won’t give you the tortoise,” said one of the boys. “Why should we? We caught it ourselves.”
“What you say is true,” said Urashima, “but I do not ask you to give it to me for nothing. I will give you some money for it—in other words, the Ojisan (Uncle) will buy it of you. Won’t that do for you, my boys?” He held up the money to them, strung on a piece of string through a hole in the center of each coin. “Look, boys, you can buy anything you like with this money. You can do much more with this money than you can with that poor tortoise. See what good boys you are to listen to me.”
The boys were not bad boys at all, they were only mischievous, and as Urashima spoke they were won by his kind smile and gentle words and began “to be of his spirit,” as they say in Japan. Gradually they all came up to him, the ringleader of the little band holding out the tortoise to him.
“Very well, Ojisan, we will give you the tortoise if you will give us the money!” And Urashima took the tortoise and gave the money to the boys, who, calling to each other, scampered away and were soon out of sight.
Then Urashima stroked the tortoise’s back, saying as he did so:
“Oh, you poor thing! Poor thing!—there, there! you are safe now! They say that a stork lives for a thousand years, but the tortoise for ten thousand years. You have the longest life of any creature in this world, and you were in great danger of having that precious life cut short by those cruel boys. Luckily I was passing by and saved you, and so life is still yours. Now I am going to take you back to your home, the sea, at once. Do not let yourself be caught again, for there might be no one to save you next time!”
All the time that the kind fisherman was speaking he was walking quickly to the shore and out upon the rocks; then putting the tortoise into the water he watched the animal disappear, and turned homewards himself, for he was tired and the sun had set.
The next morning Urashima went out as usual in his boat. The weather was fine and the sea and sky were both blue and soft in the tender haze of the summer morning. Urashima got into his boat and dreamily pushed out to sea, throwing his line as he did so. He soon passed the other fishing boats and left them behind him till they were lost to sight in the distance, and his boat drifted further and further out upon the blue waters. Somehow, he knew not why, he felt unusually happy that morning; and he could not help wishing that, like the tortoise he set free the day before, he had thousands of years to live instead of his own short span of human life.
He was suddenly startled from his reverie by hearing his own name called:
“Urashima, Urashima!”
Clear as a bell and soft as the summer wind the name floated over the sea.
He stood up and looked in every direction, thinking that one of the other boats had overtaken him, but gaze as he might over the wide expanse of water, near or far there was no sign of a boat, so the voice could not have come from any human being.
Startled, and wondering who or what it was that had called him so clearly, he looked in all directions round about him and saw that without his knowing it a tortoise had come to the side of the boat. Urashima saw with surprise that it was the very tortoise he had rescued the day before.
“Well, Mr. Tortoise,” said Urashima, “was it you who called my name just now?”
The tortoise nodded its head several times and said:
“Yes, it was I. Yesterday in your honorable shadow (o kage sama de) my life was saved, and I have come to offer you my thanks and to tell you how grateful I am for your kindness to me.”
“Indeed,” said Urashima, “that is very polite of you. Come up into the boat. I would offer you a smoke, but as you are a tortoise doubtless you do not smoke,” and the fisherman laughed at the joke.
“He-he-he-he!” laughed the tortoise; “sake (rice wine) is my favorite refreshment, but I do not care for tobacco.”
“Indeed,” said Urashima, “I regret very much that I have no “sake” in my boat to offer you, but come up and dry your back in the sun—tortoises always love to do that.”
So the tortoise climbed into the boat, the fisherman helping him, and after an exchange of complimentary speeches the tortoise said:
“Have you ever seen Rin Gin, the Palace of the Dragon King of the Sea, Urashima?”
The fisherman shook his head and replied; “No; year after year the sea has been my home, but though I have often heard of the Dragon King’s realm under the sea I have never yet set eyes on that wonderful place. It must be very far away, if it exists at all!”
“Is that really so? You have never seen the Sea King’s Palace? Then you have missed seeing one of the most wonderful sights in the whole universe. It is far away at the bottom of the sea, but if I take you there we shall soon reach the place. If you would like to see the Sea King’s land I will be your guide.”
“I should like to go there, certainly, and you are very kind to think of taking me, but you must remember that I am only a poor mortal and have not the power of swimming like a sea creature such as you are—”
Before the fisherman could say more the tortoise stopped him, saying:
“What? You need not swim yourself. If you will ride on my back I will take you without any trouble on your part.”
“But,” said Urashima, “how is it possible for me to ride on your small back?”
“It may seem absurd to you, but I assure you that you can do so. Try at once! Just come and get on my back, and see if it is as impossible as you think!”
As the tortoise finished speaking, Urashima looked at its shell, and strange to say he saw that the creature had suddenly grown so big that a man could easily sit on its back.
“This is strange indeed!” said Urashima; “then. Mr. Tortoise, with your kind permission I will get on your back. Dokoisho!” he exclaimed as he jumped on.
The tortoise, with an unmoved face, as if this strange proceeding were quite an ordinary event, said:
“Now we will set out at our leisure,” and with these words he leapt into the sea with Urashima on his back. Down through the water the tortoise dived. For a long time these two strange companions rode through the sea. Urashima never grew tired, nor his clothes moist with the water. At last, far away in the distance a magnificent gate appeared, and behind the gate, the long, sloping roofs of a palace on the horizon.
“Ya,” exclaimed Urashima. “That looks like the gate of some large palace just appearing! Mr. Tortoise, can you tell what that place is we can now see?”
“That is the great gate of the Rin Gin Palace, the large roof that you see behind the gate is the Sea King’s Palace itself.”
“Then we have at last come to the realm of the Sea King and to his Palace,” said Urashima.
“Yes, indeed,” answered the tortoise, “and don’t you think we have come very quickly?” And while he was speaking the tortoise reached the side of the gate. “And here we are, and you must please walk from here.”
The tortoise now went in front, and speaking to the gatekeeper, said:
“This is Urashima Taro, from the country of Japan. I have had the honor of bringing him as a visitor to this kingdom. Please show him the way.”
Then the gatekeeper, who was a fish, at once led the way through the gate before them.
The red bream, the flounder, the sole, the cuttlefish, and all the chief vassals of the Dragon King of the Sea now came out with courtly bows to welcome the stranger.
“Urashima Sama, Urashima Sama! welcome to the Sea Palace, the home of the Dragon King of the Sea. Thrice welcome are you, having come from such a distant country. And you, Mr. Tortoise, we are greatly indebted to you for all your trouble in bringing Urashima here.” Then, turning again to Urashima, they said, “Please follow us this way,” and from here the whole band of fishes became his guides.
Urashima, being only a poor fisher lad, did not know how to behave in a palace; but, strange though it was all to him, he did not feel ashamed or embarrassed, but followed his kind guides quite calmly where they led to the inner palace. When he reached the portals a beautiful Princess with her attendant maidens came out to welcome him. She was more beautiful than any human being, and was robed in flowing garments of red and soft green like the under side of a wave, and golden threads glimmered through the folds of her gown. Her lovely black hair streamed over her shoulders in the fashion of a king’s daughter many hundreds of years ago, and when she spoke her voice sounded like music over the water. Urashima was lost in wonder while he looked upon her, and he could not speak. Then he remembered that he ought to bow, but before he could make a low obeisance the Princess took him by the hand and led him to a beautiful hall, and to the seat of honor at the upper end, and bade him be seated.
“Urashima Taro, it gives me the highest pleasure to welcome you to my father’s kingdom,” said the Princess. “Yesterday you set free a tortoise, and I have sent for you to thank you for saving my life, for I was that tortoise. Now if you like you shall live here forever in the land of eternal youth, where summer never dies and where sorrow never comes, and I will be your bride if you will, and we will live together happily forever afterwards!”
And as Urashima listened to her sweet words and gazed upon her lovely face his heart was filled with a great wonder and joy, and he answered her, wondering if it was not all a dream:
“Thank you a thousand times for your kind speech. There is nothing I could wish for more than to be permitted to stay here with you in this beautiful land, of which I have often heard, but have never seen to this day. Beyond all words, this is the most wonderful place I have ever seen.”
While he was speaking a train of fishes appeared, all dressed in ceremonial, trailing garments. One by one, silently and with stately steps, they entered the hall, bearing on coral trays delicacies of fish and seaweed, such as no one can dream of, and this wondrous feast was set before the bride and bridegroom. The bridal was celebrated with dazzling splendor, and in the Sea King’s realm there was great rejoicing. As soon as the young pair had pledged themselves in the wedding cup of wine, three times three, music was played, and songs were sung, and fishes with silver scales and golden tails stepped in from the waves and danced. Urashima enjoyed himself with all his heart. Never in his whole life had he sat down to such a marvelous feast.
When the feast was over the Princes asked the bridegroom if he would like to walk through the palace and see all there was to be seen. Then the happy fisherman, following his bride, the Sea King’s daughter, was shown all the wonders of that enchanted land where youth and joy go hand in hand and neither time nor age can touch them. The palace was built of coral and adorned with pearls, and the beauties and wonders of the place were so great that the tongue fails to describe them.
But, to Urashima, more wonderful than the palace was the garden that surrounded it. Here was to be seen at one time the scenery of the four different seasons; the beauties of summer and winter, spring and autumn, were displayed to the wondering visitor at once.
First, when he looked to the east, the plum and cherry trees were seen in full bloom, the nightingales sang in the pink avenues, and butterflies flitted from flower to flower.
Looking to the south all the trees were green in the fullness of summer, and the day cicala and the night cricket chirruped loudly.
Looking to the west the autumn maples were ablaze like a sunset sky, and the chrysanthemums were in perfection.
Looking to the north the change made Urashima start, for the ground was silver white with snow, and trees and bamboos were also covered with snow and the pond was thick with ice.
And each day there were new joys and new wonders for Urashima, and so great was his happiness that he forgot everything, even the home he had left behind and his parents and his own country, and three days passed without his even thinking of all he had left behind. Then his mind came back to him and he remembered who he was, and that he did not belong to this wonderful land or the Sea King’s palace, and he said to himself:
“O dear! I must not stay on here, for I have an old father and mother at home. What can have happened to them all this time? How anxious they must have been these days when I did not return as usual. I must go back at once without letting one more day pass.” And he began to prepare for the journey in great haste.
Then he went to his beautiful wife, the Princess, and bowing low before her he said:
“Indeed, I have been very happy with you for a long time, Otohime Sama” (for that was her name), “and you have been kinder to me than any words can tell. But now I must say good-by. I must go back to my old parents.”
Then Otohime Sama began to weep, and said softly and sadly:
“Is it not well with you here, Urashima, that you wish to leave me so soon? Where is the haste? Stay with me yet another day only!”
But Urashima had remembered his old parents, and in Japan the duty to parents is stronger than everything else, stronger even than pleasure or love, and he would not be persuaded, but answered:
“Indeed, I must go. Do not think that I wish to leave you. It is not that. I must go and see my old parents. Let me go for one day and I will come back to you.”
“Then,” said the Princess sorrowfully, “there is nothing to be done. I will send you back to-day to your father and mother, and instead of trying to keep you with me one more day, I shall give you this as a token of our love—please take it back with you;” and she brought him a beautiful lacquer box tied about with a silken cord and tassels of red silk.
Urashima had received so much from the Princess already that he felt some compunction in taking the gift, and said:
“It does not seem right for me to take yet another gift from you after all the many favors I have received at your hands, but because it is your wish I will do so,” and then he added:
“Tell me what is this box?”
“That,” answered the Princess “is the tamate-bako (Box of the Jewel Hand), and it contains something very precious. You must not open this box, whatever happens! If you open it something dreadful will happen to you! Now promise me that you will never open this box!”
And Urashima promised that he would never, never open the box whatever happened.
Then bidding good-by to Otohime Sama he went down to the seashore, the Princess and her attendants following him, and there he found a large tortoise waiting for him.
He quickly mounted the creature’s back and was carried away over the shining sea into the East. He looked back to wave his hand to Otohime Sama till at last he could see her no more, and the land of the Sea King and the roofs of the wonderful palace were lost in the far, far distance. Then, with his face turned eagerly towards his own land, he looked for the rising of the blue hills on the horizon before him.
At last the tortoise carried him into the bay he knew so well, and to the shore from whence he had set out. He stepped on to the shore and looked about him while the tortoise rode away back to the Sea King’s realm.
But what is the strange fear that seizes Urashima as he stands and looks about him? Why does he gaze so fixedly at the people that pass him by, and why do they in turn stand and look at him? The shore is the same and the hills are the same, but the people that he sees walking past him have very different faces to those he had known so well before.
Wondering what it can mean he walks quickly towards his old home. Even that looks different, but a house stands on the spot, and he calls out:
“Father, I have just returned!” and he was about to enter, when he saw a strange man coming out.
“Perhaps my parents have moved while I have been away, and have gone somewhere else,” was the fisherman’s thought. Somehow he began to feel strangely anxious, he could not tell why.
“Excuse me,” said he to the man who was staring at him, “but till within the last few days I have lived in this house. My name is Urashima Taro. Where have my parents gone whom I left here?”
A very bewildered expression came over the face of the man, and, still gazing intently on Urashima’s face, he said:
“What? Are you Urashima Taro?”
“Yes,” said the fisherman, “I am Urashima Taro!”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the man, “you must not make such jokes. It is true that once upon a time a man called Urashima Taro did live in this village, but that is a story three hundred years old. He could not possibly be alive now!”
When Urashima heard these strange words he was frightened, and said:
“Please, please, you must not joke with me, I am greatly perplexed. I am really Urashima Taro, and I certainly have not lived three hundred years. Till four or five days ago I lived on this spot. Tell me what I want to know without more joking, please.”
But the man’s face grew more and more grave, and he answered:
“You may or may not be Urashima Taro, I don’t know. But the Urashima Taro of whom I have heard is a man who lived three hundred years ago. Perhaps you are his spirit come to revisit your old home?”
“Why do you mock me?” said Urashima. “I am no spirit! I am a living man—do you not see my feet;” and “don-don,” he stamped on the ground, first with one foot and then with the other to show the man. (Japanese ghosts have no feet.)
“But Urashima Taro lived three hundred years ago, that is all I know; it is written in the village chronicles,” persisted the man, who could not believe what the fisherman said.
Urashima was lost in bewilderment and trouble. He stood looking all around him, terribly puzzled, and, indeed, something in the appearance of everything was different to what he remembered before he went away, and the awful feeling came over him that what the man said was perhaps true. He seemed to be in a strange dream. The few days he had spent in the Sea King’s palace beyond the sea had not been days at all: they had been hundreds of years, and in that time his parents had died and all the people he had ever known, and the village had written down his story. There was no use in staying here any longer. He must get back to his beautiful wife beyond the sea.
He made his way back to the beach, carrying in his hand the box which the Princess had given him. But which was the way? He could not find it alone! Suddenly he remembered the box, the tamate-bako.
“The Princess told me when she gave me the box never to open it—that it contained a very precious thing. But now that I have no home, now that I have lost everything that was dear to me here, and my heart grows thin with sadness, at such a time, if I open the box, surely I shall find something that will help me, something that will show me the way back to my beautiful Princess over the sea. There is nothing else for me to do now. Yes, yes, I will open the box and look in!”
And so his heart consented to this act of disobedience, and he tried to persuade himself that he was doing the right thing in breaking his promise.
Slowly, very slowly, he untied the red silk cord, slowly and wonderingly he lifted the lid of the precious box. And what did he find? Strange to say only a beautiful little purple cloud rose out of the box in three soft wisps. For an instant it covered his face and wavered over him as if loath to go, and then it floated away like vapor over the sea.
Urashima, who had been till that moment like a strong and handsome youth of twenty-four, suddenly became very, very old. His back doubled up with age, his hair turned snowy white, his face wrinkled and he fell down dead on the beach.
Poor Urashima! because of his disobedience he could never return to the Sea King’s realm or the lovely Princess beyond the sea.
Little children, never be disobedient to those who are wiser than you for disobedience was the beginning of all the miseries and sorrows of life.
== THE FARMER AND THE BADGER==
Long, long ago, there lived an old farmer and his wife who had made their home in the mountains, far from any town. Their only neighbor was a bad and malicious badger. This badger used to come out every night and run across to the farmer’s field and spoil the vegetables and the rice which the farmer spent his time in carefully cultivating. The badger at last grew so ruthless in his mischievous work, and did so much harm everywhere on the farm, that the good-natured farmer could not stand it any longer, and determined to put a stop to it. So he lay in wait day after day and night after night, with a big club, hoping to catch the badger, but all in vain. Then he laid traps for the wicked animal.
The farmer’s trouble and patience was rewarded, for one fine day on going his rounds he found the badger caught in a hole he had dug for that purpose. The farmer was delighted at having caught his enemy, and carried him home securely bound with rope. When he reached the house the farmer said to his wife:
“I have at last caught the bad badger. You must keep an eye on him while I am out at work and not let him escape, because I want to make him into soup to-night.”
Saying this, he hung the badger up to the rafters of his storehouse and went out to his work in the fields. The badger was in great distress, for he did not at all like the idea of being made into soup that night, and he thought and thought for a long time, trying to hit upon some plan by which he might escape. It was hard to think clearly in his uncomfortable position, for he had been hung upside down. Very near him, at the entrance to the storehouse, looking out towards the green fields and the trees and the pleasant sunshine, stood the farmer’s old wife pounding barley. She looked tired and old. Her face was seamed with many wrinkles, and was as brown as leather, and every now and then she stopped to wipe the perspiration which rolled down her face.
“Dear lady,” said the wily badger, “you must be very weary doing such heavy work in your old age. Won’t you let me do that for you? My arms are very strong, and I could relieve you for a little while!”
“Thank you for your kindness,” said the old woman, “but I cannot let you do this work for me because I must not untie you, for you might escape if I did, and my husband would be very angry if he came home and found you gone.”
Now, the badger is one of the most cunning of animals, and he said again in a very sad, gentle, voice:
“You are very unkind. You might untie me, for I promise not to try to escape. If you are afraid of your husband, I will let you bind me again before his return when I have finished pounding the barley. I am so tired and sore tied up like this. If you would only let me down for a few minutes I would indeed be thankful!”
The old woman had a good and simple nature, and could not think badly of any one. Much less did she think that the badger was only deceiving her in order to get away. She felt sorry, too, for the animal as she turned to look at him. He looked in such a sad plight hanging downwards from the ceiling by his legs, which were all tied together so tightly that the rope and the knots were cutting into the skin. So in the kindness of her heart, and believing the creature’s promise that he would not run away, she untied the cord and let him down.
The old woman then gave him the wooden pestle and told him to do the work for a short time while she rested. He took the pestle, but instead of doing the work as he was told, the badger at once sprang upon the old woman and knocked her down with the heavy piece of wood. He then killed her and cut her up and made soup of her, and waited for the return of the old farmer. The old man worked hard in his fields all day, and as he worked he thought with pleasure that no more now would his labor be spoiled by the destructive badger.
Towards sunset he left his work and turned to go home. He was very tired, but the thought of the nice supper of hot badger soup awaiting his return cheered him. The thought that the badger might get free and take revenge on the poor old woman never once came into his mind.
The badger meanwhile assumed the old woman’s form, and as soon as he saw the old farmer approaching came out to greet him on the veranda of the little house, saying:
“So you have come back at last. I have made the badger soup and have been waiting for you for a long time.”
The old farmer quickly took off his straw sandals and sat down before his tiny dinner-tray. The innocent man never even dreamed that it was not his wife but the badger who was waiting upon him, and asked at once for the soup. Then the badger suddenly transformed himself back to his natural form and cried out:
“You wife-eating old man! Look out for the bones in the kitchen!”
Laughing loudly and derisively he escaped out of the house and ran away to his den in the hills. The old man was left behind alone. He could hardly believe what he had seen and heard. Then when he understood the whole truth he was so scared and horrified that he fainted right away. After a while he came round and burst into tears. He cried loudly and bitterly. He rocked himself to and fro in his hopeless grief. It seemed too terrible to be real that his faithful old wife had been killed and cooked by the badger while he was working quietly in the fields, knowing nothing of what was going on at home, and congratulating himself on having once for all got rid of the wicked animal who had so often spoiled his fields. And oh! the horrible thought; he had very nearly drunk the soup which the creature had made of his poor old woman. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” he wailed aloud. Now, not far away there lived in the same mountain a kind, good-natured old rabbit. He heard the old man crying and sobbing and at once set out to see what was the matter, and if there was anything he could do to help his neighbor. The old man told him all that had happened. When the rabbit heard the story he was very angry at the wicked and deceitful badger, and told the old man to leave everything to him and he would avenge his wife’s death. The farmer was at last comforted, and, wiping away his tears, thanked the rabbit for his goodness in coming to him in his distress.
The rabbit, seeing that the farmer was growing calmer, went back to his home to lay his plans for the punishment of the badger.
The next day the weather was fine, and the rabbit went out to find the badger. He was not to be seen in the woods or on the hillside or in the fields anywhere, so the rabbit went to his den and found the badger hiding there, for the animal had been afraid to show himself ever since he had escaped from the farmer’s house, for fear of the old man’s wrath.
The rabbit called out:
“Why are you not out on such a beautiful day? Come out with me, and we will go and cut grass on the hills together.”
The badger, never doubting but that the rabbit was his friend, willingly consented to go out with him, only too glad to get away from the neighborhood of the farmer and the fear of meeting him. The rabbit led the way miles away from their homes, out on the hills where the grass grew tall and thick and sweet. They both set to work to cut down as much as they could carry home, to store it up for their winter’s food. When they had each cut down all they wanted they tied it in bundles and then started homewards, each carrying his bundle of grass on his back. This time the rabbit made the badger go first.
When they had gone a little way the rabbit took out a flint and steel, and, striking it over the badger’s back as he stepped along in front, set his bundle of grass on fire. The badger heard the flint striking, and asked:
“What is that noise. ‘Crack, crack’?”
“Oh, that is nothing.” replied the rabbit; “I only said ‘Crack, crack’ because this mountain is called Crackling Mountain.”
The fire soon spread in the bundle of dry grass on the badger’s back. The badger, hearing the crackle of the burning grass, asked, “What is that?”
“Now we have come to the ‘Burning Mountain,’” answered the rabbit.
By this time the bundle was nearly burned out and all the hair had been burned off the badger’s back. He now knew what had happened by the smell of the smoke of the burning grass. Screaming with pain the badger ran as fast as he could to his hole. The rabbit followed and found him lying on his bed groaning with pain.
“What an unlucky fellow you are!” said the rabbit. “I can’t imagine how this happened! I will bring you some medicine which will heal your back quickly!”
The rabbit went away glad and smiling to think that the punishment upon the badger had already begun. He hoped that the badger would die of his burns, for he felt that nothing could be too bad for the animal, who was guilty of murdering a poor helpless old woman who had trusted him. He went home and made an ointment by mixing some sauce and red pepper together.
He carried this to the badger, but before putting it on he told him that it would cause him great pain, but that he must bear it patiently, because it was a very wonderful medicine for burns and scalds and such wounds. The badger thanked him and begged him to apply it at once. But no language can describe the agony of the badger as soon as the red pepper had been pasted all over his sore back. He rolled over and over and howled loudly. The rabbit, looking on, felt that the farmer’s wife was beginning to be avenged.
The badger was in bed for about a month; but at last, in spite of the red pepper application, his burns healed and he got well. When the rabbit saw that the badger was getting well, he thought of another plan by which he could compass the creature’s death. So he went one day to pay the badger a visit and to congratulate him on his recovery.
During the conversation the rabbit mentioned that he was going fishing, and described how pleasant fishing was when the weather was fine and the sea smooth.
The badger listened with pleasure to the rabbit’s account of the way he passed his time now, and forgot all his pains and his month’s illness, and thought what fun it would be if he could go fishing too; so he asked the rabbit if he would take him the next time he went out to fish. This was just what the rabbit wanted, so he agreed.
Then he went home and built two boats, one of wood and the other of clay. At last they were both finished, and as the rabbit stood and looked at his work he felt that all his trouble would be well rewarded if his plan succeeded, and he could manage to kill the wicked badger now.
The day came when the rabbit had arranged to take the badger fishing. He kept the wooden boat himself and gave the badger the clay boat. The badger, who knew nothing about boats, was delighted with his new boat and thought how kind it was of the rabbit to give it to him. They both got into their boats and set out. After going some distance from the shore the rabbit proposed that they should try their boats and see which one could go the quickest. The badger fell in with the proposal, and they both set to work to row as fast as they could for some time. In the middle of the race the badger found his boat going to pieces, for the water now began to soften the clay. He cried out in great fear to the rabbit to help him. But the rabbit answered that he was avenging the old woman’s murder, and that this had been his intention all along, and that he was happy to think that the badger had at last met his deserts for all his evil crimes, and was to drown with no one to help him. Then he raised his oar and struck at the badger with all his strength till he fell with the sinking clay boat and was seen no more.
Thus at last he kept his promise to the old farmer. The rabbit now turned and rowed shorewards, and having landed and pulled his boat upon the beach, hurried back to tell the old farmer everything, and how the badger, his enemy, had been killed.
The old farmer thanked him with tears in his eyes. He said that till now he could never sleep at night or be at peace in the daytime, thinking of how his wife’s death was unavenged, but from this time he would be able to sleep and eat as of old. He begged the rabbit to stay with him and share his home, so from this day the rabbit went to stay with the old farmer and they both lived together as good friends to the end of their days.
== THE “SHINANSHA,” OR THE SOUTH POINTING CARRIAGE==
The compass, with its needle always pointing to the North, is quite a common thing, and no one thinks that it is remarkable now, though when it was first invented it must have been a wonder.
Now long ago in China, there was a still more wonderful invention called the shinansha. This was a kind of chariot with the figure of a man on it always pointing to the South. No matter how the chariot was placed the figure always wheeled about and pointed to the South.
This curious instrument was invented by Kotei, one of the three Chinese Emperors of the Mythological age. Kotei was the son of the Emperor Yuhi. Before he was born his mother had a vision which foretold that her son would be a great man.
One summer evening she went out to walk in the meadows to seek the cool breezes which blow at the end of the day and to gaze with pleasure at the star-lit heavens above her. As she looked at the North Star, strange to relate, it shot forth vivid flashes of lightning in every direction. Soon after this her son Kotei came into the world.
Kotei in time grew to manhood and succeeded his father the Emperor Yuhi. His early reign was greatly troubled by the rebel Shiyu. This rebel wanted to make himself King, and many were the battles which he fought to this end. Shiyu was a wicked magician, his head was made of iron, and there was no man that could conquer him.
At last Kotei declared war against the rebel and led his army to battle, and the two armies met on a plain called Takuroku. The Emperor boldly attacked the enemy, but the magician brought down a dense fog upon the battlefield, and while the royal army were wandering about in confusion, trying to find their way, Shiyu retreated with his troops, laughing at having fooled the royal army.
No matter however strong and brave the Emperor’s soldiers were, the rebel with his magic could always escape in the end.
Kotei returned to his Palace, and thought and pondered deeply as to how he should conquer the magician, for he was determined not to give up yet. After a long time he invented the shinansha with the figure of a man always pointing South, for there were no compasses in those days. With this instrument to show him the way he need not fear the dense fogs raised up by the magician to confound his men.
Kotei again declared war against Shiyu. He placed the shinansha in front of his army and led the way to the battlefield.
The battle began in earnest. The rebel was being driven backward by the royal troops when he again resorted to magic, and upon his saying some strange words in a loud voice, immediately a dense fog came down upon the battlefield.
But this time no soldier minded the fog, not one was confused. Kotei by pointing to the shinansha could find his way and directed the army without a single mistake. He closely pursued the rebel army and drove them backward till they came to a big river. This river Kotei and his men found was swollen by the floods and impossible to cross.
Shiyu by using his magic art quickly passed over with his army and shut himself up in a fortress on the opposite bank.
When Kotei found his march checked he was wild with disappointment, for he had very nearly overtaken the rebel when the river stopped him.
He could do nothing, for there were no boats in those days, so the Emperor ordered his tent to be pitched in the pleasantest spot that the place afforded.
One day he stepped forth from his tent and after walking about for a short time he came to a pond. Here he sat down on the bank and was lost in thought.
It was autumn. The trees growing along the edge of the water were shedding their leaves, which floated hither and thither on the surface of the pond. By and by, Kotei’s attention was attracted to a spider on the brink of the water. The little insect was trying to get on to one of the floating leaves near by. It did so at last, and was soon floating over the water to the other side of the pond.
This little incident made the clever Emperor think that he might try to make something that could carry himself and his men over the river in the same way that the leaf had carried over the spider. He set to work and persevered till he invented the first boat. When he found that it was a success he set all his men to make more, and in time there were enough boats for the whole army.
Kotei now took his army across the river, and attacked Shiyu’s headquarters. He gained a complete victory, and so put an end to the war which had troubled his country for so long.
This wise and good Emperor did not rest till he had secured peace and prosperity throughout his whole land. He was beloved by his subjects, who now enjoyed their happiness of peace for many long years under him. He spent a great deal of time in making inventions which would benefit his people, and he succeeded in many besides the boat and the South Pointing shinansha.
He had reigned about a hundred years when one day, as Kotei was looking upwards, the sky became suddenly red, and something came glittering like gold towards the earth. As it came nearer Kotei saw that it was a great Dragon. The Dragon approached and bowed down its head before the Emperor. The Empress and the courtiers were so frightened that they ran away screaming.
But the Emperor only smiled and called to them to stop, and said:
“Do not be afraid. This is a messenger from Heaven. My time here is finished!” He then mounted the Dragon, which began to ascend towards the sky.
When the Empress and the courtiers saw this they all cried out together:
“Wait a moment! We wish to come too.” And they all ran and caught hold of the Dragon’s beard and tried to mount him.
But it was impossible for so many people to ride on the Dragon. Several of them hung on to the creature’s beard so that when it tried to mount the hair was pulled out and they fell to the ground.
Meanwhile the Empress and a few of the courtiers were safely seated on the Dragon’s back. The Dragon flew up so high in the heavens that in a short time the inmates of the Palace, who had been left behind disappointed, could see them no more.
After some time a bow and an arrow dropped to the earth in the courtyard of the Palace. They were recognized as having belonged to the Emperor Kotei. The courtiers took them up carefully and preserved them as sacred relics in the Palace.
== THE ADVENTURES OF KINTARO, THE GOLDEN BOY==
Long, long ago there lived in Kyoto a brave soldier named Kintoki. Now he fell in love with a beautiful lady and married her. Not long after this, through the malice of some of his friends, he fell into disgrace at Court and was dismissed. This misfortune so preyed upon his mind that he did not long survive his dismissal—he died, leaving behind him his beautiful young wife to face the world alone. Fearing her husband’s enemies, she fled to the Ashigara Mountains as soon as her husband was dead, and there in the lonely forests where no one ever came except woodcutters, a little boy was born to her. She called him Kintaro or the Golden Boy. Now the remarkable thing about this child was his great strength, and as he grew older he grew stronger and stronger, so that by the time he was eight years of age he was able to cut down trees as quickly as the woodcutters. Then his mother gave him a large ax, and he used to go out in the forest and help the woodcutters, who called him “Wonder-child,” and his mother the “Old Nurse of the Mountains,” for they did not know her high rank. Another favorite pastime of Kintaro’s was to smash up rocks and stones. You can imagine how strong he was!
Quite unlike other boys, Kintaro, grew up all alone in the mountain wilds, and as he had no companions he made friends with all the animals and learned to understand them and to speak their strange talk. By degrees they all grew quite tame and looked upon Kintaro as their master, and he used them as his servants and messengers. But his special retainers were the bear, the deer, the monkey and the hare.
The bear often brought her cubs for Kintaro to romp with, and when she came to take them home Kintaro would get on her back and have a ride to her cave. He was very fond of the deer too, and would often put his arms round the creature’s neck to show that its long horns did not frighten him. Great was the fun they all had together.
One day, as usual, Kintaro went up into the mountains, followed by the bear, the deer, the monkey, and the hare. After walking for some time up hill and down dale and over rough roads, they suddenly came out upon a wide and grassy plain covered with pretty wild flowers.
Here, indeed, was a nice place where they could all have a good romp together. The deer rubbed his horns against a tree for pleasure, the monkey scratched his back, the hare smoothed his long ears, and the bear gave a grunt of satisfaction.
Kintaro said, “Here is a place for a good game. What do you all say to a wrestling match?”
The bear being the biggest and the oldest, answered for the others:
“That will be great fun,” said she. “I am the strongest animal, so I will make the platform for the wrestlers;” and she set to work with a will to dig up the earth and to pat it into shape.
“All right,” said Kintaro, “I will look on while you all wrestle with each other. I shall give a prize to the one who wins in each round.”
“What fun! we shall all try to get the prize,” said the bear.
The deer, the monkey and the hare set to work to help the bear raise the platform on which they were all to wrestle. When this was finished, Kintaro cried out:
“Now begin! the monkey and the hare shall open the sports and the deer shall be umpire. Now, Mr. Deer, you are to be umpire!”
“He, he!” answered the deer. “I will be umpire. Now, Mr. Monkey and Mr. Hare, if you are both ready, please walk out and take your places on the platform.”
Then the monkey and the hare both hopped out, quickly and nimbly, to the wrestling platform. The deer, as umpire, stood between the two and called out:
“Red-back! Red-back!” (this to the monkey, who has a red back in Japan). “Are you ready?”
Then he turned to the hare:
“Long-ears! Long-ears! are you ready?”
Both the little wrestlers faced each other while the deer raised a leaf on high as signal. When he dropped the leaf the monkey and the hare rushed upon each other, crying “Yoisho, yoisho!”
While the monkey and the hare wrestled, the deer called out encouragingly or shouted warnings to each of them as the hare or the monkey pushed each other near the edge of the platform and were in danger of falling over.
“Red-back! Red-back! stand your ground!” called out the deer.
“Long-ears! Long-ears! be strong, be strong—don’t let the monkey beat you!” grunted the bear.
So the monkey and the hare, encouraged by their friends, tried their very hardest to beat each other. The hare at last gained on the monkey. The monkey seemed to trip up, and the hare giving him a good push sent him flying off the platform with a bound.
The poor monkey sat up rubbing his back, and his face was very long as he screamed angrily. “Oh, oh! how my back hurts—my back hurts me!”
Seeing the monkey in this plight on the ground, the deer holding his leaf on high said:
“This round is finished—the hare has won.”
Kintaro then opened his luncheon box and taking out a rice-dumpling, gave it to the hare saying:
“Here is your prize, and you have earned, it well!”
Now the monkey got up looking very cross, and as they say in Japan “his stomach stood up,” for he felt that he had not been fairly beaten. So he said to Kintaro and the others who were standing by:
“I have not been fairly beaten. My foot slipped and I tumbled. Please give me another chance and let the hare wrestle with me for another round.”
Then Kintaro consenting, the hare and the monkey began to wrestle again. Now, as every one knows, the monkey is a cunning animal by nature, and he made up his mind to get the best of the hare this time if it were possible. To do this, he thought that the best and surest way would be to get hold of the hare’s long ear. This he soon managed to do. The hare was quite thrown off his guard by the pain of having his long ear pulled so hard, and the monkey seizing his opportunity at last, caught hold of one of the hare’s legs and sent him sprawling in the middle of the dais. The monkey was now the victor and received, a rice-dumpling from Kintaro, which pleased him so much that he quite forgot his sore back.
The deer now came up and asked the hare if he felt ready for another round, and if so whether he would try a round with him, and the hare consenting, they both stood up to wrestle. The bear came forward as umpire.
The deer with long horns and the hare with long ears, it must have been an amusing sight to those who watched this queer match. Suddenly the deer went down on one of his knees, and the bear with the leaf on high declared him beaten. In this way, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, conquering, the little party amused themselves till they were tired.
At last Kintaro got up and said:
“This is enough for to-day. What a nice place we have found for wrestling; let us come again to-morrow. Now, we will all go home. Come along!” So saying, Kintaro led the way while the animals followed.
After walking some little distance they came out on the banks of a river flowing through a valley. Kintaro and his four furry friends stood and looked about for some means of crossing. Bridge there was none. The river rushed “don, don” on its way. All the animals looked serious, wondering how they could cross the stream and get home that evening.
Kintaro, however, said:
“Wait a moment. I will make a good bridge for you all in a few minutes.”
The bear, the deer, the monkey and the hare looked at him to see what he would do now.
Kintaro went from one tree to another that grew along the river bank. At last he stopped in front of a very large tree that was growing at the water’s edge. He took hold of the trunk and pulled it with all his might, once, twice, thrice! At the third pull, so great was Kintaro’s strength that the roots gave way, and “meri, meri” (crash, crash), over fell the tree, forming an excellent bridge across the stream.
“There,” said Kintaro, “what do you think of my bridge? It is quite safe, so follow me,” and he stepped across first. The four animals followed. Never had they seen any one so strong before, and they all exclaimed:
“How strong he is! how strong he is!”
While all this was going on by the river a woodcutter, who happened to be standing on a rock overlooking the stream, had seen all that passed beneath him. He watched with great surprise Kintaro and his animal companions. He rubbed his eyes to be sure that he was not dreaming when he saw this boy pull over a tree by the roots and throw it across the stream to form a bridge.
The woodcutter, for such he seemed to be by his dress, marveled at all he saw, and said to himself:
“This is no ordinary child. Whose son can he be? I will find out before this day is done.”
He hastened after the strange party and crossed the bridge behind them. Kintaro knew nothing of all this, and little guessed that he was being followed. On reaching the other side of the river he and the animals separated, they to their lairs in the woods and he to his mother, who was waiting for him.
As soon as he entered the cottage, which stood like a matchbox in the heart of the pine-woods, he went to greet his mother, saying:
“Okkasan (mother), here I am!”
“O, Kimbo!” said his mother with a bright smile, glad to see her boy home safe after the long day. “How late you are to-day. I feared that something had happened to you. Where have you been all the time?”
“I took my four friends, the bear, the deer, the monkey, and the hare, up into the hills, and there I made them try a wrestling match, to see which was the strongest. We all enjoyed the sport, and are going to the same place to-morrow to have another match.”
“Now tell me who is the strongest of all?” asked his mother, pretending not to know.
“Oh, mother,” said Kintaro, “don’t you know that I am the strongest? There was no need for me to wrestle with any of them.”
“But next to you then, who is the strongest?”
“The bear comes next to me in strength,” answered Kintaro.
“And after the bear?” asked his mother again.
“Next to the bear it is not easy to say which is the strongest, for the deer, the monkey, and the hare all seem to be as strong as each other,” said Kintaro.
Suddenly Kintaro and his mother were startled by a voice from outside.
“Listen to me, little boy! Next time you go, take this old man with you to the wrestling match. He would like to join the sport too!”
It was the old woodcutter who had followed Kintaro from the river. He slipped off his clogs and entered the cottage. Yama-uba and her son were both taken by surprise. They looked at the intruder wonderingly and saw that he was some one they had never seen before.
“Who are you?” they both exclaimed.
Then the woodcutter laughed and said:
“It does not matter who I am yet, but let us see who has the strongest arm—this boy or myself?”
Then Kintaro, who had lived all his life in the forest, answered the old man without any ceremony, saying:
“We will have a try if you wish it, but you must not be angry whoever is beaten.”
Then Kintaro and the woodcutter both put out their right arms and grasped each other’s hands. For a long time Kintaro and the old man wrestled together in this way, each trying to bend the other’s arm, but the old man was very strong, and the strange pair were evenly matched. At last the old man desisted, declaring it a drawn game.
“You are, indeed, a very strong child. There are few men who can boast of the strength of my right arm!” said the woodcutter. “I saw you first on the banks of the river a few hours ago, when you pulled up that large tree to make a bridge across the torrent. Hardly able to believe what I saw I followed you home. Your strength of arm, which I have just tried, proves what I saw this afternoon. When you are full-grown you will surely be the strongest man in all Japan. It is a pity that you are hidden away in these wild mountains.”
Then he turned to Kintaro’s mother:
“And you, mother, have you no thought of taking your child to the Capital, and of teaching him to carry a sword as befits a samurai (a Japanese knight)?”
“You are very kind to take so much interest in my son.” replied the mother; “but he is as you see, wild and uneducated, and I fear it would be very difficult to do as you say. Because of his great strength as an infant I hid him away in this unknown part of the country, for he hurt every one that came near him. I have often wished that I could, one day, see my boy a knight wearing two swords, but as we have no influential friend to introduce us at the Capital, I fear my hope will never come true.”
“You need not trouble yourself about that. To tell you the truth I am no woodcutter! I am one of the great generals of Japan. My name is Sadamitsu, and I am a vassal of the powerful Lord Minamoto-no-Raiko. He ordered me to go round the country and look for boys who give promise of remarkable strength, so that they may be trained as soldiers for his army. I thought that I could best do this by assuming the disguise of a woodcutter. By good fortune, I have thus unexpectedly come across your son. Now if you really wish him to be a SAMURAI (a knight), I will take him and present him to the Lord Raiko as a candidate for his service. What do you say to this?”
As the kind general gradually unfolded his plan the mother’s heart was filled with a great joy. She saw that here was a wonderful chance of the one wish of her life being fulfilled—that of seeing Kintaro a SAMURAI before she died.
Bowing her head to the ground, she replied:
“I will then intrust my son to you if you really mean what you say.”
Kintaro had all this time been sitting by his mother’s side listening to what they said. When his mother finished speaking, he exclaimed:
“Oh, joy! joy! I am to go with the general and one day I shall be a SAMURAI!”
Thus Kintaro’s fate was settled, and the general decided to start for the Capital at once, taking Kintaro with him. It need hardly be said that Yama-uba was sad at parting with her boy, for he was all that was left to her. But she hid her grief with a strong face, as they say in Japan. She knew that it was for her boy’s good that he should leave her now, and she must not discourage him just as he was setting out. Kintaro promised never to forget her, and said that as soon as he was a knight wearing two swords he would build her a home and take care of her in her old age.
All the animals, those he had tamed to serve him, the bear, the deer, the monkey, and the hare, as soon as they found out that he was going away, came to ask if they might attend him as usual. When they learned that he was going away for good they followed him to the foot of the mountain to see him off.
“Kimbo,” said his mother, “mind and be a good boy.”
“Mr. Kintaro,” said the faithful animals, “we wish you good health on your travels.”
Then they all climbed a tree to see the last of him, and from that height they watched him and his shadow gradually grow smaller and smaller, till he was lost to sight.
The general Sadamitsu went on his way rejoicing at having so unexpectedly found such a prodigy as Kintaro.
Having arrived at their destination the general took Kintaro at once to his Lord, Minamoto-no-Raiko, and told him all about Kintaro and how he had found the child. Lord Raiko was delighted with the story, and having commanded Kintaro to be brought to him, made him one of his vassals at once.
Lord Raiko’s army was famous for its band called “The Four Braves.” These warriors were chosen by himself from amongst the bravest and strongest of his soldiers, and the small and well-picked band was distinguished throughout the whole of Japan for the dauntless courage of its men.
When Kintaro grew up to be a man his master made him the Chief of the Four Braves. He was by far the strongest of them all. Soon after this event, news was brought to the city that a cannibal monster had taken up his abode not far away and that people were stricken with fear. Lord Raiko ordered Kintaro to the rescue. He immediately started off, delighted at the prospect of trying his sword.
Surprising the monster in its den, he made short work of cutting off its great head, which he carried back in triumph to his master.
Kintaro now rose to be the greatest hero of his country, and great was the power and honor and wealth that came to him. He now kept his promise and built a comfortable home for his old mother, who lived happily with him in the Capital to the end of her days.
Is not this the story of a great hero?
== THE STORY OF PRINCESS HASE.==
==A STORY OF OLD JAPAN==
Many, many years ago there lived in Nara, the ancient Capital of Japan, a wise State minister, by name Prince Toyonari Fujiwara. His wife was a noble, good, and beautiful woman called Princess Murasaki (Violet). They had been married by their respective families according to Japanese custom when very young, and had lived together happily ever since. They had, however, one cause for great sorrow, for as the years went by no child was born to them. This made them very unhappy, for they both longed to see a child of their own who would grow up to gladden their old age, carry on the family name, and keep up the ancestral rites when they were dead. The Prince and his lovely wife, after long consultation and much thought, determined to make a pilgrimage to the temple of Hase-no-Kwannon (Goddess of Mercy at Hase), for they believed, according to the beautiful tradition of their religion, that the Mother of Mercy, Kwannon, comes to answer the prayers of mortals in the form that they need the most. Surely after all these years of prayer she would come to them in the form of a beloved child in answer to their special pilgrimage, for that was the greatest need of their two lives. Everything else they had that this life could give them, but it was all as nothing because the cry of their hearts was unsatisfied.
So the Prince Toyonari and his wife went to the temple of Kwannon at Hase and stayed there for a long time, both daily offering incense and praying to Kwannon, the Heavenly Mother, to grant them the desire of their whole lives. And their prayer was answered.
A daughter was born at last to the Princess Murasaki, and great was the joy of her heart. On presenting the child to her husband, they both decided to call her Hase-Hime, or the Princess of Hase, because she was the gift of the Kwannon at that place. They both reared her with great care and tenderness, and the child grew in strength and beauty.
When the little girl was five years old her mother fell dangerously ill and all the doctors and their medicines could not save her. A little before she breathed her last she called her daughter to her, and gently stroking her head, said:
“Hase-Hime, do you know that your mother cannot live any longer? Though I die, you must grow up a good girl. Do your best not to give trouble to your nurse or any other of your family. Perhaps your father will marry again and some one will fill my place as your mother. If so do not grieve for me, but look upon your father’s second wife as your true mother, and be obedient and filial to both her and your father. Remember when you are grown up to be submissive to those who are your superiors, and to be kind to all those who are under you. Don’t forget this. I die with the hope that you will grow up a model woman.”
Hase-Hime listened in an attitude of respect while her mother spoke, and promised to do all that she was told. There is a proverb which says “As the soul is at three so it is at one hundred,” and so Hase-Hime grew up as her mother had wished, a good and obedient little Princess, though she was now too young to understand how great was the loss of her mother.
Not long after the death of his first wife, Prince Toyonari married again, a lady of noble birth named Princess Terute. Very different in character, alas! to the good and wise Princess Murasaki, this woman had a cruel, bad heart. She did not love her step-daughter at all, and was often very unkind to the little motherless girl, saying to herself:
“This is not my child! this is not my child!”
But Hase-Hime bore every unkindness with patience, and even waited upon her step-mother kindly and obeyed her in every way and never gave any trouble, just as she had been trained by her own good mother, so that the Lady Terute had no cause for complaint against her.
The little Princess was very diligent, and her favorite studies were music and poetry. She would spend several hours practicing every day, and her father had the most proficient of masters he could find to teach her the koto (Japanese harp), the art of writing letters and verse. When she was twelve years of age she could play so beautifully that she and her step-mother were summoned to the Palace to perform before the Emperor.
It was the Festival of the Cherry Flowers, and there were great festivities at the Court. The Emperor threw himself into the enjoyment of the season, and commanded that Princess Hase should perform before him on the koto, and that her mother Princess Terute should accompany her on the flute.
The Emperor sat on a raised dais, before which was hung a curtain of finely-sliced bamboo and purple tassels, so that His Majesty might see all and not be seen, for no ordinary subject was allowed to look upon his sacred face.
Hase-Hime was a skilled musician though so young, and often astonished her masters by her wonderful memory and talent. On this momentous occasion she played well. But Princess Terute, her step-mother, who was a lazy woman and never took the trouble to practice daily, broke down in her accompaniment and had to request one of the Court ladies to take her place. This was a great disgrace, and she was furiously jealous to think that she had failed where her step-daughter succeeded; and to make matters worse the Emperor sent many beautiful gifts to the little Princess to reward her for playing so well at the Palace.
There was also now another reason why Princess Terute hated her step-daughter, for she had had the good fortune to have a son born to her, and in her inmost heart she kept saying:
“If only Hase-Hime were not here, my son would have all the love of his father.”
And never having learned to control herself, she allowed this wicked thought to grow into the awful desire of taking her step-daughter’s life.
So one day she secretly ordered some poison and poisoned some sweet wine. This poisoned wine she put into a bottle. Into another similar bottle she poured some good wine. It was the occasion of the Boys’ Festival on the fifth of May, and Hase-Hime was playing with her little brother. All his toys of warriors and heroes were spread out and she was telling him wonderful stories about each of them. They were both enjoying themselves and laughing merrily with their attendants when his mother entered with the two bottles of wine and some delicious cakes.
“You are both so good and happy.” said the wicked Princess Terute with a smile, “that I have brought you some sweet wine as a reward—and here are some nice cakes for my good children.”
And she filled two cups from the different bottles.
Hase-Hime, never dreaming of the dreadful part her step-mother was acting, took one of the cups of wine and gave to her little step brother the other that had been poured out for him.
The wicked woman had carefully marked the poisoned bottle, but on coming into the room she had grown nervous, and pouring out the wine hurriedly had unconsciously given the poisoned cup to her own child. All this time she was anxiously watching the little Princess, but to her amazement no change whatever took place in the young girl’s face. Suddenly the little boy screamed and threw himself on the floor, doubled up with pain. His mother flew to him, taking the precaution to upset the two tiny jars of wine which she had brought into the room, and lifted him up. The attendants rushed for the doctor, but nothing could save the child—he died within the hour in his mother’s arms. Doctors did not know much in those ancient times, and it was thought that the wine had disagreed with the boy, causing convulsions of which he died.
Thus was the wicked woman punished in losing her own child when she had tried to do away with her step-daughter; but instead of blaming herself she began to hate Hase-Hime more than ever in the bitterness and wretchedness of her own heart, and she eagerly watched for an opportunity to do her harm, which was, however, long in coming.
When Hase-Hime was thirteen years of age, she had already become mentioned as a poetess of some merit. This was an accomplishment very much cultivated by the women of old Japan and one held in high esteem.
It was the rainy season at Nara, and floods were reported every day as doing damage in the neighborhood. The river Tatsuta, which flowed through the Imperial Palace grounds, was swollen to the top of its banks, and the roaring of the torrents of water rushing along a narrow bed so disturbed the Emperor’s rest day and night, that a serious nervous disorder was the result. An Imperial Edict was sent forth to all the Buddhist temples commanding the priests to offer up continuous prayers to Heaven to stop the noise of the flood. But this was of no avail.
Then it was whispered in Court circles that the Princess Hase, the daughter of Prince Toyonari Fujiwara, second minister at Court, was the most gifted poetess of the day, though still so young, and her masters confirmed the report. Long ago, a beautiful and gifted maiden-poetess had moved Heaven by praying in verse, had brought down rain upon a land famished with drought—so said the ancient biographers of the poetess Ono-no-Komachi. If the Princess Hase were to write a poem and offer it in prayer, might it not stop the noise of the rushing river and remove the cause of the Imperial illness? What the Court said at last reached the ears of the Emperor himself, and he sent an order to the minister Prince Toyonari to this effect.
Great indeed was Hase-Hime’s fear and astonishment when her father sent for her and told her what was required of her. Heavy, indeed, was the duty that was laid on her young shoulders—that of saving the Emperor’s life by the merit of her verse.
At last the day came and her poem was finished. It was written on a leaflet of paper heavily flecked with gold-dust. With her father and attendants and some of the Court officials, she proceeded to the bank of the roaring torrent and raising up her heart to Heaven, she read the poem she had composed, aloud, lifting it heavenwards in her two hands.
Strange indeed it seemed to all those standing round. The waters ceased their roaring, and the river was quiet in direct answer to her prayer. After this the Emperor soon recovered his health.
His Majesty was highly pleased, and sent for her to the Palace and rewarded her with the rank of Chinjo—that of Lieutenant-General—to distinguish her. From that time she was called Chinjo-hime, or the Lieutenant-General Princess, and respected and loved by all.
There was only one person who was not pleased at Hase-Hime’s success. That one was her stepmother. Forever brooding over the death of her own child whom she had killed when trying to poison her step-daughter, she had the mortification of seeing her rise to power and honor, marked by Imperial favor and the admiration of the whole Court. Her envy and jealousy burned in her heart like fire. Many were the lies she carried to her husband about Hase-Hime, but all to no purpose. He would listen to none of her tales, telling her sharply that she was quite mistaken.
At last the step-mother, seizing the opportunity of her husband’s absence, ordered one of her old servants to take the innocent girl to the Hibari Mountains, the wildest part of the country, and to kill her there. She invented a dreadful story about the little Princess, saying that this was the only way to prevent disgrace falling upon the family—by killing her.
Katoda, her vassal, was bound to obey his mistress. Anyhow, he saw that it would be the wisest plan to pretend obedience in the absence of the girl’s father, so he placed Hase-Hime in a palanquin and accompanied her to the most solitary place he could find in the wild district. The poor child knew there was no good in protesting to her unkind step-mother at being sent away in this strange manner, so she went as she was told.
But the old servant knew that the young Princess was quite innocent of all the things her step-mother had invented to him as reasons for her outrageous orders, and he determined to save her life. Unless he killed her, however, he could not return to his cruel task-mistress, so he decided to stay out in the wilderness. With the help of some peasants he soon built a little cottage, and having sent secretly for his wife to come, these two good old people did all in their power to take care of the now unfortunate Princess. She all the time trusted in her father, knowing that as soon as he returned home and found her absent, he would search for her.
Prince Toyonari, after some weeks, came home, and was told by his wife that his daughter Hime had done something wrong and had run away for fear of being punished. He was nearly ill with anxiety. Every one in the house told the same story—that Hase-Hime had suddenly disappeared, none of them knew why or whither. For fear of scandal he kept the matter quiet and searched everywhere he could think of, but all to no purpose.
One day, trying to forget his terrible worry, he called all his men together and told them to make ready for a several days’ hunt in the mountains. They were soon ready and mounted, waiting at the gate for their lord. He rode hard and fast to the district of the Hibari Mountains, a great company following him. He was soon far ahead of every one, and at last found himself in a narrow picturesque valley.
Looking round and admiring the scenery, he noticed a tiny house on one of the hills quite near, and then he distinctly heard a beautiful clear voice reading aloud. Seized with curiosity as to who could be studying so diligently in such a lonely spot, he dismounted, and leaving his horse to his groom, he walked up the hillside and approached the cottage. As he drew nearer his surprise increased, for he could see that the reader was a beautiful girl. The cottage was wide open and she was sitting facing the view. Listening attentively, he heard her reading the Buddhist scriptures with great devotion. More and more curious, he hurried on to the tiny gate and entered the little garden, and looking up beheld his lost daughter Hase-Hime. She was so intent on what she was saying that she neither heard nor saw her father till he spoke.
“Hase-Hime!” he cried, “it is you, my Hase-Hime!”
Taken by surprise, she could hardly realize that it was her own dear father who was calling her, and for a moment she was utterly bereft of the power to speak or move.
“My father, my father! It is indeed you—oh, my father!” was all she could say, and running to him she caught hold of his thick sleeve, and burying her face burst into a passion of tears.
Her father stroked her dark hair, asking her gently to tell him all that had happened, but she only wept on, and he wondered if he were not really dreaming.
Then the faithful old servant Katoda came out, and bowing himself to the ground before his master, poured out the long tale of wrong, telling him all that had happened, and how it was that he found his daughter in such a wild and desolate spot with only two old servants to take care of her.
The Prince’s astonishment and indignation knew no bounds. He gave up the hunt at once and hurried home with his daughter. One of the company galloped ahead to inform the household of the glad news, and the step-mother hearing what had happened, and fearful of meeting her husband now that her wickedness was discovered, fled from the house and returned in disgrace to her father’s roof, and nothing more was heard of her.
The old servant Katoda was rewarded with the highest promotion in his master’s service, and lived happily to the end of his days, devoted to the little Princess, who never forgot that she owed her life to this faithful retainer. She was no longer troubled by an unkind step-mother, and her days passed happily and quietly with her father.
As Prince Toyonari had no son, he adopted a younger son of one of the Court nobles to be his heir, and to marry his daughter Hase-Hime, and in a few years the marriage took place. Hase-Hime lived to a good old age, and all said that she was the wisest, most devout, and most beautiful mistress that had ever reigned in Prince Toyonari’s ancient house. She had the joy of presenting her son, the future lord of the family, to her father just before he retired from active life.
To this day there is preserved a piece of needle-work in one of the Buddhist temples of Kioto. It is a beautiful piece of tapestry, with the figure of Buddha embroidered in the silky threads drawn from the stem of the lotus. This is said to have been the work of the hands of the good Princess Hase.
== THE STORY OF THE MAN WHO DID NOT WISH TO DIE==
Long, long ago there lived a man called Sentaro. His surname meant “Millionaire,” but although he was not so rich as all that, he was still very far removed from being poor. He had inherited a small fortune from his father and lived on this, spending his time carelessly, without any serious thoughts of work, till he was about thirty-two years of age.
One day, without any reason whatsoever, the thought of death and sickness came to him. The idea of falling ill or dying made him very wretched.
“I should like to live,” he said to himself, “till I am five or six hundred years old at least, free from all sickness. The ordinary span of a man’s life is very short.”
He wondered whether it were possible, by living simply and frugally henceforth, to prolong his life as long as he wished.
He knew there were many stories in ancient history of emperors who had lived a thousand years, and there was a Princess of Yamato, who, it was said, lived to the age of five hundred. This was the latest story of a very long life record.
Sentaro had often heard the tale of the Chinese King named Shin-no-Shiko. He was one of the most able and powerful rulers in Chinese history. He built all the large palaces, and also the famous great wall of China. He had everything in the world he could wish for, but in spite of all his happiness and the luxury and the splendor of his Court, the wisdom of his councilors and the glory of his reign, he was miserable because he knew that one day he must die and leave it all.
When Shin-no-Shiko went to bed at night, when he rose in the morning, as he went through his day, the thought of death was always with him. He could not get away from it. Ah—if only he could find the “Elixir of Life,” he would be happy.
The Emperor at last called a meeting of his courtiers and asked them all if they could not find for him the “Elixir of Life” of which he had so often read and heard.
One old courtier, Jofuku by name, said that far away across the seas there was a country called Horaizan, and that certain hermits lived there who possessed the secret of the “Elixir of Life.” Whoever drank of this wonderful draught lived forever.
The Emperor ordered Jofuku to set out for the land of Horaizan, to find the hermits, and to bring him back a phial of the magic elixir. He gave Jofuku one of his best junks, fitted it out for him, and loaded it with great quantities of treasures and precious stones for Jofuku to take as presents to the hermits.
Jofuku sailed for the land of Horaizan, but he never returned to the waiting Emperor; but ever since that time Mount Fuji has been said to be the fabled Horaizan and the home of hermits who had the secret of the elixir, and Jofuku has been worshiped as their patron god.
Now Sentaro determined to set out to find the hermits, and if he could, to become one, so that he might obtain the water of perpetual life. He remembered that as a child he had been told that not only did these hermits live on Mount Fuji, but that they were said to inhabit all the very high peaks.
So he left his old home to the care of his relatives, and started out on his quest. He traveled through all the mountainous regions of the land, climbing to the tops of the highest peaks, but never a hermit did he find.
At last, after wandering in an unknown region for many days, he met a hunter.
“Can you tell me,” asked Sentaro, “where the hermits live who have the Elixir of Life?”
“No.” said the hunter; “I can’t tell you where such hermits live, but there is a notorious robber living in these parts. It is said that he is chief of a band of two hundred followers.”
This odd answer irritated Sentaro very much, and he thought how foolish it was to waste more time in looking for the hermits in this way, so he decided to go at once to the shrine of Jofuku, who is worshiped as the patron god of the hermits in the south of Japan.
Sentaro reached the shrine and prayed for seven days, entreating Jofuku to show him the way to a hermit who could give him what he wanted so much to find.
At midnight of the seventh day, as Sentaro knelt in the temple, the door of the innermost shrine flew open, and Jofuku appeared in a luminous cloud, and calling to Sentaro to come nearer, spoke thus:
“Your desire is a very selfish one and cannot be easily granted. You think that you would like to become a hermit so as to find the Elixir of Life. Do you know how hard a hermit’s life is? A hermit is only allowed to eat fruit and berries and the bark of pine trees; a hermit must cut himself off from the world so that his heart may become as pure as gold and free from every earthly desire. Gradually after following these strict rules, the hermit ceases to feel hunger or cold or heat, and his body becomes so light that he can ride on a crane or a carp, and can walk on water without getting his feet wet.”
“You, Sentaro, are fond of good living and of every comfort. You are not even like an ordinary man, for you are exceptionally idle, and more sensitive to heat and cold than most people. You would never be able to go barefoot or to wear only one thin dress in the winter time! Do you think that you would ever have the patience or the endurance to live a hermit’s life?”
“In answer to your prayer, however, I will help you in another way. I will send you to the country of Perpetual Life, where death never comes—where the people live forever!”
Saying this, Jofuku put into Sentaro’s hand a little crane made of paper, telling him to sit on its back and it would carry him there.
Sentaro obeyed wonderingly. The crane grew large enough for him to ride on it with comfort. It then spread its wings, rose high in the air, and flew away over the mountains right out to sea.
Sentaro was at first quite frightened; but by degrees he grew accustomed to the swift flight through the air. On and on they went for thousands of miles. The bird never stopped for rest or food, but as it was a paper bird it doubtless did not require any nourishment, and strange to say, neither did Sentaro.
After several days they reached an island. The crane flew some distance inland and then alighted.
As soon as Sentaro got down from the bird’s back, the crane folded up of its own accord and flew into his pocket.
Now Sentaro began to look about him wonderingly, curious to see what the country of Perpetual Life was like. He walked first round about the country and then through the town. Everything was, of course, quite strange, and different from his own land. But both the land and the people seemed prosperous, so he decided that it would be good for him to stay there and took up lodgings at one of the hotels.
The proprietor was a kind man, and when Sentaro told him that he was a stranger and had come to live there, he promised to arrange everything that was necessary with the governor of the city concerning Sentaro’s sojourn there. He even found a house for his guest, and in this way Sentaro obtained his great wish and became a resident in the country of Perpetual Life.
Within the memory of all the islanders no man had ever died there, and sickness was a thing unknown. Priests had come over from India and China and told them of a beautiful country called Paradise, where happiness and bliss and contentment fill all men’s hearts, but its gates could only be reached by dying. This tradition was handed down for ages from generation to generation—but none knew exactly what death was except that it led to Paradise.
Quite unlike Sentaro and other ordinary people, instead of having a great dread of death, they all, both rich and poor, longed for it as something good and desirable. They were all tired of their long, long lives, and longed to go to the happy land of contentment called Paradise of which the priests had told them centuries ago.
All this Sentaro soon found out by talking to the islanders. He found himself, according to his ideas, in the land of Topsyturvydom. Everything was upside down. He had wished to escape from dying. He had come to the land of Perpetual Life with great relief and joy, only to find that the inhabitants themselves, doomed never to die, would consider it bliss to find death.
What he had hitherto considered poison these people ate as good food, and all the things to which he had been accustomed as food they rejected. Whenever any merchants from other countries arrived, the rich people rushed to them eager to buy poisons. These they swallowed eagerly, hoping for death to come so that they might go to Paradise.
But what were deadly poisons in other lands were without effect in this strange place, and people who swallowed them with the hope of dying, only found that in a short time they felt better in health instead of worse.
Vainly they tried to imagine what death could be like. The wealthy would have given all their money and all their goods if they could but shorten their lives to two or three hundred years even. Without any change to live on forever seemed to this people wearisome and sad.
In the chemist shops there was a drug which was in constant demand, because after using it for a hundred years, it was supposed to turn the hair slightly gray and to bring about disorders of the stomach.
Sentaro was astonished to find that the poisonous globe-fish was served up in restaurants as a delectable dish, and hawkers in the streets went about selling sauces made of Spanish flies. He never saw any one ill after eating these horrible things, nor did he ever see any one with as much as a cold.
Sentaro was delighted. He said to himself that he would never grow tired of living, and that he considered it profane to wish for death. He was the only happy man on the island. For his part he wished to live thousands of years and to enjoy life. He set himself up in business, and for the present never even dreamed of going back to his native land.
As years went by, however, things did not go as smoothly as at first. He had heavy losses in business, and several times some affairs went wrong with his neighbors. This caused him great annoyance.
Time passed like the flight of an arrow for him, for he was busy from morning till night. Three hundred years went by in this monotonous way, and then at last he began to grow tired of life in this country, and he longed to see his own land and his old home. However long he lived here, life would always be the same, so was it not foolish and wearisome to stay on here forever?
Sentaro, in his wish to escape from the country of Perpetual Life, recollected Jofuku, who had helped him before when he was wishing to escape from death—and he prayed to the saint to bring him back to his own land again.
No sooner did he pray than the paper crane popped out of his pocket. Sentaro was amazed to see that it had remained undamaged after all these years. Once more the bird grew and grew till it was large enough for him to mount it. As he did so, the bird spread its wings and flew, swiftly out across the sea in the direction of Japan.
Such was the willfulness of the man’s nature that he looked back and regretted all he had left behind. He tried to stop the bird in vain. The crane held on its way for thousands of miles across the ocean.
Then a storm came on, and the wonderful paper crane got damp, crumpled up, and fell into the sea. Sentaro fell with it. Very much frightened at the thought of being drowned, he cried out loudly to Jofuku to save him. He looked round, but there was no ship in sight. He swallowed a quantity of sea-water, which only increased his miserable plight. While he was thus struggling to keep himself afloat, he saw a monstrous shark swimming towards him. As it came nearer it opened its huge mouth ready to devour him. Sentaro was all but paralyzed with fear now that he felt his end so near, and screamed out as loudly as ever he could to Jofuku to come and rescue him.
Lo, and behold, Sentaro was awakened by his own screams, to find that during his long prayer he had fallen asleep before the shrine, and that all his extraordinary and frightful adventures had been only a wild dream. He was in a cold perspiration with fright, and utterly bewildered.
Suddenly a bright light came towards him, and in the light stood a messenger. The messenger held a book in his hand, and spoke to Sentaro:
“I am sent to you by Jofuku, who in answer to your prayer, has permitted you in a dream to see the land of Perpetual Life. But you grew weary of living there, and begged to be allowed to return to your native land so that you might die. Jofuku, so that he might try you, allowed you to drop into the sea, and then sent a shark to swallow you up. Your desire for death was not real, for even at that moment you cried out loudly and shouted for help.”
“It is also vain for you to wish to become a hermit, or to find the Elixir of Life. These things are not for such as you—your life is not austere enough. It is best for you to go back to your paternal home, and to live a good and industrious life. Never neglect to keep the anniversaries of your ancestors, and make it your duty to provide for your children’s future. Thus will you live to a good old age and be happy, but give up the vain desire to escape death, for no man can do that, and by this time you have surely found out that even when selfish desires are granted they do not bring happiness.”
“In this book I give you there are many precepts good for you to know—if you study them, you will be guided in the way I have pointed out to you.”
The angel disappeared as soon as he had finished speaking, and Sentaro took the lesson to heart. With the book in his hand he returned to his old home, and giving up all his old vain wishes, tried to live a good and useful life and to observe the lessons taught him in the book, and he and his house prospered henceforth.
== THE BAMBOO-CUTTER AND THE MOON-CHILD==
Long, long ago, there lived an old bamboo wood-cutter. He was very poor and sad also, for no child had Heaven sent to cheer his old age, and in his heart there was no hope of rest from work till he died and was laid in the quiet grave. Every morning he went forth into the woods and hills wherever the bamboo reared its lithe green plumes against the sky. When he had made his choice, he would cut down these feathers of the forest, and splitting them lengthwise, or cutting them into joints, would carry the bamboo wood home and make it into various articles for the household, and he and his old wife gained a small livelihood by selling them.
One morning as usual he had gone out to his work, and having found a nice clump of bamboos, had set to work to cut some of them down. Suddenly the green grove of bamboos was flooded with a bright soft light, as if the full moon had risen over the spot. Looking round in astonishment, he saw that the brilliance was streaming from one bamboo. The old man, full of wonder, dropped his ax and went towards the light. On nearer approach he saw that this soft splendor came from a hollow in the green bamboo stem, and still more wonderful to behold, in the midst of the brilliance stood a tiny human being, only three inches in height, and exquisitely beautiful in appearance.
“You must be sent to be my child, for I find you here among the bamboos where lies my daily work,” said the old man, and taking the little creature in his hand he took it home to his wife to bring up. The tiny girl was so exceedingly beautiful and so small, that the old woman put her into a basket to safeguard her from the least possibility of being hurt in any way.
The old couple were now very happy, for it had been a lifelong regret that they had no children of their own, and with joy they now expended all the love of their old age on the little child who had come to them in so marvelous a manner.
From this time on, the old man often found gold in the notches of the bamboos when he hewed them down and cut them up; not only gold, but precious stones also, so that by degrees he became rich. He built himself a fine house, and was no longer known as the poor bamboo woodcutter, but as a wealthy man.
Three months passed quickly away, and in that time the bamboo child had, wonderful to say, become a full-grown girl, so her foster-parents did up her hair and dressed her in beautiful kimonos. She was of such wondrous beauty that they placed her behind the screens like a princess, and allowed no one to see her, waiting upon her themselves. It seemed as if she were made of light, for the house was filled with a soft shining, so that even in the dark of night it was like daytime. Her presence seemed to have a benign influence on those there. Whenever the old man felt sad, he had only to look upon his foster-daughter and his sorrow vanished, and he became as happy as when he was a youth.
At last the day came for the naming of their new-found child, so the old couple called in a celebrated name-giver, and he gave her the name of Princess Moonlight, because her body gave forth so much soft bright light that she might have been a daughter of the Moon God.
For three days the festival was kept up with song and dance and music. All the friends and relations of the old couple were present, and great was their enjoyment of the festivities held to celebrate the naming of Princess Moonlight. Everyone who saw her declared that there never had been seen any one so lovely; all the beauties throughout the length and breadth of the land would grow pale beside her, so they said. The fame of the Princess’s loveliness spread far and wide, and many were the suitors who desired to win her hand, or even so much as to see her.
Suitors from far and near posted themselves outside the house, and made little holes in the fence, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Princess as she went from one room to the other along the veranda. They stayed there day and night, sacrificing even their sleep for a chance of seeing her, but all in vain. Then they approached the house, and tried to speak to the old man and his wife or some of the servants, but not even this was granted them.
Still, in spite of all this disappointment they stayed on day after day, and night after night, and counted it as nothing, so great was their desire to see the Princess.
At last, however, most of the men, seeing how hopeless their quest was, lost heart and hope both, and returned to their homes. All except five Knights, whose ardor and determination, instead of waning, seemed to wax greater with obstacles. These five men even went without their meals, and took snatches of whatever they could get brought to them, so that they might always stand outside the dwelling. They stood there in all weathers, in sunshine and in rain.
Sometimes they wrote letters to the Princess, but no answer was vouchsafed to them. Then when letters failed to draw any reply, they wrote poems to her telling her of the hopeless love which kept them from sleep, from food, from rest, and even from their homes. Still Princes Moonlight gave no sign of having received their verses.
In this hopeless state the winter passed. The snow and frost and the cold winds gradually gave place to the gentle warmth of spring. Then the summer came, and the sun burned white and scorching in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, and still these faithful Knights kept watch and waited. At the end of these long months they called out to the old bamboo-cutter and entreated him to have some mercy upon them and to show them the Princess, but he answered only that as he was not her real father he could not insist on her obeying him against her wishes.
The five Knights on receiving this stern answer returned to their several homes, and pondered over the best means of touching the proud Princess’s heart, even so much as to grant them a hearing. They took their rosaries in hand and knelt before their household shrines, and burned precious incense, praying to Buddha to give them their heart’s desire. Thus several days passed, but even so they could not rest in their homes.
So again they set out for the bamboo-cutter’s house. This time the old man came out to see them, and they asked him to let them know if it was the Princess’s resolution never to see any man whatsoever, and they implored him to speak for them and to tell her the greatness of their love, and how long they had waited through the cold of winter and the heat of summer, sleepless and roofless through all weathers, without food and without rest, in the ardent hope of winning her, and they were willing to consider this long vigil as pleasure if she would but give them one chance of pleading their cause with her.
The old man lent a willing ear to their tale of love, for in his inmost heart he felt sorry for these faithful suitors and would have liked to see his lovely foster-daughter married to one of them. So he went in to Princess Moonlight and said reverently:
“Although you have always seemed to me to be a heavenly being, yet I have had the trouble of bringing you up as my own child and you have been glad of the protection of my roof. Will you refuse to do as I wish?”
Then Princess Moonlight replied that there was nothing she would not do for him, that she honored and loved him as her own father, and that as for herself she could not remember the time before she came to earth.
The old man listened with great joy as she spoke these dutiful words. Then he told her how anxious he was to see her safely and happily married before he died.
“I am an old man, over seventy years of age, and my end may come any time now. It is necessary and right that you should see these five suitors and choose one of them.”
“Oh, why,” said the Princess in distress, “must I do this? I have no wish to marry now.”
“I found you,” answered the old man, “many years ago, when you were a little creature three inches high, in the midst of a great white light. The light streamed from the bamboo in which you were hid and led me to you. So I have always thought that you were more than mortal woman. While I am alive it is right for you to remain as you are if you wish to do so, but some day I shall cease to be and who will take care of you then? Therefore I pray you to meet these five brave men one at a time and make up your mind to marry one of them!”
Then the Princess answered that she felt sure that she was not as beautiful as perhaps report made her out to be, and that even if she consented to marry any one of them, not really knowing her before, his heart might change afterwards. So as she did not feel sure of them, even though her father told her they were worthy Knights, she did not feel it wise to see them.
“All you say is very reasonable,” said the old man, “but what kind of men will you consent to see? I do not call these five men who have waited on you for months, light-hearted. They have stood outside this house through the winter and the summer, often denying themselves food and sleep so that they may win you. What more can you demand?”
Then Princess Moonlight said she must make further trial of their love before she would grant their request to interview her. The five warriors were to prove their love by each bringing her from distant countries something that she desired to possess.
That same evening the suitors arrived and began to play their flutes in turn, and to sing their self-composed songs telling of their great and tireless love. The bamboo-cutter went out to them and offered them his sympathy for all they had endured and all the patience they had shown in their desire to win his foster-daughter. Then he gave them her message, that she would consent to marry whosoever was successful in bringing her what she wanted. This was to test them.
The five all accepted the trial, and thought it an excellent plan, for it would prevent jealousy between them.
Princess Moonlight then sent word to the First Knight that she requested him to bring her the stone bowl which had belonged to Buddha in India.
The Second Knight was asked to go to the Mountain of Horai, said to be situated in the Eastern Sea, and to bring her a branch of the wonderful tree that grew on its summit. The roots of this tree were of silver, the trunk of gold, and the branches bore as fruit white jewels.
The Third Knight was told to go to China and search for the fire-rat and to bring her its skin.
The Fourth Knight was told to search for the dragon that carried on its head the stone radiating five colors and to bring the stone to her.
The Fifth Knight was to find the swallow which carried a shell in its stomach and to bring the shell to her.
The old man thought these very hard tasks and hesitated to carry the messages, but the Princess would make no other conditions. So her commands were issued word for word to the five men who, when they heard what was required of them, were all disheartened and disgusted at what seemed to them the impossibility of the tasks given them and returned to their own homes in despair.
But after a time, when they thought of the Princess, the love in their hearts revived for her, and they resolved to make an attempt to get what she desired of them.
The First Knight sent word to the Princess that he was starting out that day on the quest of Buddha’s bowl, and he hoped soon to bring it to her. But he had not the courage to go all the way to India, for in those days traveling was very difficult and full of danger, so he went to one of the temples in Kyoto and took a stone bowl from the altar there, paying the priest a large sum of money for it. He then wrapped it in a cloth of gold and, waiting quietly for three years, returned and carried it to the old man.
Princess Moonlight wondered that the Knight should have returned so soon. She took the bowl from its gold wrapping, expecting it to make the room full of light, but it did not shine at all, so she knew that it was a sham thing and not the true bowl of Buddha. She returned it at once and refused to see him. The Knight threw the bowl away and returned to his home in despair. He gave up now all hopes of ever winning the Princess.
The Second Knight told his parents that he needed change of air for his health, for he was ashamed to tell them that love for the Princess Moonlight was the real cause of his leaving them. He then left his home, at the same time sending word to the Princess that he was setting out for Mount Horai in the hope of getting her a branch of the gold and silver tree which she so much wished to have. He only allowed his servants to accompany him half-way, and then sent them back. He reached the seashore and embarked on a small ship, and after sailing away for three days he landed and employed several carpenters to build him a house contrived in such a way that no one could get access to it. He then shut himself up with six skilled jewelers, and endeavored to make such a gold and silver branch as he thought would satisfy the Princess as having come from the wonderful tree growing on Mount Horai. Every one whom he had asked declared that Mount Horai belonged to the land of fable and not to fact.
When the branch was finished, he took his journey home and tried to make himself look as if he were wearied and worn out with travel. He put the jeweled branch into a lacquer box and carried it to the bamboo-cutter, begging him to present it to the Princess.
The old man was quite deceived by the travel-stained appearance of the Knight, and thought that he had only just returned from his long journey with the branch. So he tried to persuade the Princess to consent to see the man. But she remained silent and looked very sad. The old man began to take out the branch and praised it as a wonderful treasure to be found nowhere in the whole land. Then he spoke of the Knight, how handsome and how brave he was to have undertaken a journey to so remote a place as the Mount of Horai.
Princess Moonlight took the branch in her hand and looked at it carefully. She then told her foster-parent that she knew it was impossible for the man to have obtained a branch from the gold and silver tree growing on Mount Horai so quickly or so easily, and she was sorry to say she believed it artificial.
The old man then went out to the expectant Knight, who had now approached the house, and asked where he had found the branch. Then the man did not scruple to make up a long story.
“Two years ago I took a ship and started in search of Mount Horai. After going before the wind for some time I reached the far Eastern Sea. Then a great storm arose and I was tossed about for many days, losing all count of the points of the compass, and finally we were blown ashore on an unknown island. Here I found the place inhabited by demons who at one time threatened to kill and eat me. However, I managed to make friends with these horrible creatures, and they helped me and my sailors to repair the boat, and I set sail again. Our food gave out, and we suffered much from sickness on board. At last, on the five-hundredth day from the day of starting, I saw far off on the horizon what looked like the peak of a mountain. On nearer approach, this proved to be an island, in the center of which rose a high mountain. I landed, and after wandering about for two or three days, I saw a shining being coming towards me on the beach, holding in his hands a golden bowl. I went up to him and asked him if I had, by good chance, found the island of Mount Horai, and he answered:”
“‘Yes, this is Mount Horai!’”
“With much difficulty I climbed to the summit, here stood the golden tree growing with silver roots in the ground. The wonders of that strange land are many, and if I began to tell you about them I could never stop. In spite of my wish to stay there long, on breaking off the branch I hurried back. With utmost speed it has taken me four hundred days to get back, and, as you see, my clothes are still damp from exposure on the long sea voyage. I have not even waited to change my raiment, so anxious was I to bring the branch to the Princess quickly.”
Just at this moment the six jewelers, who had been employed on the making of the branch, but not yet paid by the Knight, arrived at the house and sent in a petition to the Princess to be paid for their labor. They said that they had worked for over a thousand days making the branch of gold, with its silver twigs and its jeweled fruit, that was now presented to her by the Knight, but as yet they had received nothing in payment. So this Knight’s deception was thus found out, and the Princess, glad of an escape from one more importunate suitor, was only too pleased to send back the branch. She called in the workmen and had them paid liberally, and they went away happy. But on the way home they were overtaken by the disappointed man, who beat them till they were nearly dead, for letting out the secret, and they barely escaped with their lives. The Knight then returned home, raging in his heart; and in despair of ever winning the Princess gave up society and retired to a solitary life among the mountains.
Now the Third Knight had a friend in China, so he wrote to him to get the skin of the fire-rat. The virtue of any part of this animal was that no fire could harm it. He promised his friend any amount of money he liked to ask if only he could get him the desired article. As soon as the news came that the ship on which his friend had sailed home had come into port, he rode seven days on horseback to meet him. He handed his friend a large sum of money, and received the fire-rat’s skin. When he reached home he put it carefully in a box and sent it in to the Princess while he waited outside for her answer.
The bamboo-cutter took the box from the Knight and, as usual, carried it in to her and tried to coax her to see the Knight at once, but Princess Moonlight refused, saying that she must first put the skin to test by putting it into the fire. If it were the real thing it would not burn. So she took off the crape wrapper and opened the box, and then threw the skin into the fire. The skin crackled and burnt up at once, and the Princess knew that this man also had not fulfilled his word. So the Third Knight failed also.
Now the Fourth Knight was no more enterprising than the rest. Instead of starting out on the quest of the dragon bearing on its head the five-color-radiating jewel, he called all his servants together and gave them the order to seek for it far and wide in Japan and in China, and he strictly forbade any of them to return till they had found it.
His numerous retainers and servants started out in different directions, with no intention, however, of obeying what they considered an impossible order. They simply took a holiday, went to pleasant country places together, and grumbled at their master’s unreasonableness.
The Knight meanwhile, thinking that his retainers could not fail to find the jewel, repaired to his house, and fitted it up beautifully for the reception of the Princess, he felt so sure of winning her.
One year passed away in weary waiting, and still his men did not return with the dragon-jewel. The Knight became desperate. He could wait no longer, so taking with him only two men he hired a ship and commanded the captain to go in search of the dragon; the captain and the sailors refused to undertake what they said was an absurd search, but the Knight compelled them at last to put out to sea.
When they had been but a few days out they encountered a great storm which lasted so long that, by the time its fury abated, the Knight had determined to give up the hunt of the dragon. They were at last blown on shore, for navigation was primitive in those days. Worn out with his travels and anxiety, the fourth suitor gave himself up to rest. He had caught a very heavy cold, and had to go to bed with a swollen face.
The governor of the place, hearing of his plight, sent messengers with a letter inviting him to his house. While he was there thinking over all his troubles, his love for the Princess turned to anger, and he blamed her for all the hardships he had undergone. He thought that it was quite probable she had wished to kill him so that she might be rid of him, and in order to carry out her wish had sent him upon his impossible quest.
At this point all the servants he had sent out to find the jewel came to see him, and were surprised to find praise instead of displeasure awaiting them. Their master told them that he was heartily sick of adventure, and said that he never intended to go near the Princess’s house again in the future.
Like all the rest, the Fifth Knight failed in his quest—he could not find the swallow’s shell.
By this time the fame of Princess Moonlight’s beauty had reached the ears of the Emperor, and he sent one of the Court ladies to see if she were really as lovely as report said; if so he would summon her to the Palace and make her one of the ladies-in-waiting.
When the Court lady arrived, in spite of her father’s entreaties, Princess Moonlight refused to see her. The Imperial messenger insisted, saying it was the Emperor’s order. Then Princess Moonlight told the old man that if she was forced to go to the Palace in obedience to the Emperor’s order, she would vanish from the earth.
When the Emperor was told of her persistence in refusing to obey his summons, and that if pressed to obey she would disappear altogether from sight, he determined to go and see her. So he planned to go on a hunting excursion in the neighborhood of the bamboo-cutter’s house, and see the Princess himself. He sent word to the old man of his intention, and he received consent to the scheme. The next day the Emperor set out with his retinue, which he soon managed to outride. He found the bamboo-cutter’s house and dismounted. He then entered the house and went straight to where the Princess was sitting with her attendant maidens.
Never had he seen any one so wonderfully beautiful, and he could not but look at her, for she was more lovely than any human being as she shone in her own soft radiance. When Princess Moonlight became aware that a stranger was looking at her she tried to escape from the room, but the Emperor caught her and begged her to listen to what he had to say. Her only answer was to hide her face in her sleeves.
The Emperor fell deeply in love with her, and begged her to come to the Court, where he would give her a position of honor and everything she could wish for. He was about to send for one of the Imperial palanquins to take her back with him at once, saying that her grace and beauty should adorn a Court, and not be hidden in a bamboo-cutter’s cottage.
But the Princess stopped him. She said that if she were forced to go to the Palace she would turn at once into a shadow, and even as she spoke she began to lose her form. Her figure faded from his sight while he looked.
The Emperor then promised to leave her free if only she would resume her former shape, which she did.
It was now time for him to return, for his retinue would be wondering what had happened to their Royal master when they missed him for so long. So he bade her good-by, and left the house with a sad heart. Princess Moonlight was for him the most beautiful woman in the world; all others were dark beside her, and he thought of her night and day. His Majesty now spent much of his time in writing poems, telling her of his love and devotion, and sent them to her, and though she refused to see him again she answered with many verses of her own composing, which told him gently and kindly that she could never marry any one on this earth. These little songs always gave him pleasure.
At this time her foster-parents noticed that night after night the Princess would sit on her balcony and gaze for hours at the moon, in a spirit of the deepest dejection, ending always in a burst of tears. One night the old man found her thus weeping as if her heart were broken, and he besought her to tell him the reason of her sorrow.
With many tears she told him that he had guessed rightly when he supposed her not to belong to this world—that she had in truth come from the moon, and that her time on earth would soon be over. On the fifteenth day of that very month of August her friends from the moon would come to fetch her, and she would have to return. Her parents were both there, but having spent a lifetime on the earth she had forgotten them, and also the moon-world to which she belonged. It made her weep, she said, to think of leaving her kind foster-parents, and the home where she had been happy for so long.
When her attendants heard this they were very sad, and could not eat or drink for sadness at the thought that the Princess was so soon to leave them.
The Emperor, as soon as the news was carried to him, sent messengers to the house to find out if the report were true or not.
The old bamboo-cutter went out to meet the Imperial messengers. The last few days of sorrow had told upon the old man; he had aged greatly, and looked much more than his seventy years. Weeping bitterly, he told them that the report was only too true, but he intended, however, to make prisoners of the envoys from the moon, and to do all he could to prevent the Princess from being carried back.
The men returned and told His Majesty all that had passed. On the fifteenth day of that month the Emperor sent a guard of two thousand warriors to watch the house. One thousand stationed themselves on the roof, another thousand kept watch round all the entrances of the house. All were well trained archers, with bows and arrows. The bamboo-cutter and his wife hid Princess Moonlight in an inner room.
The old man gave orders that no one was to sleep that night, all in the house were to keep a strict watch, and be ready to protect the Princess. With these precautions, and the help of the Emperor’s men-at-arms, he hoped to withstand the moon-messengers, but the Princess told him that all these measures to keep her would be useless, and that when her people came for her nothing whatever could prevent them from carrying out their purpose. Even the Emperors men would be powerless. Then she added with tears that she was very, very sorry to leave him and his wife, whom she had learned to love as her parents, that if she could do as she liked she would stay with them in their old age, and try to make some return for all the love and kindness they had showered upon her during all her earthly life.
The night wore on! The yellow harvest moon rose high in the heavens, flooding the world asleep with her golden light. Silence reigned over the pine and the bamboo forests, and on the roof where the thousand men-at-arms waited.
Then the night grew gray towards the dawn and all hoped that the danger was over—that Princess Moonlight would not have to leave them after all. Then suddenly the watchers saw a cloud form round the moon—and while they looked this cloud began to roll earthwards. Nearer and nearer it came, and every one saw with dismay that its course lay towards the house.
In a short time the sky was entirely obscured, till at last the cloud lay over the dwelling only ten feet off the ground. In the midst of the cloud there stood a flying chariot, and in the chariot a band of luminous beings. One amongst them who looked like a king and appeared to be the chief stepped out of the chariot, and, poised in air, called to the old man to come out.
“The time has come,” he said, “for Princess Moonlight to return to the moon from whence she came. She committed a grave fault, and as a punishment was sent to live down here for a time. We know what good care you have taken of the Princess, and we have rewarded you for this and have sent you wealth and prosperity. We put the gold in the bamboos for you to find.”
“I have brought up this Princess for twenty years and never once has she done a wrong thing, therefore the lady you are seeking cannot be this one,” said the old man. “I pray you to look elsewhere.”
Then the messenger called aloud, saying:
“Princess Moonlight, come out from this lowly dwelling. Rest not here another moment.”
At these words the screens of the Princess’s room slid open of their own accord, revealing the Princess shining in her own radiance, bright and wonderful and full of beauty.
The messenger led her forth and placed her in the chariot. She looked back, and saw with pity the deep sorrow of the old man. She spoke to him many comforting words, and told him that it was not her will to leave him and that he must always think of her when looking at the moon.
The bamboo-cutter implored to be allowed to accompany her, but this was not allowed. The Princess took off her embroidered outer garment and gave it to him as a keepsake.
One of the moon beings in the chariot held a wonderful coat of wings, another had a phial full of the Elixir of Life which was given the Princess to drink. She swallowed a little and was about to give the rest to the old man, but she was prevented from doing so.
The robe of wings was about to be put upon her shoulders, but she said:
“Wait a little. I must not forget my good friend the Emperor. I must write him once more to say good-by while still in this human form.”
In spite of the impatience of the messengers and charioteers she kept them waiting while she wrote. She placed the phial of the Elixir of Life with the letter, and, giving them to the old man, she asked him to deliver them to the Emperor.
Then the chariot began to roll heavenwards towards the moon, and as they all gazed with tearful eyes at the receding Princess, the dawn broke, and in the rosy light of day the moon-chariot and all in it were lost amongst the fleecy clouds that were now wafted across the sky on the wings of the morning wind.
Princess Moonlight’s letter was carried to the Palace. His Majesty was afraid to touch the Elixir of Life, so he sent it with the letter to the top of the most sacred mountain in the land. Mount Fuji, and there the Royal emissaries burnt it on the summit at sunrise. So to this day people say there is smoke to be seen rising from the top of Mount Fuji to the clouds.
== THE MIRROR OF MATSUYAMA==
==A STORY OF OLD JAPAN==
Long years ago in old Japan there lived in the Province of Echigo, a very remote part of Japan even in these days, a man and his wife. When this story begins they had been married for some years and were blessed with one little daughter. She was the joy and pride of both their lives, and in her they stored an endless source of happiness for their old age.
What golden letter days in their memory were these that had marked her growing up from babyhood; the visit to the temple when she was just thirty days old, her proud mother carrying her, robed in ceremonial kimono, to be put under the patronage of the family’s household god; then her first dolls festival, when her parents gave her a set of dolls and their miniature belongings, to be added to as year succeeded year; and perhaps the most important occasion of all, on her third birthday, when her first OBI (broad brocade sash) of scarlet and gold was tied round her small waist, a sign that she had crossed the threshold of girlhood and left infancy behind. Now that she was seven years of age, and had learned to talk and to wait upon her parents in those several little ways so dear to the hearts of fond parents, their cup of happiness seemed full. There could not be found in the whole of the Island Empire a happier little family.
One day there was much excitement in the home, for the father had been suddenly summoned to the capital on business. In these days of railways and jinrickshas and other rapid modes of traveling, it is difficult to realize what such a journey as that from Matsuyama to Kyoto meant. The roads were rough and bad, and ordinary people had to walk every step of the way, whether the distance were one hundred or several hundred miles. Indeed, in those days it was as great an undertaking to go up to the capital as it is for a Japanese to make a voyage to Europe now.
So the wife was very anxious while she helped her husband get ready for the long journey, knowing what an arduous task lay before him. Vainly she wished that she could accompany him, but the distance was too great for the mother and child to go, and besides that, it was the wife’s duty to take care of the home.
All was ready at last, and the husband stood in the porch with his little family round him.
“Do not be anxious, I will come back soon,” said the man. “While I am away take care of everything, and especially of our little daughter.”
“Yes, we shall be all right—but you—you must take care of yourself and delay not a day in coming back to us,” said the wife, while the tears fell like rain from her eyes.
The little girl was the only one to smile, for she was ignorant of the sorrow of parting, and did not know that going to the capital was at all different from walking to the next village, which her father did very often. She ran to his side, and caught hold of his long sleeve to keep him a moment.
“Father, I will be very good while I am waiting for you to come back, so please bring me a present.”
As the father turned to take a last look at his weeping wife and smiling, eager child, he felt as if some one were pulling him back by the hair, so hard was it for him to leave them behind, for they had never been separated before. But he knew that he must go, for the call was imperative. With a great effort he ceased to think, and resolutely turning away he went quickly down the little garden and out through the gate. His wife, catching up the child in her arms, ran as far as the gate, and watched him as he went down the road between the pines till he was lost in the haze of the distance and all she could see was his quaint peaked hat, and at last that vanished too.
“Now father has gone, you and I must take care of everything till he comes back,” said the mother, as she made her way back to the house.
“Yes, I will be very good,” said the child, nodding her head, “and when father comes home please tell him how good I have been, and then perhaps he will give me a present.”
“Father is sure to bring you something that you want very much. I know, for I asked him to bring you a doll. You must think of father every day, and pray for a safe journey till he comes back.”
“O, yes, when he comes home again how happy I shall be,” said the child, clapping her hands, and her face growing bright with joy at the glad thought. It seemed to the mother as she looked at the child’s face that her love for her grew deeper and deeper.
Then she set to work to make the winter clothes for the three of them. She set up her simple wooden spinning-wheel and spun the thread before she began to weave the stuffs. In the intervals of her work she directed the little girl’s games and taught her to read the old stories of her country. Thus did the wife find consolation in work during the lonely days of her husband’s absence. While the time was thus slipping quickly by in the quiet home, the husband finished his business and returned.
It would have been difficult for any one who did not know the man well to recognize him. He had traveled day after day, exposed to all weathers, for about a month altogether, and was sunburnt to bronze, but his fond wife and child knew him at a glance, and flew to meet him from either side, each catching hold of one of his sleeves in their eager greeting. Both the man and his wife rejoiced to find each other well. It seemed a very long time to all till—the mother and child helping—his straw sandals were untied, his large umbrella hat taken off, and he was again in their midst in the old familiar sitting-room that had been so empty while he was away.
As soon as they had sat down on the white mats, the father opened a bamboo basket that he had brought in with him, and took out a beautiful doll and a lacquer box full of cakes.
“Here,” he said to the little girl, “is a present for you. It is a prize for taking care of mother and the house so well while I was away.”
“Thank you,” said the child, as she bowed her head to the ground, and then put out her hand just like a little maple leaf with its eager wide-spread fingers to take the doll and the box, both of which, coming from the capital, were prettier than anything she had ever seen. No words can tell how delighted the little girl was—her face seemed as if it would melt with joy, and she had no eyes and no thought for anything else.
Again the husband dived into the basket, and brought out this time a square wooden box, carefully tied up with red and white string, and handing it to his wife, said:
“And this is for you.”
The wife took the box, and opening it carefully took out a metal disk with a handle attached. One side was bright and shining like a crystal, and the other was covered with raised figures of pine-trees and storks, which had been carved out of its smooth surface in lifelike reality. Never had she seen such a thing in her life, for she had been born and bred in the rural province of Echigo. She gazed into the shining disk, and looking up with surprise and wonder pictured on her face, she said:
“I see somebody looking at me in this round thing! What is it that you have given me?”
The husband laughed and said:
“Why, it is your own face that you see. What I have brought you is called a mirror, and whoever looks into its clear surface can see their own form reflected there. Although there are none to be found in this out of the way place, yet they have been in use in the capital from the most ancient times. There the mirror is considered a very necessary requisite for a woman to possess. There is an old proverb that ‘As the sword is the soul of a samurai, so is the mirror the soul of a woman,’ and according to popular tradition, a woman’s mirror is an index to her own heart—if she keeps it bright and clear, so is her heart pure and good. It is also one of the treasures that form the insignia of the Emperor. So you must lay great store by your mirror, and use it carefully.”
The wife listened to all her husband told her, and was pleased at learning so much that was new to her. She was still more pleased at the precious gift—his token of remembrance while he had been away.
“If the mirror represents my soul, I shall certainly treasure it as a valuable possession, and never will I use it carelessly.” Saying so, she lifted it as high as her forehead, in grateful acknowledgment of the gift, and then shut it up in its box and put it away.
The wife saw that her husband was very tired, and set about serving the evening meal and making everything as comfortable as she could for him. It seemed to the little family as if they had not known what true happiness was before, so glad were they to be together again, and this evening the father had much to tell of his journey and of all he had seen at the great capital.
Time passed away in the peaceful home, and the parents saw their fondest hopes realized as their daughter grew from childhood into a beautiful girl of sixteen. As a gem of priceless value is held in its proud owner’s hand, so had they reared her with unceasing love and care: and now their pains were more than doubly rewarded. What a comfort she was to her mother as she went about the house taking her part in the housekeeping, and how proud her father was of her, for she daily reminded him of her mother when he had first married her.
But, alas! in this world nothing lasts forever. Even the moon is not always perfect in shape, but loses its roundness with time, and flowers bloom and then fade. So at last the happiness of this family was broken up by a great sorrow. The good and gentle wife and mother was one day taken ill.
In the first days of her illness the father and daughter thought that it was only a cold, and were not particularly anxious. But the days went by and still the mother did not get better; she only grew worse, and the doctor was puzzled, for in spite of all he did the poor woman grew weaker day by day. The father and daughter were stricken with grief, and day or night the girl never left her mother’s side. But in spite of all their efforts the woman’s life was not to be saved.
One day as the girl sat near her mother’s bed, trying to hide with a cheery smile the gnawing trouble at her heart, the mother roused herself and taking her daughter’s hand, gazed earnestly and lovingly into her eyes. Her breath was labored and she spoke with difficulty:
“My daughter. I am sure that nothing can save me now. When I am dead, promise me to take care of your dear father and to try to be a good and dutiful woman.”
“Oh, mother,” said the girl as the tears rushed to her eyes, “you must not say such things. All you have to do is to make haste and get well—that will bring the greatest happiness to father and myself.”
“Yes, I know, and it is a comfort to me in my last days to know how greatly you long for me to get better, but it is not to be. Do not look so sorrowful, for it was so ordained in my previous state of existence that I should die in this life just at this time; knowing this, I am quite resigned to my fate. And now I have something to give you whereby to remember me when I am gone.”
Putting her hand out, she took from the side of the pillow a square wooden box tied up with a silken cord and tassels. Undoing this very carefully, she took out of the box the mirror that her husband had given her years ago.
“When you were still a little child your father went up to the capital and brought me back as a present this treasure; it is called a mirror. This I give you before I die. If, after I have ceased to be in this life, you are lonely and long to see me sometimes, then take out this mirror and in the clear and shining surface you will always see me—so will you be able to meet with me often and tell me all your heart; and though I shall not be able to speak, I shall understand and sympathize with you, whatever may happen to you in the future.” With these words the dying woman handed the mirror to her daughter.
The mind of the good mother seemed to be now at rest, and sinking back without another word her spirit passed quietly away that day.
The bereaved father and daughter were wild with grief, and they abandoned themselves to their bitter sorrow. They felt it to be impossible to take leave of the loved woman who till now had filled their whole lives and to commit her body to the earth. But this frantic burst of grief passed, and then they took possession of their own hearts again, crushed though they were in resignation. In spite of this the daughter’s life seemed to her desolate. Her love for her dead mother did not grow less with time, and so keen was her remembrance, that everything in daily life, even the falling of the rain and the blowing of the wind, reminded her of her mother’s death and of all that they had loved and shared together. One day when her father was out, and she was fulfilling her household duties alone, her loneliness and sorrow seemed more than she could bear. She threw herself down in her mother’s room and wept as if her heart would break. Poor child, she longed just for one glimpse of the loved face, one sound of the voice calling her pet name, or for one moment’s forgetfulness of the aching void in her heart. Suddenly she sat up. Her mother’s last words had rung through her memory hitherto dulled by grief.
“Oh! my mother told me when she gave me the mirror as a parting gift, that whenever I looked into it I should be able to meet her—to see her. I had nearly forgotten her last words—how stupid I am; I will get the mirror now and see if it can possibly be true!”
She dried her eyes quickly, and going to the cupboard took out the box that contained the mirror, her heart beating with expectation as she lifted the mirror out and gazed into its smooth face. Behold, her mother’s words were true! In the round mirror before her she saw her mother’s face; but, oh, the joyful surprise! It was not her mother thin and wasted by illness, but the young and beautiful woman as she remembered her far back in the days of her own earliest childhood. It seemed to the girl that the face in the mirror must soon speak, almost that she heard the voice of her mother telling her again to grow up a good woman and a dutiful daughter, so earnestly did the eyes in the mirror look back into her own.
“It is certainly my mother’s soul that I see. She knows how miserable I am without her and she has come to comfort me. Whenever I long to see her she will meet me here; how grateful I ought to be!”
And from this time the weight of sorrow was greatly lightened for her young heart. Every morning, to gather strength for the day’s duties before her, and every evening, for consolation before she lay down to rest, did the young girl take out the mirror and gaze at the reflection which in the simplicity of her innocent heart she believed to be her mother’s soul. Daily she grew in the likeness of her dead mother’s character, and was gentle and kind to all, and a dutiful daughter to her father.
A year spent in mourning had thus passed away in the little household, when, by the advice of his relations, the man married again, and the daughter now found herself under the authority of a step-mother. It was a trying position; but her days spent in the recollection of her own beloved mother, and of trying to be what that mother would wish her to be, had made the young girl docile and patient, and she now determined to be filial and dutiful to her father’s wife, in all respects. Everything went on apparently smoothly in the family for some time under the new regime; there were no winds or waves of discord to ruffle the surface of every-day life, and the father was content.
But it is a woman’s danger to be petty and mean, and step-mothers are proverbial all the world over, and this one’s heart was not as her first smiles were. As the days and weeks grew into months, the step-mother began to treat the motherless girl unkindly and to try and come between the father and child.
Sometimes she went to her husband and complained of her step-daughter’s behavior, but the father knowing that this was to be expected, took no notice of her ill-natured complaints. Instead of lessening his affection for his daughter, as the woman desired, her grumblings only made him think of her the more. The woman soon saw that he began to show more concern for his lonely child than before. This did not please her at all, and she began to turn over in her mind how she could, by some means or other, drive her step-child out of the house. So crooked did the woman’s heart become.
She watched the girl carefully, and one day peeping into her room in the early morning, she thought she discovered a grave enough sin of which to accuse the child to her father. The woman herself was a little frightened too at what she had seen.
So she went at once to her husband, and wiping away some false tears she said in a sad voice:
“Please give me permission to leave you today.”
The man was completely taken by surprise at the suddenness of her request, and wondered whatever was the matter.
“Do you find it so disagreeable,” he asked, “in my house, that you can stay no longer?”
“No! no! it has nothing to do with you—even in my dreams I have never thought that I wished to leave your side; but if I go on living here I am in danger of losing my life, so I think it best for all concerned that you should allow me to go home!”
And the woman began to weep afresh. Her husband, distressed to see her so unhappy, and thinking that he could not have heard aright, said:
“Tell me what you mean! How is your life in danger here?”
“I will tell you since you ask me. Your daughter dislikes me as her step-mother. For some time past she has shut herself up in her room morning and evening, and looking in as I pass by, I am convinced that she has made an image of me and is trying to kill me by magic art, cursing me daily. It is not safe for me to stay here, such being the case; indeed, indeed, I must go away, we cannot live under the same roof any more.”
The husband listened to the dreadful tale, but he could not believe his gentle daughter guilty of such an evil act. He knew that by popular superstition people believed that one person could cause the gradual death of another by making an image of the hated one and cursing it daily; but where had his young daughter learned such knowledge?—the thing was impossible. Yet he remembered having noticed that his daughter stayed much in her room of late and kept herself away from every one, even when visitors came to the house. Putting this fact together with his wife’s alarm, he thought that there might be something to account for the strange story.
His heart was torn between doubting his wife and trusting his child, and he knew not what to do. He decided to go at once to his daughter and try to find out the truth. Comforting his wife and assuring her that her fears were groundless, he glided quietly to his daughter’s room.
The girl had for a long time past been very unhappy. She had tried by amiability and obedience to show her goodwill and to mollify the new wife, and to break down that wall of prejudice and misunderstanding that she knew generally stood between step-parents and their step-children. But she soon found that her efforts were in vain. The step-mother never trusted her, and seemed to misinterpret all her actions, and the poor child knew very well that she often carried unkind and untrue tales to her father. She could not help comparing her present unhappy condition with the time when her own mother was alive only a little more than a year ago—so great a change in this short time! Morning and evening she wept over the remembrance. Whenever she could she went to her room, and sliding the screens to, took out the mirror and gazed, as she thought, at her mother’s face. It was the only comfort that she had in these wretched days.
Her father found her occupied in this way. Pushing aside the fusama, he saw her bending over something or other very intently. Looking over her shoulder, to see who was entering her room, the girl was surprised to see her father, for he generally sent for her when he wished to speak to her. She was also confused at being found looking at the mirror, for she had never told any one of her mother’s last promise, but had kept it as the sacred secret of her heart. So before turning to her father she slipped the mirror into her long sleeve. Her father noting her confusion, and her act of hiding something, said in a severe manner:
“Daughter, what are you doing here? And what is that that you have hidden in your sleeve?”
The girl was frightened by her father’s severity. Never had he spoken to her in such a tone. Her confusion changed to apprehension, her color from scarlet to white. She sat dumb and shamefaced, unable to reply.
Appearances were certainly against her; the young girl looked guilty, and the father thinking that perhaps after all what his wife had told him was true, spoke angrily:
“Then, is it really true that you are daily cursing your step-mother and praying for her death? Have you forgotten what I told you, that although she is your step-mother you must be obedient and loyal to her? What evil spirit has taken possession of your heart that you should be so wicked? You have certainly changed, my daughter! What has made you so disobedient and unfaithful?”
And the father’s eyes filled with sudden tears to think that he should have to upbraid his daughter in this way.
She on her part did not know what he meant, for she had never heard of the superstition that by praying over an image it is possible to cause the death of a hated person. But she saw that she must speak and clear herself somehow. She loved her father dearly, and could not bear the idea of his anger. She put out her hand on his knee deprecatingly:
“Father! father! do not say such dreadful things to me. I am still your obedient child. Indeed, I am. However stupid I may be, I should never be able to curse any one who belonged to you, much less pray for the death of one you love. Surely some one has been telling you lies, and you are dazed, and you know not what you say—or some evil spirit has taken possession of YOUR heart. As for me I do not know—no, not so much as a dew-drop, of the evil thing of which you accuse me.”
But the father remembered that she had hidden something away when he first entered the room, and even this earnest protest did not satisfy him. He wished to clear up his doubts once for all.
“Then why are you always alone in your room these days? And tell me what is that that you have hidden in your sleeve—show it to me at once.”
Then the daughter, though shy of confessing how she had cherished her mother’s memory, saw that she must tell her father all in order to clear herself. So she slipped the mirror out from her long sleeve and laid it before him.
“This,” she said, “is what you saw me looking at just now.”
“Why,” he said in great surprise, “this is the mirror that I brought as a gift to your mother when I went up to the capital many years ago! And so you have kept it all this time? Now, why do you spend so much of your time before this mirror?”
Then she told him of her mother’s last words, and of how she had promised to meet her child whenever she looked into the glass. But still the father could not understand the simplicity of his daughter’s character in not knowing that what she saw reflected in the mirror was in reality her own face, and not that of her mother.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “I do not understand how you can meet the soul of your lost mother by looking in this mirror?”
“It is indeed true,” said the girl: “and if you don’t believe what I say, look for yourself,” and she placed the mirror before her. There, looking back from the smooth metal disk, was her own sweet face. She pointed to the reflection seriously:
“Do you doubt me still?” she asked earnestly, looking up into his face.
With an exclamation of sudden understanding the father smote his two hands together.
“How stupid I am! At last I understand. Your face is as like your mother’s as the two sides of a melon—thus you have looked at the reflection of your face all this time, thinking that you were brought face to face with your lost mother! You are truly a faithful child. It seems at first a stupid thing to have done, but it is not really so, It shows how deep has been your filial piety, and how innocent your heart. Living in constant remembrance of your lost mother has helped you to grow like her in character. How clever it was of her to tell you to do this. I admire and respect you, my daughter, and I am ashamed to think that for one instant I believed your suspicious step-mother’s story and suspected you of evil, and came with the intention of scolding you severely, while all this time you have been so true and good. Before you I have no countenance left, and I beg you to forgive me.”
And here the father wept. He thought of how lonely the poor girl must have been, and of all that she must have suffered under her step-mother’s treatment. His daughter steadfastly keeping her faith and simplicity in the midst of such adverse circumstances—bearing all her troubles with so much patience and amiability—made him compare her to the lotus which rears its blossom of dazzling beauty out of the slime and mud of the moats and ponds, fitting emblem of a heart which keeps itself unsullied while passing through the world.
The step-mother, anxious to know what would happen, had all this while been standing outside the room. She had grown interested, and had gradually pushed the sliding screen back till she could see all that went on. At this moment she suddenly entered the room, and dropping to the mats, she bowed her head over her outspread hands before her step-daughter.
“I am ashamed! I am ashamed!” she exclaimed in broken tones. “I did not know what a filial child you were. Through no fault of yours, but with a step-mother’s jealous heart, I have disliked you all the time. Hating you so much myself, it was but natural that I should think you reciprocated the feeling, and thus when I saw you retire so often to your room I followed you, and when I saw you gaze daily into the mirror for long intervals, I concluded that you had found out how I disliked you, and that you were out of revenge trying to take my life by magic art. As long as I live I shall never forget the wrong I have done you in so misjudging you, and in causing your father to suspect you. From this day I throw away my old and wicked heart, and in its place I put a new one, clean and full of repentance. I shall think of you as a child that I have borne myself. I shall love and cherish you with all my heart, and thus try to make up for all the unhappiness I have caused you. Therefore, please throw into the water all that has gone before, and give me, I beg of you, some of the filial love that you have hitherto given to your own lost mother.”
Thus did the unkind step-mother humble herself and ask forgiveness of the girl she had so wronged.
Such was the sweetness of the girl’s disposition that she willingly forgave her step-mother, and never bore a moment’s resentment or malice towards her afterwards. The father saw by his wife’s face that she was truly sorry for the past, and was greatly relieved to see the terrible misunderstanding wiped out of remembrance by both the wrong-doer and the wronged.
From this time on, the three lived together as happily as fish in water. No such trouble ever darkened the home again, and the young girl gradually forgot that year of unhappiness in the tender love and care that her step-mother now bestowed on her. Her patience and goodness were rewarded at last.
== THE GOBLIN OF ADACHIGAHARA==
Long, long ago there was a large plain called Adachigahara, in the province of Mutsu in Japan. This place was said to be haunted by a cannibal goblin who took the form of an old woman. From time to time many travelers disappeared and were never heard of more, and the old women round the charcoal braziers in the evenings, and the girls washing the household rice at the wells in the mornings, whispered dreadful stories of how the missing folk had been lured to the goblin’s cottage and devoured, for the goblin lived only on human flesh. No one dared to venture near the haunted spot after sunset, and all those who could, avoided it in the daytime, and travelers were warned of the dreaded place.
One day as the sun was setting, a priest came to the plain. He was a belated traveler, and his robe showed that he was a Buddhist pilgrim walking from shrine to shrine to pray for some blessing or to crave for forgiveness of sins. He had apparently lost his way, and as it was late he met no one who could show him the road or warn him of the haunted spot.
He had walked the whole day and was now tired and hungry, and the evenings were chilly, for it was late autumn, and he began to be very anxious to find some house where he could obtain a night’s lodging. He found himself lost in the midst of the large plain, and looked about in vain for some sign of human habitation.
At last, after wandering about for some hours, he saw a clump of trees in the distance, and through the trees he caught sight of the glimmer of a single ray of light. He exclaimed with joy:
“Oh. surely that is some cottage where I can get a night’s lodging!”
Keeping the light before his eyes he dragged his weary, aching feet as quickly as he could towards the spot, and soon came to a miserable-looking little cottage. As he drew near he saw that it was in a tumble-down condition, the bamboo fence was broken and weeds and grass pushed their way through the gaps. The paper screens which serve as windows and doors in Japan were full of holes, and the posts of the house were bent with age and seemed scarcely able to support the old thatched roof. The hut was open, and by the light of an old lantern an old woman sat industriously spinning.
The pilgrim called to her across the bamboo fence and said:
“O Baa San (old woman), good evening! I am a traveler! Please excuse me, but I have lost my way and do not know what to do, for I have nowhere to rest to-night. I beg you to be good enough to let me spend the night under your roof.”
The old woman as soon as she heard herself spoken to stopped spinning, rose from her seat and approached the intruder.
“I am very sorry for you. You must indeed be distressed to have lost your way in such a lonely spot so late at night. Unfortunately I cannot put you up, for I have no bed to offer you, and no accommodation whatsoever for a guest in this poor place!”
“Oh, that does not matter,” said the priest; “all I want is a shelter under some roof for the night, and if you will be good enough just to let me lie on the kitchen floor I shall be grateful. I am too tired to walk further to-night, so I hope you will not refuse me, otherwise I shall have to sleep out on the cold plain.” And in this way he pressed the old woman to let him stay.
She seemed very reluctant, but at last she said:
“Very well, I will let you stay here. I can offer you a very poor welcome only, but come in now and I will make a fire, for the night is cold.”
The pilgrim was only too glad to do as he was told. He took off his sandals and entered the hut. The old woman then brought some sticks of wood and lit the fire, and bade her guest draw near and warm himself.
“You must be hungry after your long tramp,” said the old woman. “I will go and cook some supper for you.” She then went to the kitchen to cook some rice.
After the priest had finished his supper the old woman sat down by the fire-place, and they talked together for a long time. The pilgrim thought to himself that he had been very lucky to come across such a kind, hospitable old woman. At last the wood gave out, and as the fire died slowly down he began to shiver with cold just as he had done when he arrived.
“I see you are cold,” said the old woman; “I will go out and gather some wood, for we have used it all. You must stay and take care of the house while I am gone.”
“No, no,” said the pilgrim, “let me go instead, for you are old, and I cannot think of letting you go out to get wood for me this cold night!”
The old woman shook her head and said:
“You must stay quietly here, for you are my guest.” Then she left him and went out.
In a minute she came back and said:
“You must sit where you are and not move, and whatever happens don’t go near or look into the inner room. Now mind what I tell you!”
“If you tell me not to go near the back room, of course I won’t,” said the priest, rather bewildered.
The old woman then went out again, and the priest was left alone. The fire had died out, and the only light in the hut was that of a dim lantern. For the first time that night he began to feel that he was in a weird place, and the old woman’s words, “Whatever you do don’t peep into the back room,” aroused his curiosity and his fear.
What hidden thing could be in that room that she did not wish him to see? For some time the remembrance of his promise to the old woman kept him still, but at last he could no longer resist his curiosity to peep into the forbidden place.
He got up and began to move slowly towards the back room. Then the thought that the old woman would be very angry with him if he disobeyed her made him come back to his place by the fireside.
As the minutes went slowly by and the old woman did not return, he began to feel more and more frightened, and to wonder what dreadful secret was in the room behind him. He must find out.
“She will not know that I have looked unless I tell her. I will just have a peep before she comes back,” said the man to himself.
With these words he got up on his feet (for he had been sitting all this time in Japanese fashion with his feet under him) and stealthily crept towards the forbidden spot. With trembling hands he pushed back the sliding door and looked in. What he saw froze the blood in his veins. The room was full of dead men’s bones and the walls were splashed and the floor was covered with human blood. In one corner skull upon skull rose to the ceiling, in another was a heap of arm bones, in another a heap of leg bones. The sickening smell made him faint. He fell backwards with horror, and for some time lay in a heap with fright on the floor, a pitiful sight. He trembled all over and his teeth chattered, and he could hardly crawl away from the dreadful spot.
“How horrible!” he cried out. “What awful den have I come to in my travels? May Buddha help me or I am lost. Is it possible that that kind old woman is really the cannibal goblin? When she comes back she will show herself in her true character and eat me up at one mouthful!”
With these words his strength came back to him and, snatching up his hat and staff, he rushed out of the house as fast as his legs could carry him. Out into the night he ran, his one thought to get as far as he could from the goblin’s haunt. He had not gone far when he heard steps behind him and a voice crying: “Stop! stop!”
He ran on, redoubling his speed, pretending not to hear. As he ran he heard the steps behind him come nearer and nearer, and at last he recognized the old woman’s voice which grew louder and louder as she came nearer.
“Stop! stop, you wicked man, why did you look into the forbidden room?”
The priest quite forgot how tired he was and his feet flew over the ground faster than ever. Fear gave him strength, for he knew that if the goblin caught him he would soon be one of her victims. With all his heart he repeated the prayer to Buddha:
“Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu.”
And after him rushed the dreadful old hag, her hair flying in the wind, and her face changing with rage into the demon that she was. In her hand she carried a large blood-stained knife, and she still shrieked after him, “Stop! stop!”
At last, when the priest felt he could run no more, the dawn broke, and with the darkness of night the goblin vanished and he was safe. The priest now knew that he had met the Goblin of Adachigahara, the story of whom he had often heard but never believed to be true. He felt that he owed his wonderful escape to the protection of Buddha to whom he had prayed for help, so he took out his rosary and bowing his head as the sun rose he said his prayers and made his thanksgiving earnestly. He then set forward for another part of the country, only too glad to leave the haunted plain behind him.
== THE SAGACIOUS MONKEY AND THE BOAR==
Long, long ago, there lived in the province of Shinshin in Japan, a traveling monkey-man, who earned his living by taking round a monkey and showing off the animal’s tricks.
One evening the man came home in a very bad temper and told his wife to send for the butcher the next morning.
The wife was very bewildered and asked her husband:
“Why do you wish me to send for the butcher?”
“It’s no use taking that monkey round any longer, he’s too old and forgets his tricks. I beat him with my stick all I know how, but he won’t dance properly. I must now sell him to the butcher and make what money out of him I can. There is nothing else to be done.”
The woman felt very sorry for the poor little animal, and pleaded for her husband to spare the monkey, but her pleading was all in vain, the man was determined to sell him to the butcher.
Now the monkey was in the next room and overheard every word of the conversation. He soon understood that he was to be killed, and he said to himself:
“Barbarous, indeed, is my master! Here I have served him faithfully for years, and instead of allowing me to end my days comfortably and in peace, he is going to let me be cut up by the butcher, and my poor body is to be roasted and stewed and eaten? Woe is me! What am I to do. Ah! a bright thought has struck me! There is, I know, a wild boar living in the forest near by. I have often heard tell of his wisdom. Perhaps if I go to him and tell him the strait I am in he will give me his counsel. I will go and try.”
There was no time to lose. The monkey slipped out of the house and ran as quickly as he could to the forest to find the boar. The boar was at home, and the monkey began his tale of woe at once.
“Good Mr. Boar, I have heard of your excellent wisdom. I am in great trouble, you alone can help me. I have grown old in the service of my master, and because I cannot dance properly now he intends to sell me to the butcher. What do you advise me to do? I know how clever you are!”
The boar was pleased at the flattery and determined to help the monkey. He thought for a little while and then said:
“Hasn’t your master a baby?”
“Oh, yes,” said the monkey, “he has one infant son.”
“Doesn’t it lie by the door in the morning when your mistress begins the work of the day? Well, I will come round early and when I see my opportunity I will seize the child and run off with it.”
“What then?” said the monkey.
“Why the mother will be in a tremendous scare, and before your master and mistress know what to do, you must run after me and rescue the child and take it home safely to its parents, and you will see that when the butcher comes they won’t have the heart to sell you.”
The monkey thanked the boar many times and then went home. He did not sleep much that night, as you may imagine, for thinking of the morrow. His life depended on whether the boar’s plan succeeded or not. He was the first up, waiting anxiously for what was to happen. It seemed to him a very long time before his master’s wife began to move about and open the shutters to let in the light of day. Then all happened as the boar had planned. The mother placed her child near the porch as usual while she tidied up the house and got her breakfast ready.
The child was crooning happily in the morning sunlight, dabbing on the mats at the play of light and shadow. Suddenly there was a noise in the porch and a loud cry from the child. The mother ran out from the kitchen to the spot, only just in time to see the boar disappearing through the gate with her child in its clutch. She flung out her hands with a loud cry of despair and rushed into the inner room where her husband was still sleeping soundly.
He sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes, and crossly demanded what his wife was making all that noise about. By the time that the man was alive to what had happened, and they both got outside the gate, the boar had got well away, but they saw the monkey running after the thief as hard as his legs would carry him.
Both the man and wife were moved to admiration at the plucky conduct of the sagacious monkey, and their gratitude knew no bounds when the faithful monkey brought the child safely back to their arms.
“There!” said the wife. “This is the animal you want to kill—if the monkey hadn’t been here we should have lost our child forever.”
“You are right, wife, for once,” said the man as he carried the child into the house. “You may send the butcher back when he comes, and now give us all a good breakfast and the monkey too.”
When the butcher arrived he was sent away with an order for some boar’s meat for the evening dinner, and the monkey was petted and lived the rest of his days in peace, nor did his master ever strike him again.
== THE HAPPY HUNTER AND THE SKILLFUL FISHER==
Long, long ago Japan was governed by Hohodemi, the fourth Mikoto (or Augustness) in descent from the illustrious Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. He was not only as handsome as his ancestress was beautiful, but he was also very strong and brave, and was famous for being the greatest hunter in the land. Because of his matchless skill as a hunter, he was called “Yama-sachi-hiko” or “The Happy Hunter of the Mountains.”
His elder brother was a very skillful fisher, and as he far surpassed all rivals in fishing, he was named “Umi-sachi-hiko” or the “Skillful Fisher of the Sea.” The brothers thus led happy lives, thoroughly enjoying their respective occupations, and the days passed quickly and pleasantly while each pursued his own way, the one hunting and the other fishing.
One day the Happy Hunter came to his brother, the Skillful Fisher, and said:
“Well, my brother, I see you go to the sea every day with your fishing rod in your hand, and when you return you come laden with fish. And as for me, it is my pleasure to take my bow and arrow and to hunt the wild animals up the mountains and down in the valleys. For a long time we have each followed our favorite occupation, so that now we must both be tired, you of your fishing and I of my hunting. Would it not be wise for us to make a change? Will you try hunting in the mountains and I will go and fish in the sea?”
The Skillful Fisher listened in silence to his brother, and for a moment was thoughtful, but at last he answered:
“O yes, why not? Your idea is not a bad one at all. Give me your bow and arrow and I will set out at once for the mountains and hunt for game.”
So the matter was settled by this talk, and the two brothers each started out to try the other’s occupation, little dreaming of all that would happen. It was very unwise of them, for the Happy Hunter knew nothing of fishing, and the Skillful Fisher, who was bad tempered, knew as much about hunting.
The Happy Hunter took his brother’s much-prized fishing hook and rod and went down to the seashore and sat down on the rocks. He baited his hook and then threw it into the sea clumsily. He sat and gazed at the little float bobbing up and down in the water, and longed for a good fish to come and be caught. Every time the buoy moved a little he pulled up his rod, but there was never a fish at the end of it, only the hook and the bait. If he had known how to fish properly, he would have been able to catch plenty of fish, but although he was the greatest hunter in the land he could not help being the most bungling fisher.
The whole day passed in this way, while he sat on the rocks holding the fishing rod and waiting in vain for his luck to turn. At last the day began to darken, and the evening came; still he had caught not a single fish. Drawing up his line for the last time before going home, he found that he had lost his hook without even knowing when he had dropped it.
He now began to feel extremely anxious, for he knew that his brother would be angry at his having lost his hook, for, it being his only one, he valued it above all other things. The Happy Hunter now set to work to look among the rocks and on the sand for the lost hook, and while he was searching to and fro, his brother, the Skillful Fisher, arrived on the scene. He had failed to find any game while hunting that day, and was not only in a bad temper, but looked fearfully cross. When he saw the Happy Hunter searching about on the shore he knew that something must have gone wrong, so he said at once:
“What are you doing, my brother?”
The Happy Hunter went forward timidly, for he feared his brother’s anger, and said:
“Oh, my brother, I have indeed done badly.”
“What is the matter?—what have you done?” asked the elder brother impatiently.
“I have lost your precious fishing hook—”
While he was still speaking his brother stopped him, and cried out fiercely:
“Lost my hook! It is just what I expected. For this reason, when you first proposed your plan of changing over our occupations I was really against it, but you seemed to wish it so much that I gave in and allowed you to do as you wished. The mistake of our trying unfamiliar tasks is soon seen! And you have done badly. I will not return you your bow and arrow till you have found my hook. Look to it that you find it and return it to me quickly.”
The Happy Hunter felt that he was to blame for all that had come to pass, and bore his brother’s scornful scolding with humility and patience. He hunted everywhere for the hook most diligently, but it was nowhere to be found. He was at last obliged to give up all hope of finding it. He then went home, and in desperation broke his beloved sword into pieces and made five hundred hooks out of it.
He took these to his angry brother and offered them to him, asking his forgiveness, and begging him to accept them in the place of the one he had lost for him. It was useless; his brother would not listen to him, much less grant his request.
The Happy Hunter then made another five hundred hooks, and again took them to his brother, beseeching him to pardon him.
“Though you make a million hooks,” said the Skillful Fisher, shaking his head, “they are of no use to me. I cannot forgive you unless you bring me back my own hook.”
Nothing would appease the anger of the Skillful Fisher, for he had a bad disposition, and had always hated his brother because of his virtues, and now with the excuse of the lost fishing hook he planned to kill him and to usurp his place as ruler of Japan. The Happy Hunter knew all this full well, but he could say nothing, for being the younger he owed his elder brother obedience; so he returned to the seashore and once more began to look for the missing hook. He was much cast down, for he had lost all hope of ever finding his brother’s hook now. While he stood on the beach, lost in perplexity and wondering what he had best do next, an old man suddenly appeared carrying a stick in his hand. The Happy Hunter afterwards remembered that he did not see from whence the old man came, neither did he know how he was there—he happened to look up and saw the old man coming towards him.
“You are Hohodemi, the Augustness, sometimes called the Happy Hunter, are you not?” asked the old man. “What are you doing alone in such a place?”
“Yes, I am he,” answered the unhappy young man. “Unfortunately, while fishing I lost my brother’s precious fishing hook. I have hunted this shore all over, but alas! I cannot find it, and I am very troubled, for my brother won’t forgive me till I restore it to him. But who are you?”
“My name is Shiwozuchino Okina, and I live near by on this shore. I am sorry to hear what misfortune has befallen you. You must indeed be anxious. But if I tell you what I think, the hook is nowhere here—it is either at the bottom of the sea or in the body of some fish who has swallowed it, and for this reason, though you spend your whole life in looking for it here, you will never find it.”
“Then what can I do?” asked the distressed man.
“You had better go down to Ryn Gu and tell Ryn Jin, the Dragon King of the Sea, what your trouble is and ask him to find the hook for you. I think that would be the best way.”
“Your idea is a splendid one,” said the Happy Hunter, “but I fear I cannot get to the Sea King’s realm, for I have always heard that it is situated at the bottom of the sea.”
“Oh, there will be no difficulty about your getting there,” said the old man; “I can soon make something for you to ride on through the sea.”
“Thank you,” said the Happy Hunter, “I shall be very grateful to you if you will be so kind.”
The old man at once set to work, and soon made a basket and offered it to the Happy Hunter. He received it with joy, and taking it to the water, mounted it, and prepared to start. He bade good by to the kind old man who had helped him so much, and told him that he would certainly reward him as soon as he found his hook and could return to Japan without fear of his brother’s anger. The old man pointed out the direction he must take, and told him how to reach the realm of Ryn Gu, and watched him ride out to sea on the basket, which resembled a small boat.
The Happy Hunter made all the haste he could, riding on the basket which had been given him by his friend. His queer boat seemed to go through the water of its own accord, and the distance was much shorter than he had expected, for in a few hours he caught sight of the gate and the roof of the Sea King’s Palace. And what a large place it was, with its numberless sloping roofs and gables, its huge gateways, and its gray stone walls! He soon landed, and leaving his basket on the beach, he walked up to the large gateway. The pillars of the gate were made of beautiful red coral, and the gate itself was adorned with glittering gems of all kinds. Large katsura trees overshadowed it. Our hero had often heard of the wonders of the Sea King’s Palace beneath the sea, but all the stories he had ever heard fell short of the reality which he now saw for the first time.
The Happy Hunter would have liked to enter the gate there and then, but he saw that it was fast closed, and also that there was no one about whom he could ask to open it for him, so he stopped to think what he should do. In the shade of the trees before the gate he noticed a well full of fresh spring water. Surely some one would come out to draw water from the well some time, he thought. Then he climbed into the tree overhanging the well, and seated himself to rest on one of the branches, and waited for what might happen. Ere long he saw the huge gate swing open, and two beautiful women came out. Now the Mikoto (Augustness) had always heard that Ryn Gu was the realm of the Dragon King under the Sea, and had naturally supposed that the place was inhabited by dragons and similar terrible creatures, so that when he saw these two lovely princesses, whose beauty would be rare even in the world from which he had just come, he was exceedingly surprised, and wondered what it could mean.
He said not a word, however, but silently gazed at them through the foliage of the trees, waiting to see what they would do. He saw that in their hands they carried golden buckets. Slowly and gracefully in their trailing garments they approached the well, standing in the shade of the katsura trees, and were about to draw water, all unknowing of the stranger who was watching them, for the Happy Hunter was quite hidden among the branches of the tree where he had posted himself.
As the two ladies leaned over the side of the well to let down their golden buckets, which they did every day in the year, they saw reflected in the deep still water the face of a handsome youth gazing at them from amidst the branches of the tree in whose shade they stood. Never before had they seen the face of mortal man; they were frightened, and drew back quickly with their golden buckets in their hands. Their curiosity, however, soon gave them courage, and they glanced timidly upwards to see the cause of the unusual reflection, and then they beheld the Happy Hunter sitting in the tree looking down at them with surprise and admiration. They gazed at him face to face, but their tongues were still with wonder and could not find a word to say to him.
When the Mikoto saw that he was discovered, he sprang down lightly from the tree and said:
“I am a traveler, and as I was very thirsty I came to the well in the hopes of quenching my thirst, but I could find no bucket with which to draw the water. So I climbed into the tree, much vexed, and waited for some one to come. Just at that moment, while I was thirstily and impatiently waiting, you noble ladies appeared, as if in answer to my great need. Therefore I pray you of your mercy give me some water to drink, for I am a thirsty traveler in a strange land.”
His dignity and graciousness overruled their timidity, and bowing in silence they both once more approached the well, and letting down their golden buckets drew up some water and poured it into a jeweled cup and offered it to the stranger.
He received it from them with both hands, raising it to the height of his forehead in token of high respect and pleasure, and then drank the water quickly, for his thirst was great. When he had finished his long draught he set the cup down on the edge of the well, and drawing his short sword he cut off one of the strange curved jewels (magatama), a necklace of which hung round his neck and fell over his breast. He placed the jewel in the cup and returned it to them, and said, bowing deeply:
“This is a token of my thanks!”
The two ladies took the cup, and looking into it to see what he had put inside—for they did not yet know what it was—they gave a start of surprise, for there lay a beautiful gem at the bottom of the cup.
“No ordinary mortal would give away a jewel so freely. Will you not honor us by telling us who you are?” said the elder damsel.
“Certainly,” said the Happy Hunter, “I am Hohodemi, the fourth Mikoto, also called in Japan, the Happy Hunter.”
“Are you indeed Hohodemi, the grandson of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess?” asked the damsel who had spoken first. “I am the eldest daughter of Ryn Jin, the King of the Sea, and my name is Princess Tayotama.”
“And,” said the younger maiden, who at last found her tongue, “I am her sister, the Princess Tamayori.”
“Are you indeed the daughters of Ryn Jin, the King of the Sea? I cannot tell you how glad I am to meet you,” said the Happy Hunter. And without waiting for them to reply he went on:
“The other day I went fishing with my brother’s hook and dropped it, how, I am sure I can’t tell. As my brother prizes his fishing hook above all his other possessions, this is the greatest calamity that could have befallen me. Unless I find it again I can never hope to win my brother’s forgiveness, for he is very angry at what I have done. I have searched for it many, many times, but I cannot find it, therefore I am much troubled. While I was hunting for the hook, in great distress, I met a wise old man, and he told me that the best thing I could do was to come to Ryn Gu, and to Ryn Jin, the Dragon King of the Sea, and ask him to help me. This kind old man also showed me how to come. Now you know how it is I am here and why. I want to ask Ryn Jin, if he knows where the lost hook is. Will you be so kind as to take me to your father? And do you think he will see me?” asked the Happy Hunter anxiously.
Princess Tayotama listened to this long story, and then said:
“Not only is it easy for you to see my father, but he will be much pleased to meet you. I am sure he will say that good fortune has befallen him, that so great and noble a man as you, the grandson of Amaterasu, should come down to the bottom of the sea.” And then turning to her younger sister, she said:
“Do you not think so, Tamayori?”
“Yes, indeed,” answered the Princess Tamayori, in her sweet voice. “As you say, we can know no greater honor than to welcome the Mikoto to our home.”
“Then I ask you to be so kind as to lead the way,” said the Happy Hunter.
“Condescend to enter, Mikoto (Augustness),” said both the sisters, and bowing low, they led him through the gate.
The younger Princess left her sister to take charge of the Happy Hunter, and going faster than they, she reached the Sea King’s Palace first, and running quickly to her father’s room, she told him of all that had happened to them at the gate, and that her sister was even now bringing the Augustness to him. The Dragon King of the Sea was much surprised at the news, for it was but seldom, perhaps only once in several hundred years, that the Sea King’s Palace was visited by mortals.
Ryn Jin at once clapped his hands and summoned all his courtiers and the servants of the Palace, and the chief fish of the sea together, and solemnly told them that the grandson of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, was coming to the Palace, and that they must be very ceremonious and polite in serving the august visitor. He then ordered them all to the entrance of the Palace to welcome the Happy Hunter.
Ryn Jin then dressed himself in his robes of ceremony, and went out to welcome him. In a few moments the Princess Tayotama and the Happy Hunter reached the entrance, and the Sea King and his wife bowed to the ground and thanked him for the honor he did them in coming to see them. The Sea King then led the Happy Hunter to the guest room, and placing him in the uppermost seat, he bowed respectfully before him, and said:
“I am Ryn Jin, the Dragon King of the Sea, and this is my wife. Condescend to remember us forever!”
“Are you indeed Ryn Jin, the King of the Sea, of whom I have so often heard?” answered the Happy Hunter, saluting his host most ceremoniously. “I must apologize for all the trouble I am giving you by my unexpected visit.” And he bowed again, and thanked the Sea King.
“You need not thank me,” said Ryn Jin. “It is I who must thank you for coming. Although the Sea Palace is a poor place, as you see, I shall be highly honored if you will make us a long visit.”
There was much gladness between the Sea King and the Happy Hunter, and they sat and talked for a long time. At last the Sea King clapped his hands, and then a huge retinue of fishes appeared, all robed in ceremonial garments, and bearing in their fins various trays on which all kinds of sea delicacies were served. A great feast was now spread before the King and his Royal guest. All the fishes-in-waiting were chosen from amongst the finest fish in the sea, so you can imagine what a wonderful array of sea creatures it was that waited upon the Happy Hunter that day. All in the Palace tried to do their best to please him and to show him that he was a much honored guest. During the long repast, which lasted for hours, Ryn Jin commanded his daughters to play some music, and the two Princesses came in and performed on the KOTO (the Japanese harp), and sang and danced in turns. The time passed so pleasantly that the Happy Hunter seemed to forget his trouble and why he had come at all to the Sea King’s Realm, and he gave himself up to the enjoyment of this wonderful place, the land of fairy fishes! Who has ever heard of such a marvelous place? But the Mikoto soon remembered what had brought him to Ryn Gu, and said to his host:
“Perhaps your daughters have told you, King Ryn Jin, that I have come here to try and recover my brother’s fishing hook, which I lost while fishing the other day. May I ask you to be so kind as to inquire of all your subjects if any of them have seen a fishing hook lost in the sea?”
“Certainly,” said the obliging Sea King, “I will immediately summon them all here and ask them.”
As soon as he had issued his command, the octopus, the cuttlefish, the bonito, the oxtail fish, the eel, the jelly fish, the shrimp, and the plaice, and many other fishes of all kinds came in and sat down before Ryn Jin their King, and arranged themselves and their fins in order. Then the Sea King said solemnly:
“Our visitor who is sitting before you all is the august grandson of Amaterasu. His name is Hohodemi, the fourth Augustness, and he is also called the Happy Hunter of the Mountains. While he was fishing the other day upon the shore of Japan, some one robbed him of his brother’s fishing hook. He has come all this way down to the bottom of the sea to our Kingdom because he thought that one of you fishes may have taken the hook from him in mischievous play. If any of you have done so you must immediately return it, or if any of you know who the thief is you must at once tell us his name and where he is now.”
All the fishes were taken by surprise when they heard these words, and could say nothing for some time. They sat looking at each other and at the Dragon King. At last the cuttlefish came forward and said:
“I think the TAI (the red bream) must be the thief who has stolen the hook!”
“Where is your proof?” asked the King.
“Since yesterday evening the TAI has not been able to eat anything, and he seems to be suffering from a bad throat! For this reason I think the hook may be in his throat. You had better send for him at once!”
All the fish agreed to this, and said:
“It is certainly strange that the TAI is the only fish who has not obeyed your summons. Will you send for him and inquire into the matter. Then our innocence will be proved.”
“Yes,” said the Sea King, “it is strange that the TAI has not come, for he ought to be the first to be here. Send for him at once!”
Without waiting for the King’s order the cuttlefish had already started for the TAI’S dwelling, and he now returned, bringing the TAI with him. He led him before the King.
The TAI sat there looking frightened and ill. He certainly was in pain, for his usually red face was pale, and his eyes were nearly closed and looked but half their usual size.
“Answer, O TAI!” cried the Sea King, “why did you not come in answer to my summons today?”
“I have been ill since yesterday,” answered the TAI; “that is why I could not come.”
“Don’t say another word!” cried out Ryn Jin angrily. “Your illness is the punishment of the gods for stealing the Mikoto’s hook.”
“It is only too true!” said the TAI; “the hook is still in my throat, and all my efforts to get it out have been useless. I can’t eat, and I can scarcely breathe, and each moment I feel that it will choke me, and sometimes it gives me great pain. I had no intention of stealing the Mikoto’s hook. I heedlessly snapped at the bait which I saw in the water, and the hook came off and stuck in my throat. So I hope you will pardon me.”
The cuttlefish now came forward, and said to the King:
“What I said was right. You see the hook still sticks in the TAI’S throat. I hope to be able to pull it out in the presence of the Mikoto, and then we can return it to him safely!”
“O please make haste and pull it out!” cried the TAI, pitifully, for he felt the pains in his throat coming on again; “I do so want to return the hook to the Mikoto.”
“All right, TAI SAN,” said his friend the cuttlefish, and then opening the TAI’S mouth as wide as he could and putting one of his feelers down the TAI’S throat, he quickly and easily drew the hook out of the sufferer’s large mouth. He then washed it and brought it to the King.
Ryn Jin took the hook from his subject, and then respectfully returned it to the Happy Hunter (the Mikoto or Augustness, the fishes called him), who was overjoyed at getting back his hook. He thanked Ryn Jin many times, his face beaming with gratitude, and said that he owed the happy ending of his quest to the Sea King’s wise authority and kindness.
Ryn Jin now desired to punish the TAI, but the Happy Hunter begged him not to do so; since his lost hook was thus happily recovered he did not wish to make more trouble for the poor TAI. It was indeed the TAI who had taken the hook, but he had already suffered enough for his fault, if fault it could be called. What had been done was done in heedlessness and not by intention. The Happy Hunter said he blamed himself; if he had understood how to fish properly he would never have lost his hook, and therefore all this trouble had been caused in the first place by his trying to do something which he did not know how to do. So he begged the Sea King to forgive his subject.
Who could resist the pleading of so wise and compassionate a judge? Ryn Jin forgave his subject at once at the request of his august guest. The TAI was so glad that he shook his fins for joy, and he and all the other fish went out from the presence of their King, praising the virtues of the Happy Hunter.
Now that the hook was found the Happy Hunter had nothing to keep him in Ryn Gu, and he was anxious to get back to his own kingdom and to make peace with his angry brother, the Skillful Fisher; but the Sea King, who had learnt to love him and would fain have kept him as a son, begged him not to go so soon, but to make the Sea Palace his home as long as ever he liked. While the Happy Hunter was still hesitating, the two lovely Princesses, Tayotama and Tamayori, came, and with the sweetest of bows and voices joined with their father in pressing him to stay, so that without seeming ungracious he could not say them “Nay,” and was obliged to stay on for some time.
Between the Sea Realm and the Earth there was no difference in the night of time, and the Happy Hunter found that three years went fleeting quickly by in this delightful land. The years pass swiftly when any one is truly happy. But though the wonders of that enchanted land seemed to be new every day, and though the Sea King’s kindness seemed rather to increase than to grow less with time, the Happy Hunter grew more and more homesick as the days passed, and he could not repress a great anxiety to know what had happened to his home and his country and his brother while he had been away.
So at last he went to the Sea King and said:
“My stay with you here has been most happy and I am very grateful to you for all your kindness to me, but I govern Japan, and, delightful as this place is, I cannot absent myself forever from my country. I must also return the fishing hook to my brother and ask his forgiveness for having deprived him of it for so long. I am indeed very sorry to part from you, but this time it cannot be helped. With your gracious permission, I will take my leave to-day. I hope to make you another visit some day. Please give up the idea of my staying longer now.”
King Ryn Jin was overcome with sorrow at the thought that he must lose his friend who had made a great diversion in the Palace of the Sea, and his tears fell fast as he answered:
“We are indeed very sorry to part with you, Mikoto, for we have enjoyed your stay with us very much. You have been a noble and honored guest and we have heartily made you welcome. I quite understand that as you govern Japan you ought to be there and not here, and that it is vain for us to try and keep you longer with us, much as we would like to have you stay. I hope you will not forget us. Strange circumstances have brought us together and I trust the friendship thus begun between the Land and the Sea will last and grow stronger than it has ever been before.”
When the Sea King had finished speaking he turned to his two daughters and bade them bring him the two Tide-Jewels of the Sea. The two Princesses bowed low, rose and glided out of the hall. In a few minutes they returned, each one carrying in her hands a flashing gem which filled the room with light. As the Happy Hunter looked at them he wondered what they could be. The Sea King took them from his daughters and said to his guest:
“These two valuable talismans we have inherited from our ancestors from time immemorial. We now give them to you as a parting gift in token of our great affection for you. These two gems are called the nanjiu and the kanjiu.”
The Happy Hunter bowed low to the ground and said:
“I can never thank you enough for all your kindness to me. And now will you add one more favor to the rest and tell me what these jewels are and what I am to do with them?”
“The nanjiu,” answered the Sea King, “is also called the Jewel of the Flood Tide, and whoever holds it in his possession can command the sea to roll in and to flood the land at any time that he wills. The kanjiu is also called the Jewel of the Ebbing Tide, and this gem controls the sea and the waves thereof, and will cause even a tidal wave to recede.”
Then Ryn Jin showed his friend how to use the talismans one by one and handed them to him. The Happy Hunter was very glad to have these two wonderful gems, the Jewel of the Flood Tide and the Jewel of the Ebbing Tide, to take back with him, for he felt that they would preserve him in case of danger from enemies at any time. After thanking his kind host again and again, he prepared to depart. The Sea King and the two Princesses, Tayotama and Tamayori, and all the inmates of the Palace, came out to say “Good-by,” and before the sound of the last farewell had died away the Happy Hunter passed out from under the gateway, past the well of happy memory standing in the shade of the great KATSURA trees on his way to the beach.
Here he found, instead of the queer basket on which he had come to the Realm of Ryn Gu, a large crocodile waiting for him. Never had he seen such a huge creature. It measured eight fathoms in length from the tip of its tail to the end of its long mouth. The Sea King had ordered the monster to carry the Happy Hunter back to Japan. Like the wonderful basket which Shiwozuchino Okina had made, it could travel faster than any steamboat, and in this strange way, riding on the back of a crocodile, the Happy Hunter returned to his own land.
As soon as the crocodile landed him, the Happy Hunter hastened to tell the Skillful Fisher of his safe return. He then gave him back the fishing hook which had been found in the mouth of the TAI and which had been the cause of so much trouble between them. He earnestly begged his brother’s forgiveness, telling him all that had happened to him in the Sea King’s Palace and what wonderful adventures had led to the finding of the hook.
Now the Skillful Fisher had used the lost hook as an excuse for driving his brother out of the country. When his brother had left him that day three years ago, and had not returned, he had been very glad in his evil heart and had at once usurped his brother’s place as ruler of the land, and had become powerful and rich. Now in the midst of enjoying what did not belong to him, and hoping that his brother might never return to claim his rights, quite unexpectedly there stood the Happy Hunter before him.
The Skillful Fisher feigned forgiveness, for he could make no more excuses for sending his brother away again, but in his heart he was very angry and hated his brother more and more, till at last he could no longer bear the sight of him day after day, and planned and watched for an opportunity to kill him.
One day when the Happy Hunter was walking in the rice fields his brother followed him with a dagger. The Happy Hunter knew that his brother was following him to kill him, and he felt that now, in this hour of great danger, was the time to use the Jewels of the Flow and Ebb of the Tide and prove whether what the Sea King had told him was true or not.
So he took out the Jewel of the Flood Tide from the bosom of his dress and raised it to his forehead. Instantly over the fields and over the farms the sea came rolling in wave upon wave till it reached the spot where his brother was standing. The Skillful Fisher stood amazed and terrified to see what was happening. In another minute he was struggling in the water and calling on his brother to save him from drowning.
The Happy Hunter had a kind heart and could not bear the sight of his brother’s distress. He at once put back the Jewel of the Flood Tide and took out the Jewel of the Ebb Tide. No sooner did he hold it up as high as his forehead than the sea ran back and back, and ere long the tossing rolling floods had vanished, and the farms and fields and dry land appeared as before.
The Skillful Fisher was very frightened at the peril of death in which he had stood, and was greatly impressed by the wonderful things he had seen his brother do. He learned now that he was making a fatal mistake to set himself against his brother, younger than he thought he was, for he now had become so powerful that the sea would flow in and the tide ebb at his word of command. So he humbled himself before the Happy Hunter and asked him to forgive him all the wrong he had done him. The Skillful Fisher promised to restore his brother to his rights and also swore that though the Happy Hunter was the younger brother and owed him allegiance by right of birth, that he, the Skillful Fisher, would exalt him as his superior and bow before him as Lord of all Japan.
Then the Happy Hunter said that he would forgive his brother if he would throw into the receding tide all his evil ways. The Skillful Fisher promised and there was peace between the two brothers. From this time he kept his word and became a good man and a kind brother.
The Happy Hunter now ruled his Kingdom without being disturbed by family strife, and there was peace in Japan for a long, long time. Above all the treasures in his house he prized the wonderful Jewels of the Flow and Ebb of the Tide which had been given him by Ryn Jin, the Dragon King of the Sea.
This is the congratulatory ending of the Happy Hunter and the Skillful Fisher.
==THE STORY OF THE OLD MAN WHO MADE WITHERED TREES TO FLOWER==
Long, long ago there lived an old man and his wife who supported themselves by cultivating a small plot of land. Their life had been a very happy and peaceful one save for one great sorrow, and this was they had no child. Their only pet was a dog named Shiro, and on him they lavished all the affection of their old age. Indeed, they loved him so much that whenever they had anything nice to eat they denied themselves to give it to Shiro. Now Shiro means “white,” and he was so called because of his color. He was a real Japanese dog, and very like a small wolf in appearance.
The happiest hour of the day both for the old man and his dog was when the man returned from his work in the field, and having finished his frugal supper of rice and vegetables, would take what he had saved from the meal out to the little veranda that ran round the cottage. Sure enough, Shiro was waiting for his master and the evening tit-bit. Then the old man said “Chin, chin!” and Shiro sat up and begged, and his master gave him the food. Next door to this good old couple there lived another old man and his wife who were both wicked and cruel, and who hated their good neighbors and the dog Shiro with all their might. Whenever Shiro happened to look into their kitchen they at once kicked him or threw something at him, sometimes even wounding him.
One day Shiro was heard barking for a long time in the field at the back of his master’s house. The old man, thinking that perhaps some birds were attacking the corn, hurried out to see what was the matter. As soon as Shiro saw his master he ran to meet him, wagging his tail, and, seizing the end of his kimono, dragged him under a large yenoki tree. Here he began to dig very industriously with his paws, yelping with joy all the time. The old man, unable to understand what it all meant, stood looking on in bewilderment. But Shiro went on barking and digging with all his might.
The thought that something might be hidden beneath the tree, and that the dog had scented it, at last struck the old man. He ran back to the house, fetched his spade and began to dig the ground at that spot. What was his astonishment when, after digging for some time, he came upon a heap of old and valuable coins, and the deeper he dug the more gold coins did he find. So intent was the old man on his work that he never saw the cross face of his neighbor peering at him through the bamboo hedge. At last all the gold coins lay shining on the ground. Shiro sat by erect with pride and looking fondly at his master as if to say, “You see, though only a dog, I can make some return for all the kindness you show me.”
The old man ran in to call his wife, and together they carried home the treasure. Thus in one day the poor old man became rich. His gratitude to the faithful dog knew no bounds, and he loved and petted him more than ever, if that were possible.
The cross old neighbor, attracted by Shiro’s barking, had been an unseen and envious witness of the finding of the treasure. He began to think that he, too, would like to find a fortune. So a few days later he called at the old man’s house and very ceremoniously asked permission to borrow Shiro for a short time.
Shiro’s master thought this a strange request, because he knew quite well that not only did his neighbor not love his pet dog, but that he never lost an opportunity of striking and tormenting him whenever the dog crossed his path. But the good old man was too kind-hearted to refuse his neighbor, so he consented to lend the dog on condition that he should be taken great care of.
The wicked old man returned to his home with an evil smile on his face, and told his wife how he had succeeded in his crafty intentions. He then took his spade and hastened to his own field, forcing the unwilling Shiro to follow him. As soon as he reached a yenoki tree, he said to the dog, threateningly:
“If there were gold coins under your master’s tree, there must also be gold coins under my tree. You must find them for me! Where are they? Where? Where?”
And catching hold of Shiro’s neck he held the dog’s head to the ground, so that Shiro began to scratch and dig in order to free himself from the horrid old man’s grasp.
The old man was very pleased when he saw the dog begin to scratch and dig, for he at once supposed that some gold coins lay buried under his tree as well as under his neighbor’s, and that the dog had scented them as before; so pushing Shiro away he began to dig himself, but there was nothing to be found. As he went on digging a foul smell was noticeable, and he at last came upon a refuse heap.
The old man’s disgust can be imagined. This soon gave way to anger. He had seen his neighbor’s good fortune, and hoping for the same luck himself, he had borrowed the dog Shiro; and now, just as he seemed on the point of finding what he sought, only a horrid smelling refuse heap had rewarded him for a morning’s digging. Instead of blaming his own greed for his disappointment, he blamed the poor dog. He seized his spade, and with all his strength struck Shiro and killed him on the spot. He then threw the dog’s body into the hole which he had dug in the hope of finding a treasure of gold coins, and covered it over with the earth. Then he returned to the house, telling no one, not even his wife, what he had done.
After waiting several days, as the dog Shiro did not return, his master began to grow anxious. Day after day went by and the good old man waited in vain. Then he went to his neighbor and asked him to give him back his dog. Without any shame or hesitation, the wicked neighbor answered that he had killed Shiro because of his bad behavior. At this dreadful news Shiro’s master wept many sad and bitter tears. Great indeed, was his woful surprise, but he was too good and gentle to reproach his bad neighbor. Learning that Shiro was buried under the yenoki tree in the field, he asked the old man to give him the tree, in remembrance of his poor dog Shiro.
Even the cross old neighbor could not refuse such a simple request, so he consented to give the old man the tree under which Shiro lay buried. Shiro’s master then cut the tree down and carried it home. Out of the trunk he made a mortar. In this his wife put some rice, and he began to pound it with the intention of making a festival to the memory of his dog Shiro.
A strange thing happened! His wife put the rice into the mortar, and no sooner had he begun to pound it to make the cakes, than it began to increase in quantity gradually till it was about five times the original amount, and the cakes were turned out of the mortar as if an invisible hand were at work.
When the old man and his wife saw this, they understood that it was a reward to them from Shiro for their faithful love to him. They tasted the cakes and found them nicer than any other food. So from this time they never troubled about food, for they lived upon the cakes with which the mortar never ceased to supply them.
The greedy neighbor, hearing of this new piece of good luck, was filled with envy as before, and called on the old man and asked leave to borrow the wonderful mortar for a short time, pretending that he, too, sorrowed for the death of Shiro, and wished to make cakes for a festival to the dog’s memory.
The old man did not in the least wish to lend it to his cruel neighbor, but he was too kind to refuse. So the envious man carried home the mortar, but he never brought it back.
Several days passed, and Shiro’s master waited in vain for the mortar, so he went to call on the borrower, and asked him to be good enough to return the mortar if he had finished with it. He found him sitting by a big fire made of pieces of wood. On the ground lay what looked very much like pieces of a broken mortar. In answer to the old man’s inquiry, the wicked neighbor answered haughtily:
“Have you come to ask me for your mortar? I broke it to pieces, and now I am making a fire of the wood, for when I tried to pound cakes in it only some horrid smelling stuff came out.”
The good old man said:
“I am very sorry for that. It is a great pity you did not ask me for the cakes if you wanted them. I would have given you as many as ever you wanted. Now please give me the ashes of the mortar, as I wish to keep them in remembrance of my dog.”
The neighbor consented at once, and the old man carried home a basket full of ashes.
Not long after this the old man accidentally scattered some of the ashes made by the burning of the mortar on the trees of his garden. A wonderful thing happened!
It was late in autumn and all the trees had shed their leaves, but no sooner did the ashes touch their branches than the cherry trees, the plum trees, and all other blossoming shrubs burst into bloom, so that the old man’s garden was suddenly transformed into a beautiful picture of spring. The old man’s delight knew no bounds, and he carefully preserved the remaining ashes.
The story of the old man’s garden spread far and wide, and people from far and near came to see the wonderful sight.
One day, soon after this, the old man heard some one knocking at his door, and going to the porch to see who it was he was surprised to see a Knight standing there. This Knight told him that he was a retainer of a great Daimio (Earl); that one of the favorite cherry trees in this nobleman’s garden had withered, and that though every one in his service had tried all manner of means to revive it, none took effect. The Knight was sore perplexed when he saw what great displeasure the loss of his favorite cherry tree caused the Daimio. At this point, fortunately, they had heard that there was a wonderful old man who could make withered trees to blossom, and that his Lord had sent him to ask the old man to come to him.
“And,” added the Knight, “I shall be very much obliged if you will come at once.”
The good old man was greatly surprised at what he heard, but respectfully followed the Knight to the nobleman’s Palace.
The Daimio, who had been impatiently awaiting the old man’s coming, as soon as he saw him asked him at once:
“Are you the old man who can make withered trees flower even out of season?”
The old man made an obeisance, and replied:
“I am that old man!”
Then the Daimio said:
“You must make that dead cherry tree in my garden blossom again by means of your famous ashes. I shall look on.”
Then they all went into the garden—the Daimio and his retainers and the ladies-in waiting, who carried the Daimio’s sword.
The old man now tucked up his kimono and made ready to climb the tree. Saying “Excuse me,” he took the pot of ashes which he had brought with him, and began to climb the tree, every one watching his movements with great interest.
At last he climbed to the spot where the tree divided into two great branches, and taking up his position here, the old man sat down and scattered the ashes right and left all over the branches and twigs.
Wonderful, indeed, was the result! The withered tree at once burst into full bloom! The Daimio was so transported with joy that he looked as if he would go mad. He rose to his feet and spread out his fan, calling the old man down from the tree. He himself gave the old man a wine cup filled with the best SAKE, and rewarded him with much silver and gold and many other precious things. The Daimio ordered that henceforth the old man should call himself by the name of Hana-Saka-Jijii, or “The Old Man who makes the Trees to Blossom,” and that henceforth all were to recognize him by this name, and he sent him home with great honor.
The wicked neighbor, as before, heard of the good old man’s fortune, and of all that had so auspiciously befallen him, and he could not suppress all the envy and jealousy that filled his heart. He called to mind how he had failed in his attempt to find the gold coins, and then in making the magic cakes; this time surely he must succeed if he imitated the old man, who made withered trees to flower simply by sprinkling ashes on them. This would be the simplest task of all.
So he set to work and gathered together all the ashes which remained in the fire-place from the burning of the wonderful mortar. Then he set out in the hope of finding some great man to employ him, calling out loudly as he went along:
“Here comes the wonderful man who can make withered trees blossom! Here comes the old man who can make dead trees blossom!”
The Daimio in his Palace heard this cry, and said:
“That must be the Hana-Saka-Jijii passing. I have nothing to do to-day. Let him try his art again; it will amuse me to look on.”
So the retainers went out and brought in the impostor before their Lord. The satisfaction of false old man can now be imagined.
But the Daimio looking at him, thought it strange that he was not at all like the old man he had seen before, so he asked him:
“Are you the man whom I named Hana-Saka-Jijii?”
And the envious neighbor answered with a lie:
“Yes, my Lord!”
“That is strange!” said the Daimio. “I thought there was only one Hana-Saka-Jijii in the world! Has he now some disciples?”
“I am the true Hana-Saka-Jijii. The one who came to you before was only my disciple!” replied the old man again.
“Then you must be more skillful than the other. Try what you can do and let me see!”
The envious neighbor, with the Daimio and his Court following, then went into the garden, and approaching a dead tree, took out a handful of the ashes which he carried with him, and scattered them over the tree.
But not only did the tree not burst into flower, but not even a bud came forth. Thinking that he had not used enough ashes, the old man took handfuls and again sprinkled them over the withered tree. But all to no effect. After trying several times, the ashes were blown into the Daimio’s eyes. This made him very angry, and he ordered his retainers to arrest the false Hana-Saka-Jijii at once and put him in prison for an impostor. From this imprisonment the wicked old man was never freed. Thus did he meet with punishment at last for all his evil doings.
The good old man, however, with the treasure of gold coins which Shiro had found for him, and with all the gold and the silver which the Daimio had showered on him, became a rich and prosperous man in his old age, and lived a long and happy life, beloved and respected by all.
== THE JELLY FISH AND THE MONKEY==
Long, long ago, in old Japan, the Kingdom of the Sea was governed by a wonderful King. He was called Rin Jin, or the Dragon King of the Sea. His power was immense, for he was the ruler of all sea creatures both great and small, and in his keeping were the Jewels of the Ebb and Flow of the Tide. The Jewel of the Ebbing Tide when thrown into the ocean caused the sea to recede from the land, and the Jewel of the Flowing Tide made the waves to rise mountains high and to flow in upon the shore like a tidal wave.
The Palace of Rin Jin was at the bottom of the sea, and was so beautiful that no one has ever seen anything like it even in dreams. The walls were of coral, the roof of jadestone and chrysoprase, and the floors were of the finest mother-of-pearl. But the Dragon King, in spite of his wide-spreading Kingdom, his beautiful Palace and all its wonders, and his power which none disputed throughout the whole sea, was not at all happy, for he reigned alone. At last he thought that if he married he would not only be happier, but also more powerful. So he decided to take a wife. Calling all his fish retainers together, he chose several of them as ambassadors to go through the sea and seek for a young Dragon Princess who would be his bride.
At last they returned to the Palace bringing with them a lovely young dragon. Her scales were of glittering green like the wings of summer beetles, her eyes threw out glances of fire, and she was dressed in gorgeous robes. All the jewels of the sea worked in with embroidery adorned them.
The King fell in love with her at once, and the wedding ceremony was celebrated with great splendor. Every living thing in the sea, from the great whales down to the little shrimps, came in shoals to offer their congratulations to the bride and bridegroom and to wish them a long and prosperous life. Never had there been such an assemblage or such gay festivities in the Fish-World before. The train of bearers who carried the bride’s possessions to her new home seemed to reach across the waves from one end of the sea to the other. Each fish carried a phosphorescent lantern and was dressed in ceremonial robes, gleaming blue and pink and silver; and the waves as they rose and fell and broke that night seemed to be rolling masses of white and green fire, for the phosphorus shone with double brilliancy in honor of the event.
Now for a time the Dragon King and his bride lived very happily. They loved each other dearly, and the bridegroom day after day took delight in showing his bride all the wonders and treasures of his coral Palace, and she was never tired of wandering with him through its vast halls and gardens. Life seemed to them both like a long summer’s day.
Two months passed in this happy way, and then the Dragon Queen fell ill and was obliged to stay in bed. The King was sorely troubled when he saw his precious bride so ill, and at once sent for the fish doctor to come and give her some medicine. He gave special orders to the servants to nurse her carefully and to wait upon her with diligence, but in spite of all the nurses’ assiduous care and the medicine that the doctor prescribed, the young Queen showed no signs of recovery, but grew daily worse.
Then the Dragon King interviewed the doctor and blamed him for not curing the Queen. The doctor was alarmed at Rin Jin’s evident displeasure, and excused his want of skill by saying that although he knew the right kind of medicine to give the invalid, it was impossible to find it in the sea.
“Do you mean to tell me that you can’t get the medicine here?” asked the Dragon King.
“It is just as you say!” said the doctor.
“Tell me what it is you want for the Queen?” demanded Rin Jin.
“I want the liver of a live monkey!” answered the doctor.
“The liver of a live monkey! Of course that will be most difficult to get,” said the King.
“If we could only get that for the Queen, Her Majesty would soon recover,” said the doctor.
“Very well, that decides it; we MUST get it somehow or other. But where are we most likely to find a monkey?” asked the King.
Then the doctor told the Dragon King that some distance to the south there was a Monkey Island where a great many monkeys lived.
“If only you could capture one of these monkeys?” said the doctor.
“How can any of my people capture a monkey?” said the Dragon King, greatly puzzled. “The monkeys live on dry land, while we live in the water; and out of our element we are quite powerless! I don’t see what we can do!”
“That has been my difficulty too,” said the doctor. “But amongst your innumerable servants you surely can find one who can go on shore for that express purpose!”
“Something must be done,” said the King, and calling his chief steward he consulted him on the matter.
The chief steward thought for some time, and then, as if struck by a sudden thought, said joyfully:
“I know what we must do! There is the kurage (jelly fish). He is certainly ugly to look at, but he is proud of being able to walk on land with his four legs like a tortoise. Let us send him to the Island of Monkeys to catch one.”
The jelly fish was then summoned to the King’s presence, and was told by His Majesty what was required of him.
The jelly fish, on being told of the unexpected mission which was to be intrusted to him, looked very troubled, and said that he had never been to the island in question, and as he had never had any experience in catching monkeys he was afraid that he would not be able to get one.
“Well,” said the chief steward, “if you depend on your strength or dexterity you will never catch a monkey. The only way is to play a trick on one!”
“How can I play a trick on a monkey? I don’t know how to do it,” said the perplexed jelly fish.
“This is what you must do,” said the wily chief steward. “When you approach the Island of Monkeys and meet some of them, you must try to get very friendly with one. Tell him that you are a servant of the Dragon King, and invite him to come and visit you and see the Dragon King’s Palace. Try and describe to him as vividly as you can the grandeur of the Palace and the wonders of the sea so as to arouse his curiosity and make him long to see it all!”
“But how am I to get the monkey here? You know monkeys don’t swim?” said the reluctant jelly fish.
“You must carry him on your back. What is the use of your shell if you can’t do that!” said the chief steward.
“Won’t he be very heavy?” queried kurage again.
“You mustn’t mind that, for you are working for the Dragon King,” replied the chief steward.
“I will do my best then,” said the jelly fish, and he swam away from the Palace and started off towards the Monkey Island. Swimming swiftly he reached his destination in a few hours, and landed by a convenient wave upon the shore. On looking round he saw not far away a big pine-tree with drooping branches and on one of those branches was just what he was looking for—a live monkey.
“I’m in luck!” thought the jelly fish. “Now I must flatter the creature and try to entice him to come back with me to the Palace, and my part will be done!”
So the jelly fish slowly walked towards the pine-tree. In those ancient days the jelly fish had four legs and a hard shell like a tortoise. When he got to the pine-tree he raised his voice and said:
“How do you do, Mr. Monkey? Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“A very fine day,” answered the monkey from the tree. “I have never seen you in this part of the world before. Where have you come from and what is your name?”
“My name is kurage or jelly fish. I am one of the servants of the Dragon King. I have heard so much of your beautiful island that I have come on purpose to see it,” answered the jelly fish.
“I am very glad to see you,” said the monkey.
“By the bye,” said the jelly fish, “have you ever seen the Palace of the Dragon King of the Sea where I live?”
“I have often heard of it, but I have never seen it!” answered the monkey.
“Then you ought most surely to come. It is a great pity for you to go through life without seeing it. The beauty of the Palace is beyond all description—it is certainly to my mind the most lovely place in the world,” said the jelly fish.
“Is it so beautiful as all that?” asked the monkey in astonishment.
Then the jelly fish saw his chance, and went on describing to the best of his ability the beauty and grandeur of the Sea King’s Palace, and the wonders of the garden with its curious trees of white, pink and red coral, and the still more curious fruits like great jewels hanging on the branches. The monkey grew more and more interested, and as he listened he came down the tree step by step so as not to lose a word of the wonderful story.
“I have got him at last!” thought the jelly fish, but aloud he said:
“Mr. Monkey. I must now go back. As you have never seen the Palace of the Dragon King, won’t you avail yourself of this splendid opportunity by coming with me? I shall then be able to act as guide and show you all the sights of the sea, which will be even more wonderful to you—a land-lubber.”
“I should love to go,” said the monkey, “but how am I to cross the water! I can’t swim, as you surely know!”
“There is no difficulty about that. I can carry you on my back.”
“That will be troubling you too much,” said the monkey.
“I can do it quite easily. I am stronger than I look, so you needn’t hesitate,” said the jelly fish, and taking the monkey on his back he stepped into the sea.
“Keep very still, Mr. monkey,” said the jelly fish. “You mustn’t fall into the sea; I am responsible for your safe arrival at the King’s Palace.”
“Please don’t go so fast, or I am sure I shall fall off,” said the monkey.
Thus they went along, the jelly fish skimming through the waves with the monkey sitting on his back. When they were about half-way, the jelly fish, who knew very little of anatomy, began to wonder if the monkey had his liver with him or not!
“Mr. Monkey, tell me, have you such a thing as a liver with you?”
The monkey was very much surprised at this queer question, and asked what the jelly fish wanted with a liver.
“That is the most important thing of all,” said the stupid jelly fish, “so as soon as I recollected it, I asked you if you had yours with you?”
“Why is my liver so important to you?” asked the monkey.
“Oh! you will learn the reason later,” said the jelly fish.
The monkey grew more and more curious and suspicious, and urged the jelly fish to tell him for what his liver was wanted, and ended up by appealing to his hearer’s feelings by saying that he was very troubled at what he had been told.
Then the jelly fish, seeing how anxious the monkey looked, was sorry for him, and told him everything. How the Dragon Queen had fallen ill, and how the doctor had said that only the liver of a live monkey would cure her, and how the Dragon King had sent him to find one.
“Now I have done as I was told, and as soon as we arrive at the Palace the doctor will want your liver, so I feel sorry for you!” said the silly jelly fish.
The poor monkey was horrified when he learnt all this, and very angry at the trick played upon him. He trembled with fear at the thought of what was in store for him.
But the monkey was a clever animal, and he thought it the wisest plan not to show any sign of the fear he felt, so he tried to calm himself and to think of some way by which he might escape.
“The doctor means to cut me open and then take my liver out! Why I shall die!” thought the monkey. At last a bright thought struck him, so he said quite cheerfully to the jelly fish:
“What a pity it was, Mr. Jelly Fish, that you did not speak of this before we left the island!”
“If I had told why I wanted you to accompany me you would certainly have refused to come,” answered the jelly fish.
“You are quite mistaken,” said the monkey. “Monkeys can very well spare a liver or two, especially when it is wanted for the Dragon Queen of the Sea. If I had only guessed of what you were in need. I should have presented you with one without waiting to be asked. I have several livers. But the greatest pity is, that as you did not speak in time, I have left all my livers hanging on the pine-tree.”
“Have you left your liver behind you?” asked the jelly fish.
“Yes,” said the cunning monkey, “during the daytime I usually leave my liver hanging up on the branch of a tree, as it is very much in the way when I am climbing about from tree to tree. To-day, listening to your interesting conversation, I quite forgot it, and left it behind when I came off with you. If only you had spoken in time I should have remembered it, and should have brought it along with me!”
The jelly fish was very disappointed when he heard this, for he believed every word the monkey said. The monkey was of no good without a liver. Finally the jelly fish stopped and told the monkey so.
“Well,” said the monkey, “that is soon remedied. I am really sorry to think of all your trouble; but if you will only take me back to the place where you found me, I shall soon be able to get my liver.”
The jelly fish did not at all like the idea of going all the way back to the island again; but the monkey assured him that if he would be so kind as to take him back he would get his very best liver, and bring it with him the next time. Thus persuaded, the jelly fish turned his course towards the Monkey Island once more.
No sooner had the jelly fish reached the shore than the sly monkey landed, and getting up into the pine-tree where the jelly fish had first seen him, he cut several capers amongst the branches with joy at being safe home again, and then looking down at the jelly fish said:
“So many thanks for all the trouble you have taken! Please present my compliments to the Dragon King on your return!”
The jelly fish wondered at this speech and the mocking tone in which it was uttered. Then he asked the monkey if it wasn’t his intention to come with him at once after getting his liver.
The monkey replied laughingly that he couldn’t afford to lose his liver: it was too precious.
“But remember your promise!” pleaded the jelly fish, now very discouraged.
“That promise was false, and anyhow it is now broken!” answered the monkey. Then he began to jeer at the jelly fish and told him that he had been deceiving him the whole time; that he had no wish to lose his life, which he certainly would have done had he gone on to the Sea King’s Palace to the old doctor waiting for him, instead of persuading the jelly fish to return under false pretenses.
“Of course, I won’t GIVE you my liver, but come and get it if you can!” added the monkey mockingly from the tree.
There was nothing for the jelly fish to do now but to repent of his stupidity, and to return to the Dragon King of the Sea and to confess his failure, so he started sadly and slowly to swim back. The last thing he heard as he glided away, leaving the island behind him, was the monkey laughing at him.
Meanwhile the Dragon King, the doctor, the chief steward, and all the servants were waiting impatiently for the return of the jelly fish. When they caught sight of him approaching the Palace, they hailed him with delight. They began to thank him profusely for all the trouble he had taken in going to Monkey Island, and then they asked him where the monkey was.
Now the day of reckoning had come for the jelly fish. He quaked all over as he told his story. How he had brought the monkey halfway over the sea, and then had stupidly let out the secret of his commission; how the monkey had deceived him by making him believe that he had left his liver behind him.
The Dragon King’s wrath was great, and he at once gave orders that the jelly fish was to be severely punished. The punishment was a horrible one. All the bones were to be drawn out from his living body, and he was to be beaten with sticks.
The poor jelly fish, humiliated and horrified beyond all words, cried out for pardon. But the Dragon King’s order had to be obeyed. The servants of the Palace forthwith each brought out a stick and surrounded the jelly fish, and after pulling out his bones they beat him to a flat pulp, and then took him out beyond the Palace gates and threw him into the water. Here he was left to suffer and repent his foolish chattering, and to grow accustomed to his new state of bonelessness.
From this story it is evident that in former times the jelly fish once had a shell and bones something like a tortoise, but, ever since the Dragon King’s sentence was carried out on the ancestor of the jelly fishes, his descendants have all been soft and boneless just as you see them to-day thrown up by the waves high upon the shores of Japan.
== THE QUARREL OF THE MONKEY AND THE CRAB==
Long, long ago, one bright autumn day in Japan, it happened, that a pink-faced monkey and a yellow crab were playing together along the bank of a river. As they were running about, the crab found a rice-dumpling and the monkey a persimmon-seed.
The crab picked up the rice-dumpling and showed it to the monkey, saying:
“Look what a nice thing I have found!”
Then the monkey held up his persimmon-seed and said:
“I also have found something good! Look!”
Now though the monkey is always very fond of persimmon fruit, he had no use for the seed he had just found. The persimmon-seed is as hard and uneatable as a stone. He, therefore, in his greedy nature, felt very envious of the crab’s nice dumpling, and he proposed an exchange. The crab naturally did not see why he should give up his prize for a hard stone-like seed, and would not consent to the monkey’s proposition.
Then the cunning monkey began to persuade the crab, saying:
“How unwise you are not to think of the future! Your rice-dumpling can be eaten now, and is certainly much bigger than my seed; but if you sow this seed in the ground it will soon grow and become a great tree in a few years, and bear an abundance of fine ripe persimmons year after year. If only I could show it to you then with the yellow fruit hanging on its branches! Of course, if you don’t believe me I shall sow it myself; though I am sure, later on, you will be very sorry that you did not take my advice.”
The simple-minded crab could not resist the monkey’s clever persuasion. He at last gave in and consented to the monkey’s proposal, and the exchange was made. The greedy monkey soon gobbled up the dumpling, and with great reluctance gave up the persimmon-seed to the crab. He would have liked to keep that too, but he was afraid of making the crab angry and of being pinched by his sharp scissor-like claws. They then separated, the monkey going home to his forest trees and the crab to his stones along the river-side. As soon as the crab reached home he put the persimmon-seed in the ground as the monkey had told him.
In the following spring the crab was delighted to see the shoot of a young tree push its way up through the ground. Each year it grew bigger, till at last it blossomed one spring, and in the following autumn bore some fine large persimmons. Among the broad smooth green leaves the fruit hung like golden balls, and as they ripened they mellowed to a deep orange. It was the little crab’s pleasure to go out day by day and sit in the sun and put out his long eyes in the same way as a snail puts out its horn, and watch the persimmons ripening to perfection.
“How delicious they will be to eat!” he said to himself.
At last, one day, he knew the persimmons must be quite ripe and he wanted very much to taste one. He made several attempts to climb the tree, in the vain hope of reaching one of the beautiful persimmons hanging above him; but he failed each time, for a crab’s legs are not made for climbing trees but only for running along the ground and over stones, both of which he can do most cleverly. In his dilemma he thought of his old playmate the monkey, who, he knew, could climb trees better than any one else in the world. He determined to ask the monkey to help him, and set out to find him.
Running crab-fashion up the stony river bank, over the pathways into the shadowy forest, the crab at last found the monkey taking an afternoon nap in his favorite pine-tree, with his tail curled tight around a branch to prevent him from falling off in his dreams. He was soon wide awake, however, when he heard himself called, and eagerly listening to what the crab told him. When he heard that the seed which he had long ago exchanged for a rice-dumpling had grown into a tree and was now bearing good fruit, he was delighted, for he at once devised a cunning plan which would give him all the persimmons for himself.
He consented to go with the crab to pick the fruit for him. When they both reached the spot, the monkey was astonished to see what a fine tree had sprung from the seed, and with what a number of ripe persimmons the branches were loaded.
He quickly climbed the tree and began to pluck and eat, as fast as he could, one persimmon after another. Each time he chose the best and ripest he could find, and went on eating till he could eat no more. Not one would he give to the poor hungry crab waiting below, and when he had finished there was little but the hard, unripe fruit left.
You can imagine the feelings of the poor crab after waiting patiently, for so long as he had done, for the tree to grow and the fruit to ripen, when he saw the monkey devouring all the good persimmons. He was so disappointed that he ran round and round the tree calling to the monkey to remember his promise. The monkey at first took no notice of the crab’s complaints, but at last he picked out the hardest, greenest persimmon he could find and aimed it at the crab’s head. The persimmon is as hard as stone when it is unripe. The monkey’s missile struck home and the crab was sorely hurt by the blow. Again and again, as fast as he could pick them, the monkey pulled off the hard persimmons and threw them at the defenseless crab till he dropped dead, covered with wounds all over his body. There he lay a pitiful sight at the foot of the tree he had himself planted.
When the wicked monkey saw that he had killed the crab he ran away from the spot as fast as he could, in fear and trembling, like a coward as he was.
Now the crab had a son who had been playing with a friend not far from the spot where this sad work had taken place. On the way home he came across his father dead, in a most dreadful condition—his head was smashed and his shell broken in several places, and around his body lay the unripe persimmons which had done their deadly work. At this dreadful sight the poor young crab sat down and wept.
But when he had wept for some time he told himself that this crying would do no good; it was his duty to avenge his father’s murder, and this he determined to do. He looked about for some clue which would lead him to discover the murderer. Looking up at the tree he noticed that the best fruit had gone, and that all around lay bits of peel and numerous seeds strewn on the ground as well as the unripe persimmons which had evidently been thrown at his father. Then he understood that the monkey was the murderer, for he now remembered that his father had once told him the story of the rice-dumpling and the persimmon-seed. The young crab knew that monkeys liked persimmons above all other fruit, and he felt sure that his greed for the coveted fruit had been the cause of the old crab’s death. Alas!
He at first thought of going to attack the monkey at once, for he burned with rage. Second thoughts, however, told him that this was useless, for the monkey was an old and cunning animal and would be hard to overcome. He must meet cunning with cunning and ask some of his friends to help him, for he knew it would be quite out of his power to kill him alone.
The young crab set out at once to call on the mortar, his father’s old friend, and told him of all that had happened. He besought the mortar with tears to help him avenge his father’s death. The mortar was very sorry when he heard the woful tale and promised at once to help the young crab punish the monkey to death. He warned him that he must be very careful in what he did, for the monkey was a strong and cunning enemy. The mortar now sent to fetch the bee and the chestnut (also the crab’s old friends) to consult them about the matter. In a short time the bee and the chestnut arrived. When they were told all the details of the old crab’s death and of the monkey’s wickedness and greed, they both gladly consented to help the young crab in his revenge.
After talking for a long time as to the ways and means of carrying out their plans they separated, and Mr. Mortar went home with the young crab to help him bury his poor father.
While all this was taking place the monkey was congratulating himself (as the wicked often do before their punishment comes upon them) on all he had done so neatly. He thought it quite a fine thing that he had robbed his friend of all his ripe persimmons and then that he had killed him. Still, smile as hard as he might, he could not banish altogether the fear of the consequences should his evil deeds be discovered. IF he were found out (and he told himself that this could not be for he had escaped unseen) the crab’s family would be sure to bear him hatred and seek to take revenge on him. So he would not go out, and kept himself at home for several days. He found this kind of life, however, extremely dull, accustomed as he was to the free life of the woods, and at last he said:
“No one knows that it was I who killed the crab! I am sure that the old thing breathed his last before I left him. Dead crabs have no mouths! Who is there to tell that I am the murderer? Since no one knows, what is the use of shutting myself up and brooding over the matter? What is done cannot be undone!”
With this he wandered out into the crab settlement and crept about as slyly as possible near the crab’s house and tried to hear the neighbors’ gossip round about. He wanted to find out what the crabs were saving about their chief’s death, for the old crab had been the chief of the tribe. But he heard nothing and said to himself:
“They are all such fools that they don’t know and don’t care who murdered their chief!”
Little did he know in his so-called “monkey’s wisdom” that this seeming unconcern was part of the young crab’s plan. He purposely pretended not to know who killed his father, and also to believe that he had met his death through his own fault. By this means he could the better keep secret the revenge on the monkey, which he was meditating.
So the monkey returned home from his walk quite content. He told himself he had nothing now to fear.
One fine day, when the monkey was sitting at home, he was surprised by the appearance of a messenger from the young crab. While he was wondering what this might mean, the messenger bowed before him and said:
“I have been sent by my master to inform you that his father died the other day in falling from a persimmon tree while trying to climb the tree after fruit. This, being the seventh day, is the first anniversary after his death, and my master has prepared a little festival in his father’s honor, and bids you come to participate in it as you were one of his best friends. My master hopes you will honor his house with your kind visit.”
When the monkey heard these words he rejoiced in his inmost heart, for all his fears of being suspected were now at rest. He could not guess that a plot had just been set in motion against him. He pretended to be very surprised at the news of the crab’s death, and said:
“I am, indeed, very sorry to hear of your chief’s death. We were great friends as you know. I remember that we once exchanged a rice-dumpling for a persimmon-seed. It grieves me much to think that that seed was in the end the cause of his death. I accept your kind invitation with many thanks. I shall be delighted to do honor to my poor old friend!” And he screwed some false tears from his eyes.
The messenger laughed inwardly and thought, “The wicked monkey is now dropping false tears, but within a short time he shall shed real ones.” But aloud he thanked the monkey politely and went home.
When he had gone, the wicked monkey laughed aloud at what he thought was the young crab’s innocence, and without the least feeling began to look forward to the feast to be held that day in honor of the dead crab, to which he had been invited. He changed his dress and set out solemnly to visit the young crab.
He found all the members of the crab’s family and his relatives waiting to receive and welcome him. As soon as the bows of meeting were over they led him to a hall. Here the young chief mourner came to receive him. Expressions of condolence and thanks were exchanged between them, and then they all sat down to a luxurious feast and entertained the monkey as the guest of honor.
The feast over, he was next invited to the tea-ceremony room to drink a cup of tea. When the young crab had conducted the monkey to the tearoom he left him and retired. Time passed and still he did not return. At last the monkey became impatient. He said to himself:
“This tea ceremony is always a very slow affair. I am tired of waiting so long. I am very thirsty after drinking so much sake at the dinner!”
He then approached the charcoal fire-place and began to pour out some hot water from the kettle boiling there, when something burst out from the ashes with a great pop and hit the monkey right in the neck. It was the chestnut, one of the crab’s friends, who had hidden himself in the fireplace. The monkey, taken by surprise, jumped backward, and then started to run out of the room.
The bee, who was hiding outside the screens, now flew out and stung him on the cheek. The monkey was in great pain, his neck was burned by the chestnut and his face badly stung by the bee, but he ran on screaming and chattering with rage.
Now the stone mortar had hidden himself with several other stones on the top of the crab’s gate, and as the monkey ran underneath, the mortar and all fell down on the top of the monkey’s head. Was it possible for the monkey to bear the weight of the mortar falling on him from the top of the gate? He lay crushed and in great pain, quite unable to get up. As he lay there helpless the young crab came up, and, holding his great claw scissors over the monkey, he said:
“Do you now remember that you murdered my father?”
“Then you—are—my—enemy?” gasped the monkey brokenly.
“Of course,” said the young crab.
“It—was—your—father’s—fault—not—mine!” gasped the unrepentant monkey.
“Can you still lie? I will soon put an end to your breath!” and with that he cut off the monkey’s head with his pitcher claws. Thus the wicked monkey met his well-merited punishment, and the young crab avenged his father’s death.
This is the end of the story of the monkey, the crab, and the persimmon-seed.
==THE WHITE HARE AND THE CROCODILES==
Long, long ago, when all the animals could talk, there lived in the province of Inaba in Japan, a little white hare. His home was on the island of Oki, and just across the sea was the mainland of Inaba.
Now the hare wanted very much to cross over to Inaba. Day after day he would go out and sit on the shore and look longingly over the water in the direction of Inaba, and day after day he hoped to find some way of getting across.
One day as usual, the hare was standing on the beach, looking towards the mainland across the water, when he saw a great crocodile swimming near the island.
“This is very lucky!” thought the hare. “Now I shall be able to get my wish. I will ask the crocodile to carry me across the sea!”
But he was doubtful whether the crocodile would consent to do what wanted. So he thought instead of asking a favor he would try to get what he wanted by a trick.
So with a loud voice he called to the crocodile, and said:
“Oh, Mr. Crocodile, isn’t it a lovely day?”
The crocodile, who had come out all by itself that day to enjoy the bright sunshine, was just beginning to feel a bit lonely when the hare’s cheerful greeting broke the silence. The crocodile swam nearer the shore, very pleased to hear some one speak.
“I wonder who it was that spoke to me just now! Was it you, Mr. Hare? You must be very lonely all by yourself!”
“Oh, no, I am not at all lonely,” said the hare, “but as it was such a fine day I came out here to enjoy myself. Won’t you stop and play with me a little while?”
The crocodile came out of the sea and sat on the shore, and the two played together for some time. Then the hare said:
“Mr. Crocodile, you live in the sea and I live on this island, and we do not often meet, so I know very little about you. Tell me, do you think the number of your company is greater than mine?”
“Of course, there are more crocodiles than hares,” answered the crocodile. “Can you not see that for yourself? You live on this small island, while I live in the sea, which spreads through all parts of the world, so if I call together all the crocodiles who dwell in the sea you hares will be as nothing compared to us!” The crocodile was very conceited.
The hare, who meant to play a trick on the crocodile, said:
“Do you think it possible for you to call up enough crocodiles to form a line from this island across the sea to Inaba?”
The crocodile thought for a moment and then answered:
“Of course, it is possible.”
“Then do try,” said the artful hare, “and I will count the number from here!”
The crocodile, who was very simple-minded, and who hadn’t the least idea that the hare intended to play a trick on him, agreed to do what the hare asked, and said:
“Wait a little while I go back into the sea and call my company together!”
The crocodile plunged into the sea and was gone for some time. The hare, meanwhile, waited patiently on the shore. At last the crocodile appeared, bringing with him a large number of other crocodiles.
“Look, Mr. Hare!” said the crocodile, “it is nothing for my friends to form a line between here and Inaba. There are enough crocodiles to stretch from here even as far as China or India. Did you ever see so many crocodiles?”
Then the whole company of crocodiles arranged themselves in the water so as to form a bridge between the Island of Oki and the mainland of Inaba. When the hare saw the bridge of crocodiles, he said:
“How splendid! I did not believe this was possible. Now let me count you all! To do this, however, with your permission, I must walk over on your backs to the other side, so please be so good as not to move, or else I shall fall into the sea and be drowned!”
So the hare hopped off the island on to the strange bridge of crocodiles, counting as he jumped from one crocodile’s back to the other:
“Please keep quite still, or I shall not be able to count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine—”
Thus the cunning hare walked right across to the mainland of Inaba. Not content with getting his wish, he began to jeer at the crocodiles instead of thanking them, and said, as he leapt off the last one’s back:
“Oh! you stupid crocodiles, now I have done with you!”
And he was just about to run away as fast as he could. But he did not escape so easily, for so soon as the crocodiles understood that this was a trick played upon them by the hare so as to enable him to cross the sea, and that the hare was now laughing at them for their stupidity, they became furiously angry and made up their minds to take revenge. So some of them ran after the hare and caught him. Then they all surrounded the poor little animal and pulled out all his fur. He cried out loudly and entreated them to spare him, but with each tuft of fur they pulled out they said:
“Serve you right!”
When the crocodiles had pulled out the last bit of fur, they threw the poor hare on the beach, and all swam away laughing at what they had done.
The hare was now in a pitiful plight, all his beautiful white fur had been pulled out, and his bare little body was quivering with pain and bleeding all over. He could hardly move, and all he could do was to lie on the beach quite helpless and weep over the misfortune that had befallen him. Notwithstanding that it was his own fault that had brought all this misery and suffering upon the white hare of Inaba, any one seeing the poor little creature could not help feeling sorry for him in his sad condition, for the crocodiles had been very cruel in their revenge.
Just at this time a number of men, who looked like King’s sons, happened to pass by, and seeing the hare lying on the beach crying, stopped and asked what was the matter.
The hare lifted up his head from between his paws, and answered them, saying:
“I had a fight with some crocodiles, but I was beaten, and they pulled out all my fur and left me to suffer here—that is why I am crying.”
Now one of these young men had a bad and spiteful disposition. But he feigned kindness, and said to the hare:
“I feel very sorry for you. If you will only try it, I know of a remedy which will cure your sore body. Go and bathe yourself in the sea, and then come and sit in the wind. This will make your fur grow again, and you will be just as you were before.”
Then all the young men passed on. The hare was very pleased, thinking that he had found a cure. He went and bathed in the sea and then came out and sat where the wind could blow upon him.
But as the wind blew and dried him, his skin became drawn and hardened, and the salt increased the pain so much that he rolled on the sand in his agony and cried aloud.
Just then another King’s son passed by, carrying a great bag on his back. He saw the hare, and stopped and asked why he was crying so loudly.
But the poor hare, remembering that he had been deceived by one very like the man who now spoke to him, did not answer, but continued to cry.
But this man had a kind heart, and looked at the hare very pityingly, and said:
“You poor thing! I see that your fur is all pulled out and that your skin is quite bare. Who can have treated you so cruelly?”
When the hare heard these kind words he felt very grateful to the man, and encouraged by his gentle manner the hare told him all that had befallen him. The little animal hid nothing from his friend, but told him frankly how he had played a trick on the crocodiles and how he had come across the bridge they had made, thinking that he wished to count their number: how he had jeered at them for their stupidity, and then how the crocodiles had revenged themselves on him. Then he went on to say how he had been deceived by a party of men who looked very like his kind friend: and the hare ended his long tale of woe by begging the man to give him some medicine that would cure him and make his fur grow again.
When the hare had finished his story, the man was full of pity towards him, and said:
“I am very sorry for all you have suffered, but remember, it was only the consequence of the deceit you practiced on the crocodiles.”
“I know,” answered the sorrowful hare, “but I have repented and made up my mind never to use deceit again, so I beg you to show me how I may cure my sore body and make the fur grow again.”
“Then I will tell you of a good remedy,” said the man. “First go and bathe well in that pond over there and try to wash all the salt from your body. Then pick some of those kaba flowers that are growing near the edge of the water, spread them on the ground and roll yourself on them. If you do this the pollen will cause your fur to grow again, and you will be quite well in a little while.”
The hare was very glad to be told what to do, so kindly. He crawled to the pond pointed out to him, bathed well in it, and then picked the kaba flowers growing near the water, and rolled himself on them.
To his amazement, even while he was doing this, he saw his nice white fur growing again, the pain ceased, and he felt just as he had done before all his misfortunes.
The hare was overjoyed at his quick recovery, and went hopping joyfully towards the young man who had so helped him, and kneeling down at his feet, said:
“I cannot express my thanks for all you have done for me! It is my earnest wish to do something for you in return. Please tell me who you are?”
“I am no King’s son as you think me. I am a fairy, and my name is Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto,” answered the man, “and those beings who passed here before me are my brothers. They have heard of a beautiful Princess called Yakami who lives in this province of Inaba, and they are on their way to find her and to ask her to marry one of them. But on this expedition I am only an attendant, so I am walking behind them with this great big bag on my back.”
The hare humbled himself before this great fairy Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto, whom many in that part of the land worshiped as a god.
“Oh, I did not know that you were Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto. How kind you have been to me! It is impossible to believe that that unkind fellow who sent me to bathe in the sea is one of your brothers. I am quite sure that the Princess, whom your brothers have gone to seek, will refuse to be the bride of any of them, and will prefer you for your goodness of heart. I am quite sure that you will win her heart without intending to do so, and she will ask to be your bride.”
Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto took no notice of what the hare said, but bidding the little animal goodby, went on his way quickly and soon overtook his brothers. He found them just entering the Princess’s gate.
Just as the hare had said, the Princess could not be persuaded to become the bride of any of the brothers, but when she looked at the kind brother’s face she went straight up to him and said:
“To you I give myself,” and so they were married.
This is the end of the story. Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto is worshiped by the people in some parts of Japan, as a god, and the hare has become famous as “The White Hare of Inaba.” But what became of the crocodiles nobody knows.
==THE STORY OF PRINCE YAMATO TAKE==
The insignia of the great Japanese Empire is composed of three treasures which have been considered sacred, and guarded with jealous care from time immemorial. These are the Yatano-no-Kagami or the Mirror of Yata, the Yasakami-no-Magatama or the Jewel of Yasakami, and the Murakumo-no-Tsurugi or the Sword of Murakumo.
Of these three treasures of the Empire, the sword of Murakumo, afterwards known as Kusanagi-no-Tsrugugi, or the grass-cleaving sword, is considered the most precious and most highly to be honored, for it is the symbol of strength to this nation of warriors and the talisman of invincibility for the Emperor, while he holds it sacred in the shrine of his ancestors.
Nearly two thousand years ago this sword was kept at the shrines of Ite, the temples dedicated to the worship of Amaterasu, the great and beautiful Sun Goddess from whom the Japanese Emperors are said to be descended.
There is a story of knightly adventure and daring which explains why the name of the sword was changed from that of Murakumo to Kasanagi, which means grass clearing.
Once, many, many years ago, there was born a son to the Emperor Keiko, the twelfth in descent from the great Jimmu, the founder of the Japanese dynasty. This Prince was the second son of the Emperor Keiko, and he was named Yamato. From his childhood he proved himself to be of remarkable strength, wisdom and courage, and his father noticed with pride that he gave promise of great things, and he loved him even more than he did his elder son.
Now when Prince Yamato had grown to manhood (in the olden days of Japanese history, a boy was considered to have reached man’s estate at the early age of sixteen) the realm was much troubled by a band of outlaws whose chiefs were two brothers, Kumaso and Takeru. These rebels seemed to delight in rebelling against the King, in breaking the laws and defying all authority.
At last King Keiko ordered his younger son Prince Yamato to subdue the brigands and, if possible, to rid the land of their evil lives. Prince Yamato was only sixteen years of age, he had but reached his manhood according to the law, yet though he was such a youth in years he possessed the dauntless spirit of a warrior of fuller age and knew not what fear was. Even then there was no man who could rival him for courage and bold deeds, and he received his father’s command with great joy.
He at once made ready to start, and great was the stir in the precincts of the Palace as he and his trusty followers gathered together and prepared for the expedition, and polished up their armor and donned it. Before he left his father’s Court he went to pray at the shrine of Ise and to take leave of his aunt the Princess Yamato, for his heart was somewhat heavy at the thought of the dangers he had to face, and he felt that he needed the protection of his ancestress, Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. The Princess his aunt came out to give him glad welcome, and congratulated him on being trusted with so great a mission by his father the King. She then gave him one of her gorgeous robes as a keepsake to go with him and to bring him good luck, saying that it would surely be of service to him on this adventure. She then wished him all success in his undertaking and bade him good speed.
The young Prince bowed low before his aunt, and received her gracious gift with much pleasure and many respectful bows.
“I will now set out,” said the Prince, and returning to the Palace he put himself at the head of his troops. Thus cheered by his aunt’s blessing, he felt ready for all that might befall, and marching through the land he went down to the Southern Island of Kiushiu, the home of the brigands.
Before many days had passed he reached the Southern Island, and then slowly but surely made his way to the head-quarters of the chiefs Kumaso and Takeru. He now met with great difficulties, for he found the country exceedingly wild and rough. The mountains were high and steep, the valleys dark and deep, and huge trees and bowlders of rock blocked up the road and stopped the progress of his army. It was all but impossible to go on.
Though the Prince was but a youth he had the wisdom of years, and, seeing that it was vain to try and lead his men further, he said to himself:
“To attempt to fight a battle in this impassable country unknown to my men only makes my task harder. We cannot clear the roads and fight as well. It is wiser for me to resort to stratagem and come upon my enemies unawares. In that way I may be able to kill them without much exertion.”
So he now bade his army halt by the way. His wife, the Princess Ototachibana, had accompanied him, and he bade her bring him the robe his aunt the priestess of Ise had given him, and to help him attire himself as a woman. With her help he put on the robe, and let his hair down till it flowed over his shoulders. Ototachibana then brought him her comb, which he put in his black tresses, and then adorned himself with strings of strange jewels just as you see in the picture. When he had finished his unusual toilet, Ototachibana brought him her mirror. He smiled as he gazed at himself—the disguise was so perfect.
He hardly knew himself, so changed was he. All traces of the warrior had disappeared, and in the shining surface only a beautiful lady looked back at him.
Thus completely disguised, he set out for the enemy’s camp alone. In the folds of his silk gown, next his strong heart, was hidden a sharp dagger.
The two chiefs Kumaso and Takeru wore sitting in their tent, resting in the cool of the evening, when the Prince approached. They were talking of the news which had recently been carried to them, that the King’s son had entered their country with a large army determined to exterminate their band. They had both heard of the young warrior’s renown, and for the first time in their wicked lives they felt afraid. In a pause in their talk they happened to look up, and saw through the door of the tent a beautiful woman robed in sumptuous garments coming towards them. Like an apparition of loveliness she appeared in the soft twilight. Little did they dream that it was their enemy whose coming they so dreaded who now stood before them in this disguise.
“What a beautiful woman! Where has she come from?” said the astonished Kumaso, forgetting war and council and everything as he looked at the gentle intruder.
He beckoned to the disguised Prince and bade him sit down and serve them with wine. Yamato Take felt his heart swell with a fierce glee for he now knew that his plan would succeed. However, he dissembled cleverly, and putting on a sweet air of shyness he approached the rebel chief with slow steps and eyes glancing like a frightened deer. Charmed to distraction by the girl’s loveliness Kumaso drank cup after cup of wine for the pleasure of seeing her pour it out for him, till at last he was quite overcome with the quantity he had drunk.
This was the moment for which the brave Prince had been waiting. Flinging down the wine jar, he seized the tipsy and astonished Kumaso and quickly stabbed him to death with the dagger which he had secretly carried hidden in his breast.
Takeru, the brigand’s brother, was terror-struck as soon as he saw what was happening and tried to escape, but Prince Yamato was too quick for him. Ere he could reach the tent door the Prince was at his heel, his garments were clutched by a hand of iron, and a dagger flashed before his eyes and he lay stabbed to the earth, dying but not yet dead.
“Wait one moment!” gasped the brigand painfully, and he seized the Prince’s hand.
Yamato relaxed his hold somewhat and said.
“Why should I pause, thou villain?”
The brigand raised himself fearfully and said:
“Tell me from whence you come, and whom I have the honor of addressing? Hitherto I believed that my dead brother and I were the strongest men in the land, and that there was no one who could overcome us. Alone you have ventured into our stronghold, alone you have attacked and killed us! Surely you are more than mortal?”
Then the young Prince answered with a proud smile:—“I am the son of the King and my name is Yamato, and I have been sent by my father as the avenger of evil to bring death to all rebels! No longer shall robbery and murder hold my people in terror!” and he held the dagger dripping red above the rebel’s head.
“Ah,” gasped the dying man with a great effort, “I have often heard of you. You are indeed a strong man to have so easily overcome us. Allow me to give you a new name. From henceforth you shall be known as Yamato Take. Our title I bequeath to you as the bravest man in Yamato.”
And with these noble words, Takeru fell back and died.
The Prince having thus successfully put an end to his father’s enemies in the world, was prepared to return to the capital. On the way back he passed through the province of Idum. Here he met with another outlaw named Idzumo Takeru who he knew had done much harm in the land. He again resorted to stratagem, and feigned friendship with the rebel under an assumed name. Having done this he made a sword of wood and jammed it tightly in the shaft of his own strong sword. This he purposedly buckled to his side and wore on every occasion when he expected to meet the third robber Takeru.
He now invited Takeru to the bank of the River Hinokawa, and persuaded him to try a swim with him in the cool refreshing waters of the river.
As it was a hot summer’s day, the rebel was nothing loath to take a plunge in the river, while his enemy was still swimming down the stream the Prince turned back and landed with all possible haste. Unperceived, he managed to change swords, putting his wooden one in place of the keen steel sword of Takeru.
Knowing nothing of this, the brigand came up to the bank shortly. As soon as he had landed and donned his clothes, the Prince came forward and asked him to cross swords with him to prove his skill, saying:
“Let us two prove which is the better swordsman of the two!”
The robber agreed with delight, feeling certain of victory, for he was famous as a fencer in his province and he did not know who his adversary was. He seized quickly what he thought was his sword and stood on guard to defend himself. Alas! for the rebel the sword was the wooden one of the young Prince and in vain Takeru tried to unsheathe it—it was jammed fast, not all his exerted strength could move it. Even if his efforts had been successful the sword would have been of no use to him for it was of wood. Yamato Take saw that his enemy was in his power, and swinging high the sword he had taken from Takeru he brought it down with great might and dexterity and cut off the robber’s head.
In this way, sometimes by using his wisdom and sometimes by using his bodily strength, and at other times by resorting to craftiness, which was as much esteemed in those days as it is despised in these, he prevailed against all the King’s foes one by one, and brought peace and rest to the land and the people.
When he returned to the capital the King praised him for his brave deeds, and held a feast in the Palace in honor of his safe coming home and presented him with many rare gifts. From this time forth the King loved him more than ever and would not let Yamato Take go from his side, for he said that his son was now as precious to him as one of his arms.
But the Prince was not allowed to live an idle life long. When he was about thirty years old, news was brought that the Ainu race, the aborigines of the islands of Japan, who had been conquered and pushed northwards by the Japanese, had rebelled in the Eastern provinces, and leaving the vicinity which had been allotted to them were causing great trouble in the land. The King decided that it was necessary to send an army to do battle with them and bring them to reason. But who was to lead the men?
Prince Yamato Take at once offered to go and bring the newly arisen rebels into subjection. Now as the King loved the Prince dearly, and could not bear to have him go out of his sight even for the length of one day, he was of course very loath to send him on his dangerous expedition. But in the whole army there was no warrior so strong or so brave as the Prince his son, so that His Majesty, unable to do otherwise, reluctantly complied with Yamato’s wish.
When the time came for the Prince to start, the King gave him a spear called the Eight-Arms-Length-Spear of the Holly Tree (the handle was probably made from the wood of the holly tree), and ordered him to set out to subjugate the Eastern Barbarians as the Ainu were then called.
The Eight-Arms-Length-Spear of the Holly Tree of those old days, was prized by warriors just as much as the Standard or Banner is valued by a regiment in these modern days, when given by the King to his soldiers on the occasion of setting out for war.
The Prince respectfully and with great reverence received the King’s spear, and leaving the capital, marched with his army to the East. On his way he visited first of all the temples of Ise for worship, and his aunt the Princess of Yamato and High Priestess came out to greet him. She it was who had given him her robe which had proved such a boon to him before in helping him to overcome and slay the brigands of the West.
He told her all that had happened to him, and of the great part her keepsake had played in the success of his previous undertaking, and thanked her very heartily. When she heard that he was starting out once again to do battle with his father’s enemies, she went into the temple, and reappeared bearing a sword and a beautiful bag which she had made herself, and which was full of flints, which in those times people used instead of matches for making fire. These she presented to him as a parting gift.
The sword was the sword of Murakumo, one of the three sacred treasures which comprise the insignia of the Imperial House of Japan. No more auspicious talisman of luck and success could she have given her nephew, and she bade him use it in the hour of his greatest need.
Yamato Take now bade farewell to his aunt, and once more placing himself at the head of his men he marched to the farthest East through the province of Owari, and then he reached the province of Suruga. Here the governor welcomed the Prince right heartily and entertained him royally with many feasts. When these were over, the governor told his guest that his country was famous for its fine deer, and proposed a deer hunt for the Prince’s amusement. The Prince was utterly deceived by the cordiality of his host, which was all feigned, and gladly consented to join in the hunt.
The governor then led the Prince to a wild and extensive plain where the grass grew high and in great abundance. Quite ignorant that the governor had laid a trap for him with the desire to compass his death, the Prince began to ride hard and hunt down the deer, when all of a sudden to his amazement he saw flames and smoke bursting out from the bush in front of him. Realizing his danger he tried to retreat, but no sooner did he turn his horse in the opposite direction than he saw that even there the prairie was on fire. At the same time the grass on his left and right burst into flames, and these began to spread swiftly towards him on all sides. He looked round for a chance of escape. There was none. He was surrounded by fire.
“This deer hunt was then only a cunning trick of the enemy!” said the Prince, looking round on the flames and the smoke that crackled and rolled in towards him on every side. “What a fool I was to be lured into this trap like a wild beast!” and he ground his teeth with rage as he thought of the governor’s smiling treachery.
Dangerous as was his situation now, the Prince was not in the least confounded. In his dire extremity he remembered the gifts his aunt had given him when they parted, and it seemed to him as if she must, with prophetic foresight, have divined this hour of need. He coolly opened the flint-bag that his aunt had given him and set fire to the grass near him. Then drawing the sword of Murakumo from its sheath he set to work to cut down the grass on either side of him with all speed. He determined to die, if that were necessary, fighting for his life and not standing still waiting for death to come to him.
Strange to say the wind began to change and to blow from the opposite direction, and the fiercest portion of the burning bush which had hitherto threatened to come upon him was now blown right away from him, and the Prince, without even a scratch on his body or a single hair burned, lived to tell the tale of his wonderful escape, while the wind rising to a gale overtook the governor, and he was burned to death in the flames he had set alight to kill Yamato Take.
Now the Prince ascribed his escape entirely to the virtue of the sword of Murakumo, and to the protection of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess of Ise, who controls the wind and all the elements and insures the safety of all who pray to her in the hour of danger. Lifting the precious sword he raised it above his head many times in token of his great respect, and as he did this he re-named it Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi or the Grass-Cleaving Sword, and the place where he set fire to the grass round him and escaped from death in the burning prairie, he called Yaidzu. To this day there is a spot along the great Tokaido railway named Yaidzu, which is said to be the very place where this thrilling event took place.
Thus did the brave Prince Yamato Take escape out of the snare laid for him by his enemy. He was full of resource and courage, and finally outwitted and subdued all his foes. Leaving Yaidzu he marched eastward, and came to the shore at Idzu from whence he wished to cross to Kadzusa.
In these dangers and adventures he had been followed by his faithful loving wife the Princess Ototachibana. For his sake she counted the weariness of the long journeys and the dangers of war as nothing, and her love for her warrior husband was so great that she felt well repaid for all her wanderings if she could but hand him his sword when he sallied forth to battle, or minister to his wants when he returned weary to the camp.
But the heart of the Prince was full of war and conquest and he cared little for the faithful Ototachibana. From long exposure in traveling, and from care and grief at her lord’s coldness to her, her beauty had faded, and her ivory skin was burnt brown by the sun, and the Prince told her one day that her place was in the Palace behind the screens at home and not with him upon the warpath. But in spite of rebuffs and indifference on her husband’s part, Ototachibana could not find it in her heart to leave him. But perhaps it would have been better for her if she had done so, for on the way to Idzu, when they came to Owari, her heart was well-nigh broken.
Here dwelt in a Palace shaded by pine-trees and approached by imposing gates, the Princess Miyadzu, beautiful as the cherry blossom in the blushing dawn of a spring morning. Her garments were dainty and bright, and her skin was white as snow, for she had never known what it was to be weary along the path of duty or to walk in the heat of a summer’s sun. And the Prince was ashamed of his sunburnt wife in her travel-stained garments, and bade her remain behind while he went to visit the Princess Miyadzu. Day after day he spent hours in the gardens and the Palace of his new friend, thinking only of his pleasure, and caring little for his poor wife who remained behind to weep in the tent at the misery which had come into her life. Yet she was so faithful a wife, and her character so patient, that she never allowed a reproach to escape her lips, or a frown to mar the sweet sadness of her face, and she was ever ready with a smile to welcome her husband back or usher him forth wherever he went.
At last the day came when the Prince Yamato Take must depart for Idzu and cross over the sea to Kadzusa, and he bade his wife follow in his retinue as an attendant while he went to take a ceremonious farewell of the Princess Miyadzu. She came out to greet him dressed in gorgeous robes, and she seemed more beautiful than ever, and when Yamato Take saw her he forgot his wife, his duty, and everything except the joy of the idle present, and swore that he would return to Owari and marry her when the war was over. And as he looked up when he had said these words he met the large almond eyes of Ototachibana fixed full upon him in unspeakable sadness and wonder, and he knew that he had done wrong, but he hardened his heart and rode on, caring little for the pain he had caused her.
When they reached the seashore at Idzu his men sought for boats in which to cross the straits to Kadzusa, but it was difficult to find boats enough to allow all the soldiers to embark. Then the Prince stood on the beach, and in the pride of his strength he scoffed and said:
“This is not the sea! This is only a brook! Why do you men want so many boats? I could jump this if I would.”
When at last they had all embarked and were fairly on their way across the straits, the sky suddenly clouded and a great storm arose. The waves rose mountains high, the wind howled, the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled, and the boat which held Ototachibana and the Prince and his men was tossed from crest to crest of the rolling waves, till it seemed that every moment must be their last and that they must all be swallowed up in the angry sea. For Kin Jin, the Dragon King of the Sea, had heard Yamato Take jeer, and had raised this terrible storm in anger, to show the scoffing Prince how awful the sea could be though it did but look like a brook.
The terrified crew lowered the sails and looked after the rudder, and worked for their dear lives’ sake, but all in vain—the storm only seemed to increase in violence, and all gave themselves up for lost. Then the faithful Ototachibana rose, and forgetting all the grief that her husband had caused her, forgetting even that he had wearied of her, in the one great desire of her love to save him, she determined to sacrifice her life to rescue him from death if it were possible.
While the waves dashed over the ship and the wind whirled round them in fury she stood up and said:
“Surely all this has come because the Prince has angered Rin Jin, the God of the Sea, by his jesting. If so, I, Ototachibana, will appease the wrath of the Sea God who desires nothing less than my husband’s life!”
Then addressing the sea she said:
“I will take the place of His Augustness, Yamato Take. I will now cast myself into your outraged depths, giving my life for his. Therefore hear me and bring him safely to the shore of Kadzusa.”
With these words she leaped quickly into the boisterous sea, and the waves soon whirled her away and she was lost to sight. Strange to say, the storm ceased at once, and the sea became as calm and smooth as the matting on which the astonished onlookers were sitting. The gods of the sea were now appeased, and the weather cleared and the sun shone as on a summer’s day.
Yamato Take soon reached the opposite shore and landed safely, even as his wife Ototachibana had prayed. His prowess in war was marvelous, and he succeeded after some time in conquering the Eastern Barbarians, the Ainu.
He ascribed his safe landing wholly to the faithfulness of his wife, who had so willingly and lovingly sacrificed herself in the hour of his utmost peril. His heart was softened at the remembrance of her, and he never allowed her to pass from his thoughts even for a moment. Too late had he learned to esteem the goodness of her heart and the greatness of her love for him.
As he was returning on his homeward way he came to the high pass of the Usui Toge, and here he stood and gazed at the wonderful prospect beneath him. The country, from this great elevation, all lay open to his sight, a vast panorama of mountain and plain and forest, with rivers winding like silver ribbons through the land; then far off he saw the distant sea, which shimmered like a luminous mist in the great distance, where Ototachibana had given her life for him, and as he turned towards it he stretched out his arms, and thinking of her love which he had scorned and his faithlessness to her, his heart burst out into a sorrowful and bitter cry:
“Azuma, Azuma, Ya!” (Oh! my wife, my wife!) And to this day there is a district in Tokio called Azuma, which commemorates the words of Prince Yamato Take, and the place where his faithful wife leapt into the sea to save him is still pointed out. So, though in life the Princess Ototachibana was unhappy, history keeps her memory green, and the story of her unselfishness and heroic death will never pass away.
Yamato Take had now fulfilled all his father’s orders, he had subdued all rebels, and rid the land of all robbers and enemies to the peace, and his renown was great, for in the whole land there was no one who could stand up against him, he was so strong in battle and wise in council.
He was about to return straight for home by the way he had come, when the thought struck him that he would find it more interesting to take another route, so he passed through the province of Owari and came to the province of Omi.
When the Prince reached Omi he found the people in a state of great excitement and fear. In many houses as he passed along he saw the signs of mourning and heard loud lamentations. On inquiring the cause of this he was told that a terrible monster had appeared in the mountains, who daily came down from thence and made raids on the villages, devouring whoever he could seize. Many homes had been made desolate and the men were afraid to go out to their daily work in the fields, or the women to go to the rivers to wash their rice.
When Yamato Take heard this his wrath was kindled, and he said fiercely:
“From the western end of Kiushiu to the eastern corner of Yezo I have subdued all the King’s enemies—there is no one who dares to break the laws or to rebel against the King. It is indeed a matter for wonder that here in this place, so near the capital, a wicked monster has dared to take up his abode and be the terror of the King’s subjects. Not long shall it find pleasure in devouring innocent folk. I will start out and kill it at once.”
With these words he set out for the Ibuki Mountain, where the monster was said to live. He climbed up a good distance, when all of a sudden, at a winding in the path, a monster serpent appeared before him and stopped the way.
“This must be the monster,” said the Prince; “I do not need my sword for a serpent. I can kill him with my hands.”
He thereupon sprang upon the serpent and tried to strangle it to death with his bare arms. It was not long before his prodigious strength gained the mastery and the serpent lay dead at his feet. Now a sudden darkness came over the mountain and rain began to fall, so that for the gloom and the rain the Prince could hardly see which way to take. In a short time, however, while he was groping his way down the pass, the weather cleared, and our brave hero was able to make his way quickly down the mountain.
When he got back he began to feel ill and to have burning pains in his feet, so he knew that the serpent had poisoned him. So great was his suffering that he could hardly move, much less walk, so he had himself carried to a place in the mountains famous for its hot mineral springs, which rose bubbling out of the earth, and almost boiling from the volcanic fires beneath.
Yamato Take bathed daily in these waters, and gradually he felt his strength come again, and the pains left him, till at last one day he found with great joy that he was quite recovered. He now hastened to the temples of Ise, where you will remember that he prayed before undertaking this long expedition. His aunt, priestess of the shrine, who had blessed him on his setting out, now came to welcome him back. He told her of the many dangers he had encountered and of how marvelously his life had been preserved through all—and she praised his courage and his warrior’s prowess, and then putting on her most magnificent robes she returned thanks to their ancestress the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, to whose protection they both ascribed the Prince’s wonderful preservation.
Here ends the story of Prince Yamato Take of Japan.
==MOMOTARO, OR THE STORY OF THE SON OF A PEACH==
Long, long ago there lived, an old man and an old woman; they were peasants, and had to work hard to earn their daily rice. The old man used to go and cut grass for the farmers around, and while he was gone the old woman, his wife, did the work of the house and worked in their own little rice field.
One day the old man went to the hills as usual to cut grass and the old woman took some clothes to the river to wash.
It was nearly summer, and the country was very beautiful to see in its fresh greenness as the two old people went on their way to work. The grass on the banks of the river looked like emerald velvet, and the pussy willows along the edge of the water were shaking out their soft tassels.
The breezes blew and ruffled the smooth surface of the water into wavelets, and passing on touched the cheeks of the old couple who, for some reason they could not explain, felt very happy that morning.
The old woman at last found a nice spot by the river bank and put her basket down. Then she set to work to wash the clothes; she took them one by one out of the basket and washed them in the river and rubbed them on the stones. The water was as clear as crystal, and she could see the tiny fish swimming to and fro, and the pebbles at the bottom.
As she was busy washing her clothes a great peach came bumping down the stream. The old woman looked up from her work and saw this large peach. She was sixty years of age, yet in all her life she had never seen such a big peach as this.
“How delicious that peach must be!” she said to herself. “I must certainly get it and take it home to my old man.”
She stretched out her arm to try and get it, but it was quite out of her reach. She looked about for a stick, but there was not one to be seen, and if she went to look for one she would lose the peach.
Stopping a moment to think what she would do, she remembered an old charm-verse. Now she began to clap her hands to keep time to the rolling of the peach down stream, and while she clapped she sang this song:
“Distant water is bitter,
The near water is sweet;
Pass by the distant water
And come into the sweet.”
Strange to say, as soon as she began to repeat this little song the peach began to come nearer and nearer the bank where the old woman was standing, till at last it stopped just in front of her so that she was able to take it up in her hands. The old woman was delighted. She could not go on with her work, so happy and excited was she, so she put all the clothes back in her bamboo basket, and with the basket on her back and the peach in her hand she hurried homewards.
It seemed a very long time to her to wait till her husband returned. The old man at last came back as the sun was setting, with a big bundle of grass on his back—so big that he was almost hidden and she could hardly see him. He seemed very tired and used the scythe for a walking stick, leaning on it as he walked along.
As soon as the old woman saw him she called out:
“O Fii San! (old man) I have been waiting for you to come home for such a long time to-day!”
“What is the matter? Why are you so impatient?” asked the old man, wondering at her unusual eagerness. “Has anything happened while I have been away?”
“Oh, no!” answered the old woman, “nothing has happened, only I have found a nice present for you!”
“That is good,” said the old man. He then washed his feet in a basin of water and stepped up to the veranda.
The old woman now ran into the little room and brought out from the cupboard the big peach. It felt even heavier than before. She held it up to him, saying:
“Just look at this! Did you ever see such a large peach in all your life?”
When the old man looked at the peach he was greatly astonished and said:
“This is indeed the largest peach I have ever seen! Wherever did you buy it?”
“I did not buy it,” answered the old woman. “I found it in the river where I was washing.” And she told him the whole story.
“I am very glad that you have found it. Let us eat it now, for I am hungry,” said the O Fii San.
He brought out the kitchen knife, and, placing the peach on a board, was about to cut it when, wonderful to tell, the peach split in two of itself and a clear voice said:
“Wait a bit, old man!” and out stepped a beautiful little child.
The old man and his wife were both so astonished at what they saw that they fell to the ground. The child spoke again:
“Don’t be afraid. I am no demon or fairy. I will tell you the truth. Heaven has had compassion on you. Every day and every night you have lamented that you had no child. Your cry has been heard and I am sent to be the son of your old age!”
On hearing this the old man and his wife were very happy. They had cried night and day for sorrow at having no child to help them in their lonely old age, and now that their prayer was answered they were so lost with joy that they did not know where to put their hands or their feet. First the old man took the child up in his arms, and then the old woman did the same; and they named him MOMOTARO, OR SON OF A PEACH, because he had come out of a peach.
The years passed quickly by and the child grew to be fifteen years of age. He was taller and far stronger than any other boys of his own age, he had a handsome face and a heart full of courage, and he was very wise for his years. The old couple’s pleasure was very great when they looked at him, for he was just what they thought a hero ought to be like.
One day Momotaro came to his foster-father and said solemnly:
“Father, by a strange chance we have become father and son. Your goodness to me has been higher than the mountain grasses which it was your daily work to cut, and deeper than the river where my mother washes the clothes. I do not know how to thank you enough.”
“Why,” answered the old man, “it is a matter of course that a father should bring up his son. When you are older it will be your turn to take care of us, so after all there will be no profit or loss between us—all will be equal. Indeed, I am rather surprised that you should thank me in this way!” and the old man looked bothered.
“I hope you will be patient with me,” said Momotaro; “but before I begin to pay back your goodness to me I have a request to make which I hope you will grant me above everything else.”
“I will let you do whatever you wish, for you are quite different to all other boys!”
“Then let me go away at once!”
“What do you say? Do you wish to leave your old father and mother and go away from your old home?”
“I will surely come back again, if you let me go now!”
“Where are you going?”
“You must think it strange that I want to go away,” said Momotaro, “because I have not yet told you my reason. Far away from here to the northeast of Japan there is an island in the sea. This island is the stronghold of a band of devils. I have often heard how they invade this land, kill and rob the people, and carry off all they can find. They are not only very wicked but they are disloyal to our Emperor and disobey his laws. They are also cannibals, for they kill and eat some of the poor people who are so unfortunate as to fall into their hands. These devils are very hateful beings. I must go and conquer them and bring back all the plunder of which they have robbed this land. It is for this reason that I want to go away for a short time!”
The old man was much surprised at hearing all this from a mere boy of fifteen. He thought it best to let the boy go. He was strong and fearless, and besides all this, the old man knew he was no common child, for he had been sent to them as a gift from Heaven, and he felt quite sure that the devils would be powerless to harm him.
“All you say is very interesting, Momotaro,” said the old man. “I will not hinder you in your determination. You may go if you wish. Go to the island as soon as ever you like and destroy the demons and bring peace to the land.”
“Thank you, for all your kindness,” said Momotaro, who began to get ready to go that very day. He was full of courage and did not know what fear was.
The old man and woman at once set to work to pound rice in the kitchen mortar to make cakes for Momotaro to take with him on his journey.
At last the cakes were made and Momotaro was ready to start on his long journey.
Parting is always sad. So it was now. The eyes of the two old people were filled with tears and their voices trembled as they said:
“Go with all care and speed. We expect you back victorious!”
Momotaro was very sorry to leave his old parents (though he knew he was coming back as soon as he could), for he thought of how lonely they would be while he was away. But he said “Good-by!” quite bravely.
“I am going now. Take good care of yourselves while I am away. Good-by!” And he stepped quickly out of the house. In silence the eyes of Momotaro and his parents met in farewell.
Momotaro now hurried on his way till it was midday. He began to feel hungry, so he opened his bag and took out one of the rice-cakes and sat down under a tree by the side of the road to eat it. While he was thus having his lunch a dog almost as large as a colt came running out from the high grass. He made straight for Momotaro, and showing his teeth, said in a fierce way:
“You are a rude man to pass my field without asking permission first. If you leave me all the cakes you have in your bag you may go; otherwise I will bite you till I kill you!”
Momotaro only laughed scornfully:
“What is that you are saying? Do you know who I am? I am Momotaro, and I am on my way to subdue the devils in their island stronghold in the northeast of Japan. If you try to stop me on my way there I will cut you in two from the head downwards!”
The dog’s manner at once changed. His tail dropped between his legs, and coming near he bowed so low that his forehead touched the ground.
“What do I hear? The name of Momotaro? Are you indeed Momotaro? I have often heard of your great strength. Not knowing who you were I have behaved in a very stupid way. Will you please pardon my rudeness? Are you indeed on your way to invade the Island of Devils? If you will take such a rude fellow with you as one of your followers, I shall be very grateful to you.”
“I think I can take you with me if you wish to go,” said Momotaro.
“Thank you!” said the dog. “By the way, I am very very hungry. Will you give me one of the cakes you are carrying?”
“This is the best kind of cake there is in Japan,” said Momotaro. “I cannot spare you a whole one; I will give you half of one.”
“Thank you very much,” said the dog, taking the piece thrown to him.
Then Momotaro got up and the dog followed. For a long time they walked over the hills and through the valleys. As they were going along an animal came down from a tree a little ahead of them. The creature soon came up to Momotaro and said:
“Good morning, Momotaro! You are welcome in this part of the country. Will you allow me to go with you?”
The dog answered jealously:
“Momotaro already has a dog to accompany him. Of what use is a monkey like you in battle? We are on our way to fight the devils! Get away!”
The dog and the monkey began to quarrel and bite, for these two animals always hate each other.
“Now, don’t quarrel!” said Momotaro, putting himself between them. “Wait a moment, dog!”
“It is not at all dignified for you to have such a creature as that following you!” said the dog.
“What do you know about it?” asked Momotaro; and pushing aside the dog, he spoke to the monkey:
“Who are you?”
“I am a monkey living in these hills,” replied the monkey. “I heard of your expedition to the Island of Devils, and I have come to go with you. Nothing will please me more than to follow you!”
“Do you really wish to go to the Island of Devils and fight with me?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the monkey.
“I admire your courage,” said Momotaro. “Here is a piece of one of my fine rice-cakes. Come along!”
So the monkey joined Momotaro. The dog and the monkey did not get on well together. They were always snapping at each other as they went along, and always wanting to have a fight. This made Momotaro very cross, and at last he sent the dog on ahead with a flag and put the monkey behind with a sword, and he placed himself between them with a war-fan, which is made of iron.
By and by they came to a large field. Here a bird flew down and alighted on the ground just in front of the little party. It was the most beautiful bird Momotaro had ever seen. On its body were five different robes of feathers and its head was covered with a scarlet cap.
The dog at once ran at the bird and tried to seize and kill it. But the bird struck out its spurs and flew at the dog’s tail, and the fight went hard with both.
Momotaro, as he looked on, could not help admiring the bird; it showed so much spirit in the fight. It would certainly make a good fighter.
Momotaro went up to the two combatants, and holding the dog back, said to the bird:
“You rascal! you are hindering my journey. Surrender at once, and I will take you with me. If you don’t I will set this dog to bite your head off!”
Then the bird surrendered at once, and begged to be taken into Momotaro’s company.
“I do not know what excuse to offer for quarreling with the dog, your servant, but I did not see you. I am a miserable bird called a pheasant. It is very generous of you to pardon my rudeness and to take me with you. Please allow me to follow you behind the dog and the monkey!”
“I congratulate you on surrendering so soon,” said Momotaro, smiling. “Come and join us in our raid on the devils.”
“Are you going to take this bird with you also?” asked the dog, interrupting.
“Why do you ask such an unnecessary question? Didn’t you hear what I said? I take the bird with me because I wish to!”
“Humph!” said the dog.
Then Momotaro stood and gave this order:
“Now all of you must listen to me. The first thing necessary in an army is harmony. It is a wise saying which says that ‘Advantage on earth is better than advantage in Heaven!’ Union amongst ourselves is better than any earthly gain. When we are not at peace amongst ourselves it is no easy thing to subdue an enemy. From now, you three, the dog, the monkey and the pheasant, must be friends with one mind. The one who first begins a quarrel will be discharged on the spot!”
All the three promised not to quarrel. The pheasant was now made a member of Momotaro’s suite, and received half a cake.
Momotaro’s influence was so great that the three became good friends, and hurried onwards with him as their leader.
Hurrying on day after day they at last came out upon the shore of the North-Eastern Sea. There was nothing to be seen as far as the horizon—not a sign of any island. All that broke the stillness was the rolling of the waves upon the shore.
Now, the dog and the monkey and the pheasant had come very bravely all the way through the long valleys and over the hills, but they had never seen the sea before, and for the first time since they set out they were bewildered and gazed at each other in silence. How were they to cross the water and get to the Island of Devils?
Momotaro soon saw that they were daunted by the sight of the sea, and to try them he spoke loudly and roughly:
“Why do you hesitate? Are you afraid of the sea? Oh! what cowards you are! It is impossible to take such weak creatures as you with me to fight the demons. It will be far better for me to go alone. I discharge you all at once!”
The three animals were taken aback at this sharp reproof, and clung to Momotaro’s sleeve, begging him not to send them away.
“Please, Momotaro!” said the dog.
“We have come thus far!” said the monkey.
“It is inhuman to leave us here!” said the pheasant.
“We are not at all afraid of the sea,” said the monkey again.
“Please do take us with you,” said the pheasant.
“Do please,” said the dog.
They had now gained a little courage, so Momotaro said:
“Well, then, I will take you with me, but be careful!”
Momotaro now got a small ship, and they all got on board. The wind and weather were fair, and the ship went like an arrow over the sea. It was the first time they had ever been on the water, and so at first the dog, the monkey and the pheasant were frightened at the waves and the rolling of the vessel, but by degrees they grew accustomed to the water and were quite happy again. Every day they paced the deck of their little ship, eagerly looking out for the demons’ island.
When they grew tired of this, they told each other stories of all their exploits of which they were proud, and then played games together; and Momotaro found much to amuse him in listening to the three animals and watching their antics, and in this way he forgot that the way was long and that he was tired of the voyage and of doing nothing. He longed to be at work killing the monsters who had done so much harm in his country.
As the wind blew in their favor and they met no storms the ship made a quick voyage, and one day when the sun was shining brightly a sight of land rewarded the four watchers at the bow.
Momotaro knew at once that what they saw was the devils’ stronghold. On the top of the precipitous shore, looking out to sea, was a large castle. Now that his enterprise was close at hand, he was deep in thought with his head leaning on his hands, wondering how he should begin the attack. His three followers watched him, waiting for orders. At last he called to the pheasant:
“It is a great advantage for us to have you with us.” said Momotaro to the bird, “for you have good wings. Fly at once to the castle and engage the demons to fight. We will follow you.”
The pheasant at once obeyed. He flew off from the ship beating the air gladly with his wings. The bird soon reached the island and took up his position on the roof in the middle of the castle, calling out loudly:
“All you devils listen to me! The great Japanese general Momotaro has come to fight you and to take your stronghold from you. If you wish to save your lives surrender at once, and in token of your submission you must break off the horns that grow on your forehead. If you do not surrender at once, but make up your mind to fight, we, the pheasant, the dog and the monkey, will kill you all by biting and tearing you to death!”
The horned demons looking up and only seeing a pheasant, laughed and said:
“A wild pheasant, indeed! It is ridiculous to hear such words from a mean thing like you. Wait till you get a blow from one of our iron bars!”
Very angry, indeed, were the devils. They shook their horns and their shocks of red hair fiercely, and rushed to put on tiger skin trousers to make themselves look more terrible. They then brought out great iron bars and ran to where the pheasant perched over their heads, and tried to knock him down. The pheasant flew to one side to escape the blow, and then attacked the head of first one and then another demon. He flew round and round them, beating the air with his wings so fiercely and ceaselessly, that the devils began to wonder whether they had to fight one or many more birds.
In the meantime, Momotaro had brought his ship to land. As they had approached, he saw that the shore was like a precipice, and that the large castle was surrounded by high walls and large iron gates and was strongly fortified.
Momotaro landed, and with the hope of finding some way of entrance, walked up the path towards the top, followed by the monkey and the dog. They soon came upon two beautiful damsels washing clothes in a stream. Momotaro saw that the clothes were blood-stained, and that as the two maidens washed, the tears were falling fast down their cheeks. He stopped and spoke to them:
“Who are you, and why do you weep?”
“We are captives of the Demon King. We were carried away from our homes to this island, and though we are the daughters of Daimios (Lords), we are obliged to be his servants, and one day he will kill us”—and the maidens held up the blood-stained clothes—“and eat us, and there is no one to help us!”
And their tears burst out afresh at this horrible thought.
“I will rescue you,” said Momotaro. “Do not weep any more, only show me how I may get into the castle.”
Then the two ladies led the way and showed Momotaro a little back door in the lowest part of the castle wall—so small that Momotaro could hardly crawl in.
The pheasant, who was all this time fighting hard, saw Momotaro and his little band rush in at the back.
Momotaro’s onslaught was so furious that the devils could not stand against him. At first their foe had been a single bird, the pheasant, but now that Momotaro and the dog and the monkey had arrived they were bewildered, for the four enemies fought like a hundred, so strong were they. Some of the devils fell off the parapet of the castle and were dashed to pieces on the rocks beneath; others fell into the sea and were drowned; many were beaten to death by the three animals.
The chief of the devils at last was the only one left. He made up his mind to surrender, for he knew that his enemy was stronger than mortal man.
He came up humbly to Momotaro and threw down his iron bar, and kneeling down at the victor’s feet he broke off the horns on his head in token of submission, for they were the sign of his strength and power.
“I am afraid of you,” he said meekly. “I cannot stand against you. I will give you all the treasure hidden in this castle if you will spare my life!”
Momotaro laughed.
“It is not like you, big devil, to beg for mercy, is it? I cannot spare your wicked life, however much you beg, for you have killed and tortured many people and robbed our country for many years.”
Then Momotaro tied the devil chief up and gave him into the monkey’s charge. Having done this, he went into all the rooms of the castle and set the prisoners free and gathered together all the treasure he found.
The dog and the pheasant carried home the plunder, and thus Momotaro returned triumphantly to his home, taking with him the devil chief as a captive.
The two poor damsels, daughters of Daimios, and others whom the wicked demon had carried off to be his slaves, were taken safely to their own homes and delivered to their parents.
The whole country made a hero of Momotaro on his triumphant return, and rejoiced that the country was now freed from the robber devils who had been a terror of the land for a long time.
The old couple’s joy was greater than ever, and the treasure Momotaro had brought home with him enabled them to live in peace and plenty to the end of their days.
==THE OGRE OF RASHOMON==
Long, long ago in Kyoto, the people of the city were terrified by accounts of a dreadful ogre, who, it was said, haunted the Gate of Rashomon at twilight and seized whoever passed by. The missing victims were never seen again, so it was whispered that the ogre was a horrible cannibal, who not only killed the unhappy victims but ate them also. Now everybody in the town and neighborhood was in great fear, and no one durst venture out after sunset near the Gate of Rashomon.
Now at this time there lived in Kyoto a general named Raiko, who had made himself famous for his brave deeds. Some time before this he made the country ring with his name, for he had attacked Oeyama, where a band of ogres lived with their chief, who instead of wine drank the blood of human beings. He had routed them all and cut off the head of the chief monster.
This brave warrior was always followed by a band of faithful knights. In this band there were five knights of great valor. One evening as the five knights sat at a feast quaffing SAKE in their rice bowls and eating all kinds of fish, raw, and stewed, and broiled, and toasting each other’s healths and exploits, the first knight, Hojo, said to the others:
“Have you all heard the rumor that every evening after sunset there comes an ogre to the Gate of Rashomon, and that he seizes all who pass by?”
The second knight, Watanabe, answered him, saying:
“Do not talk such nonsense! All the ogres were killed by our chief Raiko at Oeyama! It cannot be true, because even if any ogres did escape from that great killing they would not dare to show themselves in this city, for they know that our brave master would at once attack them if he knew that any of them were still alive!”
“Then do you disbelieve what I say, and think that I am telling you a falsehood?”
“No, I do not think that you are telling a lie,” said Watanabe; “but you have heard some old woman’s story which is not worth believing.”
“Then the best plan is to prove what I say, by going there yourself and finding out yourself whether it is true or not,” said Hojo.
Watanabe, the second knight, could not bear the thought that his companion should believe he was afraid, so he answered quickly:
“Of course, I will go at once and find out for myself!”
So Watanabe at once got ready to go—he buckled on his long sword and put on a coat of armor, and tied on his large helmet. When he was ready to start he said to the others:
“Give me something so that I can prove I have been there!”
Then one of the men got a roll of writing paper and his box of Indian ink and brushes, and the four comrades wrote their names on a piece of paper.
“I will take this,” said Watanabe, “and put it on the Gate of Rashomon, so to-morrow morning will you all go and look at it? I may be able to catch an ogre or two by then!” and he mounted his horse and rode off gallantly.
It was a very dark night, and there was neither moon nor star to light Watanabe on his way. To make the darkness worse a storm came on, the rain fell heavily and the wind howled like wolves in the mountains. Any ordinary man would have trembled at the thought of going out of doors, but Watanabe was a brave warrior and dauntless, and his honor and word were at stake, so he sped on into the night, while his companions listened to the sound of his horse’s hoofs dying away in the distance, then shut the sliding shutters close and gathered round the charcoal fire and wondered what would happen—and whether their comrade would encounter one of those horrible Oni.
At last Watanabe reached the Gate of Rashomon, but peer as he might through the darkness he could see no sign of an ogre.
“It is just as I thought,” said Watanabe to himself; “there are certainly no ogres here; it is only an old woman’s story. I will stick this paper on the gate so that the others can see I have been here when they come to-morrow, and then I will take my way home and laugh at them all.”
He fastened the piece of paper, signed by all his four companions, on the gate, and then turned his horse’s head towards home.
As he did so he became aware that some one was behind him, and at the same time a voice called out to him to wait. Then his helmet was seized from the back. “Who are you?” said Watanabe fearlessly. He then put out his hand and groped around to find out who or what it was that held him by the helmet. As he did so he touched something that felt like an arm—it was covered with hair and as big round as the trunk of a tree!
Watanabe knew at once that this was the arm of an ogre, so he drew his sword and cut at it fiercely.
There was a loud yell of pain, and then the ogre dashed in front of the warrior.
Watanabe’s eyes grew large with wonder, for he saw that the ogre was taller than the great gate, his eyes were flashing like mirrors in the sunlight, and his huge mouth was wide open, and as the monster breathed, flames of fire shot out of his mouth.
The ogre thought to terrify his foe, but Watanabe never flinched. He attacked the ogre with all his strength, and thus they fought face to face for a long time. At last the ogre, finding that he could neither frighten nor beat Watanabe and that he might himself be beaten, took to flight. But Watanabe, determined not to let the monster escape, put spurs to his horse and gave chase.
But though the knight rode very fast the ogre ran faster, and to his disappointment he found himself unable to overtake the monster, who was gradually lost to sight.
Watanabe returned to the gate where the fierce fight had taken place, and got down from his horse. As he did so he stumbled upon something lying on the ground.
Stooping to pick it up he found that it was one of the ogre’s huge arms which he must have slashed off in the fight. His joy was great at having secured such a prize, for this was the best of all proofs of his adventure with the ogre. So he took it up carefully and carried it home as a trophy of his victory.
When he got back, he showed the arm to his comrades, who one and all called him the hero of their band and gave him a great feast. His wonderful deed was soon noised abroad in Kyoto, and people from far and near came to see the ogre’s arm.
Watanabe now began to grow uneasy as to how he should keep the arm in safety, for he knew that the ogre to whom it belonged was still alive. He felt sure that one day or other, as soon as the ogre got over his scare, he would come to try to get his arm back again. Watanabe therefore had a box made of the strongest wood and banded with iron. In this he placed the arm, and then he sealed down the heavy lid, refusing to open it for anyone. He kept the box in his own room and took charge of it himself, never allowing it out of his sight.
Now one night he heard some one knocking at the porch, asking for admittance.
When the servant went to the door to see who it was, there was only an old woman, very respectable in appearance. On being asked who she was and what was her business, the old woman replied with a smile that she had been nurse to the master of the house when he was a little baby. If the lord of the house were at home she begged to be allowed to see him.
The servant left the old woman at the door and went to tell his master that his old nurse had come to see him. Watanabe thought it strange that she should come at that time of night, but at the thought of his old nurse, who had been like a foster-mother to him and whom he had not seen for a long time, a very tender feeling sprang up for her in his heart. He ordered the servant to show her in.
The old woman was ushered into the room, and after the customary bows and greetings were over, she said:
“Master, the report of your brave fight with the ogre at the Gate of Rashomon is so widely known that even your poor old nurse has heard of it. Is it really true, what every one says, that you cut off one of the ogre’s arms? If you did, your deed is highly to be praised!”
“I was very disappointed,” said Watanabe, “that I was not able take the monster captive, which was what I wished to do, instead of only cutting off an arm!”
“I am very proud to think,” answered the old woman, “that my master was so brave as to dare to cut off an ogre’s arm. There is nothing that can be compared to your courage. Before I die it is the great wish of my life to see this arm,” she added pleadingly.
“No,” said Watanabe, “I am sorry, but I cannot grant your request.”
“But why?” asked the old woman.
“Because,” replied Watanabe, “ogres are very revengeful creatures, and if I open the box there is no telling but that the ogre may suddenly appear and carry off his arm. I have had a box made on purpose with a very strong lid, and in this box I keep the ogre’s arm secure; and I never show it to any one, whatever happens.”
“Your precaution is very reasonable,” said the old woman. “But I am your old nurse, so surely you will not refuse to show ME the arm. I have only just heard of your brave act, and not being able to wait till the morning I came at once to ask you to show it to me.”
Watanabe was very troubled at the old woman’s pleading, but he still persisted in refusing. Then the old woman said:
“Do you suspect me of being a spy sent by the ogre?”
“No, of course I do not suspect you of being the ogre’s spy, for you are my old nurse,” answered Watanabe.
“Then you cannot surely refuse to show me the arm any longer.” entreated the old woman; “for it is the great wish of my heart to see for once in my life the arm of an ogre!”
Watanabe could not hold out in his refusal any longer, so he gave in at last, saying:
“Then I will show you the ogre’s arm, since you so earnestly wish to see it. Come, follow me!” and he led the way to his own room, the old woman following.
When they were both in the room Watanabe shut the door carefully, and then going towards a big box which stood in a corner of the room, he took off the heavy lid. He then called to the old woman to come near and look in, for he never took the arm out of the box.
“What is it like? Let me have a good look at it,” said the old nurse, with a joyful face.
She came nearer and nearer, as if she were afraid, till she stood right against the box. Suddenly she plunged her hand into the box and seized the arm, crying with a fearful voice which made the room shake:
“Oh, joy! I have got my arm back again!”
And from an old woman she was suddenly transformed into the towering figure of the frightful ogre!
Watanabe sprang back and was unable to move for a moment, so great was his astonishment; but recognizing the ogre who had attacked him at the Gate of Rashomon, he determined with his usual courage to put an end to him this time. He seized his sword, drew it out of its sheath in a flash, and tried to cut the ogre down.
So quick was Watanabe that the creature had a narrow escape. But the ogre sprang up to the ceiling, and bursting through the roof, disappeared in the mist and clouds.
In this way the ogre escaped with his arm. The knight gnashed his teeth with disappointment, but that was all he could do. He waited in patience for another opportunity to dispatch the ogre. But the latter was afraid of Watanabe’s great strength and daring, and never troubled Kyoto again. So once more the people of the city were able to go out without fear even at night time, and the brave deeds of Watanabe have never been forgotten!
==HOW AN OLD MAN LOST HIS WEN==
Many, many years ago there lived a good old man who had a wen like a tennis-ball growing out of his right cheek. This lump was a great disfigurement to the old man, and so annoyed him that for many years he spent all his time and money in trying to get rid of it. He tried everything he could think of. He consulted many doctors far and near, and took all kinds of medicines both internally and externally. But it was all of no use. The lump only grew bigger and bigger till it was nearly as big as his face, and in despair he gave up all hopes of ever losing it, and resigned himself to the thought of having to carry the lump on his face all his life.
One day the firewood gave out in his kitchen, so, as his wife wanted some at once, the old man took his ax and set out for the woods up among the hills not very far from his home. It was a fine day in the early autumn, and the old man enjoyed the fresh air and was in no hurry to get home. So the whole afternoon passed quickly while he was chopping wood, and he had collected a goodly pile to take back to his wife. When the day began to draw to a close, he turned his face homewards.
The old man had not gone far on his way down the mountain pass when the sky clouded and rain began to fall heavily. He looked about for some shelter, but there was not even a charcoal-burner’s hut near. At last he espied a large hole in the hollow trunk of a tree. The hole was near the ground, so he crept in easily, and sat down in hopes that he had only been overtaken by a mountain shower, and that the weather would soon clear.
But much to the old man’s disappointment, instead of clearing the rain fell more and more heavily, and finally a heavy thunderstorm broke over the mountain. The thunder roared so terrifically, and the heavens seemed to be so ablaze with lightning, that the old man could hardly believe himself to be alive. He thought that he must die of fright. At last, however, the sky cleared, and the whole country was aglow in the rays of the setting sun. The old man’s spirits revived when he looked out at the beautiful twilight, and he was about to step out from his strange hiding-place in the hollow tree when the sound of what seemed like the approaching steps of several people caught his ear. He at once thought that his friends had come to look for him, and he was delighted at the idea of having some jolly companions with whom to walk home. But on looking out from the tree, what was his amazement to see, not his friends, but hundreds of demons coming towards the spot. The more he looked, the greater was his astonishment. Some of these demons were as large as giants, others had great big eyes out of all proportion to the rest of their bodies, others again had absurdly long noses, and some had such big mouths that they seemed to open from ear to ear. All had horns growing on their foreheads. The old man was so surprised at what he saw that he lost his balance and fell out of the hollow tree. Fortunately for him the demons did not see him, as the tree was in the background. So he picked himself up and crept back into the tree.
While he was sitting there and wondering impatiently when he would be able to get home, he heard the sounds of gay music, and then some of the demons began to sing.
“What are these creatures doing?” said the old man to himself. “I will look out, it sounds very amusing.”
On peeping out, the old man saw that the demon chief himself was actually sitting with his back against the tree in which he had taken refuge, and all the other demons were sitting round, some drinking and some dancing. Food and wine was spread before them on the ground, and the demons were evidently having a great entertainment and enjoying themselves immensely.
It made the old man laugh to see their strange antics.
“How amusing this is!” laughed the old man to himself “I am now quite old, but I have never seen anything so strange in all my life.”
He was so interested and excited in watching all that the demons were doing, that he forgot himself and stepped out of the tree and stood looking on.
The demon chief was just taking a big cup of SAKE and watching one of the demons dancing. In a little while he said with a bored air:
“Your dance is rather monotonous. I am tired of watching it. Isn’t there any one amongst you all who can dance better than this fellow?”
Now the old man had been fond of dancing all his life, and was quite an expert in the art, and he knew that he could do much better than the demon.
“Shall I go and dance before these demons and let them see what a human being can do? It may be dangerous, for if I don’t please them they may kill me!” said the old fellow to himself.
His fears, however, were soon overcome by his love of dancing. In a few minutes he could restrain himself no longer, and came out before the whole party of demons and began to dance at once. The old man, realizing that his life probably depended on whether he pleased these strange creatures or not, exerted his skill and wit to the utmost.
The demons were at first very surprised to see a man so fearlessly taking part in their entertainment, and then their surprise soon gave place to admiration.
“How strange!” exclaimed the horned chief. “I never saw such a skillful dancer before! He dances admirably!”
When the old man had finished his dance, the big demon said:
“Thank you very much for your amusing dance. Now give us the pleasure of drinking a cup of wine with us,” and with these words he handed him his largest wine-cup.
The old man thanked him very humbly:
“I did not expect such kindness from your lordship. I fear I have only disturbed your pleasant party by my unskillful dancing.”
“No, no,” answered the big demon. “You must come often and dance for us. Your skill has given us much pleasure.”
The old man thanked him again and promised to do so.
“Then will you come again to-morrow, old man?” asked the demon.
“Certainly, I will,” answered the old man.
“Then you must leave some pledge of your word with us,” said the demon.
“Whatever you like,” said the old man.
“Now what is the best thing he can leave with us as a pledge?” asked the demon, looking round.
Then said one of the demon’s attendants kneeling behind the chief:
“The token he leaves with us must be the most important thing to him in his possession. I see the old man has a wen on his right cheek. Now mortal men consider such a wen very fortunate. Let my lord take the lump from the old man’s right cheek, and he will surely come to-morrow, if only to get that back.”
“You are very clever,” said the demon chief, giving his horns an approving nod. Then he stretched out a hairy arm and claw-like hand, and took the great lump from the old man’s right cheek. Strange to say, it came off as easily as a ripe plum from the tree at the demon’s touch, and then the merry troop of demons suddenly vanished.
The old man was lost in bewilderment by all that had happened. He hardly knew for some time where he was. When he came to understand what had happened to him, he was delighted to find that the lump on his face, which had for so many years disfigured him, had really been taken away without any pain to himself. He put up his hand to feel if any scar remained, but found that his right cheek was as smooth as his left.
The sun had long set, and the young moon had risen like a silver crescent in the sky. The old man suddenly realized how late it was and began to hurry home. He patted his right cheek all the time, as if to make sure of his good fortune in having lost the wen. He was so happy that he found it impossible to walk quietly—he ran and danced the whole way home.
He found his wife very anxious, wondering what had happened to make him so late. He soon told her all that had passed since he left home that afternoon. She was quite as happy as her husband when he showed her that the ugly lump had disappeared from his face, for in her youth she had prided herself on his good looks, and it had been a daily grief to her to see the horrid growth.
Now next door to this good old couple there lived a wicked and disagreeable old man. He, too, had for many years been troubled with the growth of a wen on his left cheek, and he, too, had tried all manner of things to get rid of it, but in vain.
He heard at once, through the servant, of his neighbor’s good luck in losing the lump on his face, so he called that very evening and asked his friend to tell him everything that concerned the loss of it. The good old man told his disagreeable neighbor all that had happened to him. He described the place where he would find the hollow tree in which to hide, and advised him to be on the spot in the late afternoon towards the time of sunset.
The old neighbor started out the very next afternoon, and after hunting about for some time, came to the hollow tree just as his friend had described. Here he hid himself and waited for the twilight.
Just as he had been told, the band of demons came at that hour and held a feast with dance and song. When this had gone on for some time the chief of the demons looked around and said:
“It is now time for the old man to come as he promised us. Why doesn’t he come?”
When the second old man heard these words he ran out of his hiding-place in the tree and, kneeling down before the Oni, said:
“I have been waiting for a long time for you to speak!”
“Ah, you are the old man of yesterday,” said the demon chief. “Thank you for coming, you must dance for us soon.”
The old man now stood up and opened his fan and began to dance. But he had never learned to dance, and knew nothing about the necessary gestures and different positions. He thought that anything would please the demons, so he just hopped about, waving his arms and stamping his feet, imitating as well as he could any dancing he had ever seen.
The Oni were very dissatisfied at this exhibition, and said amongst themselves:
“How badly he dances to-day!”
Then to the old man the demon chief said:
“Your performance to-day is quite different from the dance of yesterday. We don’t wish to see any more of such dancing. We will give you back the pledge you left with us. You must go away at once.”
With these words he took out from a fold of his dress the lump which he had taken from the face of the old man who had danced so well the day before, and threw it at the right cheek of the old man who stood before him. The lump immediately attached itself to his cheek as firmly as if it had grown there always, and all attempts to pull it off were useless. The wicked old man, instead of losing the lump on his left cheek as he had hoped, found to his dismay that he had but added another to his right cheek in his attempt to get rid of the first.
He put up first one hand and then the other to each side of his face to make sure if he were not dreaming a horrible nightmare. No, sure enough there was now a great wen on the right side of his face as on the left. The demons had all disappeared, and there was nothing for him to do but to return home. He was a pitiful sight, for his face, with the two large lumps, one on each side, looked just like a Japanese gourd.
==THE STONES OF FIVE COLORS AND THE EMPRESS JOKWA: AN OLD CHINESE STORY==
Long, long ago there lived a great Chinese Empress who succeeded her brother the Emperor Fuki. It was the age of giants, and the Empress Jokwa, for that was her name, was twenty-five feet high, nearly as tall as her brother. She was a wonderful woman, and an able ruler. There is an interesting story of how she mended a part of the broken heavens and one of the terrestrial pillars which upheld the sky, both of which were damaged during a rebellion raised by one of King Fuki’s subjects.
The rebel’s name was Kokai. He was twenty-six feet high. His body was entirely covered with hair, and his face was as black as iron. He was a wizard and a very terrible character indeed. When the Emperor Fuki died, Kokai was bitten with the ambition to be Emperor of China, but his plan failed, and Jokwa, the dead Emperor’s sister, mounted the throne. Kokai was so angry at being thwarted in his desire that he raised a revolt. His first act was to employ the Water Devil, who caused a great flood to rush over the country. This swamped the poor people out of their homes, and when the Empress Jokwa saw the plight of her subjects, and knew it was Kokai’s fault, she declared war against him.
Now Jokwa, the Empress, had two young warriors called Hako and Eiko, and the former she made General of the front forces. Hako was delighted that the Empress’s choice should fall on him, and he prepared himself for battle. He took up the longest lance he could find and mounted a red horse, and was just about to set out when he heard some one galloping hard behind him and shouting:
“Hako! Stop! The general of the front forces must be I!”
He looked back and saw Eiko his comrade, riding on a white horse, in the act of unsheathing a large sword to draw upon him. Hako’s anger was kindled, and as he turned to face his rival he cried:
“Insolent wretch! I have been appointed by the Empress to lead the front forces to battle. Do you dare to stop me?”
“Yes,” answered Eiko. “I ought to lead the army. It is you who should follow me.”
At this bold reply Hako’s anger burst from a spark into a flame.
“Dare you answer me thus? Take that,” and he lunged at him with his lance.
But Eiko moved quickly aside, and at the same time, raising his sword, he wounded the head of the General’s horse. Obliged to dismount, Hako was about to rush at his antagonist, when Eiko, as quick as lightning, tore from his breast the badge of commandership and galloped away. The action was so quick that Hako stood dazed, not knowing what to do.
The Empress had been a spectator of the scene, and she could not but admire the quickness of the ambitious Eiko, and in order to pacify the rivals she determined to appoint them both to the Generalship of the front army.
So Hako was made commander of the left wing of the front army, and Eiko of the right. One hundred thousand soldiers followed them and marched to put down the rebel Kokai.
Within a short time the two Generals reached the castle where Kokai had fortified himself. When aware of their approach, the wizard said:
“I will blow these two poor children away with one breath.” (He little thought how hard he would find the fight.)
With these words Kokai seized an iron rod and mounted a black horse, and rushed forth like an angry tiger to meet his two foes.
As the two young warriors saw him tearing down upon them, they said to each other: “We must not let him escape alive,” and they attacked him from the right and from the left with sword and with lance. But the all-powerful Kokai was not to be easily beaten—he whirled his iron rod round like a great water-wheel, and for a long time they fought thus, neither side gaining nor losing. At last, to avoid the wizard’s iron rod, Hako turned his horse too quickly; the animal’s hoofs struck against a large stone, and in a fright the horse reared as straight on end as a screen, throwing his master to the ground.
Thereupon Kokai drew his three-edged sword and was about to kill the prostrate Hako, but before the wizard could work his wicked will the brave Eiko had wheeled his horse in front of Kokai and dared him to try his strength with him, and not to kill a fallen man. But Kokai was tired, and he did not feel inclined to face this fresh and dauntless young soldier, so suddenly wheeling his horse round, he fled from the fray.
Hako, who had been only slightly stunned, had by this time got upon his feet, and he and his comrade rushed after the retreating enemy, the one on foot and the other on horseback.
Kokai, seeing that he was pursued, turned upon his nearest assailant, who was, of course, the mounted Eiko, and drawing forth an arrow from the quiver at his back, fitted it to his bow and drew upon Eiko.
As quick as lightning the wary Eiko avoided the shaft, which only touched his helmet strings, and glancing off, fell harmless against Hako’s coat of armor.
The wizard saw that both his enemies remained unscathed. He also knew that there was no time to pull a second arrow before they would be upon him, so to save himself he resorted to magic. He stretched forth his wand, and immediately a great flood arose, and Jokwa’s army and her brave young Generals were swept away like a falling of autumn leaves on a stream.
Hako and Eiko found themselves struggling neck deep in water, and looking round they saw the ferocious Kokai making towards them through the water with his iron rod on high. They thought every moment that they would be cut down, but they bravely struck out to swim as far as they could from Kokai’s reach. All of a sudden they found themselves in front of what seemed to be an island rising straight out of the water. They looked up, and there stood an old man with hair as white as snow, smiling at them. They cried to him to help them. The old man nodded his head and came down to the edge of the water. As soon as his feet touched the flood it divided, and a good road appeared, to the amazement of the drowning men, who now found themselves safe.
Kokai had by this time reached the island which had risen as if by a miracle out of the water, and seeing his enemies thus saved he was furious. He rushed through the water upon the old man, and it seemed as if he would surely be killed. But the old man appeared not in the least dismayed, and calmly awaited the wizard’s onslaught.
As Kokai drew near, the old man laughed aloud merrily, and turning into a large and beautiful white crane, flapped his wings and flew upwards into the heavens.
When Hako and Eiko saw this, they knew that their deliverer was no mere human being—was perhaps a god in disguise—and they hoped later on to find out who the venerable old man was.
In the meantime they had retreated, and it being now the close of day, for the sun was setting, both Kokai and the young warriors gave up the idea of fighting more that day.
That night Hako and Eiko decided that it was useless to fight against the wizard Kokai, for he had supernatural powers, while they were only human. So they presented themselves before the Empress Jokwa. After a long consultation, the Empress decided to ask the Fire King, Shikuyu, to help her against the rebel wizard and to lead her army against him.
Now Shikuyu, the Fire King, lived at the South Pole. It was the only safe place for him to be in, for he burnt up everything around him anywhere else, but it was impossible to burn up ice and snow. To look at he was a giant, and stood thirty feet high. His face was just like marble, and his hair and beard long and as white as snow. His strength was stupendous, and he was master of all fire just as Kokai was of water.
“Surely,” thought the Empress, “Shikuyu can conquer Kokai.” So she sent Eiko to the South Pole to beg Shikuyu to take the war against Kokai into his own hands and conquer him once for all.
The Fire King, on hearing the Empress’s request, smiled and said:
“That is an easy matter, to be sure! It was none other than I who came to your rescue when you and your companion were drowning in the flood raised by Kokai!”
Eiko was surprised at learning this. He thanked the Fire King for coming to the rescue in their dire need, and then besought him to return with him and lead the war and defeat the wicked Kokai.
Shikuyu did as he was asked, and returned with Eiko to the Empress. She welcomed the Fire King cordially, and at once told him why she had sent for him—to ask him to be the Generalissimo of her army. His reply was very reassuring:
“Do not have any anxiety. I will certainly kill Kokai.”
Shikuyu then placed himself at the head of thirty thousand soldiers, and with Hako and Eiko showing him the way, marched to the enemy’s castle. The Fire King knew the secret of Kokai’s power, and he now told all the soldiers to gather a certain kind of shrub. This they burned in large quantities, and each soldier was then ordered to fill a bag full of the ashes thus obtained.
Kokai, on the other hand, in his own conceit, thought that Shikuyu was of inferior power to himself, and he murmured angrily:
“Even though you are the Fire King, I can soon extinguish you.”
Then he repeated an incantation, and the water-floods rose and welled as high as mountains. Shikuyu, not in the least frightened, ordered his soldiers to scatter the ashes which he had caused them to make. Every man did as he was bid, and such was the power of the plant that they had burned, that as soon as the ashes mingled with the water a stiff mud was formed, and they were all safe from drowning.
Now Kokai the wizard was dismayed when he saw that the Fire King was superior in wisdom to himself, and his anger was so great that he rushed headlong towards the enemy.
Eiko rode to meet him, and the two fought together for some time. They were well matched in a hand-to-hand combat. Hako, who was carefully watching the fray, saw that Eiko began to tire, and fearing that his companion would be killed, he took his place.
But Kokai had tired as well, and feeling him self unable to hold out against Hako, he said artfully:
“You are too magnanimous, thus to fight for your friend and run the risk of being killed. I will not hurt such a good man.”
And he pretended to retreat, turning away the head of his horse. His intention was to throw Hako off his guard and then to wheel round and take him by surprise.
But Shikuyu understood the wily wizard, and he spoke at once:
“You are a coward! You cannot deceive me!”
Saying this, the Fire King made a sign to the unwary Hako to attack him. Kokai now turned upon Shikuyu furiously, but he was tired and unable to fight well, and he soon received a wound in his shoulder. He now broke from the fray and tried to escape in earnest.
While the fight between their leaders had been going on the two armies had stood waiting for the issue. Shikuyu now turned and bade Jokwa’s soldiers charge the enemy’s forces. This they did, and routed them with great slaughter, and the wizard barely escaped with his life.
It was in vain that Kokai called upon the Water Devil to help him, for Shikuyu knew the counter-charm. The wizard found that the battle was against him. Mad with pain, for his wound began to trouble him, and frenzied with disappointment and fear, he dashed his head against the rocks of Mount Shu and died on the spot.
There was an end of the wicked Kokai, but not of trouble in the Empress Jokwa’s Kingdom, as you shall see. The force with which the wizard fell against the rocks was so great that the mountain burst, and fire rushed out from the earth, and one of the pillars upholding the Heavens was broken so that one corner of the sky dropped till it touched the earth.
Shikuyu, the Fire King, took up the body of the wizard and carried it to the Empress Jokwa, who rejoiced greatly that her enemy was vanquished, and her generals victorious. She showered all manner of gifts and honors upon Shikuyu.
But all this time fire was bursting from the mountain broken by the fall of Kokai. Whole villages were destroyed, rice-fields burnt up, river beds filled with the burning lava, and the homeless people were in great distress. So the Empress left the capital as soon as she had rewarded the victor Shikuyu, and journeyed with all speed to the scene of disaster. She found that both Heaven and earth had sustained damage, and the place was so dark that she had to light her lamp to find out the extent of the havoc that had been wrought.
Having ascertained this, she set to work at repairs. To this end she ordered her subjects to collect stones of five colors—blue, yellow, red, white and black. When she had obtained these, she boiled them with a kind of porcelain in a large caldron, and the mixture became a beautiful paste, and with this she knew that she could mend the sky. Now all was ready.
Summoning the clouds that were sailing ever so high above her head, she mounted them, and rode heavenwards, carrying in her hands the vase containing the paste made from the stones of five colors. She soon reached the corner of the sky that was broken, and applied the paste and mended it. Having done this, she turned her attention to the broken pillar, and with the legs of a very large tortoise she mended it. When this was finished she mounted the clouds and descended to the earth, hoping to find that all was now right, but to her dismay she found that it was still quite dark. Neither the sun shone by day nor the moon by night.
Greatly perplexed, she at last called a meeting of all the wise men of the Kingdom, and asked their advice as to what she should do in this dilemma.
Two of the wisest said:
“The roads of Heaven have been damaged by the late accident, and the Sun and Moon have been obliged to stay at home. Neither the Sun could make his daily journey nor the Moon her nightly one because of the bad roads. The Sun and Moon do not yet know that your Majesty has mended all that was damaged, so we will go and inform them that since you have repaired them the roads are safe.”
The Empress approved of what the wise men suggested, and ordered them to set out on their mission. But this was not easy, for the Palace of the Sun and Moon was many, many hundreds of thousands of miles distant into the East. If they traveled on foot they might never reach the place, they would die of old age on the road. But Jokwa had recourse to magic. She gave her two ambassadors wonderful chariots which could whirl through the air by magic power a thousand miles per minute. They set out in good spirits, riding above the clouds, and after many days they reached the country where the Sun and the Moon were living happily together.
The two ambassadors were granted an interview with their Majesties of Light and asked them why they had for so many days secluded themselves from the Universe? Did they not know that by doing so they plunged the world and all its people into uttermost darkness both day and night?
Replied the Sun and the Moon:
“Surely you know that Mount Shu has suddenly burst forth with fire, and the roads of Heaven have been greatly damaged! I, the Sun, found it impossible to make my daily journey along such rough roads—and certainly the Moon could not issue forth at night! so we both retired into private life for a time.”
Then the two wise men bowed themselves to the ground and said:
“Our Empress Jokwa has already repaired the roads with the wonderful stones of five colors, so we beg to assure your Majesties that the roads are just as they were before the eruption took place.”
But the Sun and the Moon still hesitated, saying that they had heard that one of the pillars of Heaven had been broken as well, and they feared that, even if the roads had been remade, it would still be dangerous for them to sally forth on their usual journeys.
“You need have no anxiety about the broken pillar,” said the two ambassadors. “Our Empress restored it with the legs of a great tortoise, and it is as firm as ever it was.”
Then the Sun and Moon appeared satisfied, and they both set out to try the roads. They found that what the Empress’s deputies had told them was correct.
After the examination of the heavenly roads, the Sun and Moon again gave light to the earth. All the people rejoiced greatly, and peace and prosperity were secured in China for a long time under the reign of the wise Empress Jokwa.
==THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES==
Many years ago, there was an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of new clothes, that he spent all his money in dress. He did not trouble himself in the least about his soldiers; nor did he care to go either to the theatre or the chase, except for the opportunities then afforded him for displaying his new clothes. He had a different suit for each hour of the day; and as of any other king or emperor, one is accustomed to say, “he is sitting in council,” it was always said of him, “The Emperor is sitting in his wardrobe.”
Time passed merrily in the large town which was his capital; strangers arrived every day at the court. One day, two rogues, calling themselves weavers, made their appearance. They gave out that they knew how to weave stuffs of the most beautiful colors and elaborate patterns, the clothes manufactured from which should have the wonderful property of remaining invisible to everyone who was unfit for the office he held, or who was extraordinarily simple in character.
“These must, indeed, be splendid clothes!” thought the Emperor. “Had I such a suit, I might at once find out what men in my realms are unfit for their office, and also be able to distinguish the wise from the foolish! This stuff must be woven for me immediately.” And he caused large sums of money to be given to both the weavers in order that they might begin their work directly.
So the two pretended weavers set up two looms, and affected to work very busily, though in reality they did nothing at all. They asked for the most delicate silk and the purest gold thread; put both into their own knapsacks; and then continued their pretended work at the empty looms until late at night.
“I should like to know how the weavers are getting on with my cloth,” said the Emperor to himself, after some little time had elapsed; he was, however, rather embarrassed, when he remembered that a simpleton, or one unfit for his office, would be unable to see the manufacture. To be sure, he thought he had nothing to risk in his own person; but yet, he would prefer sending somebody else, to bring him intelligence about the weavers, and their work, before he troubled himself in the affair. All the people throughout the city had heard of the wonderful property the cloth was to possess; and all were anxious to learn how wise, or how ignorant, their neighbors might prove to be.
“I will send my faithful old minister to the weavers,” said the Emperor at last, after some deliberation, “he will be best able to see how the cloth looks; for he is a man of sense, and no one can be more suitable for his office than he is.”
So the faithful old minister went into the hall, where the knaves were working with all their might, at their empty looms. “What can be the meaning of this?” thought the old man, opening his eyes very wide. “I cannot discover the least bit of thread on the looms.” However, he did not express his thoughts aloud.
The impostors requested him very courteously to be so good as to come nearer their looms; and then asked him whether the design pleased him, and whether the colors were not very beautiful; at the same time pointing to the empty frames. The poor old minister looked and looked, he could not discover anything on the looms, for a very good reason, viz: there was nothing there. “What!” thought he again. “Is it possible that I am a simpleton? I have never thought so myself; and no one must know it now if I am so. Can it be, that I am unfit for my office? No, that must not be said either. I will never confess that I could not see the stuff.”
“Well, Sir Minister!” said one of the knaves, still pretending to work. “You do not say whether the stuff pleases you.”
“Oh, it is excellent!” replied the old minister, looking at the loom through his spectacles. “This pattern, and the colors, yes, I will tell the Emperor without delay, how very beautiful I think them.”
“We shall be much obliged to you,” said the impostors, and then they named the different colors and described the pattern of the pretended stuff. The old minister listened attentively to their words, in order that he might repeat them to the Emperor; and then the knaves asked for more silk and gold, saying that it was necessary to complete what they had begun. However, they put all that was given them into their knapsacks; and continued to work with as much apparent diligence as before at their empty looms.
The Emperor now sent another officer of his court to see how the men were getting on, and to ascertain whether the cloth would soon be ready. It was just the same with this gentleman as with the minister; he surveyed the looms on all sides, but could see nothing at all but the empty frames.
“Does not the stuff appear as beautiful to you, as it did to my lord the minister?” asked the impostors of the Emperor's second ambassador; at the same time making the same gestures as before, and talking of the design and colors which were not there.
“I certainly am not stupid!” thought the messenger. “It must be, that I am not fit for my good, profitable office! That is very odd; however, no one shall know anything about it.” And accordingly he praised the stuff he could not see, and declared that he was delighted with both colors and patterns. “Indeed, please your Imperial Majesty,” said he to his sovereign when he returned, “the cloth which the weavers are preparing is extraordinarily magnificent.”
The whole city was talking of the splendid cloth which the Emperor had ordered to be woven at his own expense.
And now the Emperor himself wished to see the costly manufacture, while it was still in the loom. Accompanied by a select number of officers of the court, among whom were the two honest men who had already admired the cloth, he went to the crafty impostors, who, as soon as they were aware of the Emperor's approach, went on working more diligently than ever; although they still did not pass a single thread through the looms.
“Is not the work absolutely magnificent?” said the two officers of the crown, already mentioned. “If your Majesty will only be pleased to look at it! What a splendid design! What glorious colors!” and at the same time they pointed to the empty frames; for they imagined that everyone else could see this exquisite piece of workmanship.
“How is this?” said the Emperor to himself. “I can see nothing! This is indeed a terrible affair! Am I a simpleton, or am I unfit to be an Emperor? That would be the worst thing that could happen—Oh! the cloth is charming,” said he, aloud. “It has my complete approbation.” And he smiled most graciously, and looked closely at the empty looms; for on no account would he say that he could not see what two of the officers of his court had praised so much. All his retinue now strained their eyes, hoping to discover something on the looms, but they could see no more than the others; nevertheless, they all exclaimed, “Oh, how beautiful!” and advised his majesty to have some new clothes made from this splendid material, for the approaching procession. “Magnificent! Charming! Excellent!” resounded on all sides; and everyone was uncommonly gay. The Emperor shared in the general satisfaction; and presented the impostors with the riband of an order of knighthood, to be worn in their button-holes, and the title of “Gentlemen Weavers.”
The rogues sat up the whole of the night before the day on which the procession was to take place, and had sixteen lights burning, so that everyone might see how anxious they were to finish the Emperor's new suit. They pretended to roll the cloth off the looms; cut the air with their scissors; and sewed with needles without any thread in them. “See!” cried they, at last. “The Emperor's new clothes are ready!”
And now the Emperor, with all the grandees of his court, came to the weavers; and the rogues raised their arms, as if in the act of holding something up, saying, “Here are your Majesty's trousers! Here is the scarf! Here is the mantle! The whole suit is as light as a cobweb; one might fancy one has nothing at all on, when dressed in it; that, however, is the great virtue of this delicate cloth.”
“Yes indeed!” said all the courtiers, although not one of them could see anything of this exquisite manufacture.
“If your Imperial Majesty will be graciously pleased to take off your clothes, we will fit on the new suit, in front of the looking glass.”
The Emperor was accordingly undressed, and the rogues pretended to array him in his new suit; the Emperor turning round, from side to side, before the looking glass.
“How splendid his Majesty looks in his new clothes, and how well they fit!” everyone cried out. “What a design! What colors! These are indeed royal robes!”
“The canopy which is to be borne over your Majesty, in the procession, is waiting,” announced the chief master of the ceremonies.
“I am quite ready,” answered the Emperor. “Do my new clothes fit well?” asked he, turning himself round again before the looking glass, in order that he might appear to be examining his handsome suit.
The lords of the bedchamber, who were to carry his Majesty's train felt about on the ground, as if they were lifting up the ends of the mantle; and pretended to be carrying something; for they would by no means betray anything like simplicity, or unfitness for their office.
So now the Emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession, through the streets of his capital; and all the people standing by, and those at the windows, cried out, “Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor's new clothes! What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!” in short, no one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the Emperor's various suits, had ever made so great an impression, as these invisible ones.
“But the Emperor has nothing at all on!” said a little child.
“Listen to the voice of innocence!” exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.
“But he has nothing at all on!” at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.
==THE SWINEHERD==
There was once a poor Prince, who had a kingdom. His kingdom was very small, but still quite large enough to marry upon; and he wished to marry.
It was certainly rather cool of him to say to the Emperor's daughter, “Will you have me?” But so he did; for his name was renowned far and wide; and there were a hundred princesses who would have answered, “Yes!” and “Thank you kindly.” We shall see what this princess said.
Listen!
It happened that where the Prince's father lay buried, there grew a rose tree—a most beautiful rose tree, which blossomed only once in every five years, and even then bore only one flower, but that was a rose! It smelt so sweet that all cares and sorrows were forgotten by him who inhaled its fragrance.
And furthermore, the Prince had a nightingale, who could sing in such a manner that it seemed as though all sweet melodies dwelt in her little throat. So the Princess was to have the rose, and the nightingale; and they were accordingly put into large silver caskets, and sent to her.
The Emperor had them brought into a large hall, where the Princess was playing at “Visiting,” with the ladies of the court; and when she saw the caskets with the presents, she clapped her hands for joy.
“Ah, if it were but a little pussy-cat!” said she; but the rose tree, with its beautiful rose came to view.
“Oh, how prettily it is made!” said all the court ladies.
“It is more than pretty,” said the Emperor, “it is charming!”
But the Princess touched it, and was almost ready to cry.
“Fie, papa!” said she. “It is not made at all, it is natural!”
“Let us see what is in the other casket, before we get into a bad humor,” said the Emperor. So the nightingale came forth and sang so delightfully that at first no one could say anything ill-humored of her.
“Superbe! Charmant!” exclaimed the ladies; for they all used to chatter French, each one worse than her neighbor.
“How much the bird reminds me of the musical box that belonged to our blessed Empress,” said an old knight. “Oh yes! These are the same tones, the same execution.”
“Yes! yes!” said the Emperor, and he wept like a child at the remembrance.
“I will still hope that it is not a real bird,” said the Princess.
“Yes, it is a real bird,” said those who had brought it. “Well then let the bird fly,” said the Princess; and she positively refused to see the Prince.
However, he was not to be discouraged; he daubed his face over brown and black; pulled his cap over his ears, and knocked at the door.
“Good day to my lord, the Emperor!” said he. “Can I have employment at the palace?”
“Why, yes,” said the Emperor. “I want some one to take care of the pigs, for we have a great many of them.”
So the Prince was appointed “Imperial Swineherd.” He had a dirty little room close by the pigsty; and there he sat the whole day, and worked. By the evening he had made a pretty little kitchen-pot. Little bells were hung all round it; and when the pot was boiling, these bells tinkled in the most charming manner, and played the old melody,
 “Ach! du lieber Augustin,
 Alles ist weg, weg, weg!”*
 
 * “Ah! dear Augustine!
 All is gone, gone, gone!”
 
But what was still more curious, whoever held his finger in the smoke of the kitchen-pot, immediately smelt all the dishes that were cooking on every hearth in the city—this, you see, was something quite different from the rose.
Now the Princess happened to walk that way; and when she heard the tune, she stood quite still, and seemed pleased; for she could play “Lieber Augustine”; it was the only piece she knew; and she played it with one finger.
“Why there is my piece,” said the Princess. “That swineherd must certainly have been well educated! Go in and ask him the price of the instrument.”
So one of the court-ladies must run in; however, she drew on wooden slippers first.
“What will you take for the kitchen-pot?” said the lady.
“I will have ten kisses from the Princess,” said the swineherd.
“Yes, indeed!” said the lady.
“I cannot sell it for less,” rejoined the swineherd.
“He is an impudent fellow!” said the Princess, and she walked on; but when she had gone a little way, the bells tinkled so prettily
 “Ach! du lieber Augustin,
 Alles ist weg, weg, weg!”
 
“Stay,” said the Princess. “Ask him if he will have ten kisses from the ladies of my court.”
“No, thank you!” said the swineherd. “Ten kisses from the Princess, or I keep the kitchen-pot myself.”
“That must not be, either!” said the Princess. “But do you all stand before me that no one may see us.”
And the court-ladies placed themselves in front of her, and spread out their dresses—the swineherd got ten kisses, and the Princess—the kitchen-pot.
That was delightful! The pot was boiling the whole evening, and the whole of the following day. They knew perfectly well what was cooking at every fire throughout the city, from the chamberlain's to the cobbler's; the court-ladies danced and clapped their hands.
“We know who has soup, and who has pancakes for dinner to-day, who has cutlets, and who has eggs. How interesting!”
“Yes, but keep my secret, for I am an Emperor's daughter.”
The swineherd—that is to say—the Prince, for no one knew that he was other than an ill-favored swineherd, let not a day pass without working at something; he at last constructed a rattle, which, when it was swung round, played all the waltzes and jig tunes, which have ever been heard since the creation of the world.
“Ah, that is superbe!” said the Princess when she passed by. “I have never heard prettier compositions! Go in and ask him the price of the instrument; but mind, he shall have no more kisses!”
“He will have a hundred kisses from the Princess!” said the lady who had been to ask.
“I think he is not in his right senses!” said the Princess, and walked on, but when she had gone a little way, she stopped again. “One must encourage art,” said she, “I am the Emperor's daughter. Tell him he shall, as on yesterday, have ten kisses from me, and may take the rest from the ladies of the court.”
“Oh—but we should not like that at all!” said they. “What are you muttering?” asked the Princess. “If I can kiss him, surely you can. Remember that you owe everything to me.” So the ladies were obliged to go to him again.
“A hundred kisses from the Princess,” said he, “or else let everyone keep his own!”
“Stand round!” said she; and all the ladies stood round her whilst the kissing was going on.
“What can be the reason for such a crowd close by the pigsty?” said the Emperor, who happened just then to step out on the balcony; he rubbed his eyes, and put on his spectacles. “They are the ladies of the court; I must go down and see what they are about!” So he pulled up his slippers at the heel, for he had trodden them down.
As soon as he had got into the court-yard, he moved very softly, and the ladies were so much engrossed with counting the kisses, that all might go on fairly, that they did not perceive the Emperor. He rose on his tiptoes.
“What is all this?” said he, when he saw what was going on, and he boxed the Princess's ears with his slipper, just as the swineherd was taking the eighty-sixth kiss.
“March out!” said the Emperor, for he was very angry; and both Princess and swineherd were thrust out of the city.
The Princess now stood and wept, the swineherd scolded, and the rain poured down.
“Alas! Unhappy creature that I am!” said the Princess. “If I had but married the handsome young Prince! Ah! how unfortunate I am!”
And the swineherd went behind a tree, washed the black and brown color from his face, threw off his dirty clothes, and stepped forth in his princely robes; he looked so noble that the Princess could not help bowing before him.
“I am come to despise thee,” said he. “Thou would'st not have an honorable Prince! Thou could'st not prize the rose and the nightingale, but thou wast ready to kiss the swineherd for the sake of a trumpery plaything. Thou art rightly served.”
He then went back to his own little kingdom, and shut the door of his palace in her face. Now she might well sing,
 “Ach! du lieber Augustin,
 Alles ist weg, weg, weg!”
 
==THE UGLY DUCKLING==
It was very pleasant out in the country. It was summer time, the corn was yellow, the oats green, the hay was stacked down in the green meadows, and there the stork walked about on his long red legs and talked Egyptian. He had learnt the language from his mother. Round the fields and meadows there were large woods and within them deep lakes: indeed, it was pleasant out in the country. Full in the sunshine, an old manor house stood, surrounded by a deep moat, and from the base of the walls right down to the water great dock plants grew--so tall that a little child could stand upright under the largest of them. It was as lonely in among them as in the thickest wood; and there a Duck was sitting on her nest. She had got to hatch out her little Ducklings, but by this time she was well nigh tired out, they took so long about it, and she had very few callers. The other Ducks preferred swimming about the moat to coming up and sitting under a dock-leaf to chat with her.
At last, one egg after another cracked, and said: "Pip! pip!" All the egg-yolks had come to life and were sticking their heads out.
"Quack, quack!" said she, and they said it too, as well as they could, and looked all round them beneath the green leaves; and their mother let them look as much as they liked, for green is good for the eyes.
"What a big place the world is," said all the young ones: for to be sure they had a great deal more room now than when they lay in the egg.
"Do you suppose this is all the world?" said their mother; "why, it stretches out far beyond the other side of the garden, right into the parson's field--but I've never been there. You're all there, I suppose?" and she got up. "No, that's not all; there lies the biggest egg still. How long will it take? I'm really almost sick of it," and with that she sat down again.
"Well, how goes it?" asked an elderly Duck who came to call on her. "Oh, this one egg takes a dreadful long time," said the sitting Duck; "it won't break. But just you look at the others! They are the sweetest Ducklings I've ever seen; they're all just like their wretch of a father, who never comes to see me."
"Let me look at the egg that won't hatch," said the old Duck; "you may be sure that's a turkey's egg. I was made a fool of once that way, and I had my share of trouble and anxiety with the young ones, I can tell you, for they are afraid of the water. I couldn't get them to go in! I quacked and I pecked, but it was no good. Let me see the egg. Ah, yes, that's a turkey's egg; you just let it lie and teach the rest to swim."
"Oh, I'll just sit on it a bit longer," said the Duck. "As I've sat so long, I may as well give it a Whitsun week!" "Just as you please," said the old Duck, and walked off.
At last the big egg opened. "Pip! pip!" said the young one, scrambling out; he was very big and ugly. The Duck looked at him: "That's a fearfully big Duckling, that is," she said. "None of the others look like that. I suppose it can't be a turkey poult! Well, we'll soon see; into the water he shall go, if I have to kick him out myself."
Next day the weather was perfectly delicious: the sun shone all over the green docks, and the mother Duck and all her family came out, and down to the moat. Splash! Into the water went she. "Quack, quack!" she said, and one Duckling after another plumped in. The water went over their heads, but they were up again in a moment and swam beautifully. Their legs worked of themselves, and now they were all out in the water, and even the ugly grey one was swimming with them. "No, no, that's no turkey," she said. "Look how nicely he uses his legs, and how well he holds himself up. That's my own child! He's really quite handsome if you look at him properly. Quack, quack! Come along with me and I'll take you out into the world and introduce you to the duck-yard, but mind and keep close to me so that nobody can tread on you, and do look out for the cat."
So they went into the duck-yard. There was a terrible commotion there, for two families were quarrelling over an eel's head--which the cat got after all.
"Look, that's the way the world goes," said the mother Duck--her beak watering a little, for she would have liked the eel's head herself. "Now then, use your legs," she said; "mind and look alive, and stoop your necks to the old Duck over there, she's the most distinguished person here; she's of Spanish descent, so she's something special, and you see she's got a red rag round her leg. That is an extraordinarily splendid thing, the greatest distinction any duck can have; it means that people can't do without her, and she must be recognized by animals and men alike. Now then, look alive! Don't turn your toes in! A duckling that's properly brought up keeps its legs wide apart, like father and mother. Look here! Now then! Make a bow and say quack."
So they did; but the other ducks round them looked at them and said, quite loud, "Look there! Now we've got to have all this mob on the top of us, as if there weren't enough of us already; and poof! what an object that duckling is! We can't stand him"; and a duck rushed at him and bit him in the neck.
"Let him be," said his mother; "he isn't doing any harm." "Yes, but he's too big and odd altogether," said the duck who had bitten him; "so he's got to be smacked."
"Those are pretty ducklings that mother has," said the old Duck with the rag on her leg; "all quite pretty except that one. He hasn't been a success; I could wish the mother would alter him."
"That can't be done, your grace," said the mother Duck. "He's not handsome, but he has a really good disposition, and swims as nicely as any of the rest, even better, I venture to say. I believe he will grow handsome, or perhaps in time he will grow even somewhat smaller; he has lain too long in the egg, and so has not acquired a proper shape." And she picked at his neck and smoothed him down. "Besides, he's a drake," she went on, "so it doesn't matter quite so much. He has, I believe, a good constitution and will win through in the end."
"The other ducklings are charming," said the old lady. "Well, make yourselves at home, and if you happen to find an eel's head, you can bring it to me."
So they made themselves at home: but the poor Duckling who had come last out of the egg and looked so ugly, was bitten and buffeted and made to look a fool by the hens and the ducks alike. "He's too big," they all said; and the turkey cock, who was born with spurs, and considered himself an emperor on the strength of it, blew himself up like a ship under full sail and went straight at the Duckling, gobbling and getting quite red in the head. The poor Duckling didn't know where to stay or which way to go, he was so miserable at being ugly and the butt of the whole duck-yard.
That was the first day, and as time went on it got worse and worse. The wretched Duckling was chased about by everybody, and even his mother and sisters were nasty to him, and kept saying: "I wish the cat would get you, you ugly devil." And his mother said: "I wish you'd get right away"; and the ducks bit him and the hens pecked him, and the maid who had to feed the creatures kicked at him. So he ran away, and flew over the fence. The little birds in the bushes shot up in the air in a fright. "That's because I'm so ugly," the Duckling thought, and shut his eyes, but ran on all the same, till he got out into the wide marsh where the wild-duck lived; and there he lay all night, for he was very tired and very unhappy.
In the morning the wild-duck flew up and caught sight of their new comrade. "What sort of a chap are you?" they asked; and the Duckling turned to this side and that and greeted them as well as he could. "You're precious ugly," said the wild-ducks; "but that doesn't matter to us as long as you don't marry into our family." Poor wretch! He wasn't thinking much about marrying, as long as he could be allowed to lie among the reeds, and drink a little marsh water. There he lay two whole days, and then came a pair of wild geese (or rather wild ganders, for they were both he's): they hadn't been hatched out very long, and so they were particularly lively. "Here, mate," they said, "you're so ugly I quite like you. Will you come along and be a migrant? Close by in another marsh there's some sweet pretty wild geese--all young ladies that can say Quack. You're so ugly you could make your fortune with them." At that moment there was a Bang! Bang! and both the wild geese fell dead among the reeds, and the water was stained blood red. Another bang! bang! and whole flights of geese flew up from the reeds, and there was yet another bang! a great shoot was afoot. The sportsmen were all round the marsh, some even sitting up among the branches of trees that stretched out over the reeds. The blue smoke drifted like clouds, in among the dark stems, and hung far out over the water. The dogs went splash! splash! into the mud, and the reeds and rushes swayed hither and thither; it was terrible for the wretched Duckling, who was bending his neck to get it under his wing, when all at once, close to him, there was a fearful big dog with his tongue hanging right out of his mouth and his eyes shining horribly. He thrust his muzzle right at the Duckling and showed his sharp teeth--and then--splash! Off he went without seizing him.
"Oh, thank goodness," sighed the Duckling; "I'm so ugly, even the dog doesn't like to bite me!" But there he lay perfectly still while the duck shots rattled in the reeds and gun after gun banged out. It was well on in the day before all was quiet, but the unhappy bird dared not get up even then. He waited several hours yet, before he looked about him, and then he hurried away from the marsh as fast as ever he could, running over fields and meadows, and such a wind got up that he had hard work to get along. Towards evening he was near a poor little cottage, so crazy was it that it didn't know which way to tumble down, so it remained standing. The wind howled so fiercely round the Duckling that he had to sit down on his tail to keep facing it, and it grew worse and worse. Then he noticed that one hinge of the door was gone, and it hung so crooked that he could slip indoors through the crack, and so he did.
Here lived an old woman with a cat and a hen. The cat, whom she called Sonny, could set up his fur and purr, and also throw out sparks, but for this he had to be stroked backwards. The Hen had very short little legs, and was consequently called "chicky short legs". She laid good eggs, and the woman was as fond of her as of a child of her own.
Next morning the strange Duckling was noticed at once, and the cat began to purr, and the Hen to cluck. "What's the matter?" said the old woman, looking all about her. But her sight wasn't good, so she took the Duckling for a fat duck that had strayed away. "That's a splendid catch," she said: "now I can have duck eggs, if only it isn't a drake! We must make sure of that." So the Duckling was taken in on approval for three weeks, but no eggs came.
The Cat was the gentleman of the house and the Hen the lady, and they always talked of "we and the world"; for they considered that they were half the world, and much the best half. It seemed to the Duckling that some people might think differently, but this the Hen could not tolerate.
"Can you lay eggs?" she asked. "No! Then will you kindly hold your tongue."
And the Cat said: "Can you put up your fur, or purr, or give out sparks? No! Then you've no call to have an opinion when sensible people are talking."
So the Duckling lay in a corner and was in the lowest spirits. He began to think of the fresh air and sunshine, and such a strange longing to swim in the water came on him that he could not help telling the Hen.
"What's the matter with you?" she asked. "You've nothing to do, that's why you get these fancies; you just lay some eggs, or purr, and they'll pass off." "But it is so delicious to float on the water," said the Duckling; "so lovely to get it over your head and dive right down to the bottom."
"Oh yes, most delightful, of course!" said the Hen. "Why, you're absolutely mad! Ask the Cat--he's the cleverest man I know--whether he enjoys floating on the water or diving down; I say nothing of myself. Why, ask your mistress, the old woman; there's no one in the world cleverer than her--do you suppose she wants to go swimming and getting the water over her head?"
"You don't understand me," said the Duckling.
"Well, if we don't understand you, who is going to understand you, pray? You'll never be cleverer than the Cat and the woman, to say nothing of me. Don't give yourself airs, child, but thank your Maker for all the kindness people have done you. Don't you live in a warm room among company you can learn something from? But there! You're a rubbishy thing, and there's little entertainment in your company. You may take it from me! I mean well by you, and I'm telling you home truths, and that's how people can see their true friends. Now just do take pains to lay eggs, or learn to purr or else give sparks."
"I think I'll go out into the wide world," said the Duckling.
"Very well, do," said the Hen.
So the Duckling went off and swam on the water and dived into it; but he was looked down upon by all the creatures because of his ugliness.
Autumn now came on: the leaves of the wood turned brown and yellow, the wind caught them and made them dance about, and above the sky looked cold, where the clouds hung heavy with hail and snow, and on the fence the raven perched and cried "Caw! Caw!" for the mere cold. Indeed, it regularly gave you the shivers to think of it. The unhappy Duckling had a very hard time.
One evening, when there was a lovely sunset, a whole flock of beautiful great birds rose out of the bushes. The Duckling had never seen any so handsome. They were brilliantly white, with long supple necks. They were swans, and they uttered a strange sound and spread their splendid long wings and flew far away from the cold region to warmer lands, and unfrozen lakes. They mounted so high, so high that the ugly little Duckling was strangely moved; he whirled himself round in the water like a wheel, he stretched his neck straight up into the air after them and uttered such a loud cry, so strange, that he was quite frightened at it himself. Oh, he could not forget those beautiful birds, those wonderful birds! And the moment they were out of sight he dived right down to the bottom of the water, and when he came up again he was almost beside himself. He didn't know what the birds were called or which way they were flying, but he loved them as he had never loved anything yet. He was not envious of them--how could it enter his mind to wish for such beauty for himself--he would have been happy if even the ducks had let him into their company--poor ugly creature.
The winter grew very very cold: the Duckling was obliged to swim about on the water to keep it from freezing quite over, but every night the hole he swam in became smaller and smaller. It froze so hard that the ice cracked again; the Duckling had always to be moving about to keep the water open, till at last he was tired out and sat still, and was frozen fast in the ice.
Early in the morning a labourer came that way, saw him, went on the ice and with his wooden shoe broke it up and carried the Duckling home to his wife, and there he was brought to life again. The children wanted to play with him, but he thought they meant to hurt him, and in his fright he dashed right into the milk-pan and made the milk splash out into the room. The woman screamed and threw up her hands. Then he flew into the butter-tub and after that into the meal-bin and out again. Goodness, what a sight he was! The woman screamed out and hit at him with the tongs, and the children tumbled over one another trying to catch him, laughing, calling out--by good luck the door stood open, and out he rushed into the bushes, on the new fallen snow, and there he lay almost in a swoon.
But it would be too sad to tell of all the hardships and miseries which he had to go through in that hard winter. When the sun began once more to shine out warm and the larks to sing, he was lying among the reeds in the marsh, and it was the beautiful spring. Then all at once he lifted his wings, and they rustled more strongly than before, and bore him swiftly away; and before he knew it he was in a spacious garden where were apple trees in blossom, and sweet-smelling lilacs hung on long green boughs right down to the winding moat. Oh, it was lovely here, and fresh with spring; and straight in front of him, out of the shadows, came three beautiful white swans with rustling plumage floating lightly on the water. The Duckling recognized the splendid creatures, and a strange sorrowfulness came over him.
"I will fly to them, these royal birds, and they will peck me to death because I, who am so ugly, dare to approach them; but it doesn't matter; it's better to be killed by them than to be snapped at by the ducks and pecked at by hens and kicked by the servant who looks after the poultry-yard, and suffer all the winter." So he flew out into the open water and swam towards the stately swans, and they saw him and hastened with swelling plumage to meet him. "Yes, kill me," the poor creature said, bowing his head down to the water, and waited for death. But what did he see in the clear water? He beheld his own image, but it was no longer that of a clumsy dark grey bird, ugly and repulsive. He was a swan himself.
It doesn't matter in the least whether you are born in the duck-yard, if only you've lain in a swan's egg.
It really delighted him now to think of all the hardships and adversities he had suffered, now he could rightly discern his good fortune and all the beauty that greeted him. The great swans swam round him and caressed him with their bills. Some little children now came into the garden and threw bread and corn into the water, and the smallest of them cried: "There's a new one!" And the others called out in delight: "Yes, there's a new one come!" They clapped their hands and danced about and ran to their father and mother. More bread and cake was thrown into the water, and everyone said: "The new one is the handsomest of all; how young and beautiful he is!" And the elder swans bowed before him.
At that he felt quite ill at ease, and covered his head with his wings, and knew not what to do. He was more than happy, and yet not proud, for a good heart is never puffed up. He thought how persecuted and depressed he had been, yet now he heard everyone saying he was the most beautiful of all beautiful birds. And the lilacs bowed their branches down to the water, and the sun shone warm and pleasant, and his plumage ruffled, and he raised his slender neck, and from his heart he said joyfully: "Such happiness I never dreamed of when I was the Ugly Duckling."
==THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA==
Once upon a time there was a Prince, and he wanted to get himself a Princess; but she must be a proper Princess. So he travelled all the world over to find one, but everywhere there was some obstacle. There were Princesses enough, but whether they were real proper princesses he could not be quite certain; there was always something not perfectly correct. So he came back home and was very much cast down, for he did so want to get a real princess.
One evening there was a terrible storm; it lightened and thundered and the rain poured down; it was quite fearful. There came a knock at the town gate and the old King went off to open it.
It was a Princess that was standing outsider but gracious! what a figure she was with the rain and bad weather! The water ran all down her hair and her clothes and in at the toes of her shoes and out at the heels; and she said she was a real Princess.
"Ah, we'll find that out right enough," thought the old Queen to herself, but she didn't say anything; she went into the bedroom, took all the clothes off the bed and laid one dried pea on the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on top of the pea, and then twenty eiderdowns on top of the mattresses, and there the Princess was to sleep that night.
In the morning they asked her how she had slept, "Oh, dreadfully badly," said the Princess; "I hardly closed my eyes the whole night! Goodness knows what there was in the bed! There was something hard I lay on that has made me black and blue all over! It's quite dreadful."
Then they could see that this was a proper Princess, since she had felt the pea through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eiderdowns. Nobody could possibly have such a tender skin but a real Princess.
So the Prince took her to wife, for now he knew that he had got a proper Princess; and the pea was put in the treasure chamber, where it is still to be seen, unless somebody has taken it away.
==THE LITTLE MERMAID==
Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could sound it, and many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects.
We must not imagine that there is nothing at the bottom of the sea but bare yellow sand. No, indeed, for on this sand grow the strangest flowers and plants, the leaves and stems of which are so pliant that the slightest agitation of the water causes them to stir as if they had life. Fishes, both large and small, glide between the branches as birds fly among the trees here upon land.
In the deepest spot of all stands the castle of the Sea King. Its walls are built of coral, and the long Gothic windows are of the clearest amber. The roof is formed of shells that open and close as the water flows over them. Their appearance is very beautiful, for in each lies a glittering pearl which would be fit for the diadem of a queen.
The Sea King had been a widower for many years, and his aged mother kept house for him. She was a very sensible woman, but exceedingly proud of her high birth, and on that account wore twelve oysters on her tail, while others of high rank were only allowed to wear six.
She was, however, deserving of very great praise, especially for her care of the little sea princesses, her six granddaughters. They were beautiful children, but the youngest was the prettiest of them all. Her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea; but, like all the others, she had no feet and her body ended in a fish's tail. All day long they played in the great halls of the castle or among the living flowers that grew out of the walls. The large amber windows were open, and the fish swam in, just as the swallows fly into our houses when we open the windows; only the fishes swam up to the princesses, ate out of their hands, and allowed themselves to be stroked.
Outside the castle there was a beautiful garden, in which grew bright-red and dark-blue flowers, and blossoms like flames of fire; the fruit glittered like gold, and the leaves and stems waved to and fro continually. The earth itself was the finest sand, but blue as the flame of burning sulphur. Over everything lay a peculiar blue radiance, as if the blue sky were everywhere, above and below, instead of the dark depths of the sea. In calm weather the sun could be seen, looking like a reddish-purple flower with light streaming from the calyx.
Each of the young princesses had a little plot of ground in the garden, where she might dig and plant as she pleased. One arranged her flower bed in the form of a whale; another preferred to make hers like the figure of a little mermaid; while the youngest child made hers round, like the sun, and in it grew flowers as red as his rays at sunset.
She was a strange child, quiet and thoughtful. While her sisters showed delight at the wonderful things which they obtained from the wrecks of vessels, she cared only for her pretty flowers, red like the sun, and a beautiful marble statue. It was the representation of a handsome boy, carved out of pure white stone, which had fallen to the bottom of the sea from a wreck.
She planted by the statue a rose-colored weeping willow. It grew rapidly and soon hung its fresh branches over the statue, almost down to the blue sands. The shadows had the color of violet and waved to and fro like the branches, so that it seemed as if the crown of the tree and the root were at play, trying to kiss each other.
Nothing gave her so much pleasure as to hear about the world above the sea. She made her old grandmother tell her all she knew of the ships and of the towns, the people and the animals. To her it seemed most wonderful and beautiful to hear that the flowers of the land had fragrance, while those below the sea had none; that the trees of the forest were green; and that the fishes among the trees could sing so sweetly that it was a pleasure to listen to them. Her grandmother called the birds fishes, or the little mermaid would not have understood what was meant, for she had never seen birds.
"When you have reached your fifteenth year," said the grandmother, "you will have permission to rise up out of the sea and sit on the rocks in the moonlight, while the great ships go sailing by. Then you will see both forests and towns."
In the following year, one of the sisters would be fifteen, but as each was a year younger than the other, the youngest would have to wait five years before her turn came to rise up from the bottom of the ocean to see the earth as we do. However, each promised to tell the others what she saw on her first visit and what she thought was most beautiful. Their grandmother could not tell them enough—there were so many things about which they wanted to know.
None of them longed so much for her turn to come as the youngest—she who had the longest time to wait and who was so quiet and thoughtful. Many nights she stood by the open window, looking up through the dark blue water and watching the fish as they splashed about with their fins and tails. She could see the moon and stars shining faintly, but through the water they looked larger than they do to our eyes. When something like a black cloud passed between her and them, she knew that it was either a whale swimming over her head, or a ship full of human beings who never imagined that a pretty little mermaid was standing beneath them, holding out her white hands towards the keel of their ship.
At length the eldest was fifteen and was allowed to rise to the surface of the ocean.
When she returned she had hundreds of things to talk about. But the finest thing, she said, was to lie on a sand bank in the quiet moonlit sea, near the shore, gazing at the lights of the near-by town, that twinkled like hundreds of stars, and listening to the sounds of music, the noise of carriages, the voices of human beings, and the merry pealing of the bells in the church steeples. Because she could not go near all these wonderful things, she longed for them all the more.
Oh, how eagerly did the youngest sister listen to all these descriptions! And afterwards, when she stood at the open window looking up through the dark-blue water, she thought of the great city, with all its bustle and noise, and even fancied she could hear the sound of the church bells down in the depths of the sea.
In another year the second sister received permission to rise to the surface of the water and to swim about where she pleased. She rose just as the sun was setting, and this, she said, was the most beautiful sight of all. The whole sky looked like gold, and violet and rose-colored clouds, which she could not describe, drifted across it. And more swiftly than the clouds, flew a large flock of wild swans toward the setting sun, like a long white veil across the sea. She also swam towards the sun, but it sank into the waves, and the rosy tints faded from the clouds and from the sea.
The third sister's turn followed, and she was the boldest of them all, for she swam up a broad river that emptied into the sea. On the banks she saw green hills covered with beautiful vines, and palaces and castles peeping out from amid the proud trees of the forest. She heard birds singing and felt the rays of the sun so strongly that she was obliged often to dive under the water to cool her burning face. In a narrow creek she found a large group of little human children, almost naked, sporting about in the water. She wanted to play with them, but they fled in a great fright; and then a little black animal—it was a dog, but she did not know it, for she had never seen one before—came to the water and barked at her so furiously that she became frightened and rushed back to the open sea. But she said she should never forget the beautiful forest, the green hills, and the pretty children who could swim in the water although they had no tails.
The fourth sister was more timid. She remained in the midst of the sea, but said it was quite as beautiful there as nearer the land. She could see many miles around her, and the sky above looked like a bell of glass. She had seen the ships, but at such a great distance that they looked like sea gulls. The dolphins sported in the waves, and the great whales spouted water from their nostrils till it seemed as if a hundred fountains were playing in every direction.
The fifth sister's birthday occurred in the winter, so when her turn came she saw what the others had not seen the first time they went up. The sea looked quite green, and large icebergs were floating about, each like a pearl, she said, but larger and loftier than the churches built by men. They were of the most singular shapes and glittered like diamonds. She had seated herself on one of the largest and let the wind play with her long hair. She noticed that all the ships sailed past very rapidly, steering as far away as they could, as if they were afraid of the iceberg. Towards evening, as the sun went down, dark clouds covered the sky, the thunder rolled, and the flashes of lightning glowed red on the icebergs as they were tossed about by the heaving sea. On all the ships the sails were reefed with fear and trembling, while she sat on the floating iceberg, calmly watching the lightning as it darted its forked flashes into the sea.
Each of the sisters, when first she had permission to rise to the surface, was delighted with the new and beautiful sights. Now that they were grown-up girls and could go when they pleased, they had become quite indifferent about it. They soon wished themselves back again, and after a month had passed they said it was much more beautiful down below and pleasanter to be at home.
Yet often, in the evening hours, the five sisters would twine their arms about each other and rise to the surface together. Their voices were more charming than that of any human being, and before the approach of a storm, when they feared that a ship might be lost, they swam before the vessel, singing enchanting songs of the delights to be found in the depths of the sea and begging the voyagers not to fear if they sank to the bottom. But the sailors could not understand the song and thought it was the sighing of the storm. These things were never beautiful to them, for if the ship sank, the men were drowned and their dead bodies alone reached the palace of the Sea King.
When the sisters rose, arm in arm, through the water, their youngest sister would stand quite alone, looking after them, ready to cry—only, since mermaids have no tears, she suffered more acutely.
"Oh, were I but fifteen years old!" said she. "I know that I shall love the world up there, and all the people who live in it."
At last she reached her fifteenth year.
"Well, now you are grown up," said the old dowager, her grandmother. "Come, and let me adorn you like your sisters." And she placed in her hair a wreath of white lilies, of which every flower leaf was half a pearl. Then the old lady ordered eight great oysters to attach themselves to the tail of the princess to show her high rank.
"But they hurt me so," said the little mermaid.
"Yes, I know; pride must suffer pain," replied the old lady.
Oh, how gladly she would have shaken off all this grandeur and laid aside the heavy wreath! The red flowers in her own garden would have suited her much better. But she could not change herself, so she said farewell and rose as lightly as a bubble to the surface of the water.
The sun had just set when she raised her head above the waves. The clouds were tinted with crimson and gold, and through the glimmering twilight beamed the evening star in all its beauty. The sea was calm, and the air mild and fresh. A large ship with three masts lay becalmed on the water; only one sail was set, for not a breeze stirred, and the sailors sat idle on deck or amidst the rigging. There was music and song on board, and as darkness came on, a hundred colored lanterns were lighted, as if the flags of all nations waved in the air.
The little mermaid swam close to the cabin windows, and now and then, as the waves lifted her up, she could look in through glass window-panes and see a number of gayly dressed people.
Among them, and the most beautiful of all, was a young prince with large, black eyes. He was sixteen years of age, and his birthday was being celebrated with great display. The sailors were dancing on deck, and when the prince came out of the cabin, more than a hundred rockets rose in the air, making it as bright as day. The little mermaid was so startled that she dived under water, and when she again stretched out her head, it looked as if all the stars of heaven were falling around her.
She had never seen such fireworks before. Great suns spurted fire about, splendid fireflies flew into the blue air, and everything was reflected in the clear, calm sea beneath. The ship itself was so brightly illuminated that all the people, and even the smallest rope, could be distinctly seen. How handsome the young prince looked, as he pressed the hands of all his guests and smiled at them, while the music resounded through the clear night air!
It was very late, yet the little mermaid could not take her eyes from the ship or from the beautiful prince. The colored lanterns had been extinguished, no more rockets rose in the air, and the cannon had ceased firing; but the sea became restless, and a moaning, grumbling sound could be heard beneath the waves. Still the little mermaid remained by the cabin window, rocking up and down on the water, so that she could look within. After a while the sails were quickly set, and the ship went on her way. But soon the waves rose higher, heavy clouds darkened the sky, and lightning appeared in the distance. A dreadful storm was approaching. Once more the sails were furled, and the great ship pursued her flying course over the raging sea. The waves rose mountain high, as if they would overtop the mast, but the ship dived like a swan between them, then rose again on their lofty, foaming crests. To the little mermaid this was pleasant sport; but not so to the sailors. At length the ship groaned and creaked; the thick planks gave way under the lashing of the sea, as the waves broke over the deck; the mainmast snapped asunder like a reed, and as the ship lay over on her side, the water rushed in.
The little mermaid now perceived that the crew were in danger; even she was obliged to be careful, to avoid the beams and planks of the wreck which lay scattered on the water. At one moment it was pitch dark so that she could not see a single object, but when a flash of lightning came it revealed the whole scene; she could see every one who had been on board except the prince. When the ship parted, she had seen him sink into the deep waves, and she was glad, for she thought he would now be with her. Then she remembered that human beings could not live in the water, so that when he got down to her father's palace he would certainly be quite dead.
No, he must not die! So she swam about among the beams and planks which strewed the surface of the sea, forgetting that they could crush her to pieces. Diving deep under the dark waters, rising and falling with the waves, she at length managed to reach the young prince, who was fast losing the power to swim in that stormy sea. His limbs were failing him, his beautiful eyes were closed, and he would have died had not the little mermaid come to his assistance. She held his head above the water and let the waves carry them where they would.
In the morning the storm had ceased, but of the ship not a single fragment could be seen. The sun came up red and shining out of the water, and its beams brought back the hue of health to the prince's cheeks, but his eyes remained closed. The mermaid kissed his high, smooth forehead and stroked back his wet hair. He seemed to her like the marble statue in her little garden, so she kissed him again and wished that he might live.
Presently they came in sight of land, and she saw lofty blue mountains on which the white snow rested as if a flock of swans were lying upon them. Beautiful green forests were near the shore, and close by stood a large building, whether a church or a convent she could not tell. Orange and citron trees grew in the garden, and before the door stood lofty palms. The sea here formed a little bay, in which the water lay quiet and still, but very deep. She swam with the handsome prince to the beach, which was covered with fine white sand, and there she laid him in the warm sunshine, taking care to raise his head higher than his body. Then bells sounded in the large white building, and some young girls came into the garden. The little mermaid swam out farther from the shore and hid herself among some high rocks that rose out of the water. Covering her head and neck with the foam of the sea, she watched there to see what would become of the poor prince.
It was not long before she saw a young girl approach the spot where the prince lay. She seemed frightened at first, but only for a moment; then she brought a number of people, and the mermaid saw that the prince came to life again and smiled upon those who stood about him. But to her he sent no smile; he knew not that she had saved him. This made her very sorrowful, and when he was led away into the great building, she dived down into the water and returned to her father's castle.
She had always been silent and thoughtful, and now she was more so than ever. Her sisters asked her what she had seen during her first visit to the surface of the water, but she could tell them nothing. Many an evening and morning did she rise to the place where she had left the prince. She saw the fruits in the garden ripen and watched them gathered; she watched the snow on the mountain tops melt away; but never did she see the prince, and therefore she always returned home more sorrowful than before.
It was her only comfort to sit in her own little garden and fling her arm around the beautiful marble statue, which was like the prince. She gave up tending her flowers, and they grew in wild confusion over the paths, twining their long leaves and stems round the branches of the trees so that the whole place became dark and gloomy.
At length she could bear it no longer and told one of her sisters all about it. Then the others heard the secret, and very soon it became known to several mermaids, one of whom had an intimate friend who happened to know about the prince. She had also seen the festival on board ship, and she told them where the prince came from and where his palace stood.
"Come, little sister," said the other princesses. Then they entwined their arms and rose together to the surface of the water, near the spot where they knew the prince's palace stood. It was built of bright-yellow, shining stone and had long flights of marble steps, one of which reached quite down to the sea. Splendid gilded cupolas rose over the roof, and between the pillars that surrounded the whole building stood lifelike statues of marble. Through the clear crystal of the lofty windows could be seen noble rooms, with costly silk curtains and hangings of tapestry and walls covered with beautiful paintings. In the center of the largest salon a fountain threw its sparkling jets high up into the glass cupola of the ceiling, through which the sun shone in upon the water and upon the beautiful plants that grew in the basin of the fountain.
Now that the little mermaid knew where the prince lived, she spent many an evening and many a night on the water near the palace. She would swim much nearer the shore than any of the others had ventured, and once she went up the narrow channel under the marble balcony, which threw a broad shadow on the water. Here she sat and watched the young prince, who thought himself alone in the bright moonlight.
She often saw him evenings, sailing in a beautiful boat on which music sounded and flags waved. She peeped out from among the green rushes, and if the wind caught her long silvery-white veil, those who saw it believed it to be a swan, spreading out its wings.
Many a night, too, when the fishermen set their nets by the light of their torches, she heard them relate many good things about the young prince. And this made her glad that she had saved his life when he was tossed about half dead on the waves. She remembered how his head had rested on her bosom and how heartily she had kissed him, but he knew nothing of all this and could not even dream of her.
She grew more and more to like human beings and wished more and more to be able to wander about with those whose world seemed to be so much larger than her own. They could fly over the sea in ships and mount the high hills which were far above the clouds; and the lands they possessed, their woods and their fields, stretched far away beyond the reach of her sight. There was so much that she wished to know! but her sisters were unable to answer all her questions. She then went to her old grandmother, who knew all about the upper world, which she rightly called "the lands above the sea."
"If human beings are not drowned," asked the little mermaid, "can they live forever? Do they never die, as we do here in the sea?"
"Yes," replied the old lady, "they must also die, and their term of life is even shorter than ours. We sometimes live for three hundred years, but when we cease to exist here, we become only foam on the surface of the water and have not even a grave among those we love. We have not immortal souls, we shall never live again; like the green seaweed when once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more. Human beings, on the contrary, have souls which live forever, even after the body has been turned to dust. They rise up through the clear, pure air, beyond the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water and behold all the land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see."
"Why have not we immortal souls?" asked the little mermaid, mournfully. "I would gladly give all the hundreds of years that I have to live, to be a human being only for one day and to have the hope of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars."
"You must not think that," said the old woman. "We believe that we are much happier and much better off than human beings."
"So I shall die," said the little mermaid, "and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about, never again to hear the music of the waves or to see the pretty flowers or the red sun? Is there anything I can do to win an immortal soul?"
"No," said the old woman; "unless a man should love you so much that you were more to him than his father or his mother, and if all his thoughts and all his love were fixed upon you, and the priest placed his right hand in yours, and he promised to be true to you here and hereafter—then his soul would glide into your body, and you would obtain a share in the future happiness of mankind. He would give to you a soul and retain his own as well; but this can never happen. Your fish's tail, which among us is considered so beautiful, on earth is thought to be quite ugly. They do not know any better, and they think it necessary, in order to be handsome, to have two stout props, which they call legs."
Then the little mermaid sighed and looked sorrowfully at her fish's tail. "Let us be happy," said the old lady, "and dart and spring about during the three hundred years that we have to live, which is really quite long enough. After that we can rest ourselves all the better. This evening we are going to have a court ball."
It was one of those splendid sights which we can never see on earth. The walls and the ceiling of the large ballroom were of thick but transparent crystal. Many hundreds of colossal shells,—some of a deep red, others of a grass green,—with blue fire in them, stood in rows on each side. These lighted up the whole salon, and shone through the walls so that the sea was also illuminated. Innumerable fishes, great and small, swam past the crystal walls; on some of them the scales glowed with a purple brilliance, and on others shone like silver and gold. Through the halls flowed a broad stream, and in it danced the mermen and the mermaids to the music of their own sweet singing.
No one on earth has such lovely voices as they, but the little mermaid sang more sweetly than all. The whole court applauded her with hands and tails, and for a moment her heart felt quite gay, for she knew she had the sweetest voice either on earth or in the sea. But soon she thought again of the world above her; she could not forget the charming prince, nor her sorrow that she had not an immortal soul like his. She crept away silently out of her father's palace, and while everything within was gladness and song, she sat in her own little garden, sorrowful and alone. Then she heard the bugle sounding through the water and thought: "He is certainly sailing above, he in whom my wishes center and in whose hands I should like to place the happiness of my life. I will venture all for him and to win an immortal soul. While my sisters are dancing in my father's palace I will go to the sea witch, of whom I have always been so much afraid; she can give me counsel and help."
Then the little mermaid went out from her garden and took the road to the foaming whirlpools, behind which the sorceress lived. She had never been that way before. Neither flowers nor grass grew there; nothing but bare, gray, sandy ground stretched out to the whirlpool, where the water, like foaming mill wheels, seized everything that came within its reach and cast it into the fathomless deep. Through the midst of these crushing whirlpools the little mermaid was obliged to pass before she could reach the dominions of the sea witch. Then, for a long distance, the road lay across a stretch of warm, bubbling mire, called by the witch her turf moor.
Beyond this was the witch's house, which stood in the center of a strange forest, where all the trees and flowers were polypi, half animals and half plants. They looked like serpents with a hundred heads, growing out of the ground. The branches were long, slimy arms, with fingers like flexible worms, moving limb after limb from the root to the top. All that could be reached in the sea they seized upon and held fast, so that it never escaped from their clutches.
The little mermaid was so alarmed at what she saw that she stood still and her heart beat with fear. She came very near turning back, but she thought of the prince and of the human soul for which she longed, and her courage returned. She fastened her long, flowing hair round her head, so that the polypi should not lay hold of it. She crossed her hands on her bosom, and then darted forward as a fish shoots through the water, between the supple arms and fingers of the ugly polypi, which were stretched out on each side of her. She saw that they all held in their grasp something they had seized with their numerous little arms, which were as strong as iron bands. Tightly grasped in their clinging arms were white skeletons of human beings who had perished at sea and had sunk down into the deep waters; skeletons of land animals; and oars, rudders, and chests, of ships. There was even a little mermaid whom they had caught and strangled, and this seemed the most shocking of all to the little princess.
She now came to a space of marshy ground in the wood, where large, fat water snakes were rolling in the mire and showing their ugly, drab-colored bodies. In the midst of this spot stood a house, built of the bones of shipwrecked human beings. There sat the sea witch, allowing a toad to eat from her mouth just as people sometimes feed a canary with pieces of sugar. She called the ugly water snakes her little chickens and allowed them to crawl all over her bosom.
"I know what you want," said the sea witch. "It is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, though it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. You want to get rid of your fish's tail and to have two supports instead, like human beings on earth, so that the young prince may fall in love with you and so that you may have an immortal soul." And then the witch laughed so loud and so disgustingly that the toad and the snakes fell to the ground and lay there wriggling.
"You are but just in time," said the witch, "for after sunrise to-morrow I should not be able to help you till the end of another year. I will prepare a draft for you, with which you must swim to land to-morrow before sunrise; seat yourself there and drink it. Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what men call legs.
"You will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly. Every step you take, however, will be as if you were treading upon sharp knives and as if the blood must flow. If you will bear all this, I will help you."
"Yes, I will," said the little princess in a trembling voice, as she thought of the prince and the immortal soul.
"But think again," said the witch, "for when once your shape has become like a human being, you can no more be a mermaid. You will never return through the water to your sisters or to your father's palace again. And if you do not win the love of the prince, so that he is willing to forget his father and mother for your sake and to love you with his whole soul and allow the priest to join your hands that you may be man and wife, then you will never have an immortal soul. The first morning after he marries another, your heart will break and you will become foam on the crest of the waves."
"I will do it," said the little mermaid, and she became pale as death.
"But I must be paid, also," said the witch, "and it is not a trifle that I ask. You have the sweetest voice of any who dwell here in the depths of the sea, and you believe that you will be able to charm the prince with it. But this voice you must give to me. The best thing you possess will I have as the price of my costly draft, which must be mixed with my own blood so that it may be as sharp as a two-edged sword."
"But if you take away my voice," said the little mermaid, "what is left for me?"
"Your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes. Surely with these you can enchain a man's heart. Well, have you lost your courage? Put out your little tongue, that I may cut it off as my payment; then you shall have the powerful draft."
"It shall be," said the little mermaid.
Then the witch placed her caldron on the fire, to prepare the magic draft.
"Cleanliness is a good thing," said she, scouring the vessel with snakes which she had tied together in a large knot. Then she pricked herself in the breast and let the black blood drop into the caldron. The steam that rose twisted itself into such horrible shapes that no one could look at them without fear. Every moment the witch threw a new ingredient into the vessel, and when it began to boil, the sound was like the weeping of a crocodile. When at last the magic draft was ready, it looked like the clearest water.
"There it is for you," said the witch. Then she cut off the mermaid's tongue, so that she would never again speak or sing. "If the polypi should seize you as you return through the wood," said the witch, "throw over them a few drops of the potion, and their fingers will be torn into a thousand pieces." But the little mermaid had no occasion to do this, for the polypi sprang back in terror when they caught sight of the glittering draft, which shone in her hand like a twinkling star.
So she passed quickly through the wood and the marsh and between the rushing whirlpools. She saw that in her father's palace the torches in the ballroom were extinguished and that all within were asleep. But she did not venture to go in to them, for now that she was dumb and going to leave them forever she felt as if her heart would break. She stole into the garden, took a flower from the flower bed of each of her sisters, kissed her hand towards the palace a thousand times, and then rose up through the dark-blue waters.
The sun had not risen when she came in sight of the prince's palace and approached the beautiful marble steps, but the moon shone clear and bright. Then the little mermaid drank the magic draft, and it seemed as if a two-edged sword went through her delicate body. She fell into a swoon and lay like one dead. When the sun rose and shone over the sea, she recovered and felt a sharp pain, but before her stood the handsome young prince.
He fixed his coal-black eyes upon her so earnestly that she cast down her own and then became aware that her fish's tail was gone and that she had as pretty a pair of white legs and tiny feet as any little maiden could have. But she had no clothes, so she wrapped herself in her long, thick hair. The prince asked her who she was and whence she came. She looked at him mildly and sorrowfully with her deep blue eyes, but could not speak. He took her by the hand and led her to the palace.
Every step she took was as the witch had said it would be; she felt as if she were treading upon the points of needles or sharp knives. She bore it willingly, however, and moved at the prince's side as lightly as a bubble, so that he and all who saw her wondered at her graceful, swaying movements. She was very soon arrayed in costly robes of silk and muslin and was the most beautiful creature in the palace; but she was dumb and could neither speak nor sing. Beautiful female slaves, dressed in silk and gold, stepped forward and sang before the prince and his royal parents. One sang better than all the others, and the prince clapped his hands and smiled at her. This was a great sorrow to the little mermaid, for she knew how much more sweetly she herself once could sing, and she thought, "Oh, if he could only know that I have given away my voice forever, to be with him!" The slaves next performed some pretty fairy-like dances, to the sound of beautiful music. Then the little mermaid raised her lovely white arms, stood on the tips of her toes, glided over the floor, and danced as no one yet had been able to dance. At each moment her beauty was more revealed, and her expressive eyes appealed more directly to the heart than the songs of the slaves. Every one was enchanted, especially the prince, who called her his little foundling. She danced again quite readily, to please him, though each time her foot touched the floor it seemed as if she trod on sharp knives. The prince said she should remain with him always, and she was given permission to sleep at his door, on a velvet cushion. He had a page's dress made for her, that she might accompany him on horseback. They rode together through the sweet-scented woods, where the green boughs touched their shoulders, and the little birds sang among the fresh leaves. She climbed with him to the tops of high mountains, and although her tender feet bled so that even her steps were marked, she only smiled, and followed him till they could see the clouds beneath them like a flock of birds flying to distant lands. While at the prince's palace, and when all the household were asleep, she would go and sit on the broad marble steps, for it eased her burning feet to bathe them in the cold sea water. It was then that she thought of all those below in the deep.
Once during the night her sisters came up arm in arm, singing sorrowfully as they floated on the water. She beckoned to them, and they recognized her and told her how she had grieved them; after that, they came to the same place every night. Once she saw in the distance her old grandmother, who had not been to the surface of the sea for many years, and the old Sea King, her father, with his crown on his head. They stretched out their hands towards her, but did not venture so near the land as her sisters had.
As the days passed she loved the prince more dearly, and he loved her as one would love a little child. The thought never came to him to make her his wife. Yet unless he married her, she could not receive an immortal soul, and on the morning after his marriage with another, she would dissolve into the foam of the sea.
"Do you not love me the best of them all?" the eyes of the little mermaid seemed to say when he took her in his arms and kissed her fair forehead.
"Yes, you are dear to me," said the prince, "for you have the best heart and you are the most devoted to me. You are like a young maiden whom I once saw, but whom I shall never meet again. I was in a ship that was wrecked, and the waves cast me ashore near a holy temple where several young maidens performed the service. The youngest of them found me on the shore and saved my life. I saw her but twice, and she is the only one in the world whom I could love. But you are like her, and you have almost driven her image from my mind. She belongs to the holy temple, and good fortune has sent you to me in her stead. We will never part.
"Ah, he knows not that it was I who saved his life," thought the little mermaid. "I carried him over the sea to the wood where the temple stands; I sat beneath the foam and watched till the human beings came to help him. I saw the pretty maiden that he loves better than he loves me." The mermaid sighed deeply, but she could not weep. "He says the maiden belongs to the holy temple, therefore she will never return to the world—they will meet no more. I am by his side and see him every day. I will take care of him, and love him, and give up my life for his sake." Very soon it was said that the prince was to marry and that the beautiful daughter of a neighboring king would be his wife, for a fine ship was being fitted out. Although the prince gave out that he intended merely to pay a visit to the king, it was generally supposed that he went to court the princess. A great company were to go with him. The little mermaid smiled and shook her head. She knew the prince's thoughts better than any of the others. "I must travel," he had said to her; "I must see this beautiful princess. My parents desire it, but they will not oblige me to bring her home as my bride. I cannot love her, because she is not like the beautiful maiden in the temple, whom you resemble. If I were forced to choose a bride, I would choose you, my dumb foundling, with those expressive eyes." Then he kissed her rosy mouth, played with her long, waving hair, and laid his head on her heart, while she dreamed of human happiness and an immortal soul. "You are not afraid of the sea, my dumb child, are you?" he said, as they stood on the deck of the noble ship which was to carry them to the country of the neighboring king. Then he told her of storm and of calm, of strange fishes in the deep beneath them, and of what the divers had seen there. She smiled at his descriptions, for she knew better than any one what wonders were at the bottom of the sea. In the moonlight night, when all on board were asleep except the man at the helm, she sat on deck, gazing down through the clear water. She thought she could distinguish her father's castle, and upon it her aged grandmother, with the silver crown on her head, looking through the rushing tide at the keel of the vessel. Then her sisters came up on the waves and gazed at her mournfully, wringing their white hands. She beckoned to them, and smiled, and wanted to tell them how happy and well off she was. But the cabin boy approached, and when her sisters dived down, he thought what he saw was only the foam of the sea.
The next morning the ship sailed into the harbor of a beautiful town belonging to the king whom the prince was going to visit. The church bells were ringing, and from the high towers sounded a flourish of trumpets. Soldiers, with flying colors and glittering bayonets, lined the roads through which they passed. Every day was a festival, balls and entertainments following one another. But the princess had not yet appeared. People said that she had been brought up and educated in a religious house, where she was learning every royal virtue.
At last she came. Then the little mermaid, who was anxious to see whether she was really beautiful, was obliged to admit that she had never seen a more perfect vision of beauty. Her skin was delicately fair, and beneath her long, dark eyelashes her laughing blue eyes shone with truth and purity.
"It was you," said the prince, "who saved my life when I lay as if dead on the beach," and he folded his blushing bride in his arms.
"Oh, I am too happy!" said he to the little mermaid; "my fondest hopes are now fulfilled. You will rejoice at my happiness, for your devotion to me is great and sincere."
The little mermaid kissed his hand and felt as if her heart were already broken. His wedding morning would bring death to her, and she would change into the foam of the sea.
All the church bells rang, and the heralds rode through the town proclaiming the betrothal. Perfumed oil was burned in costly silver lamps on every altar. The priests waved the censers, while the bride and the bridegroom joined their hands and received the blessing of the bishop. The little mermaid, dressed in silk and gold, held up the bride's train; but her ears heard nothing of the festive music, and her eyes saw not the holy ceremony. She thought of the night of death which was coming to her, and of all she had lost in the world.
On the same evening the bride and bridegroom went on board the ship. Cannons were roaring, flags waving, and in the center of the ship a costly tent of purple and gold had been erected. It contained elegant sleeping couches for the bridal pair during the night. The ship, under a favorable wind, with swelling sails, glided away smoothly and lightly over the calm sea.
When it grew dark, a number of colored lamps were lighted and the sailors danced merrily on the deck. The little mermaid could not help thinking of her first rising out of the sea, when she had seen similar joyful festivities, so she too joined in the dance, poised herself in the air as a swallow when he pursues his prey, and all present cheered her wonderingly. She had never danced so gracefully before. Her tender feet felt as if cut with sharp knives, but she cared not for the pain; a sharper pang had pierced her heart.
She knew this was the last evening she should ever see the prince for whom she had forsaken her kindred and her home. She had given up her beautiful voice and suffered unheard-of pain daily for him, while he knew nothing of it. This was the last evening that she should breathe the same air with him or gaze on the starry sky and the deep sea. An eternal night, without a thought or a dream, awaited her. She had no soul, and now could never win one.
All was joy and gaiety on the ship until long after midnight. She smiled and danced with the rest, while the thought of death was in her heart. The prince kissed his beautiful bride and she played with his raven hair till they went arm in arm to rest in the sumptuous tent. Then all became still on board the ship, and only the pilot, who stood at the helm, was awake. The little mermaid leaned her white arms on the edge of the vessel and looked towards the east for the first blush of morning—for that first ray of the dawn which was to be her death. She saw her sisters rising out of the flood. They were as pale as she, but their beautiful hair no longer waved in the wind; it had been cut off.
"We have given our hair to the witch," said they, "to obtain help for you, that you may not die to-night. She has given us a knife; see, it is very sharp. Before the sun rises you must plunge it into the heart of the prince. When the warm blood falls upon your feet they will grow together again into a fish's tail, and you will once more be a mermaid and can return to us to live out your three hundred years before you are changed into the salt sea foam. Haste, then; either he or you must die before sunrise. Our old grandmother mourns so for you that her white hair is falling, as ours fell under the witch's scissors. Kill the prince, and come back. Hasten! Do you not see the first red streaks in the sky? In a few minutes the sun will rise, and you must die."
Then they sighed deeply and mournfully, and sank beneath the waves.
The little mermaid drew back the crimson curtain of the tent and beheld the fair bride, whose head was resting on the prince's breast. She bent down and kissed his noble brow, then looked at the sky, on which the rosy dawn grew brighter and brighter. She glanced at the sharp knife and again fixed her eyes on the prince, who whispered the name of his bride in his dreams.
She was in his thoughts, and the knife trembled in the hand of the little mermaid—but she flung it far from her into the waves. The water turned red where it fell, and the drops that spurted up looked like blood. She cast one more lingering, half-fainting glance at the prince, then threw herself from the ship into the sea and felt her body dissolving into foam.
The sun rose above the waves, and his warm rays fell on the cold foam of the little mermaid, who did not feel as if she were dying. She saw the bright sun, and hundreds of transparent, beautiful creatures floating around her—she could see through them the white sails of the ships and the red clouds in the sky. Their speech was melodious, but could not be heard by mortal ears—just as their bodies could not be seen by mortal eyes. The little mermaid perceived that she had a body like theirs and that she continued to rise higher and higher out of the foam. "Where am I?" asked she, and her voice sounded ethereal, like the voices of those who were with her. No earthly music could imitate it.
"Among the daughters of the air," answered one of them. "A mermaid has not an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she wins the love of a human being. On the will of another hangs her eternal destiny. But the daughters of the air, although they do not possess an immortal soul, can, by their good deeds, procure one for themselves. We fly to warm countries and cool the sultry air that destroys mankind with the pestilence. We carry the perfume of the flowers to spread health and restoration.
"After we have striven for three hundred years to do all the good in our power, we receive an immortal soul and take part in the happiness of mankind. You, poor little mermaid, have tried with your whole heart to do as we are doing. You have suffered and endured, and raised yourself to the spirit world by your good deeds, and now, by striving for three hundred years in the same way, you may obtain an immortal soul."
The little mermaid lifted her glorified eyes toward the sun and, for the first time, felt them filling with tears.
On the ship in which she had left the prince there were life and noise, and she saw him and his beautiful bride searching for her. Sorrowfully they gazed at the pearly foam, as if they knew she had thrown herself into the waves. Unseen she kissed the forehead of the bride and fanned the prince, and then mounted with the other children of the air to a rosy cloud that floated above.
"After three hundred years, thus shall we float into the kingdom of heaven," said she. "And we may even get there sooner," whispered one of her companions. "Unseen we can enter the houses of men where there are children, and for every day on which we find a good child that is the joy of his parents and deserves their love, our time of probation is shortened. The child does not know, when we fly through the room, that we smile with joy at his good conduct—for we can count one year less of our three hundred years. But when we see a naughty or a wicked child we shed tears of sorrow, and for every tear a day is added to our time of trial."
LITTLE THUMBELINA
THERE was once a woman who wished very much to have a little child. She went to a fairy and said: "I should so very much like to have a little child. Can you tell me where I can find one?"
"Oh, that can be easily managed," said the fairy. "Here is a barleycorn; it is not exactly of the same sort as those which grow in the farmers' fields, and which the chickens eat. Put it into a flowerpot and see what will happen."
"Thank you," said the woman; and she gave the fairy twelve shillings, which was the price of the barleycorn. Then she went home and planted it, and there grew up a large, handsome flower, somewhat like a tulip in appearance, but with its leaves tightly closed, as if it were still a bud.
"It is a beautiful flower," said the woman, and she kissed the red and golden-colored petals; and as she did so the flower opened, and she could see that it was a real tulip. But within the flower, upon the green velvet stamens, sat a very delicate and graceful little maiden. She was scarcely half as long as a thumb, and they gave her the name of Little Thumb, or Thumbelina, because she was so small.
A walnut shell, elegantly polished, served her for a cradle; her bed was formed of blue violet leaves, with a rose leaf for a counterpane. Here she slept at night, but during the day she amused herself on a table, where the peasant wife had placed a plate full of water.
Round this plate were wreaths of flowers with their stems in the water, and upon it floated a large tulip leaf, which served the little one for a boat. Here she sat and rowed herself from side to side, with two oars made of white horsehair. It was a very pretty sight. Thumbelina could also sing so softly and sweetly that nothing like her singing had ever before been heard.
One night, while she lay in her pretty bed, a large, ugly, wet toad crept through a broken pane of glass in the window and leaped right upon the table where she lay sleeping under her rose-leaf quilt.
"What a pretty little wife this would make for my son," said the toad, and she took up the walnut shell in which Thumbelina lay asleep, and jumped through the window with it, into the garden.
In the swampy margin of a broad stream in the garden lived the toad with her son. He was uglier even than his mother; and when he saw the pretty little maiden in her elegant bed, he could only cry "Croak, croak, croak."
"Don't speak so loud, or she will wake," said the toad, "and then she might run away, for she is as light as swan's-down. We will place her on one of the water-lily leaves out in the stream; it will be like an island to her, she is so light and small, and then she cannot escape; and while she is there we will make haste and prepare the stateroom under the marsh, in which you are to live when you are married."
Far out in the stream grew a number of water lilies with broad green leaves which seemed to float on the top of the water. The largest of these leaves appeared farther off than the rest, and the old toad swam out to it with the walnut shell, in which Thumbelina still lay asleep.
The tiny creature woke very early in the morning and began to cry bitterly when she found where she was, for she could see nothing but water on every side of the large green leaf, and no way of reaching the land.
Meanwhile the old toad was very busy under the marsh, decking her room with rushes and yellow wildflowers, to make it look pretty for her new daughter-in-law. Then she swam out with her ugly son to the leaf on which she had placed poor Thumbelina. She wanted to bring the pretty bed, that she might put it in the bridal chamber to be ready for her. The old toad bowed low to her in the water and said, "Here is my son; he will be your husband, and you will live happily together in the marsh by the stream."
"Croak, croak, croak," was all her son could say for himself. So the toad took up the elegant little bed and swam away with it, leaving Thumbelina all alone on the green leaf, where she sat and wept. She could not bear to think of living with the old toad and having her ugly son for a husband. The little fishes who swam about in the water beneath had seen the toad and heard what she said, so now they lifted their heads above the water to look at the little maiden.
As soon as they caught sight of her they saw she was very pretty, and it vexed them to think that she must go and live with the ugly toads.
"No, it must never be!" So they gathered together in the water, round the green stalk which held the leaf on which the little maiden stood, and gnawed it away at the root with their teeth. Then the leaf floated down the stream, carrying Thumbelina far away out of reach of land.
Thumbelina sailed past many towns, and the little birds in the bushes saw her and sang, "What a lovely little creature." So the leaf swam away with her farther and farther, till it brought her to other lands. A graceful little white butterfly constantly fluttered round her and at last alighted on the leaf. The little maiden pleased him, and she was glad of it, for now the toad could not possibly reach her, and the country through which she sailed was beautiful, and the sun shone upon the water till it glittered like liquid gold. She took off her girdle and tied one end of it round the butterfly, fastening the other end of the ribbon to the leaf, which now glided on much faster than before, taking Thumbelina with it as she stood.
Presently a large cockchafer flew by. The moment he caught sight of her he seized her round her delicate waist with his claws and flew with her into a tree. The green leaf floated away on the brook, and the butterfly flew with it, for he was fastened to it and could not get away.
Oh, how frightened Thumbelina felt when the cockchafer flew with her to the tree! But especially was she sorry for the beautiful white butterfly which she had fastened to the leaf, for if he could not free himself he would die of hunger. But the cockchafer did not trouble himself at all about the matter. He seated himself by her side, on a large green leaf, gave her some honey from the flowers to eat, and told her she was very pretty, though not in the least like a cockchafer.
After a time all the cockchafers who lived in the tree came to pay Thumbelina a visit. They stared at her, and then the young lady cockchafers turned up their feelers and said, "She has only two legs! how ugly that looks." "She has no feelers," said another. "Her waist is quite slim. Pooh! she is like a human being."
"Oh, she is ugly," said all the lady cockchafers. The cockchafer who had run away with her believed all the others when they said she was ugly. He would have nothing more to say to her, and told her she might go where she liked. Then he flew down with her from the tree and placed her on a daisy, and she wept at the thought that she was so ugly that even the cockchafers would have nothing to say to her. And all the while she was really the loveliest creature that one could imagine, and as tender and delicate as a beautiful rose leaf.
During the whole summer poor little Thumbelina lived quite alone in the wide forest. She wove herself a bed with blades of grass and hung it up under a broad leaf, to protect herself from the rain. She sucked the honey from the flowers for food and drank the dew from their leaves every morning.
So passed away the summer and the autumn, and then came the winter—the long, cold winter. All the birds who had sung to her so sweetly had flown away, and the trees and the flowers had withered. The large shamrock under the shelter of which she had lived was now rolled together and shriveled up; nothing remained but a yellow, withered stalk. She felt dreadfully cold, for her clothes were torn, and she was herself so frail and delicate that she was nearly frozen to death. It began to snow, too; and the snowflakes, as they fell upon her, were like a whole shovelful falling upon one of us, for we are tall, but she was only an inch high. She wrapped herself in a dry leaf, but it cracked in the middle and could not keep her warm, and she shivered with cold.
Near the wood in which she had been living was a large cornfield, but the corn had been cut a long time; nothing remained but the bare, dry stubble, standing up out of the frozen ground. It was to her like struggling through a large wood.
Oh! how she shivered with the cold. She came at last to the door of a field mouse, who had a little den under the corn stubble. There dwelt the field mouse in warmth and comfort, with a whole roomful of corn, a kitchen, and a beautiful dining room. Poor Thumbelina stood before the door, just like a little beggar girl, and asked for a small piece of barleycorn, for she had been without a morsel to eat for two days.
"You poor little creature," said the field mouse, for she was really a good old mouse, "come into my warm room and dine with me."
She was pleased with Thumbelina, so she said, "You are quite welcome to stay with me all the winter, if you like; but you must keep my rooms clean and neat, and tell me stories, for I shall like to hear them very much." And Thumbelina did all that the field mouse asked her, and found herself very comfortable.
"We shall have a visitor soon," said the field mouse one day; "my neighbor pays me a visit once a week. He is better off than I am; he has large rooms, and wears a beautiful black velvet coat. If you could only have him for a husband, you would be well provided for indeed. But he is blind, so you must tell him some of your prettiest stories."
Thumbelina did not feel at all interested about this neighbor, for he was a mole. However, he came and paid his visit, dressed in his black velvet coat.
"He is very rich and learned, and his house is twenty times larger than mine," said the field mouse.
He was rich and learned, no doubt, but he always spoke slightingly of the sun and the pretty flowers, because he had never seen them. Thumbelina was obliged to sing to him, "Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home," and many other pretty songs. And the mole fell in love with her because she had so sweet a voice; but he said nothing yet, for he was very prudent and cautious. A short time before, the mole had dug a long passage under the earth, which led from the dwelling of the field mouse to his own, and here she had permission to walk with Thumbelina whenever she liked. But he warned them not to be alarmed at the sight of a dead bird which lay in the passage. It was a perfect bird, with a beak and feathers, and could not have been dead long. It was lying just where the mole had made his passage. The mole took in his mouth a piece of phosphorescent wood, which glittered like fire in the dark. Then he went before them to light them through the long, dark passage. When they came to the spot where the dead bird lay, the mole pushed his broad nose through the ceiling, so that the earth gave way and the daylight shone into the passage.
In the middle of the floor lay a swallow, his beautiful wings pulled close to his sides, his feet and head drawn up under his feathers—the poor bird had evidently died of the cold. It made little Thumbelina very sad to see it, she did so love the little birds; all the summer they had sung and twittered for her so beautifully. But the mole pushed it aside with his crooked legs and said: "He will sing no more now. How miserable it must be to be born a little bird! I am thankful that none of my children will ever be birds, for they can do nothing but cry 'Tweet, tweet,' and must always die of hunger in the winter."
"Yes, you may well say that, as a clever man!" exclaimed the field mouse. "What is the use of his twittering if, when winter comes, he must either starve or be frozen to death? Still, birds are very high bred."
Thumbelina said nothing, but when the two others had turned their backs upon the bird, she stooped down and stroked aside the soft feathers which covered his head, and kissed the closed eyelids. "Perhaps this was the one who sang to me so sweetly in the summer," she said; "and how much pleasure it gave me, you dear, pretty bird."
The mole now stopped up the hole through which the daylight shone, and then accompanied the ladies home. But during the night Thumbelina could not sleep; so she got out of bed and wove a large, beautiful carpet of hay. She carried it to the dead bird and spread it over him, with some down from the flowers which she had found in the field mouse's room. It was as soft as wool, and she spread some of it on each side of the bird, so that he might lie warmly in the cold earth.
"Farewell, pretty little bird," said she, "farewell. Thank you for your delightful singing during the summer, when all the trees were green and the warm sun shone upon us." Then she laid her head on the bird's breast, but she was alarmed, for it seemed as if something inside the bird went "thump, thump." It was the bird's heart; he was not really dead, only benumbed with the cold, and the warmth had restored him to life. In autumn all the swallows fly away into warm countries; but if one happens to linger, the cold seizes it, and it becomes chilled and falls down as if dead. It remains where it fell, and the cold snow covers it.
Thumbelina trembled very much; she was quite frightened, for the bird was large, a great deal larger than herself (she was only an inch high). But she took courage, laid the wool more thickly over the poor swallow, and then took a leaf which she had used for her own counterpane and laid it over his head.
The next night she again stole out to see him. He was alive, but very weak; he could only open his eyes for a moment to look at Thumbelina, who stood by, holding a piece of decayed wood in her hand, for she had no other lantern. "Thank you, pretty little maiden," said the sick swallow; "I have been so nicely warmed that I shall soon regain my strength and be able to fly about again in the warm sunshine."
"Oh," said she, "it is cold out of doors now; it snows and freezes. Stay in your warm bed; I will take care of you."
She brought the swallow some water in a flower leaf, and after he had drunk, he told her that he had wounded one of his wings in a thornbush and could not fly as fast as the others, who were soon far away on their journey to warm countries. At last he had fallen to the earth, and could remember nothing more, nor how he came to be where she had found him.
All winter the swallow remained underground, and Thumbelina nursed him with care and love. She did not tell either the mole or the field mouse anything about it, for they did not like swallows. Very soon the springtime came, and the sun warmed the earth. Then the swallow bade farewell to Thumbelina, and she opened the hole in the ceiling which the mole had made. The sun shone in upon them so beautifully that the swallow asked her if she would go with him. She could sit on his back, he said, and he would fly away with her into the green woods. But she knew it would grieve the field mouse if she left her in that manner, so she said, "No, I cannot."
"Farewell, then, farewell, you good, pretty little maiden," said the swallow, and he flew out into the sunshine.
Thumbelina looked after him, and the tears rose in her eyes. She was very fond of the poor swallow.
"Tweet, tweet," sang the bird, as he flew out into the green woods, and Thumbelina felt very sad. She was not allowed to go out into the warm sunshine. The corn which had been sowed in the field over the house of the field mouse had grown up high into the air and formed a thick wood to Thumbelina, who was only an inch in height.
"You are going to be married, little one," said the field mouse. "My neighbor has asked for you. What good fortune for a poor child like you! Now we will prepare your wedding clothes. They must be woolen and linen. Nothing must be wanting when you are the wife of the mole."
Thumbelina had to turn the spindle, and the field mouse hired four spiders, who were to weave day and night. Every evening the mole visited her and was continually speaking of the time when the summer would be over. Then he would keep his wedding day with Thumbelina; but now the heat of the sun was so great that it burned the earth and made it hard, like stone. As soon as the summer was over the wedding should take place. But Thumbelina was not at all pleased, for she did not like the tiresome mole.
Every morning when the sun rose and every evening when it went down she would creep out at the door, and as the wind blew aside the ears of corn so that she could see the blue sky, she thought how beautiful and bright it seemed out there and wished so much to see her dear friend, the swallow, again. But he never returned, for by this time he had flown far away into the lovely green forest.
When autumn arrived Thumbelina had her outfit quite ready, and the field mouse said to her, "In four weeks the wedding must take place."
Then she wept and said she would not marry the disagreeable mole.
"Nonsense," replied the field mouse. "Now don't be obstinate, or I shall bite you with my white teeth. He is a very handsome mole; the queen herself does not wear more beautiful velvets and furs. His kitchens and cellars are quite full. You ought to be very thankful for such good fortune."
So the wedding day was fixed, on which the mole was to take her away to live with him, deep under the earth, and never again to see the warm sun, because he did not like it. The poor child was very unhappy at the thought of saying farewell to the beautiful sun, and as the field mouse had given her permission to stand at the door, she went to look at it once more.
"Farewell, bright sun," she cried, stretching out her arm towards it; and then she walked a short distance from the house, for the corn had been cut, and only the dry stubble remained in the fields. "Farewell, farewell," she repeated, twining her arm around a little red flower that grew just by her side. "Greet the little swallow from me, if you should see him again."
"Tweet, tweet," sounded over her head suddenly. She looked up, and there was the swallow himself flying close by. As soon as he spied Thumbelina he was delighted. She told him how unwilling she was to marry the ugly mole, and to live always beneath the earth, nevermore to see the bright sun. And as she told him, she wept.
"Cold winter is coming," said the swallow, "and I am going to fly away into warmer countries. Will you go with me? You can sit on my back and fasten yourself on with your sash. Then we can fly away from the ugly mole and his gloomy rooms—far away, over the mountains, into warmer countries, where the sun shines more brightly than here; where it is always summer, and the flowers bloom in greater beauty. Fly now with me, dear little one; you saved my life when I lay frozen in that dark, dreary passage."
"Yes, I will go with you," said Thumbelina; and she seated herself on the bird's back, with her feet on his outstretched wings, and tied her girdle to one of his strongest feathers.
The swallow rose in the air and flew over forest and over sea—high above the highest mountains, covered with eternal snow. Thumbelina would have been frozen in the cold air, but she crept under the bird's warm feathers, keeping her little head uncovered, so that she might admire the beautiful lands over which they passed. At length they reached the warm countries, where the sun shines brightly and the sky seems so much higher above the earth. Here on the hedges and by the wayside grew purple, green, and white grapes, lemons and oranges hung from trees in the fields, and the air was fragrant with myrtles and orange blossoms. Beautiful children ran along the country lanes, playing with large gay butterflies; and as the swallow flew farther and farther, every place appeared still more lovely.
At last they came to a blue lake, and by the side of it, shaded by trees of the deepest green, stood a palace of dazzling white marble, built in the olden times. Vines clustered round its lofty pillars, and at the top were many swallows' nests, and one of these was the home of the swallow who carried Thumbelina.
"This is my house," said the swallow; "but it would not do for you to live there—you would not be comfortable. You must choose for yourself one of those lovely flowers, and I will put you down upon it, and then you shall have everything that you can wish to make you happy."
"That will be delightful," she said, and clapped her little hands for joy.
A large marble pillar lay on the ground, which, in falling, had been broken into three pieces. Between these pieces grew the most beautiful large white flowers, so the swallow flew down with Thumbelina and placed her on one of the broad leaves. But how surprised she was to see in the middle of the flower a tiny little man, as white and transparent as if he had been made of crystal! He had a gold crown on his head, and delicate wings at his shoulders, and was not much larger than was she herself. He was the angel of the flower, for a tiny man and a tiny woman dwell in every flower, and this was the king of them all.
"Oh, how beautiful he is!" whispered Thumbelina to the swallow.
The little prince was at first quite frightened at the bird, who was like a giant compared to such a delicate little creature as himself; but when he saw Thumbelina he was delighted and thought her the prettiest little maiden he had ever seen. He took the gold crown from his head and placed it on hers, and asked her name and if she would be his wife and queen over all the flowers.
This certainly was a very different sort of husband from the son of the toad, or the mole with his black velvet and fur, so she said Yes to the handsome prince. Then all the flowers opened, and out of each came a little lady or a tiny lord, all so pretty it was quite a pleasure to look at them. Each of them brought Thumbelina a present; but the best gift was a pair of beautiful wings, which had belonged to a large white fly, and they fastened them to Thumbelina's shoulders, so that she might fly from flower to flower.
Then there was much rejoicing, and the little swallow, who sat above them in his nest, was asked to sing a wedding song, which he did as well as he could; but in his heart he felt sad, for he was very fond of Thumbelina and would have liked never to part from her again.
"You must not be called Thumbelina any more," said the spirit of the flowers to her. "It is an ugly name, and you are so very lovely. We will call you Maia."
"Farewell, farewell," said the swallow, with a heavy heart, as he left the warm countries, to fly back into Denmark. There he had a nest over the window of a house in which dwelt the writer of fairy tales. The swallow sang "Tweet, tweet," and from his song came the whole story.
==THE REAL PRINCESS==
There was once a Prince who wished to marry a Princess; but then she must be a real Princess. He travelled all over the world in hopes of finding such a lady; but there was always something wrong. Princesses he found in plenty; but whether they were real Princesses it was impossible for him to decide, for now one thing, now another, seemed to him not quite right about the ladies. At last he returned to his palace quite cast down, because he wished so much to have a real Princess for his wife.
One evening a fearful tempest arose, it thundered and lightened, and the rain poured down from the sky in torrents: besides, it was as dark as pitch. All at once there was heard a violent knocking at the door, and the old King, the Prince's father, went out himself to open it.
It was a Princess who was standing outside the door. What with the rain and the wind, she was in a sad condition; the water trickled down from her hair, and her clothes clung to her body. She said she was a real Princess.
“Ah! we shall soon see that!” thought the old Queen-mother; however, she said not a word of what she was going to do; but went quietly into the bedroom, took all the bed-clothes off the bed, and put three little peas on the bedstead. She then laid twenty mattresses one upon another over the three peas, and put twenty feather beds over the mattresses.
Upon this bed the Princess was to pass the night.
The next morning she was asked how she had slept. “Oh, very badly indeed!” she replied. “I have scarcely closed my eyes the whole night through. I do not know what was in my bed, but I had something hard under me, and am all over black and blue. It has hurt me so much!”
Now it was plain that the lady must be a real Princess, since she had been able to feel the three little peas through the twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. None but a real Princess could have had such a delicate sense of feeling.
The Prince accordingly made her his wife; being now convinced that he had found a real Princess. The three peas were however put into the cabinet of curiosities, where they are still to be seen, provided they are not lost.
Wasn't this a lady of real delicacy?
 
==THE SHOES OF FORTUNE==
===I. A Beginning===
Every author has some peculiarity in his descriptions or in his style of writing. Those who do not like him, magnify it, shrug up their shoulders, and exclaim—there he is again! I, for my part, know very well how I can bring about this movement and this exclamation. It would happen immediately if I were to begin here, as I intended to do, with: “Rome has its Corso, Naples its Toledo”—“Ah! that Andersen; there he is again!” they would cry; yet I must, to please my fancy, continue quite quietly, and add: “But Copenhagen has its East Street.”
Here, then, we will stay for the present. In one of the houses not far from the new market a party was invited—a very large party, in order, as is often the case, to get a return invitation from the others. One half of the company was already seated at the card-table, the other half awaited the result of the stereotype preliminary observation of the lady of the house:
“Now let us see what we can do to amuse ourselves.”
They had got just so far, and the conversation began to crystallise, as it could but do with the scanty stream which the commonplace world supplied. Amongst other things they spoke of the middle ages: some praised that period as far more interesting, far more poetical than our own too sober present; indeed Councillor Knap defended this opinion so warmly, that the hostess declared immediately on his side, and both exerted themselves with unwearied eloquence. The Councillor boldly declared the time of King Hans to be the noblest and the most happy period.*
* A.D. 1482-1513
While the conversation turned on this subject, and was only for a moment interrupted by the arrival of a journal that contained nothing worth reading, we will just step out into the antechamber, where cloaks, mackintoshes, sticks, umbrellas, and shoes, were deposited. Here sat two female figures, a young and an old one. One might have thought at first they were servants come to accompany their mistresses home; but on looking nearer, one soon saw they could scarcely be mere servants; their forms were too noble for that, their skin too fine, the cut of their dress too striking. Two fairies were they; the younger, it is true, was not Dame Fortune herself, but one of the waiting-maids of her handmaidens who carry about the lesser good things that she distributes; the other looked extremely gloomy—it was Care. She always attends to her own serious business herself, as then she is sure of having it done properly.
They were telling each other, with a confidential interchange of ideas, where they had been during the day. The messenger of Fortune had only executed a few unimportant commissions, such as saving a new bonnet from a shower of rain, etc.; but what she had yet to perform was something quite unusual.
“I must tell you,” said she, “that to-day is my birthday; and in honor of it, a pair of walking-shoes or galoshes has been entrusted to me, which I am to carry to mankind. These shoes possess the property of instantly transporting him who has them on to the place or the period in which he most wishes to be; every wish, as regards time or place, or state of being, will be immediately fulfilled, and so at last man will be happy, here below.”
“Do you seriously believe it?” replied Care, in a severe tone of reproach. “No; he will be very unhappy, and will assuredly bless the moment when he feels that he has freed himself from the fatal shoes.”
“Stupid nonsense!” said the other angrily. “I will put them here by the door. Some one will make a mistake for certain and take the wrong ones—he will be a happy man.”
Such was their conversation.
II. What Happened to the Councillor
It was late; Councillor Knap, deeply occupied with the times of King Hans, intended to go home, and malicious Fate managed matters so that his feet, instead of finding their way to his own galoshes, slipped into those of Fortune. Thus caparisoned the good man walked out of the well-lighted rooms into East Street. By the magic power of the shoes he was carried back to the times of King Hans; on which account his foot very naturally sank in the mud and puddles of the street, there having been in those days no pavement in Copenhagen.
“Well! This is too bad! How dirty it is here!” sighed the Councillor. “As to a pavement, I can find no traces of one, and all the lamps, it seems, have gone to sleep.”
The moon was not yet very high; it was besides rather foggy, so that in the darkness all objects seemed mingled in chaotic confusion. At the next corner hung a votive lamp before a Madonna, but the light it gave was little better than none at all; indeed, he did not observe it before he was exactly under it, and his eyes fell upon the bright colors of the pictures which represented the well-known group of the Virgin and the infant Jesus.
“That is probably a wax-work show,” thought he; “and the people delay taking down their sign in hopes of a late visitor or two.”
A few persons in the costume of the time of King Hans passed quickly by him.
“How strange they look! The good folks come probably from a masquerade!”
Suddenly was heard the sound of drums and fifes; the bright blaze of a fire shot up from time to time, and its ruddy gleams seemed to contend with the bluish light of the torches. The Councillor stood still, and watched a most strange procession pass by. First came a dozen drummers, who understood pretty well how to handle their instruments; then came halberdiers, and some armed with cross-bows. The principal person in the procession was a priest. Astonished at what he saw, the Councillor asked what was the meaning of all this mummery, and who that man was.
“That's the Bishop of Zealand,” was the answer.
“Good Heavens! What has taken possession of the Bishop?” sighed the Councillor, shaking his head. It certainly could not be the Bishop; even though he was considered the most absent man in the whole kingdom, and people told the drollest anecdotes about him. Reflecting on the matter, and without looking right or left, the Councillor went through East Street and across the Habro-Platz. The bridge leading to Palace Square was not to be found; scarcely trusting his senses, the nocturnal wanderer discovered a shallow piece of water, and here fell in with two men who very comfortably were rocking to and fro in a boat.
“Does your honor want to cross the ferry to the Holme?” asked they.
“Across to the Holme!” said the Councillor, who knew nothing of the age in which he at that moment was. “No, I am going to Christianshafen, to Little Market Street.”
Both men stared at him in astonishment.
“Only just tell me where the bridge is,” said he. “It is really unpardonable that there are no lamps here; and it is as dirty as if one had to wade through a morass.”
The longer he spoke with the boatmen, the more unintelligible did their language become to him.
“I don't understand your Bornholmish dialect,” said he at last, angrily, and turning his back upon them. He was unable to find the bridge: there was no railway either. “It is really disgraceful what a state this place is in,” muttered he to himself. Never had his age, with which, however, he was always grumbling, seemed so miserable as on this evening. “I'll take a hackney-coach!” thought he. But where were the hackney-coaches? Not one was to be seen.
“I must go back to the New Market; there, it is to be hoped, I shall find some coaches; for if I don't, I shall never get safe to Christianshafen.”
So off he went in the direction of East Street, and had nearly got to the end of it when the moon shone forth.
“God bless me! What wooden scaffolding is that which they have set up there?” cried he involuntarily, as he looked at East Gate, which, in those days, was at the end of East Street.
He found, however, a little side-door open, and through this he went, and stepped into our New Market of the present time. It was a huge desolate plain; some wild bushes stood up here and there, while across the field flowed a broad canal or river. Some wretched hovels for the Dutch sailors, resembling great boxes, and after which the place was named, lay about in confused disorder on the opposite bank.
“I either behold a fata morgana, or I am regularly tipsy,” whimpered out the Councillor. “But what's this?”
He turned round anew, firmly convinced that he was seriously ill. He gazed at the street formerly so well known to him, and now so strange in appearance, and looked at the houses more attentively: most of them were of wood, slightly put together; and many had a thatched roof.
“No—I am far from well,” sighed he; “and yet I drank only one glass of punch; but I cannot suppose it—it was, too, really very wrong to give us punch and hot salmon for supper. I shall speak about it at the first opportunity. I have half a mind to go back again, and say what I suffer. But no, that would be too silly; and Heaven only knows if they are up still.”
He looked for the house, but it had vanished.
“It is really dreadful,” groaned he with increasing anxiety; “I cannot recognise East Street again; there is not a single decent shop from one end to the other! Nothing but wretched huts can I see anywhere; just as if I were at Ringstead. Oh! I am ill! I can scarcely bear myself any longer. Where the deuce can the house be? It must be here on this very spot; yet there is not the slightest idea of resemblance, to such a degree has everything changed this night! At all events here are some people up and stirring. Oh! oh! I am certainly very ill.”
He now hit upon a half-open door, through a chink of which a faint light shone. It was a sort of hostelry of those times; a kind of public-house. The room had some resemblance to the clay-floored halls in Holstein; a pretty numerous company, consisting of seamen, Copenhagen burghers, and a few scholars, sat here in deep converse over their pewter cans, and gave little heed to the person who entered.
“By your leave!” said the Councillor to the Hostess, who came bustling towards him. “I've felt so queer all of a sudden; would you have the goodness to send for a hackney-coach to take me to Christianshafen?”
The woman examined him with eyes of astonishment, and shook her head; she then addressed him in German. The Councillor thought she did not understand Danish, and therefore repeated his wish in German. This, in connection with his costume, strengthened the good woman in the belief that he was a foreigner. That he was ill, she comprehended directly; so she brought him a pitcher of water, which tasted certainly pretty strong of the sea, although it had been fetched from the well.
The Councillor supported his head on his hand, drew a long breath, and thought over all the wondrous things he saw around him.
“Is this the Daily News of this evening?” he asked mechanically, as he saw the Hostess push aside a large sheet of paper.
The meaning of this councillorship query remained, of course, a riddle to her, yet she handed him the paper without replying. It was a coarse wood-cut, representing a splendid meteor “as seen in the town of Cologne,” which was to be read below in bright letters.
“That is very old!” said the Councillor, whom this piece of antiquity began to make considerably more cheerful. “Pray how did you come into possession of this rare print? It is extremely interesting, although the whole is a mere fable. Such meteorous appearances are to be explained in this way—that they are the reflections of the Aurora Borealis, and it is highly probable they are caused principally by electricity.”
Those persons who were sitting nearest him and heard his speech, stared at him in wonderment; and one of them rose, took off his hat respectfully, and said with a serious countenance, “You are no doubt a very learned man, Monsieur.”
“Oh no,” answered the Councillor, “I can only join in conversation on this topic and on that, as indeed one must do according to the demands of the world at present.”
“Modestia is a fine virtue,” continued the gentleman; “however, as to your speech, I must say mihi secus videtur: yet I am willing to suspend my judicium.”
“May I ask with whom I have the pleasure of speaking?” asked the Councillor.
“I am a Bachelor in Theologia,” answered the gentleman with a stiff reverence.
This reply fully satisfied the Councillor; the title suited the dress. “He is certainly,” thought he, “some village schoolmaster—some queer old fellow, such as one still often meets with in Jutland.”
“This is no locus docendi, it is true,” began the clerical gentleman; “yet I beg you earnestly to let us profit by your learning. Your reading in the ancients is, sine dubio, of vast extent?”
“Oh yes, I've read something, to be sure,” replied the Councillor. “I like reading all useful works; but I do not on that account despise the modern ones; 'tis only the unfortunate 'Tales of Every-day Life' that I cannot bear—we have enough and more than enough such in reality.”
“'Tales of Every-day Life?'” said our Bachelor inquiringly.
“I mean those new fangled novels, twisting and writhing themselves in the dust of commonplace, which also expect to find a reading public.”
“Oh,” exclaimed the clerical gentleman smiling, “there is much wit in them; besides they are read at court. The King likes the history of Sir Iffven and Sir Gaudian particularly, which treats of King Arthur, and his Knights of the Round Table; he has more than once joked about it with his high vassals.”
“I have not read that novel,” said the Councillor; “it must be quite a new one, that Heiberg has published lately.”
“No,” answered the theologian of the time of King Hans: “that book is not written by a Heiberg, but was imprinted by Godfrey von Gehmen.”
“Oh, is that the author's name?” said the Councillor. “It is a very old name, and, as well as I recollect, he was the first printer that appeared in Denmark.”
“Yes, he is our first printer,” replied the clerical gentleman hastily.
So far all went on well. Some one of the worthy burghers now spoke of the dreadful pestilence that had raged in the country a few years back, meaning that of 1484. The Councillor imagined it was the cholera that was meant, which people made so much fuss about; and the discourse passed off satisfactorily enough. The war of the buccaneers of 1490 was so recent that it could not fail being alluded to; the English pirates had, they said, most shamefully taken their ships while in the roadstead; and the Councillor, before whose eyes the Herostratic event of 1801 still floated vividly, agreed entirely with the others in abusing the rascally English. With other topics he was not so fortunate; every moment brought about some new confusion, and threatened to become a perfect Babel; for the worthy Bachelor was really too ignorant, and the simplest observations of the Councillor sounded to him too daring and phantastical. They looked at one another from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet; and when matters grew to too high a pitch, then the Bachelor talked Latin, in the hope of being better understood—but it was of no use after all.
 * Herostratus, or Eratostratus—an Ephesian, who wantonly
 set fire to the famous temple of Diana, in order to
 commemorate his name by so uncommon an action.
“What's the matter?” asked the Hostess, plucking the Councillor by the sleeve; and now his recollection returned, for in the course of the conversation he had entirely forgotten all that had preceded it.
“Merciful God, where am I!” exclaimed he in agony; and while he so thought, all his ideas and feelings of overpowering dizziness, against which he struggled with the utmost power of desperation, encompassed him with renewed force. “Let us drink claret and mead, and Bremen beer,” shouted one of the guests—“and you shall drink with us!”
Two maidens approached. One wore a cap of two staring colors, denoting the class of persons to which she belonged. They poured out the liquor, and made the most friendly gesticulations; while a cold perspiration trickled down the back of the poor Councillor.
“What's to be the end of this! What's to become of me!” groaned he; but he was forced, in spite of his opposition, to drink with the rest. They took hold of the worthy man; who, hearing on every side that he was intoxicated, did not in the least doubt the truth of this certainly not very polite assertion; but on the contrary, implored the ladies and gentlemen present to procure him a hackney-coach: they, however, imagined he was talking Russian.
Never before, he thought, had he been in such a coarse and ignorant company; one might almost fancy the people had turned heathens again. “It is the most dreadful moment of my life: the whole world is leagued against me!” But suddenly it occurred to him that he might stoop down under the table, and then creep unobserved out of the door. He did so; but just as he was going, the others remarked what he was about; they laid hold of him by the legs; and now, happily for him, off fell his fatal shoes—and with them the charm was at an end.
The Councillor saw quite distinctly before him a lantern burning, and behind this a large handsome house. All seemed to him in proper order as usual; it was East Street, splendid and elegant as we now see it. He lay with his feet towards a doorway, and exactly opposite sat the watchman asleep.
“Gracious Heaven!” said he. “Have I lain here in the street and dreamed? Yes; 'tis East Street! How splendid and light it is! But really it is terrible what an effect that one glass of punch must have had on me!”
Two minutes later, he was sitting in a hackney-coach and driving to Frederickshafen. He thought of the distress and agony he had endured, and praised from the very bottom of his heart the happy reality—our own time—which, with all its deficiencies, is yet much better than that in which, so much against his inclination, he had lately been.
III. The Watchman's Adventure
“Why, there is a pair of galoshes, as sure as I'm alive!” said the watchman, awaking from a gentle slumber. “They belong no doubt to the lieutenant who lives over the way. They lie close to the door.”
The worthy man was inclined to ring and deliver them at the house, for there was still a light in the window; but he did not like disturbing the other people in their beds, and so very considerately he left the matter alone.
“Such a pair of shoes must be very warm and comfortable,” said he; “the leather is so soft and supple.” They fitted his feet as though they had been made for him. “'Tis a curious world we live in,” continued he, soliloquizing. “There is the lieutenant, now, who might go quietly to bed if he chose, where no doubt he could stretch himself at his ease; but does he do it? No; he saunters up and down his room, because, probably, he has enjoyed too many of the good things of this world at his dinner. That's a happy fellow! He has neither an infirm mother, nor a whole troop of everlastingly hungry children to torment him. Every evening he goes to a party, where his nice supper costs him nothing: would to Heaven I could but change with him! How happy should I be!”
While expressing his wish, the charm of the shoes, which he had put on, began to work; the watchman entered into the being and nature of the lieutenant. He stood in the handsomely furnished apartment, and held between his fingers a small sheet of rose-colored paper, on which some verses were written—written indeed by the officer himself; for who has not, at least once in his life, had a lyrical moment? And if one then marks down one's thoughts, poetry is produced. But here was written:
 OH, WERE I RICH!
 
 “Oh, were I rich! Such was my wish, yea such
 When hardly three feet high, I longed for much.
 Oh, were I rich! an officer were I,
 With sword, and uniform, and plume so high.
 And the time came, and officer was I!
 But yet I grew not rich. Alas, poor me!
 Have pity, Thou, who all man's wants dost see.
 
 “I sat one evening sunk in dreams of bliss,
 A maid of seven years old gave me a kiss,
 I at that time was rich in poesy
 And tales of old, though poor as poor could be;
 But all she asked for was this poesy.
 Then was I rich, but not in gold, poor me!
 As Thou dost know, who all men's hearts canst see.
 
 “Oh, were I rich! Oft asked I for this boon.
 The child grew up to womanhood full soon.
 She is so pretty, clever, and so kind
 Oh, did she know what's hidden in my mind—
 A tale of old. Would she to me were kind!
 But I'm condemned to silence! oh, poor me!
 As Thou dost know, who all men's hearts canst see.
 
 “Oh, were I rich in calm and peace of mind,
 My grief you then would not here written find!
 O thou, to whom I do my heart devote,
 Oh read this page of glad days now remote,
 A dark, dark tale, which I tonight devote!
 Dark is the future now. Alas, poor me!
 Have pity Thou, who all men's pains dost see.”
 
Such verses as these people write when they are in love! But no man in his senses ever thinks of printing them. Here one of the sorrows of life, in which there is real poetry, gave itself vent; not that barren grief which the poet may only hint at, but never depict in its detail—misery and want: that animal necessity, in short, to snatch at least at a fallen leaf of the bread-fruit tree, if not at the fruit itself. The higher the position in which one finds oneself transplanted, the greater is the suffering. Everyday necessity is the stagnant pool of life—no lovely picture reflects itself therein. Lieutenant, love, and lack of money—that is a symbolic triangle, or much the same as the half of the shattered die of Fortune. This the lieutenant felt most poignantly, and this was the reason he leant his head against the window, and sighed so deeply.
“The poor watchman out there in the street is far happier than I. He knows not what I term privation. He has a home, a wife, and children, who weep with him over his sorrows, who rejoice with him when he is glad. Oh, far happier were I, could I exchange with him my being—with his desires and with his hopes perform the weary pilgrimage of life! Oh, he is a hundred times happier than I!”
In the same moment the watchman was again watchman. It was the shoes that caused the metamorphosis by means of which, unknown to himself, he took upon him the thoughts and feelings of the officer; but, as we have just seen, he felt himself in his new situation much less contented, and now preferred the very thing which but some minutes before he had rejected. So then the watchman was again watchman.
“That was an unpleasant dream,” said he; “but 'twas droll enough altogether. I fancied that I was the lieutenant over there: and yet the thing was not very much to my taste after all. I missed my good old mother and the dear little ones; who almost tear me to pieces for sheer love.”
He seated himself once more and nodded: the dream continued to haunt him, for he still had the shoes on his feet. A falling star shone in the dark firmament.
“There falls another star,” said he: “but what does it matter; there are always enough left. I should not much mind examining the little glimmering things somewhat nearer, especially the moon; for that would not slip so easily through a man's fingers. When we die—so at least says the student, for whom my wife does the washing—we shall fly about as light as a feather from one such a star to the other. That's, of course, not true: but 'twould be pretty enough if it were so. If I could but once take a leap up there, my body might stay here on the steps for what I care.”
Behold—there are certain things in the world to which one ought never to give utterance except with the greatest caution; but doubly careful must one be when we have the Shoes of Fortune on our feet. Now just listen to what happened to the watchman.
As to ourselves, we all know the speed produced by the employment of steam; we have experienced it either on railroads, or in boats when crossing the sea; but such a flight is like the travelling of a sloth in comparison with the velocity with which light moves. It flies nineteen million times faster than the best race-horse; and yet electricity is quicker still. Death is an electric shock which our heart receives; the freed soul soars upwards on the wings of electricity. The sun's light wants eight minutes and some seconds to perform a journey of more than twenty million of our Danish miles; borne by electricity, the soul wants even some minutes less to accomplish the same flight. To it the space between the heavenly bodies is not greater than the distance between the homes of our friends in town is for us, even if they live a short way from each other; such an electric shock in the heart, however, costs us the use of the body here below; unless, like the watchman of East Street, we happen to have on the Shoes of Fortune.
 * A Danish mile is nearly 4 3/4 English.
In a few seconds the watchman had done the fifty-two thousand of our miles up to the moon, which, as everyone knows, was formed out of matter much lighter than our earth; and is, so we should say, as soft as newly-fallen snow. He found himself on one of the many circumjacent mountain-ridges with which we are acquainted by means of Dr. Madler's “Map of the Moon.” Within, down it sunk perpendicularly into a caldron, about a Danish mile in depth; while below lay a town, whose appearance we can, in some measure, realize to ourselves by beating the white of an egg in a glass of water. The matter of which it was built was just as soft, and formed similar towers, and domes, and pillars, transparent and rocking in the thin air; while above his head our earth was rolling like a large fiery ball.
He perceived immediately a quantity of beings who were certainly what we call “men”; yet they looked different to us. A far more correct imagination than that of the pseudo-Herschel* had created them; and if they had been placed in rank and file, and copied by some skilful painter's hand, one would, without doubt, have exclaimed involuntarily, “What a beautiful arabesque!”
*This relates to a book published some years ago in Germany, and said to be by Herschel, which contained a description of the moon and its inhabitants, written with such a semblance of truth that many were deceived by the imposture.
Probably a translation of the celebrated Moon hoax, written by Richard A. Locke, and originally published in New York.
They had a language too; but surely nobody can expect that the soul of the watchman should understand it. Be that as it may, it did comprehend it; for in our souls there germinate far greater powers than we poor mortals, despite all our cleverness, have any notion of. Does she not show us—she the queen in the land of enchantment—her astounding dramatic talent in all our dreams? There every acquaintance appears and speaks upon the stage, so entirely in character, and with the same tone of voice, that none of us, when awake, were able to imitate it. How well can she recall persons to our mind, of whom we have not thought for years; when suddenly they step forth “every inch a man,” resembling the real personages, even to the finest features, and become the heroes or heroines of our world of dreams. In reality, such remembrances are rather unpleasant: every sin, every evil thought, may, like a clock with alarm or chimes, be repeated at pleasure; then the question is if we can trust ourselves to give an account of every unbecoming word in our heart and on our lips.
The watchman's spirit understood the language of the inhabitants of the moon pretty well. The Selenites* disputed variously about our earth, and expressed their doubts if it could be inhabited: the air, they said, must certainly be too dense to allow any rational dweller in the moon the necessary free respiration. They considered the moon alone to be inhabited: they imagined it was the real heart of the universe or planetary system, on which the genuine Cosmopolites, or citizens of the world, dwelt. What strange things men—no, what strange things Selenites sometimes take into their heads!
* Dwellers in the moon.
About politics they had a good deal to say. But little Denmark must take care what it is about, and not run counter to the moon; that great realm, that might in an ill-humor bestir itself, and dash down a hail-storm in our faces, or force the Baltic to overflow the sides of its gigantic basin.
We will, therefore, not listen to what was spoken, and on no condition run in the possibility of telling tales out of school; but we will rather proceed, like good quiet citizens, to East Street, and observe what happened meanwhile to the body of the watchman.
He sat lifeless on the steps: the morning-star,* that is to say, the heavy wooden staff, headed with iron spikes, and which had nothing else in common with its sparkling brother in the sky, had glided from his hand; while his eyes were fixed with glassy stare on the moon, looking for the good old fellow of a spirit which still haunted it.
*The watchmen in Germany, had formerly, and in some places they still carry with them, on their rounds at night, a sort of mace or club, known in ancient times by the above denomination.
“What's the hour, watchman?” asked a passer-by. But when the watchman gave no reply, the merry roysterer, who was now returning home from a noisy drinking bout, took it into his head to try what a tweak of the nose would do, on which the supposed sleeper lost his balance, the body lay motionless, stretched out on the pavement: the man was dead. When the patrol came up, all his comrades, who comprehended nothing of the whole affair, were seized with a dreadful fright, for dead he was, and he remained so. The proper authorities were informed of the circumstance, people talked a good deal about it, and in the morning the body was carried to the hospital.
Now that would be a very pretty joke, if the spirit when it came back and looked for the body in East Street, were not to find one. No doubt it would, in its anxiety, run off to the police, and then to the “Hue and Cry” office, to announce that “the finder will be handsomely rewarded,” and at last away to the hospital; yet we may boldly assert that the soul is shrewdest when it shakes off every fetter, and every sort of leading-string—the body only makes it stupid.
The seemingly dead body of the watchman wandered, as we have said, to the hospital, where it was brought into the general viewing-room: and the first thing that was done here was naturally to pull off the galoshes—when the spirit, that was merely gone out on adventures, must have returned with the quickness of lightning to its earthly tenement. It took its direction towards the body in a straight line; and a few seconds after, life began to show itself in the man. He asserted that the preceding night had been the worst that ever the malice of fate had allotted him; he would not for two silver marks again go through what he had endured while moon-stricken; but now, however, it was over.
The same day he was discharged from the hospital as perfectly cured; but the Shoes meanwhile remained behind.
IV. A Moment of Head Importance—An Evening's “Dramatic Readings”—A Most Strange Journey
Every inhabitant of Copenhagen knows, from personal inspection, how the entrance to Frederick's Hospital looks; but as it is possible that others, who are not Copenhagen people, may also read this little work, we will beforehand give a short description of it.
The extensive building is separated from the street by a pretty high railing, the thick iron bars of which are so far apart, that in all seriousness, it is said, some very thin fellow had of a night occasionally squeezed himself through to go and pay his little visits in the town. The part of the body most difficult to manage on such occasions was, no doubt, the head; here, as is so often the case in the world, long-headed people get through best. So much, then, for the introduction.
One of the young men, whose head, in a physical sense only, might be said to be of the thickest, had the watch that evening. The rain poured down in torrents; yet despite these two obstacles, the young man was obliged to go out, if it were but for a quarter of an hour; and as to telling the door-keeper about it, that, he thought, was quite unnecessary, if, with a whole skin, he were able to slip through the railings. There, on the floor lay the galoshes, which the watchman had forgotten; he never dreamed for a moment that they were those of Fortune; and they promised to do him good service in the wet; so he put them on. The question now was, if he could squeeze himself through the grating, for he had never tried before. Well, there he stood.
“Would to Heaven I had got my head through!” said he, involuntarily; and instantly through it slipped, easily and without pain, notwithstanding it was pretty large and thick. But now the rest of the body was to be got through!
“Ah! I am much too stout,” groaned he aloud, while fixed as in a vice. “I had thought the head was the most difficult part of the matter—oh! oh! I really cannot squeeze myself through!”
He now wanted to pull his over-hasty head back again, but he could not. For his neck there was room enough, but for nothing more. His first feeling was of anger; his next that his temper fell to zero. The Shoes of Fortune had placed him in the most dreadful situation; and, unfortunately, it never occurred to him to wish himself free. The pitch-black clouds poured down their contents in still heavier torrents; not a creature was to be seen in the streets. To reach up to the bell was what he did not like; to cry aloud for help would have availed him little; besides, how ashamed would he have been to be found caught in a trap, like an outwitted fox! How was he to twist himself through! He saw clearly that it was his irrevocable destiny to remain a prisoner till dawn, or, perhaps, even late in the morning; then the smith must be fetched to file away the bars; but all that would not be done so quickly as he could think about it. The whole Charity School, just opposite, would be in motion; all the new booths, with their not very courtier-like swarm of seamen, would join them out of curiosity, and would greet him with a wild “hurrah!” while he was standing in his pillory: there would be a mob, a hissing, and rejoicing, and jeering, ten times worse than in the rows about the Jews some years ago—“Oh, my blood is mounting to my brain; 'tis enough to drive one mad! I shall go wild! I know not what to do. Oh! were I but loose; my dizziness would then cease; oh, were my head but loose!”
You see he ought to have said that sooner; for the moment he expressed the wish his head was free; and cured of all his paroxysms of love, he hastened off to his room, where the pains consequent on the fright the Shoes had prepared for him, did not so soon take their leave.
But you must not think that the affair is over now; it grows much worse.
The night passed, the next day also; but nobody came to fetch the Shoes.
In the evening “Dramatic Readings” were to be given at the little theatre in King Street. The house was filled to suffocation; and among other pieces to be recited was a new poem by H. C. Andersen, called, My Aunt's Spectacles; the contents of which were pretty nearly as follows:
“A certain person had an aunt, who boasted of particular skill in fortune-telling with cards, and who was constantly being stormed by persons that wanted to have a peep into futurity. But she was full of mystery about her art, in which a certain pair of magic spectacles did her essential service. Her nephew, a merry boy, who was his aunt's darling, begged so long for these spectacles, that, at last, she lent him the treasure, after having informed him, with many exhortations, that in order to execute the interesting trick, he need only repair to some place where a great many persons were assembled; and then, from a higher position, whence he could overlook the crowd, pass the company in review before him through his spectacles. Immediately 'the inner man' of each individual would be displayed before him, like a game of cards, in which he unerringly might read what the future of every person presented was to be. Well pleased the little magician hastened away to prove the powers of the spectacles in the theatre; no place seeming to him more fitted for such a trial. He begged permission of the worthy audience, and set his spectacles on his nose. A motley phantasmagoria presents itself before him, which he describes in a few satirical touches, yet without expressing his opinion openly: he tells the people enough to set them all thinking and guessing; but in order to hurt nobody, he wraps his witty oracular judgments in a transparent veil, or rather in a lurid thundercloud, shooting forth bright sparks of wit, that they may fall in the powder-magazine of the expectant audience.”
The humorous poem was admirably recited, and the speaker much applauded. Among the audience was the young man of the hospital, who seemed to have forgotten his adventure of the preceding night. He had on the Shoes; for as yet no lawful owner had appeared to claim them; and besides it was so very dirty out-of-doors, they were just the thing for him, he thought.
The beginning of the poem he praised with great generosity: he even found the idea original and effective. But that the end of it, like the Rhine, was very insignificant, proved, in his opinion, the author's want of invention; he was without genius, etc. This was an excellent opportunity to have said something clever.
Meanwhile he was haunted by the idea—he should like to possess such a pair of spectacles himself; then, perhaps, by using them circumspectly, one would be able to look into people's hearts, which, he thought, would be far more interesting than merely to see what was to happen next year; for that we should all know in proper time, but the other never.
“I can now,” said he to himself, “fancy the whole row of ladies and gentlemen sitting there in the front row; if one could but see into their hearts—yes, that would be a revelation—a sort of bazar. In that lady yonder, so strangely dressed, I should find for certain a large milliner's shop; in that one the shop is empty, but it wants cleaning plain enough. But there would also be some good stately shops among them. Alas!” sighed he, “I know one in which all is stately; but there sits already a spruce young shopman, which is the only thing that's amiss in the whole shop. All would be splendidly decked out, and we should hear, 'Walk in, gentlemen, pray walk in; here you will find all you please to want.' Ah! I wish to Heaven I could walk in and take a trip right through the hearts of those present!”
And behold! to the Shoes of Fortune this was the cue; the whole man shrunk together and a most uncommon journey through the hearts of the front row of spectators, now began. The first heart through which he came, was that of a middle-aged lady, but he instantly fancied himself in the room of the “Institution for the cure of the crooked and deformed,” where casts of mis-shapen limbs are displayed in naked reality on the wall. Yet there was this difference, in the institution the casts were taken at the entry of the patient; but here they were retained and guarded in the heart while the sound persons went away. They were, namely, casts of female friends, whose bodily or mental deformities were here most faithfully preserved.
With the snake-like writhings of an idea he glided into another female heart; but this seemed to him like a large holy fane. The white dove of innocence fluttered over the altar. How gladly would he have sunk upon his knees; but he must away to the next heart; yet he still heard the pealing tones of the organ, and he himself seemed to have become a newer and a better man; he felt unworthy to tread the neighboring sanctuary which a poor garret, with a sick bed-rid mother, revealed. But God's warm sun streamed through the open window; lovely roses nodded from the wooden flower-boxes on the roof, and two sky-blue birds sang rejoicingly, while the sick mother implored God's richest blessings on her pious daughter.
 * temple
He now crept on hands and feet through a butcher's shop; at least on every side, and above and below, there was nought but flesh. It was the heart of a most respectable rich man, whose name is certain to be found in the Directory.
He was now in the heart of the wife of this worthy gentleman. It was an old, dilapidated, mouldering dovecot. The husband's portrait was used as a weather-cock, which was connected in some way or other with the doors, and so they opened and shut of their own accord, whenever the stern old husband turned round.
Hereupon he wandered into a boudoir formed entirely of mirrors, like the one in Castle Rosenburg; but here the glasses magnified to an astonishing degree. On the floor, in the middle of the room, sat, like a Dalai-Lama, the insignificant “Self” of the person, quite confounded at his own greatness. He then imagined he had got into a needle-case full of pointed needles of every size.
“This is certainly the heart of an old maid,” thought he. But he was mistaken. It was the heart of a young military man; a man, as people said, of talent and feeling.
In the greatest perplexity, he now came out of the last heart in the row; he was unable to put his thoughts in order, and fancied that his too lively imagination had run away with him.
“Good Heavens!” sighed he. “I have surely a disposition to madness—'tis dreadfully hot here; my blood boils in my veins and my head is burning like a coal.” And he now remembered the important event of the evening before, how his head had got jammed in between the iron railings of the hospital. “That's what it is, no doubt,” said he. “I must do something in time: under such circumstances a Russian bath might do me good. I only wish I were already on the upper bank.” 
 *In these Russian (vapor) baths the person extends himself
 on a bank or form, and as he gets accustomed to the heat,
 moves to another higher up towards the ceiling, where, of
 course, the vapor is warmest. In this manner he ascends
 gradually to the highest.
And so there he lay on the uppermost bank in the vapor-bath; but with all his clothes on, in his boots and galoshes, while the hot drops fell scalding from the ceiling on his face.
“Holloa!” cried he, leaping down. The bathing attendant, on his side, uttered a loud cry of astonishment when he beheld in the bath, a man completely dressed.
The other, however, retained sufficient presence of mind to whisper to him, “'Tis a bet, and I have won it!” But the first thing he did as soon as he got home, was to have a large blister put on his chest and back to draw out his madness.
The next morning he had a sore chest and a bleeding back; and, excepting the fright, that was all that he had gained by the Shoes of Fortune.
V. Metamorphosis of the Copying-Clerk
The watchman, whom we have certainly not forgotten, thought meanwhile of the galoshes he had found and taken with him to the hospital; he now went to fetch them; and as neither the lieutenant, nor anybody else in the street, claimed them as his property, they were delivered over to the police-office.*
*As on the continent, in all law and police practices nothing is verbal, but any circumstance, however trifling, is reduced to writing, the labor, as well as the number of papers that thus accumulate, is enormous. In a police-office, consequently, we find copying-clerks among many other scribes of various denominations, of which, it seems, our hero was one.
“Why, I declare the Shoes look just like my own,” said one of the clerks, eying the newly-found treasure, whose hidden powers, even he, sharp as he was, was not able to discover. “One must have more than the eye of a shoemaker to know one pair from the other,” said he, soliloquizing; and putting, at the same time, the galoshes in search of an owner, beside his own in the corner.
“Here, sir!” said one of the men, who panting brought him a tremendous pile of papers.
The copying-clerk turned round and spoke awhile with the man about the reports and legal documents in question; but when he had finished, and his eye fell again on the Shoes, he was unable to say whether those to the left or those to the right belonged to him. “At all events it must be those which are wet,” thought he; but this time, in spite of his cleverness, he guessed quite wrong, for it was just those of Fortune which played as it were into his hands, or rather on his feet. And why, I should like to know, are the police never to be wrong? So he put them on quickly, stuck his papers in his pocket, and took besides a few under his arm, intending to look them through at home to make the necessary notes. It was noon; and the weather, that had threatened rain, began to clear up, while gaily dressed holiday folks filled the streets. “A little trip to Fredericksburg would do me no great harm,” thought he; “for I, poor beast of burden that I am, have so much to annoy me, that I don't know what a good appetite is. 'Tis a bitter crust, alas! at which I am condemned to gnaw!”
Nobody could be more steady or quiet than this young man; we therefore wish him joy of the excursion with all our heart; and it will certainly be beneficial for a person who leads so sedentary a life. In the park he met a friend, one of our young poets, who told him that the following day he should set out on his long-intended tour.
“So you are going away again!” said the clerk. “You are a very free and happy being; we others are chained by the leg and held fast to our desk.”
“Yes; but it is a chain, friend, which ensures you the blessed bread of existence,” answered the poet. “You need feel no care for the coming morrow: when you are old, you receive a pension.”
“True,” said the clerk, shrugging his shoulders; “and yet you are the better off. To sit at one's ease and poetise—that is a pleasure; everybody has something agreeable to say to you, and you are always your own master. No, friend, you should but try what it is to sit from one year's end to the other occupied with and judging the most trivial matters.”
The poet shook his head, the copying-clerk did the same. Each one kept to his own opinion, and so they separated.
“It's a strange race, those poets!” said the clerk, who was very fond of soliloquizing. “I should like some day, just for a trial, to take such nature upon me, and be a poet myself; I am very sure I should make no such miserable verses as the others. Today, methinks, is a most delicious day for a poet. Nature seems anew to celebrate her awakening into life. The air is so unusually clear, the clouds sail on so buoyantly, and from the green herbage a fragrance is exhaled that fills me with delight. For many a year have I not felt as at this moment.”
We see already, by the foregoing effusion, that he is become a poet; to give further proof of it, however, would in most cases be insipid, for it is a most foolish notion to fancy a poet different from other men. Among the latter there may be far more poetical natures than many an acknowledged poet, when examined more closely, could boast of; the difference only is, that the poet possesses a better mental memory, on which account he is able to retain the feeling and the thought till they can be embodied by means of words; a faculty which the others do not possess. But the transition from a commonplace nature to one that is richly endowed, demands always a more or less breakneck leap over a certain abyss which yawns threateningly below; and thus must the sudden change with the clerk strike the reader.
“The sweet air!” continued he of the police-office, in his dreamy imaginings; “how it reminds me of the violets in the garden of my aunt Magdalena! Yes, then I was a little wild boy, who did not go to school very regularly. O heavens! 'tis a long time since I have thought on those times. The good old soul! She lived behind the Exchange. She always had a few twigs or green shoots in water—let the winter rage without as it might. The violets exhaled their sweet breath, whilst I pressed against the windowpanes covered with fantastic frost-work the copper coin I had heated on the stove, and so made peep-holes. What splendid vistas were then opened to my view! What change—what magnificence! Yonder in the canal lay the ships frozen up, and deserted by their whole crews, with a screaming crow for the sole occupant. But when the spring, with a gentle stirring motion, announced her arrival, a new and busy life arose; with songs and hurrahs the ice was sawn asunder, the ships were fresh tarred and rigged, that they might sail away to distant lands. But I have remained here—must always remain here, sitting at my desk in the office, and patiently see other people fetch their passports to go abroad. Such is my fate! Alas!”—sighed he, and was again silent. “Great Heaven! What is come to me! Never have I thought or felt like this before! It must be the summer air that affects me with feelings almost as disquieting as they are refreshing.”
He felt in his pocket for the papers. “These police-reports will soon stem the torrent of my ideas, and effectually hinder any rebellious overflowing of the time-worn banks of official duties”; he said to himself consolingly, while his eye ran over the first page. “DAME TIGBRITH, tragedy in five acts.” “What is that? And yet it is undeniably my own handwriting. Have I written the tragedy? Wonderful, very wonderful!—And this—what have I here? 'INTRIGUE ON THE RAMPARTS; or THE DAY OF REPENTANCE: vaudeville with new songs to the most favorite airs.' The deuce! Where did I get all this rubbish? Some one must have slipped it slyly into my pocket for a joke. There is too a letter to me; a crumpled letter and the seal broken.”
Yes; it was not a very polite epistle from the manager of a theatre, in which both pieces were flatly refused.
“Hem! hem!” said the clerk breathlessly, and quite exhausted he seated himself on a bank. His thoughts were so elastic, his heart so tender; and involuntarily he picked one of the nearest flowers. It is a simple daisy, just bursting out of the bud. What the botanist tells us after a number of imperfect lectures, the flower proclaimed in a minute. It related the mythus of its birth, told of the power of the sun-light that spread out its delicate leaves, and forced them to impregnate the air with their incense—and then he thought of the manifold struggles of life, which in like manner awaken the budding flowers of feeling in our bosom. Light and air contend with chivalric emulation for the love of the fair flower that bestowed her chief favors on the latter; full of longing she turned towards the light, and as soon as it vanished, rolled her tender leaves together and slept in the embraces of the air. “It is the light which adorns me,” said the flower.
“But 'tis the air which enables thee to breathe,” said the poet's voice.
Close by stood a boy who dashed his stick into a wet ditch. The drops of water splashed up to the green leafy roof, and the clerk thought of the million of ephemera which in a single drop were thrown up to a height, that was as great doubtless for their size, as for us if we were to be hurled above the clouds. While he thought of this and of the whole metamorphosis he had undergone, he smiled and said, “I sleep and dream; but it is wonderful how one can dream so naturally, and know besides so exactly that it is but a dream. If only to-morrow on awaking, I could again call all to mind so vividly! I seem in unusually good spirits; my perception of things is clear, I feel as light and cheerful as though I were in heaven; but I know for a certainty, that if to-morrow a dim remembrance of it should swim before my mind, it will then seem nothing but stupid nonsense, as I have often experienced already—especially before I enlisted under the banner of the police, for that dispels like a whirlwind all the visions of an unfettered imagination. All we hear or say in a dream that is fair and beautiful is like the gold of the subterranean spirits; it is rich and splendid when it is given us, but viewed by daylight we find only withered leaves. Alas!” he sighed quite sorrowful, and gazed at the chirping birds that hopped contentedly from branch to branch, “they are much better off than I! To fly must be a heavenly art; and happy do I prize that creature in which it is innate. Yes! Could I exchange my nature with any other creature, I fain would be such a happy little lark!”
He had hardly uttered these hasty words when the skirts and sleeves of his coat folded themselves together into wings; the clothes became feathers, and the galoshes claws. He observed it perfectly, and laughed in his heart. “Now then, there is no doubt that I am dreaming; but I never before was aware of such mad freaks as these.” And up he flew into the green roof and sang; but in the song there was no poetry, for the spirit of the poet was gone. The Shoes, as is the case with anybody who does what he has to do properly, could only attend to one thing at a time. He wanted to be a poet, and he was one; he now wished to be a merry chirping bird: but when he was metamorphosed into one, the former peculiarities ceased immediately. “It is really pleasant enough,” said he: “the whole day long I sit in the office amid the driest law-papers, and at night I fly in my dream as a lark in the gardens of Fredericksburg; one might really write a very pretty comedy upon it.” He now fluttered down into the grass, turned his head gracefully on every side, and with his bill pecked the pliant blades of grass, which, in comparison to his present size, seemed as majestic as the palm-branches of northern Africa.
Unfortunately the pleasure lasted but a moment. Presently black night overshadowed our enthusiast, who had so entirely missed his part of copying-clerk at a police-office; some vast object seemed to be thrown over him. It was a large oil-skin cap, which a sailor-boy of the quay had thrown over the struggling bird; a coarse hand sought its way carefully in under the broad rim, and seized the clerk over the back and wings. In the first moment of fear, he called, indeed, as loud as he could—“You impudent little blackguard! I am a copying-clerk at the police-office; and you know you cannot insult any belonging to the constabulary force without a chastisement. Besides, you good-for-nothing rascal, it is strictly forbidden to catch birds in the royal gardens of Fredericksburg; but your blue uniform betrays where you come from.” This fine tirade sounded, however, to the ungodly sailor-boy like a mere “Pippi-pi.” He gave the noisy bird a knock on his beak, and walked on.
He was soon met by two schoolboys of the upper class—that is to say as individuals, for with regard to learning they were in the lowest class in the school; and they bought the stupid bird. So the copying-clerk came to Copenhagen as guest, or rather as prisoner in a family living in Gother Street.
“'Tis well that I'm dreaming,” said the clerk, “or I really should get angry. First I was a poet; now sold for a few pence as a lark; no doubt it was that accursed poetical nature which has metamorphosed me into such a poor harmless little creature. It is really pitiable, particularly when one gets into the hands of a little blackguard, perfect in all sorts of cruelty to animals: all I should like to know is, how the story will end.”
The two schoolboys, the proprietors now of the transformed clerk, carried him into an elegant room. A stout stately dame received them with a smile; but she expressed much dissatisfaction that a common field-bird, as she called the lark, should appear in such high society. For to-day, however, she would allow it; and they must shut him in the empty cage that was standing in the window. “Perhaps he will amuse my good Polly,” added the lady, looking with a benignant smile at a large green parrot that swung himself backwards and forwards most comfortably in his ring, inside a magnificent brass-wired cage. “To-day is Polly's birthday,” said she with stupid simplicity: “and the little brown field-bird must wish him joy.”
Mr. Polly uttered not a syllable in reply, but swung to and fro with dignified condescension; while a pretty canary, as yellow as gold, that had lately been brought from his sunny fragrant home, began to sing aloud.
“Noisy creature! Will you be quiet!” screamed the lady of the house, covering the cage with an embroidered white pocket handkerchief.
“Chirp, chirp!” sighed he. “That was a dreadful snowstorm”; and he sighed again, and was silent.
The copying-clerk, or, as the lady said, the brown field-bird, was put into a small cage, close to the Canary, and not far from “my good Polly.” The only human sounds that the Parrot could bawl out were, “Come, let us be men!” Everything else that he said was as unintelligible to everybody as the chirping of the Canary, except to the clerk, who was now a bird too: he understood his companion perfectly.
“I flew about beneath the green palms and the blossoming almond-trees,” sang the Canary; “I flew around, with my brothers and sisters, over the beautiful flowers, and over the glassy lakes, where the bright water-plants nodded to me from below. There, too, I saw many splendidly-dressed paroquets, that told the drollest stories, and the wildest fairy tales without end.”
“Oh! those were uncouth birds,” answered the Parrot. “They had no education, and talked of whatever came into their head.
“If my mistress and all her friends can laugh at what I say, so may you too, I should think. It is a great fault to have no taste for what is witty or amusing—come, let us be men.”
“Ah, you have no remembrance of love for the charming maidens that danced beneath the outspread tents beside the bright fragrant flowers? Do you no longer remember the sweet fruits, and the cooling juice in the wild plants of our never-to-be-forgotten home?” said the former inhabitant of the Canary Isles, continuing his dithyrambic.
“Oh, yes,” said the Parrot; “but I am far better off here. I am well fed, and get friendly treatment. I know I am a clever fellow; and that is all I care about. Come, let us be men. You are of a poetical nature, as it is called—I, on the contrary, possess profound knowledge and inexhaustible wit. You have genius; but clear-sighted, calm discretion does not take such lofty flights, and utter such high natural tones. For this they have covered you over—they never do the like to me; for I cost more. Besides, they are afraid of my beak; and I have always a witty answer at hand. Come, let us be men!”
“O warm spicy land of my birth,” sang the Canary bird; “I will sing of thy dark-green bowers, of the calm bays where the pendent boughs kiss the surface of the water; I will sing of the rejoicing of all my brothers and sisters where the cactus grows in wanton luxuriance.”
“Spare us your elegiac tones,” said the Parrot giggling. “Rather speak of something at which one may laugh heartily. Laughing is an infallible sign of the highest degree of mental development. Can a dog, or a horse laugh? No, but they can cry. The gift of laughing was given to man alone. Ha! ha! ha!” screamed Polly, and added his stereotype witticism. “Come, let us be men!”
“Poor little Danish grey-bird,” said the Canary; “you have been caught too. It is, no doubt, cold enough in your woods, but there at least is the breath of liberty; therefore fly away. In the hurry they have forgotten to shut your cage, and the upper window is open. Fly, my friend; fly away. Farewell!”
Instinctively the Clerk obeyed; with a few strokes of his wings he was out of the cage; but at the same moment the door, which was only ajar, and which led to the next room, began to creak, and supple and creeping came the large tomcat into the room, and began to pursue him. The frightened Canary fluttered about in his cage; the Parrot flapped his wings, and cried, “Come, let us be men!” The Clerk felt a mortal fright, and flew through the window, far away over the houses and streets. At last he was forced to rest a little.
The neighboring house had a something familiar about it; a window stood open; he flew in; it was his own room. He perched upon the table.
“Come, let us be men!” said he, involuntarily imitating the chatter of the Parrot, and at the same moment he was again a copying-clerk; but he was sitting in the middle of the table.
“Heaven help me!” cried he. “How did I get up here—and so buried in sleep, too? After all, that was a very unpleasant, disagreeable dream that haunted me! The whole story is nothing but silly, stupid nonsense!”
VI. The Best That the Galoshes Gave
The following day, early in the morning, while the Clerk was still in bed, someone knocked at his door. It was his neighbor, a young Divine, who lived on the same floor. He walked in.
“Lend me your Galoshes,” said he; “it is so wet in the garden, though the sun is shining most invitingly. I should like to go out a little.”
He got the Galoshes, and he was soon below in a little duodecimo garden, where between two immense walls a plumtree and an apple-tree were standing. Even such a little garden as this was considered in the metropolis of Copenhagen as a great luxury.
The young man wandered up and down the narrow paths, as well as the prescribed limits would allow; the clock struck six; without was heard the horn of a post-boy.
“To travel! to travel!” exclaimed he, overcome by most painful and passionate remembrances. “That is the happiest thing in the world! That is the highest aim of all my wishes! Then at last would the agonizing restlessness be allayed, which destroys my existence! But it must be far, far away! I would behold magnificent Switzerland; I would travel to Italy, and—”
It was a good thing that the power of the Galoshes worked as instantaneously as lightning in a powder-magazine would do, otherwise the poor man with his overstrained wishes would have travelled about the world too much for himself as well as for us. In short, he was travelling. He was in the middle of Switzerland, but packed up with eight other passengers in the inside of an eternally-creaking diligence; his head ached till it almost split, his weary neck could hardly bear the heavy load, and his feet, pinched by his torturing boots, were terribly swollen. He was in an intermediate state between sleeping and waking; at variance with himself, with his company, with the country, and with the government. In his right pocket he had his letter of credit, in the left, his passport, and in a small leathern purse some double louis d'or, carefully sewn up in the bosom of his waistcoat. Every dream proclaimed that one or the other of these valuables was lost; wherefore he started up as in a fever; and the first movement which his hand made, described a magic triangle from the right pocket to the left, and then up towards the bosom, to feel if he had them all safe or not. From the roof inside the carriage, umbrellas, walking-sticks, hats, and sundry other articles were depending, and hindered the view, which was particularly imposing. He now endeavored as well as he was able to dispel his gloom, which was caused by outward chance circumstances merely, and on the bosom of nature imbibe the milk of purest human enjoyment.
Grand, solemn, and dark was the whole landscape around. The gigantic pine-forests, on the pointed crags, seemed almost like little tufts of heather, colored by the surrounding clouds. It began to snow, a cold wind blew and roared as though it were seeking a bride.
“Augh!” sighed he, “were we only on the other side the Alps, then we should have summer, and I could get my letters of credit cashed. The anxiety I feel about them prevents me enjoying Switzerland. Were I but on the other side!”
And so saying he was on the other side in Italy, between Florence and Rome. Lake Thracymene, illumined by the evening sun, lay like flaming gold between the dark-blue mountain-ridges; here, where Hannibal defeated Flaminius, the rivers now held each other in their green embraces; lovely, half-naked children tended a herd of black swine, beneath a group of fragrant laurel-trees, hard by the road-side. Could we render this inimitable picture properly, then would everybody exclaim, “Beautiful, unparalleled Italy!” But neither the young Divine said so, nor anyone of his grumbling companions in the coach of the vetturino.
The poisonous flies and gnats swarmed around by thousands; in vain one waved myrtle-branches about like mad; the audacious insect population did not cease to sting; nor was there a single person in the well-crammed carriage whose face was not swollen and sore from their ravenous bites. The poor horses, tortured almost to death, suffered most from this truly Egyptian plague; the flies alighted upon them in large disgusting swarms; and if the coachman got down and scraped them off, hardly a minute elapsed before they were there again. The sun now set: a freezing cold, though of short duration pervaded the whole creation; it was like a horrid gust coming from a burial-vault on a warm summer's day—but all around the mountains retained that wonderful green tone which we see in some old pictures, and which, should we not have seen a similar play of color in the South, we declare at once to be unnatural. It was a glorious prospect; but the stomach was empty, the body tired; all that the heart cared and longed for was good night-quarters; yet how would they be? For these one looked much more anxiously than for the charms of nature, which every where were so profusely displayed.
The road led through an olive-grove, and here the solitary inn was situated. Ten or twelve crippled-beggars had encamped outside. The healthiest of them resembled, to use an expression of Marryat's, “Hunger's eldest son when he had come of age”; the others were either blind, had withered legs and crept about on their hands, or withered arms and fingerless hands. It was the most wretched misery, dragged from among the filthiest rags. “Excellenza, miserabili!” sighed they, thrusting forth their deformed limbs to view. Even the hostess, with bare feet, uncombed hair, and dressed in a garment of doubtful color, received the guests grumblingly. The doors were fastened with a loop of string; the floor of the rooms presented a stone paving half torn up; bats fluttered wildly about the ceiling; and as to the smell therein—no—that was beyond description.
“You had better lay the cloth below in the stable,” said one of the travellers; “there, at all events, one knows what one is breathing.”
The windows were quickly opened, to let in a little fresh air. Quicker, however, than the breeze, the withered, sallow arms of the beggars were thrust in, accompanied by the eternal whine of “Miserabili, miserabili, excellenza!” On the walls were displayed innumerable inscriptions, written in nearly every language of Europe, some in verse, some in prose, most of them not very laudatory of “bella Italia.”
The meal was served. It consisted of a soup of salted water, seasoned with pepper and rancid oil. The last ingredient played a very prominent part in the salad; stale eggs and roasted cocks'-combs furnished the grand dish of the repast; the wine even was not without a disgusting taste—it was like a medicinal draught.
At night the boxes and other effects of the passengers were placed against the rickety doors. One of the travellers kept watch while the others slept. The sentry was our young Divine. How close it was in the chamber! The heat oppressive to suffocation—the gnats hummed and stung unceasingly—the “miserabili” without whined and moaned in their sleep.
“Travelling would be agreeable enough,” said he groaning, “if one only had no body, or could send it to rest while the spirit went on its pilgrimage unhindered, whither the voice within might call it. Wherever I go, I am pursued by a longing that is insatiable—that I cannot explain to myself, and that tears my very heart. I want something better than what is but what is fled in an instant. But what is it, and where is it to be found? Yet, I know in reality what it is I wish for. Oh! most happy were I, could I but reach one aim—could but reach the happiest of all!”
And as he spoke the word he was again in his home; the long white curtains hung down from the windows, and in the middle of the floor stood the black coffin; in it he lay in the sleep of death. His wish was fulfilled—the body rested, while the spirit went unhindered on its pilgrimage. “Let no one deem himself happy before his end,” were the words of Solon; and here was a new and brilliant proof of the wisdom of the old apothegm.
Every corpse is a sphynx of immortality; here too on the black coffin the sphynx gave us no answer to what he who lay within had written two days before:
 “O mighty Death! thy silence teaches nought,
 Thou leadest only to the near grave's brink;
 Is broken now the ladder of my thoughts?
 Do I instead of mounting only sink?
 
 Our heaviest grief the world oft seeth not,
 Our sorest pain we hide from stranger eyes:
 And for the sufferer there is nothing left
 But the green mound that o'er the coffin lies.”
 
Two figures were moving in the chamber. We knew them both; it was the fairy of Care, and the emissary of Fortune. They both bent over the corpse.
“Do you now see,” said Care, “what happiness your Galoshes have brought to mankind?”
“To him, at least, who slumbers here, they have brought an imperishable blessing,” answered the other.
“Ah no!” replied Care. “He took his departure himself; he was not called away. His mental powers here below were not strong enough to reach the treasures lying beyond this life, and which his destiny ordained he should obtain. I will now confer a benefit on him.”
And she took the Galoshes from his feet; his sleep of death was ended; and he who had been thus called back again to life arose from his dread couch in all the vigor of youth. Care vanished, and with her the Galoshes. She has no doubt taken them for herself, to keep them to all eternity.
==THE FIR TREE==
Out in the woods stood a nice little Fir Tree. The place he had was a very good one: the sun shone on him: as to fresh air, there was enough of that, and round him grew many large-sized comrades, pines as well as firs. But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a grown-up tree.
He did not think of the warm sun and of the fresh air; he did not care for the little cottage children that ran about and prattled when they were in the woods looking for wild-strawberries. The children often came with a whole pitcher full of berries, or a long row of them threaded on a straw, and sat down near the young tree and said, “Oh, how pretty he is! What a nice little fir!” But this was what the Tree could not bear to hear.
At the end of a year he had shot up a good deal, and after another year he was another long bit taller; for with fir trees one can always tell by the shoots how many years old they are.
“Oh! Were I but such a high tree as the others are,” sighed he. “Then I should be able to spread out my branches, and with the tops to look into the wide world! Then would the birds build nests among my branches: and when there was a breeze, I could bend with as much stateliness as the others!”
Neither the sunbeams, nor the birds, nor the red clouds which morning and evening sailed above him, gave the little Tree any pleasure.
In winter, when the snow lay glittering on the ground, a hare would often come leaping along, and jump right over the little Tree. Oh, that made him so angry! But two winters were past, and in the third the Tree was so large that the hare was obliged to go round it. “To grow and grow, to get older and be tall,” thought the Tree—“that, after all, is the most delightful thing in the world!”
In autumn the wood-cutters always came and felled some of the largest trees. This happened every year; and the young Fir Tree, that had now grown to a very comely size, trembled at the sight; for the magnificent great trees fell to the earth with noise and cracking, the branches were lopped off, and the trees looked long and bare; they were hardly to be recognised; and then they were laid in carts, and the horses dragged them out of the wood.
Where did they go to? What became of them?
In spring, when the swallows and the storks came, the Tree asked them, “Don't you know where they have been taken? Have you not met them anywhere?”
The swallows did not know anything about it; but the Stork looked musing, nodded his head, and said, “Yes; I think I know; I met many ships as I was flying hither from Egypt; on the ships were magnificent masts, and I venture to assert that it was they that smelt so of fir. I may congratulate you, for they lifted themselves on high most majestically!”
“Oh, were I but old enough to fly across the sea! But how does the sea look in reality? What is it like?”
“That would take a long time to explain,” said the Stork, and with these words off he went.
“Rejoice in thy growth!” said the Sunbeams. “Rejoice in thy vigorous growth, and in the fresh life that moveth within thee!”
And the Wind kissed the Tree, and the Dew wept tears over him; but the Fir understood it not.
When Christmas came, quite young trees were cut down: trees which often were not even as large or of the same age as this Fir Tree, who could never rest, but always wanted to be off. These young trees, and they were always the finest looking, retained their branches; they were laid on carts, and the horses drew them out of the wood.
“Where are they going to?” asked the Fir. “They are not taller than I; there was one indeed that was considerably shorter; and why do they retain all their branches? Whither are they taken?”
“We know! We know!” chirped the Sparrows. “We have peeped in at the windows in the town below! We know whither they are taken! The greatest splendor and the greatest magnificence one can imagine await them. We peeped through the windows, and saw them planted in the middle of the warm room and ornamented with the most splendid things, with gilded apples, with gingerbread, with toys, and many hundred lights!”
“And then?” asked the Fir Tree, trembling in every bough. “And then? What happens then?”
“We did not see anything more: it was incomparably beautiful.”
“I would fain know if I am destined for so glorious a career,” cried the Tree, rejoicing. “That is still better than to cross the sea! What a longing do I suffer! Were Christmas but come! I am now tall, and my branches spread like the others that were carried off last year! Oh! were I but already on the cart! Were I in the warm room with all the splendor and magnificence! Yes; then something better, something still grander, will surely follow, or wherefore should they thus ornament me? Something better, something still grander must follow—but what? Oh, how I long, how I suffer! I do not know myself what is the matter with me!”
“Rejoice in our presence!” said the Air and the Sunlight. “Rejoice in thy own fresh youth!”
But the Tree did not rejoice at all; he grew and grew, and was green both winter and summer. People that saw him said, “What a fine tree!” and towards Christmas he was one of the first that was cut down. The axe struck deep into the very pith; the Tree fell to the earth with a sigh; he felt a pang—it was like a swoon; he could not think of happiness, for he was sorrowful at being separated from his home, from the place where he had sprung up. He well knew that he should never see his dear old comrades, the little bushes and flowers around him, anymore; perhaps not even the birds! The departure was not at all agreeable.
The Tree only came to himself when he was unloaded in a court-yard with the other trees, and heard a man say, “That one is splendid! We don't want the others.” Then two servants came in rich livery and carried the Fir Tree into a large and splendid drawing-room. Portraits were hanging on the walls, and near the white porcelain stove stood two large Chinese vases with lions on the covers. There, too, were large easy-chairs, silken sofas, large tables full of picture-books and full of toys, worth hundreds and hundreds of crowns—at least the children said so. And the Fir Tree was stuck upright in a cask that was filled with sand; but no one could see that it was a cask, for green cloth was hung all round it, and it stood on a large gaily-colored carpet. Oh! how the Tree quivered! What was to happen? The servants, as well as the young ladies, decorated it. On one branch there hung little nets cut out of colored paper, and each net was filled with sugarplums; and among the other boughs gilded apples and walnuts were suspended, looking as though they had grown there, and little blue and white tapers were placed among the leaves. Dolls that looked for all the world like men—the Tree had never beheld such before—were seen among the foliage, and at the very top a large star of gold tinsel was fixed. It was really splendid—beyond description splendid.
“This evening!” they all said. “How it will shine this evening!”
“Oh!” thought the Tree. “If the evening were but come! If the tapers were but lighted! And then I wonder what will happen! Perhaps the other trees from the forest will come to look at me! Perhaps the sparrows will beat against the windowpanes! I wonder if I shall take root here, and winter and summer stand covered with ornaments!”
He knew very much about the matter—but he was so impatient that for sheer longing he got a pain in his back, and this with trees is the same thing as a headache with us.
The candles were now lighted—what brightness! What splendor! The Tree trembled so in every bough that one of the tapers set fire to the foliage. It blazed up famously.
“Help! Help!” cried the young ladies, and they quickly put out the fire.
Now the Tree did not even dare tremble. What a state he was in! He was so uneasy lest he should lose something of his splendor, that he was quite bewildered amidst the glare and brightness; when suddenly both folding-doors opened and a troop of children rushed in as if they would upset the Tree. The older persons followed quietly; the little ones stood quite still. But it was only for a moment; then they shouted that the whole place re-echoed with their rejoicing; they danced round the Tree, and one present after the other was pulled off.
“What are they about?” thought the Tree. “What is to happen now!” And the lights burned down to the very branches, and as they burned down they were put out one after the other, and then the children had permission to plunder the Tree. So they fell upon it with such violence that all its branches cracked; if it had not been fixed firmly in the ground, it would certainly have tumbled down.
The children danced about with their beautiful playthings; no one looked at the Tree except the old nurse, who peeped between the branches; but it was only to see if there was a fig or an apple left that had been forgotten.
“A story! A story!” cried the children, drawing a little fat man towards the Tree. He seated himself under it and said, “Now we are in the shade, and the Tree can listen too. But I shall tell only one story. Now which will you have; that about Ivedy-Avedy, or about Humpy-Dumpy, who tumbled downstairs, and yet after all came to the throne and married the princess?”
“Ivedy-Avedy,” cried some; “Humpy-Dumpy,” cried the others. There was such a bawling and screaming—the Fir Tree alone was silent, and he thought to himself, “Am I not to bawl with the rest? Am I to do nothing whatever?” for he was one of the company, and had done what he had to do.
And the man told about Humpy-Dumpy that tumbled down, who notwithstanding came to the throne, and at last married the princess. And the children clapped their hands, and cried. “Oh, go on! Do go on!” They wanted to hear about Ivedy-Avedy too, but the little man only told them about Humpy-Dumpy. The Fir Tree stood quite still and absorbed in thought; the birds in the wood had never related the like of this. “Humpy-Dumpy fell downstairs, and yet he married the princess! Yes, yes! That's the way of the world!” thought the Fir Tree, and believed it all, because the man who told the story was so good-looking. “Well, well! who knows, perhaps I may fall downstairs, too, and get a princess as wife!” And he looked forward with joy to the morrow, when he hoped to be decked out again with lights, playthings, fruits, and tinsel.
“I won't tremble to-morrow!” thought the Fir Tree. “I will enjoy to the full all my splendor! To-morrow I shall hear again the story of Humpy-Dumpy, and perhaps that of Ivedy-Avedy too.” And the whole night the Tree stood still and in deep thought.
In the morning the servant and the housemaid came in.
“Now then the splendor will begin again,” thought the Fir. But they dragged him out of the room, and up the stairs into the loft: and here, in a dark corner, where no daylight could enter, they left him. “What's the meaning of this?” thought the Tree. “What am I to do here? What shall I hear now, I wonder?” And he leaned against the wall lost in reverie. Time enough had he too for his reflections; for days and nights passed on, and nobody came up; and when at last somebody did come, it was only to put some great trunks in a corner, out of the way. There stood the Tree quite hidden; it seemed as if he had been entirely forgotten.
“'Tis now winter out-of-doors!” thought the Tree. “The earth is hard and covered with snow; men cannot plant me now, and therefore I have been put up here under shelter till the spring-time comes! How thoughtful that is! How kind man is, after all! If it only were not so dark here, and so terribly lonely! Not even a hare! And out in the woods it was so pleasant, when the snow was on the ground, and the hare leaped by; yes—even when he jumped over me; but I did not like it then! It is really terribly lonely here!”
“Squeak! Squeak!” said a little Mouse, at the same moment, peeping out of his hole. And then another little one came. They snuffed about the Fir Tree, and rustled among the branches.
“It is dreadfully cold,” said the Mouse. “But for that, it would be delightful here, old Fir, wouldn't it?”
“I am by no means old,” said the Fir Tree. “There's many a one considerably older than I am.”
“Where do you come from,” asked the Mice; “and what can you do?” They were so extremely curious. “Tell us about the most beautiful spot on the earth. Have you never been there? Were you never in the larder, where cheeses lie on the shelves, and hams hang from above; where one dances about on tallow candles: that place where one enters lean, and comes out again fat and portly?”
“I know no such place,” said the Tree. “But I know the wood, where the sun shines and where the little birds sing.” And then he told all about his youth; and the little Mice had never heard the like before; and they listened and said,
“Well, to be sure! How much you have seen! How happy you must have been!”
“I!” said the Fir Tree, thinking over what he had himself related. “Yes, in reality those were happy times.” And then he told about Christmas-eve, when he was decked out with cakes and candles.
“Oh,” said the little Mice, “how fortunate you have been, old Fir Tree!”
“I am by no means old,” said he. “I came from the wood this winter; I am in my prime, and am only rather short for my age.”
“What delightful stories you know,” said the Mice: and the next night they came with four other little Mice, who were to hear what the Tree recounted: and the more he related, the more he remembered himself; and it appeared as if those times had really been happy times. “But they may still come—they may still come! Humpy-Dumpy fell downstairs, and yet he got a princess!” and he thought at the moment of a nice little Birch Tree growing out in the woods: to the Fir, that would be a real charming princess.
“Who is Humpy-Dumpy?” asked the Mice. So then the Fir Tree told the whole fairy tale, for he could remember every single word of it; and the little Mice jumped for joy up to the very top of the Tree. Next night two more Mice came, and on Sunday two Rats even; but they said the stories were not interesting, which vexed the little Mice; and they, too, now began to think them not so very amusing either.
“Do you know only one story?” asked the Rats.
“Only that one,” answered the Tree. “I heard it on my happiest evening; but I did not then know how happy I was.”
“It is a very stupid story! Don't you know one about bacon and tallow candles? Can't you tell any larder stories?”
“No,” said the Tree.
“Then good-bye,” said the Rats; and they went home.
At last the little Mice stayed away also; and the Tree sighed: “After all, it was very pleasant when the sleek little Mice sat round me, and listened to what I told them. Now that too is over. But I will take good care to enjoy myself when I am brought out again.”
But when was that to be? Why, one morning there came a quantity of people and set to work in the loft. The trunks were moved, the tree was pulled out and thrown—rather hard, it is true—down on the floor, but a man drew him towards the stairs, where the daylight shone.
“Now a merry life will begin again,” thought the Tree. He felt the fresh air, the first sunbeam—and now he was out in the courtyard. All passed so quickly, there was so much going on around him, the Tree quite forgot to look to himself. The court adjoined a garden, and all was in flower; the roses hung so fresh and odorous over the balustrade, the lindens were in blossom, the Swallows flew by, and said, “Quirre-vit! My husband is come!” but it was not the Fir Tree that they meant.
“Now, then, I shall really enjoy life,” said he exultingly, and spread out his branches; but, alas, they were all withered and yellow! It was in a corner that he lay, among weeds and nettles. The golden star of tinsel was still on the top of the Tree, and glittered in the sunshine.
In the court-yard some of the merry children were playing who had danced at Christmas round the Fir Tree, and were so glad at the sight of him. One of the youngest ran and tore off the golden star.
“Only look what is still on the ugly old Christmas tree!” said he, trampling on the branches, so that they all cracked beneath his feet.
And the Tree beheld all the beauty of the flowers, and the freshness in the garden; he beheld himself, and wished he had remained in his dark corner in the loft; he thought of his first youth in the wood, of the merry Christmas-eve, and of the little Mice who had listened with so much pleasure to the story of Humpy-Dumpy.
“'Tis over—'tis past!” said the poor Tree. “Had I but rejoiced when I had reason to do so! But now 'tis past, 'tis past!”
And the gardener's boy chopped the Tree into small pieces; there was a whole heap lying there. The wood flamed up splendidly under the large brewing copper, and it sighed so deeply! Each sigh was like a shot.
The boys played about in the court, and the youngest wore the gold star on his breast which the Tree had had on the happiest evening of his life. However, that was over now—the Tree gone, the story at an end. All, all was over—every tale must end at last.
==THE TIN SOLDIER==
=== THE TOY SHOP ===
The lights shining through the rain on the smooth street made of it a golden river.
The shabby old gentleman navigated unsteadily until he came to a corner. A lamp-post offered safe harbor. He steered for it and took his bearings. On each side of the glimmering stream loomed dark houses. A shadowy blot on the triangle he knew to be a church. Beyond the church was the intersecting avenue. Down the avenue were the small exclusive shops which were gradually encroaching on the residence section.
The shabby old gentleman took out his watch. It was a fine old watch, not at all in accord with the rest of him. It was almost six. The darkness of the November afternoon had come at five. The shabby old gentleman swung away from the lamppost and around the corner, then bolted triumphantly into the Toy Shop.
"Here I am," he said, with an attempt at buoyancy, and sat down.
"Oh," said the girl behind the counter, "you are wet."
"Well, I said I'd come, didn't I? Rain or shine? In five minutes I should have been too late—shop closed—" He lurched a little towards her.
She backed away from him. "You—you are—wet—won't you take cold—?"
"Never take cold—glad to get here—" He smiled and shut his eyes, opened them and smiled again, nodded and recovered, nodded and came to rest with his head on the counter.
The girl made a sudden rush for the rear door of the shop. "Look here, Emily. Poor old duck!"
Emily, standing in the doorway, surveyed the sleeping derelict scornfully. "You'd better put him out. It is six o'clock, Jean—"
"He was here yesterday—and he was furious because I wouldn't sell him any soldiers. He said he wanted to make a bonfire of the Prussian ones—and to buy the French and English ones for his son," she laughed.
"Of course you told him they were not for sale."
"Yes. But he insisted. And when he went away he told me he'd come again and bring a lot of money—"
The shabby old gentleman, rousing at the psychological moment, threw on the counter a roll of bills and murmured brokenly:
"'Ten little soldiers fighting on the line,
One was blown to glory, and, then there were nine—!'"
His head fell forward and again he slept.
"Disgusting," said Emily Bridges; "of course we've got to get him out."
Getting him out, however, offered difficulties. He was a very big old gentleman, and they were little women.
"We might call the police—"
"Oh, Emily—"
"Well, if you can suggest anything better. We must close the shop."
"We might put him in a taxi—and send him home."
"He probably hasn't any home."
"Don't be so pessimistic—he certainly has money."
"You don't know where he got it. You can't be too careful, Jean—"
The girl, touching the old man's shoulder, asked, "Where do you live?"
He murmured indistinctly.
"Where?" she bent her ear down to him.
Waking, he sang:
"Two little soldiers, blowing up a Hun—
The darned thing—exploded—
And then there was—One—"
"Oh, Emily, did you ever hear anything so funny?"
Emily couldn't see the funny side of it. It was tragic and it was disconcerting. "I don't know what to do. Perhaps you'd better call a taxi."
"He's shivering, Emily. I believe I'll make him a cup of chocolate."
"Dear child, it will be a lot of trouble—"
"I'd like to do it—really."
"Very well." Emily was not unsympathetic, but she had had a rather wearing life. Her love of toys and of little children had kept her human, otherwise she had a feeling that she might have hardened into chill spinsterhood.
As Jean disappeared through the door, the elder woman moved about the shop, setting it in order for the night. It was a labor of love to put the dolls to bed, to lock the glass doors safely on the puffy rabbits and woolly dogs and round-eyed cats, to close the drawers on the tea-sets and Lilliputian kitchens, to shut into boxes the tin soldiers that their queer old customer had craved.
For more than a decade Emily Bridges had kept the shop. Originally it had been a Thread and Needle Shop, supplying people who did not care to go downtown for such wares.
Then one Christmas she had put in a few things to attract the children. The children had come, and gradually there had been more toys—until at last she had found herself the owner of a Toy Shop, with the thread and needle and other staid articles stuck negligently in the background.
Yet in the last three years it had been hard to keep up the standard which she had set for herself. Toys were made in Germany, and the men who had made them were in the trenches, the women who had helped were in the fields—the days when the bisque babies had smiled on happy working-households were over. There was death and darkness where once the rollicking clowns and dancing dolls had been set to mechanical music.
Jean, coming back with the chocolate, found Emily with a great white plush elephant in her arms. His trappings were of red velvet and there was much gold; he was the last of a line of assorted sizes.
There had always been a white elephant in Miss Emily's window. Painfully she had seen her supply dwindle. For this last of the herd, she had a feeling far in excess of his value, such as a collector might have for a rare coin of a certain minting, or a bit of pottery of a pre-historic period.
She had not had the heart to sell him. "I may never get another. And there are none made like him in America."
"After the war—" Jean had hinted.
Miss Emily had flared, "Do you think I shall buy toys of Germany after this war?"
"Good for you, Emily. I was afraid you might."
But tonight a little pensively Miss Emily wrapped the old mastodon up in a white cloth. "I believe I'll take him home with me. People are always asking to buy him, and it's hard to explain."
"I should say it is. I had an awful time with him," she indicated the old gentleman, "yesterday."
She set the tray down on the counter. There was a slim silver pot on it, and a thin green cup. She poked the sleeping man with a tentative finger. "Won't you please wake up and have some chocolate."
Rousing, he came slowly to the fact of her hospitality. "My dear young lady," he said, with a trace of courtliness, "you shouldn't have troubled—" and reached out a trembling hand for the cup. There was a ring on the hand, a seal ring with a coat of arms. As he drank the chocolate eagerly, he spilled some of it on his shabby old coat.
He was facing the door. Suddenly it opened, and his cup fell with a crash.
A young man came in. He too, was shabby, but not as shabby as the old gentleman. He had on a dilapidated rain-coat, and a soft hat. He took off his hat, showing hair that was of an almost silvery fairness. His eyebrows made a dark pencilled line—his eyes were gray. It was a striking face, given a slightly foreign air by a small mustache.
He walked straight up to the old man, laid his hand on his shoulder, "Hello, Dad." Then, anxiously, to the two women, "I hope he hasn't troubled you. He isn't quite—himself."
Jean nodded. "I am so glad you came. We didn't know what to do."
"I've been looking for him—" He bent to pick up the broken cup. "I'm dreadfully sorry. You must let me pay for it."
"Oh, no."
"Please." He was looking at it. "It was valuable?"
"Yes," Jean admitted, "it was one of Emily's precious pets."
"Please don't think any more about it," Emily begged. "You had better get your father home at once, and put him to bed with a hot water bottle."
Now that the shabby youth was looking at her with troubled eyes, Emily found herself softening towards the old gentleman. Simply as a derelict she had not cared what became of him. But as the father of this son, she cared.
"Thank you, I will. We must be going, Dad."
The old gentleman stood up. "Wait a minute—I came for tin soldiers—Derry—"
"They are not for sale," Miss Emily stated. "They are made in Germany. I can't get any more. I have withdrawn everything of the kind from my selling stock."
The shabby old gentleman murmured, disconsolately.
"Oh, Emily," said the girl behind the counter, "don't you think we might—?"
Derry Drake glanced at her with sudden interest. She had an unusual voice, quick and thrilling. It matched her beauty, which was of a rare quality—white skin, blue eyes, crinkled hair like beaten copper.
"I don't see," he said, smiling for the first time, "what Dad wants of tin soldiers."
"To make 'em fight," said the shabby old man, "we've got to have some fighting blood in the family."
The smile was struck from the young man's face. Out of a dead silence, he said at last, "You were very good to look after him. Come, Dad." His voice was steady, but the flush that had flamed in his cheeks was still there, as he put his arm about the shaky old man and led him to the door.
"Thank you both again," he said from the threshold. Then, with his head high, he steered his unsteady parent out into the rain.
It was late when the two women left the shop. Miss Emily, struggling down the block with her white elephant, found, in a few minutes, harbor in her boarding house. But Jean lived in the more fashionable section beyond Dupont Circle. Her father was a doctor with a practice among the older district people, who, in spite of changing administrations and fluctuating populations, had managed, to preserve their family traditions and social identity.
Dr. McKenzie did not always dine at home. But tonight when Jean came down he was at the head of the table. He was a big, handsome man with crinkled hair like his daughter's, copper-colored and cut close to his rather classic head.
Hilda Merritt was also at the table. She was a trained nurse, who, having begun life as the Doctor's office-girl, had, gradually, after his wife's death, assumed the management of his household. Jean was not fond of her. She had repeatedly begged that her dear Emily might take Miss Merritt's place.
"But Hilda is much younger," her father had contended, "and much more of a companion for you."
"She isn't a companion at all, Daddy. We haven't the same thoughts."
But Hilda had stayed on, and Jean had sought her dear Emily's company in the little shop. Sometimes she waited on customers. Sometimes she worked in the rear room. It was always a great joke to feel that she was really helping. In all her life her father had never let her do a useful thing.
The table was lighted with candles, and there was a silver dish of fruit in the center. The dinner was well-served by a trim maid.
Jean ate very little. Her father noticed her lack of appetite, "Why don't you eat your dinner, dear?"
"I had chocolate at Emily's."
"I don't think she ought to go there so often," Miss Merritt complained.
"Why not?" Jean's voice was like the crack of a whip.
"It is so late when you get home. It isn't safe."
"I can always send the car for you, Jean," her father said. "I don't care to have you out alone."
"Having the car isn't like walking. You know it isn't, Daddy, with the rain against your cheeks and the wind—"
Dr. McKenzie's quick imagination was fired. His eyes were like Jean's, lighted from within.
"I suppose it is all right if she comes straight up Connecticut Avenue, Hilda?"
Miss Merritt had long white hands which lay rather limply on the table. Her arms were bare. She was handsome in a red-cheeked, blond fashion.
"Of course if you think it is all right, Doctor—"
"It is up to Jean. If she isn't afraid, we needn't worry."
"I'm not afraid of anything."
He smiled at her. She was so pretty and slim and feminine in her white gown, with a string of pearls on her white neck. He liked pretty things and he liked her fearlessness. He had never been afraid. It pleased him that his daughter should share his courage.
"Perhaps, if I am not too busy, I will come for you the next time you go to the shop. Would walking with me break the spell of the wind and wet?"
"You know it wouldn't. It would be quite—heavenly—Daddy."
After dinner, Doctor McKenzie read the evening paper. Jean sat on the rug in front of the fire and knitted for the soldiers. She had made sweaters until it seemed sometimes as if she saw life through a haze of olive-drab.
"I am going to knit socks next," she told her father.
He looked up from his paper. "Did you ever stop to think what it means to a man over there when a woman says 'I'm going to knit socks'?"
Jean nodded. That was one of the charms which her father had for her. He saw things. It was tired soldiers at this moment, marching in the cold and needing—socks.
Hilda, having no vision, remarked from the corner where she sat with her book, "There's no sense in all this killing—I wish we'd kept out of it."
"Wasn't there any sense," said little Jean from the hearth rug, "in Bunker Hill and Valley Forge?"
Hilda evaded that. "Anyhow, I'm glad they've stopped playing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' at the movies. I'm tired of standing up."
Jean voiced her scorn. "I'd stand until I dropped, rather than miss a note of it."
Doctor McKenzie interposed:
"'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things,
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—'"
"Oh, Daddy," Jean reproached him, "I should think you might be serious."
"I am not just twenty—and I have learned to bank my fires. And you mustn't take Hilda too literally. She doesn't mean all that she says, do you, Hilda?"
He patted Miss Merritt on the shoulder as he went out. Jean hated that. And Hilda's blush.
With the Doctor gone, Hilda shut herself up in the office to balance her books.
Jean went on with her knitting, Hilda did not knit. When she was not helping in the office or in the house, her hands lay idle in her lap.
Jean's mind, as she worked, was on those long white hands of Hilda's. Her own hands had short fingers like her father's. Her mother's hands had been slender and transparent. Hilda's hands were not slender, they had breadth as well as length, and the skin was thick. Even the whiteness was like the flesh of a fish, pale and flabby. No, there was no beauty at all in Hilda's hands.
Once Jean had criticised them to her father. "I think they are ugly."
"They are useful hands, and they have often helped me."
"I like Emily's hands much better."
"Oh, you and your Emily," he had teased.
Yet Jean's words came back to the Doctor the next night, as he sat in the Toy Shop waiting to escort his daughter home.
Miss Emily was serving a customer, a small boy in a red coat and baggy trousers. A nurse stood behind the small boy, and played, as it were, Chorus. She wore a blue cape and a long blue bow on the back of her hat.
The small boy was having the mechanical toys wound up for him. He expressed a preference for the clowns, but didn't like the colors.
"I want him boo'," he informed Miss Emily, "he's for a girl, and she yikes boo'."
"Blue," said the nurse austerely, "you know your mother doesn't like baby talk, Teddy."
"Ble-yew—" said the small boy, carefully.
"Blue clowns," Miss Emily stated, sympathetically, "are hard to get. Most of them are red. I have the nicest thing that I haven't shown you. But it costs a lot—"
"It's a birfday present," said the small boy.
"Birthday," from the Chorus.
"Be-yirthday," was the amended version, "and I want it nice."
Miss Emily brought forth from behind the glass doors of a case a small green silk head of lettuce. She set it on the counter, and her fingers found the key, then clickety-click, clickety-click, she wound it up. It played a faint tune, the leaves opened—a rabbit with a wide-frilled collar rose in the center. He turned from side to side, he waggled his ears, and nodded his head, he winked an eye; then he disappeared, the leaves closed, the music stopped.
The small boy was entranced. "It's boo-ful—"
"Beautiful—" from the background.
"Be-yewtiful—. I'll take it, please."
It was while Miss Emily was winding the toy that Dr. McKenzie noticed her bands. They were young hands, quick and delightful hands. They hovered over the toy, caressingly, beat time to the music, rested for a moment on the shoulders of the little boy as he stood finally with upturned face and tied-up parcel.
"I'm coming adain," he told her.
"Again—."
"Ag-yain—," patiently.
"I hope you will." Miss Emily held out her hand. She did not kiss him. He was a boy, and she knew better.
When he had gone, importantly, Emily saw the Doctor's eyes upon her. "I hated to sell it," she said, with a sigh; "goodness knows when I shall get another. But I can't resist the children—"
He laughed. "You are a miser, Emily."
He had known her for many years. She was his wife's distant cousin, and had been her dearest friend. She had taught in a private school before she opened her shop, and Jean had been one of her pupils. Since Mrs. McKenzie's death it had been Emily who had mothered Jean.
The Doctor had always liked her, but without enthusiasm. His admiration of women depended largely on their looks. His wife had meant more to him than that, but it had been her beauty which had first held him.
Emily Bridges had been a slender and diffident girl. She had kept her slenderness, but she had lost her diffidence, and she had gained an air of distinction. She dressed well, her really pretty feet were always carefully shod and her hair carefully waved. Yet she was one of the women who occupy the background rather than the foreground of men's lives—the kind of woman for whom a man must be a Columbus, discovering new worlds for himself.
"Yon are a miser," the Doctor repeated.
"Wouldn't you be, under the same circumstances? If it were, for example, surgical instruments—anaesthetics—? And you knew that when they were gone you wouldn't get any more?"
He did not like logic in a woman. He wanted to laugh and tease. "Jean told me about the white elephant."
"Well, what of it? I have him at home—safe. In a big box—with moth-balls—" Her lips twitched. "Oh, it must seem funny to anyone who doesn't feel as I do."
The door of the rear room opened, and Jean came in, carrying in her arms an assortment of strange creatures which she set in a row on the floor in front of her father.
"There?" she asked, "what do you think of them?"
They were silhouettes of birds and beasts, made of wood, painted and varnished. But such ducks had never quacked, such geese had never waddled, such dogs had never barked—fantastic as a nightmare—too long—too broad—exaggerated out of all reality, they might have marched with Alice from Wonderland or from behind the Looking Glass.
"I made them, Daddy."
"You—."
"Yes, do you like them?"
"Aren't they a bit—uncanny?"
"We've sold dozens; the children adore them."
"And you haven't told me you were doing it. Why?"
"I wanted you to see them first—a surprise. We call them the Lovely Dreams, and we made the ducks green and the pussy cats pink because that's the way the children see them in their own little minds—"
She was radiant. "And I am making money, Daddy. Emily had such a hard time getting toys after the war began, so we thought we'd try. And we worked out these. I get a percentage on all sales."
He frowned. "I am not sure that I like that."
"Why not?"
"Don't I give you money enough?"
"Of course. But this is different."
"How different?"
"It is my own. Don't you see?"
Being a man he did not see, but Miss Emily did. "Any work that is worth doing at all is worth being paid for. You know that, Doctor."
He did know it, but he didn't like to have a woman tell him. "She doesn't need the money."
"I do. I am giving it to the Red Cross. Please don't be stuffy about it, Daddy."
"Am I stuffy?"
"Yes."
He tried to redeem himself by a rather tardy enthusiasm and succeeded. Jean brought out more Lovely Dreams, until a grotesque procession stretched across the room.
"Tomorrow," she announced, triumphantly, "we'll put them in the window, and you'll see the children coming."
As she carried them away, Doctor McKenzie said to Emily, "It seems strange that she should want to do it."
"Not at all. She needs an outlet for her energies."
"Oh, does she?"
"If she weren't your daughter, you'd know it."
On the way home he said, "I am very proud of you, my dear."
Jean had tucked her arm through his. It was not raining, but the sky was full of ragged clouds, and the wind blew strongly. They felt the push of it as they walked against it.
"Oh," she said, with her cheek against his rough coat, "are you proud of me because of my green ducks and my pink pussy cats?"
But she knew it was more than that, although he laughed, and she laughed with him, as if his pride in her was a thing which they took lightly. But they both walked a little faster to keep pace with their quickened blood.
Thus their walk became a sort of triumphant progress. They passed the British Embassy with the Lion and the Unicorn watching over it in the night; they rounded the Circle and came suddenly upon a line of motor cars.
"The Secretary is dining a rather important commission," the Doctor said; "it was in the paper. They are to have a war feast—three courses, no wine, and limited meats and sweets."
They stopped for a moment as the guests descended from their cars and swept across the sidewalk. The lantern which swung low from the arched entrance showed a spot of rosy color—the velvet wrap of a girl whose knot of dark curls shone above the ermine collar. A Spanish comb, encrusted with diamonds, was stuck at right angles to the knot.
Beside the young woman in the rosy wrap walked a young man in a fur coat who topped her by a head. He had gray eyes and a small upturned mustache—Jean uttered an exclamation.
"What's the matter?" her father asked.
"Oh, nothing—" she watched the two ascend the stairs. "I thought for a moment that I knew him."
The great door opened and closed, the rosy wrap and the fur coat were swallowed up.
"Of course it couldn't be," Jean decided as she and her father continued on their wonderful way.
"Couldn't be what, my dear?"
"The same man, Daddy," Jean said, and changed the subject.
=== CINDERELLA ===
The next time that Jean saw Him was at the theater. She and her father went to worship at the shrine of Maude Adams, and He was there.
It was Jean's yearly treat. There were, of course, other plays. But since her very-small-girlhood, there had been always that red-letter night when "The Little Minister" or "Hop-o'-my-Thumb" or "Peter Pan" had transported her straight from the real world to that whimsical, tender, delightful realm where Barrie reigns.
Peter Pan had been the climax!
Do you believe in fairies?
Of course she did. And so did Miss Emily. And so did her father, except in certain backsliding moments. But Hilda didn't.
Tonight it was "A Kiss for Cinderella"—! The very name had been enough to set Jean's cheeks burning and her eyes shining.
"Do you remember, Daddy, that I was six when I first saw her, and she's as young as ever?"
"Younger." It was at such moments that the Doctor was at his best. The youth in him matched the youth in his daughter. They were boy and girl together.
And now the girl on the stage, whose undying youth made her the interpreter of dreams for those who would never grow up, wove her magic spells of tears and laughter.
It was not until the first satisfying act was over that Jean drew a long breath and looked about her.
The house was packed. The old theater with its painted curtain had nothing modern to recommend it. But to Jean's mind it could not have been improved. She wanted not one thing changed. For years and years she had sat in her favorite seat in the seventh row of the parquet and had loved the golden proscenium arch, the painted goddesses, the red velvet hangings—she had thrilled to the voice and gesture of the artists who had played to please her. There had been "Wang" and "The Wizard of Oz"; "Robin Hood"; the tall comedian of "Casey at the Bat"; the short comedian who had danced to fame on his crooked legs; Mrs. Fiske, most incomparable Becky; Mansfield, Sothern—some of them, alas, already gods of yesterday!
At first there had been matinées with her mother—"The Little Princess," over whose sorrows she had wept in the harrowing first act, having to be consoled with chocolates and the promise of brighter things as the play progressed.
Now and then she had come with Hilda. But never when she could help it. "I'd rather stay at home," she had told her father.
"But—why—?"
"Because she laughs in the wrong places."
Her father never laughed in the wrong places, and he squeezed her hand in those breathless moments where words would have been desecration, and wiped his eyes frankly when his feelings were stirred.
"There is no one like you, Daddy," she had told him, "to enjoy things." And so it had come about that he had pushed away his work on certain nights and, sitting beside her, had forgotten the sordid and suffering world which he knew so well, and which she knew not at all.
As her eyes swept the house, they rested at last with a rather puzzled look on a stout old gentleman with a wide shirt-front, who sat in the right-hand box. He had white hair and a red face.
Where had she seen him?
There were women in the box, a sparkling company in white and silver, and black and diamonds, and green and gold. There was a big bald-headed man, and quite in the shadow back of them all, a slender youth.
It was when the slender youth leaned forward to speak to the vision in white and silver that Jean stared and stared again.
She knew now where she had seen the old gentleman with the wide shirt front. He was the shabby old gentleman of the Toy Shop! And the youth was the shabby son!
Yet here they were in state and elegance! As if a fairy godmother had waved a wand—!
The curtain went up on a feverish little slavey with her mind set on going to the ball, on Our Policeman wanting a shave, on the orphans in boxes, on baked potato offered as hospitality by a half-starved hostess, on a waiting Cinderella asleep on a frozen doorstep.
And then the ball—and Mona Lisa, and the Duchess of Devonshire, and The Girl with the Pitcher and the Girl with the Muff—and Cinderella in azure tulle and cloth-of-gold, dancing with the Prince at the end like mad—.
Then the bell boomed—the lights went out—and after a little moment, one saw Cinderella, stripped of her finery, staggering up the stairs.
Jean cried and laughed, and cried again. Yet even in the midst of her emotion, she found her eyes pulled away from that appealing figure on the stage to those faintly illumined figures in the box.
When the curtain went down, her father, most surprisingly, bowed to the old gentleman and received in return a genial nod.
"Oh, do you know him?" she demanded.
"Yes. It is General Drake."
"Who are the others?"
"I am not sure about the women. The boy in the back of the box is his son, DeRhymer Drake."
Derry!
"Oh,"—she had a feeling that she was not being quite candid with her father—"he's rather swank, isn't he, Daddy?"
"Heavens, what slang! I don't see where you get it. He is rich, if that's what you mean, and it's a wonder he isn't spoiled to death. His mother is dead, and the General is his own worst enemy; eats and drinks too much, and thinks he can get away with it."
"Are they very rich—?"
"Millions, with only Derry to leave it to. He's the child of a second wife."
Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely Cinderella, could your godmother do more than this? To endow two rained-on and shabby gentlemen with pomp and circumstance!
Jean tucked her hand into her father's, as if to anchor herself against this amazing tide of revelation. Then, as the auditorium darkened, and the curtain went up, she was swept along on a wave of emotions in which the play world and the real world were inextricably mixed.
And now Our Policeman discovers that he is "romantical." Cinderella finds her Prince, who isn't in the least the Prince of the fairy tale, but much nicer under the circumstance—and the curtain goes down on a glass slipper stuck on the toes of two tiny feet and a cockney Cinderella, quite content.
"Well," Jean drew a long breath. "It was the loveliest ever, Daddy," she said, as he helped her with her cloak.
And it was while she stood there in that cloak of heavenly blue that the young man in the box looked down and saw her.
He batted his eyes.
Of course she wasn't real.
But when he opened them, there she was, smiling up into the face of the man who had helped her into that heavenly garment.
It came to him, quite suddenly, that his father had bowed to the man—the big man with the classic head and the air of being at ease with himself and the world.
He did things to the velvet and ermine wrap that he was holding, which seemed to satisfy its owner, then he gripped his father's arm. "Dad, who is that big man down there—with the red head—the one who bowed to you?"
"Dr. McKenzie, Bruce McKenzie, the nerve specialist—"
Of course it was something to know that, but one didn't get very far.
"Let's go somewhere and eat," said the General, and that was the end of it. Out of the tail of his eye, Derry Drake saw the two figures with the copper-colored heads move down the aisle, to be finally merged into the indistinguishable stream of humanity which surged towards the door.
Jean and her father did not go to supper at the big hotel around the corner as was their custom.
"I've got to get to the hospital before twelve," the Doctor said. "I am sorry, dear—"
"It doesn't make a bit of difference. I don't want to eat," she settled herself comfortably beside him in the car. "Oh, it is snowing, Daddy, how splendid—"
He laughed. "You little bundle of—ecstasy—what am I going to do with you?"
"Love me. And isn't the snow—wonderful?"
"Yes. But everybody doesn't see it that way."
"I am glad that I do. I should hate to see nothing in all this miracle, but—slush tomorrow—"
"Yet a lot of life is just—slush tomorrow—. I wish you need never find that out—."
When Jean went into the house, and her father drove on, she found Hilda waiting up for her.
"Father had to go to the hospital."
"Did you have anything to eat?"
"No."
"I thought I might cook some oysters."
"I am really not hungry." Then feeling that her tone was ungracious, she tried to make amends. "It was nice of you to think of it—"
"Your father may like them. I'll have them hot for him."
Jean lingered uncertainly. She didn't want the food, but she hated to leave the field to Hilda. She unfastened her cloak, and sat down. "How are you going to cook them?"
"Panned—with celery."
"It sounds good—I think I'll stay down, Hilda."
"As you wish."
The Doctor, coming in with his coat powdered with snow, found his daughter in a big chair in front of the library fire.
"I thought you'd be in bed."
"Hilda has some oysters for us."
"Fine—I'm starved."
She looked at him, meditatively, "I don't see how you can be."
"Why not?"
"Oh, on such a night as this, Daddy? Food seems superfluous."
He sat down, smiling. "Don't ever expect to feed any man over forty on star-dust. Hilda knows better, don't you, Hilda?"
Hilda was bringing in the tray. There was a copper chafing-dish and a percolator. She wore her nurse's outfit of white linen. She looked well in it, and she was apt to put it on after dinner, when she was in charge of the office.
"You know better than to feed a man on stardust, don't you?" the Doctor persisted.
Hilda lifted the cover of the chafing-dish and stirred the contents. "Well, yes," she smiled at him, "you see, I have lived longer than Jean. She'll learn."
"I don't want to learn," Jean told her hotly. "I want to believe that—that—" Words failed her.
"That men can live on star-dust?" her father asked gently. "Well, so be it. We won't quarrel with her, will we, Hilda?"
The oysters were very good. Jean ate several with healthy appetite. Her father, twinkling, teased her, "You see—?"
She shrugged, "All the same, I didn't need them."
Hilda, putting things back on the tray, remarked: "There was a message from Mrs. Witherspoon. Her son is on leave for the week end. She wants you for dinner on Saturday night—both of you."
Doctor McKenzie tapped a finger on the table thoughtfully, "Oh, does she? Do you want to go, Jeanie?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"I am not sure. I should like to build a fence about you, my dear, and never let a man look over. Ralph Witherspoon wants to marry her, Hilda, what do you think of that?"
"Well, why not?" Hilda laid her long hands flat on the table, leaning on them.
Jean felt little prickles of irritability. "Because I don't want to get married, Hilda."
Hilda gave her a sidelong glance, "Of course you do. But you don't know it."
She went out with her tray. Jean turned, white-faced, to her father, "I wish she wouldn't say such things—"
"My dear, I am afraid you don't quite do her justice."
"Oh, well, we won't talk about her. I've got to go to bed, Daddy."
She kissed him wistfully. "Sometimes I think there are two of you, the one that likes me, and the one that likes Hilda."
With his hands on her shoulders, he gave an easy laugh. "Who knows? But you mustn't have it on your mind. It isn't good for you."
"I shall always have you on my mind—."
"But not to worry about, baby. I'm not worth it—."
Hilda came in with the evening paper. "Have you read it, Doctor?"
"No." He glanced at the headlines and his face grew hard. "More frightfulness," he said, stormily. "If I had my way, it should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. For every man they have tortured, there should be one of their men—tortured. For every child mutilated, one of theirs—mutilated. For every woman—."
He stopped. Jean had caught hold of his arm. "Don't, Daddy," she said thickly, "it makes me afraid of you." She covered her face with her hands.
He drew her to him and smoothed her hair in silence. Over her head he glanced at Hilda. She was smiling inscrutably into the fir
=== DRUSILLA ===
The thing that Derry Drake had on his mind the next morning was a tea-cup. There were other things on his mind—things so heavy that he turned with relief to the contemplation of cups.
Stuck all over the great house were cabinets of china—his father had collected and his mother had prized. Derry, himself, had not cared for any of it until this morning, but when Bronson, the old man who served him and had served his father for years, came in with his breakfast, Derry showed him a broken bit which he had brought home with him two nights before. "Have we a cup like this anywhere in the house, Bronson?"
"There's a lot of them, sir, in the blue room, in the wall cupboard."
"I thought so, let me have one of them. If Dad ever asks for it, send him to me. He broke the other, so it's a fair exchange."
He had it carefully wrapped and carried it downtown with him. The morning was clear, and the sun sparkled on the snow. As he passed through Dupont Circle he found that a few children and their nurses had braved the cold. One small boy in a red coat ran to Derry.
"Where are you going, Cousin Derry?"
"Down town."
"To-day is Margaret-Mary's birf-day. I am going to give her a wabbit—."
"Rabbit, Buster. You'd better say it quick. Nurse is on the way."
"Rab-yit. What are you going to give her?"
"Oh, must I give her something?"
"Of course. Mother said you'd forget it. I wanted to telephone, and she wouldn't let me."
"Would a doll do?"
"I shouldn't like a doll. But she is littler. And you mustn't spend much money. Mother said I spent too much for my rab-yit. That I ought to save it for Our Men. And you mustn't eat what you yike—we've got a card in the window, and there wasn't any bacon for bref-fus."
"Breakfast."
"Yes. An' we had puffed rice and prunes—"
Nurse, coming up, was immediately on the job. "You are getting mud on Mr. Derry's spats, Teddy. Stand up like a little gentleman."
"He is always that, Nurse, isn't he? And I should not have on spats at this hour in the morning."
Derry smiled to himself as he left them. He knew that Nurse did not approve of him. He had a way as it were of aiding and abetting Teddy.
But as he went on the smile faded. There were many soldiers on the street, many uniforms, flags of many nations draping doorways where were housed the men from across the sea who were working shoulder to shoulder with America for the winning of the war—. Washington had taken on a new aspect. It had a waked-up look, as if its lazy days were over, and there were real things to do.
The big church at the triangle showed a Red Cross banner. Within women were making bandages, knitting sweaters and socks, sewing up the long seams of shirts and pajamas. A few years ago they had worshipped a Christ among the lilies. They saw him now on the battlefield, crucified again in the cause of humanity.
It seemed to Derry that even the civilians walked with something of a martial stride. Men, who for years had felt their strength sapped by the monotony of Government service, were revived by the winds of patriotism which swept from the four corners of the earth. Women who had lost youth and looks in the treadmill of Departmental life held up their heads as if their eyes beheld a new vision.
Street cars were crowded, things were at sixes and sevens; red tape was loose where it should have been tight and tight where it should have been loose. Little men with the rank of officer sat in swivel chairs and tried to direct big things; big men, without rank, were tied to the trivial. Many, many things were wrong, and many, many things were right, as it is always when war comes upon a people unprepared.
And in the midst of all this clash and crash and movement and achievement, Derry was walking to a toy shop to carry a tea-cup!
He found Miss Emily alone in the big front room.
She did not at once recognize him.
"You remember I was in here the other night—and you wouldn't sell—tin soldiers—."
She flushed a little. "Oh, with your father?"
"Yes. He's a dear old chap—."
It was the best apology he could make, and she loved him for it.
He brought out the cup and set it on the counter. "It is like yours?"
"Yes." But she did not want to take it.
"Please. I brought it on purpose. We have a dozen."
"Of these?"
"Yes."
"But it will break your set."
"We have oodles of sets. Dad collects—you know— There are dishes enough in the house to start a crockery shop."
She glanced at him curiously. It was hard to reconcile this slim young man of fashion with the shabby boy of the other night. But there were the lad's eyes, smiling into hers!
"I should like, too, if you don't mind, to find a toy for a very little girl. It is her birthday, and I had forgotten."
"It is dreadful to forget," Miss Emily told him, "children care so much."
"I have never forgotten before, but I had so much on my mind."
She brought forth the Lovely Dreams—"They have been a great success."
He chose at once a rose-colored cat and a yellow owl. The cat was carved impressionistically in a series of circles. She was altogether celestial and comfortable. The owl might have been lighted by the moon.
"But why?" Derry asked, "a rose-colored cat?"
"Isn't a white cat pink and puffy in the firelight? And a child sees her pink and puffy. If we don't it is because we are blind."
"But why the green ducks and the amethyst cows?"
"The cows are coming tinkling home in the twilight—the green ducks swim under the willows. And they are longer and broader because of the lights and shadows. That's the way you saw them when you were six."
"By Jove," he said, staring, "I believe I did."
"So there's nothing queer about them to the children—you ought to see them listen when Jean tells them."
Jean—!
"She—she tells the children?"
"Yes. Charming stories. I am having them put in a little pamphlet to go with the toys."
"She's Dr. McKenzie's daughter, isn't she? I saw her last night at the play."
"Yes. Such a dear child. She is usually here in the afternoon."
He had hoped until then that Jean might be hidden in that rear room, locked up with the dolls in a drawer, tucked away in a box—he had a blank feeling of the futility of his tea-cup—
Then, suddenly, the gods being in a gay mood, Jean arrived!
At once his errand justified itself. She wore a gray squirrel jacket and a hat to match—and her crinkled copper-colored hair came out from under the hat and over her ears. She carried a little muff. Her eyes—the color of her cheeks! A man might walk to the world's end for less than this—!
He was buying, he told her, pink pussy cats and yellow owls. Had she liked the play last night? He was glad that she adored Maude Adams. He adored—Maude Adams. Did she remember "Peter Pan"? Yes, he had gone to everything—glorified matinées—glorified everything! Wasn't it remarkable that his father knew her father? And she was Jean McKenzie, and he was Derry Drake!
At last there was no excuse for him to linger. "I shall come back for more—Lovely Dreams," he told Miss Emily, and got away.
Alone in the shop the two women looked at each other. Then Emily said, "Jean, darling, how dreadful it must be for him."
"Dreadful—."
"With such a father—."
"Oh, you mean—the other night."
"Yes. He isn't happy, Jean."
"How do you know?"
"He has lonesome eyes."
"Oh, Emily."
"Well, he has, and it must be dreadful."
How dreadful it was neither of them could really know. Derry, having lunched with a rather important committee, went to Drusilla Gray's in the afternoon for a cup of tea. He was called almost at once to the telephone. Bronson was at the other end. "I am sorry, Mr. Derry, but I thought you ought to know—"
Derry, with the sick feeling which always came over him with the knowledge of what was ahead, said steadily, "That's all right, Bronson—which way did he go?"
"He took the Cabin John car, sir. I tried to get on, but he saw me, and sent me back, and I didn't like to make a scene. Shall I follow in a taxi?"
"Yes; I'll get away as soon as I can and call you up out there."
He went back to Drusilla. "Sing for me," he said. Drusilla Gray lived with her Aunt Marion in an apartment winch overlooked Rock Creek. Marion Gray occupied herself with the writing of books. Drusilla had varying occupations. Just now she was interested in interior decoration and in the war.
She was also interested in trying to flirt with Derry Drake. "He won't play the game," she told her aunt, "and that's why I like it—the game, I mean."
"You like him because he hasn't surrendered."
"No. He is a rather perfect thing of his kind, like a bit of jewelled Sèvres or Sang de boeuf. And he doesn't know it. And that's another thing in his favor—his modesty. He makes me think of a little Austrian prince I once met at Palm Beach; who wore a white satin shirt with a high collar of gold embroidery, and white kid boots, and wonderful rings—and his nails long like a Chinaman's. At first we laughed at him—called him effeminate—. But after we knew him we didn't laugh. There was the blood in him of kings and rulers—and presently he had us on our knees. And Derry's like that. When you first meet him you look over his head; then you find yourself looking up—"
Marion smiled. "You've got it bad, Drusilla."
"If you think I am in love with him, I'm not. I'd like to be, but it wouldn't be of any use. He's a Galahad—a pocket-edition Galahad. If he ever falls in love, there'll be more of romance in it than I can give him."
It was to this Drusilla that Derry had come. He liked her immensely. And they had in common a great love of music.
She had tea for him, and some rather strange little spiced cakes on a red lacquer tray. There was much dark blue and vivid red in the room, with white woodwork. Drusilla herself was in unrelieved red. The effect was startling but stimulating.
"I am not sure that I like it," she said, "the red and white and blue, but I wanted to see whether I could do it. And Aunt Marion doesn't care. The red things can all be taken out, and the rest toned down. But I have a feeling that a man couldn't sit in this room and be a slacker."
"No, he couldn't," Derry agreed. "You'd better hang out a recruiting sign, Drusilla."
"I should if they would let me. The best I can do is ask them to tea and sing for them."
It was right here that Bronson's message had broken in, and Derry, coming back from the telephone, had said, "Sing for me."
Drusilla lighted two red candles on the piano in the alcove. She began with a medley of patriotic songs. With her voice never soaring above a repressed note, she managed to give the effect of culminating emotion, so that when she reached a climax in the Marseillaise, Derry rose, thrilled, to his feet.
She whirled around and faced him. "They all do that," she said, with a glowing air Of triumph. "It's when I get them."
"Why did you give the Marseillaise last?"
"It has the tramp in it of marching men—I love it."
"But why not the 'Star Spangled Banner'?"
"That's for sacred moments. I hate to make it common—but I'll sing it—now—"
Still standing, he listened. Drusilla held her voice to that low note, but there was the crash of battle in the music that she made, the hush of dawn, the cry of victory—
"Dear girl, you are a genius."
"No, I am not. But I can feel things—and I can make others feel—"
She rose and went to the window. "There's a new moon," she said, "come and see—"
The curtains were not drawn, and the apartment was high up, so that they looked out beyond the hills to a sky in which the daylight blue had faded to a faint green, and saw the little moon and one star.
"Derry," Drusilla said, softly. "Derry, why aren't you fighting?"
It was the question he had dreaded. He had seen it often in her eyes, but never before had she voiced it.
"I can't tell you, Drusilla, but there's a reason—a good one. God knows I would go if I could."
The passion in his voice convinced her.
"Don't you know I'd be in it if I had my way. But I've got to stay on the shelf like the tin soldier in the fairy tale. Do you remember, Drusilla? And people keep asking me—why?"
"I shouldn't have asked it, Derry?"
"You couldn't know. And you had a right to ask—everybody has a right—and I can't answer."
She laid her hand on his shoulder. "When I was a little girl," she said, softly, "I used to cry—because I was so sorry for the—tin soldier—"
"Are you sorry for me, Drusilla?"
"Dreffly sorry."
They stood in silence among the shadows, with only the red candles burning. Then Derry said, heartily, "You are the best friend that a fellow ever had, Drusilla."
And that was as far as he would play the game!
=== THE QUESTION ===
Whatever else might be said of General Drake, his Bacchanalian adventures were those of a gentleman. Not for him were the sinister streets and the sordid taverns of the town. When his wild moods came upon him, he struck out straight for open country. Up hill and down dale he trudged, a knight of the road, finding shelter and refreshment at wayside inns, or perchance at some friendly farm.
The danger lay in the lawless folk whom he might meet on the way. Unshaven and unshorn he met them, travelling endlessly along the railroad tracks, by highways, through woodland paths. They slept by day and journeyed by night. By reversing this program, the General as a rule avoided them. But not always, and when the little lad Derry had followed his strange quests, he had come now and then upon his father, telling stories to an unsavory circle, lord for the moment of them all.
"Come, Dad," Derry would say, and when the men had growled a threat, he had flung defiance at them. "My mother's motor is up the road with two men in it. If I don't get back in five minutes they will follow me."
The General had always been tractable in the hands of his son. He adored him. It was only of late that he had found anything to criticise.
Derry, driving along the old Conduit road in the crisp darkness, wondered how long that restless spirit would endure in that ageing body. He shuddered as he thought of the two men who were his father—one a polished gentleman ruling his world, by the power of his keen mind and of his money, the other a self-made vagabond—pursuing an aimless course.
The stars were sharp in a sable sky, the river was a thin line of silver, the bills were blotted out.
Bronson was waiting by the big bridge. "He is singing down there," he said, "on the bank. Can you hear him?"
Leaning over the parapet, Derry listened. The quavering voice came up to him.
"_He has sounded forth the—trumpet—that shall never call—retreat—
He is sifting out the—hearts of men—before his judgment—
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him! Be jubilant, my feet—'_"
Poor old soldier, beating time to the triumphant tune, stumbling over the words—held pathetically to the memory of those days when he had marched in the glory of his youth, strength and spirit given to a mighty cause!
The pity of it wrung Derry's heart. "Couldn't you do anything with him, Bronson?"
"No, sir, I tried, but he sent me home. Told me I was discharged."
They might have laughed over that, but it was not the moment for laughter. In the last twenty years, the General had discharged Bronson more than once, always without the least idea of being taken at his word. To have lost this faithful servant would have broken his heart.
"I see. It won't do for you to show yourself just now. You'd better go home, and have his hot bath ready."
"Are you sure you can bring him, Mr. Derry?"
"Sure, Bronson, thank you."
Bronson walked a few steps and came back. "It is freezing cold, sir, you'd better take the rug from the car."
Laden thus, Derry made his way down. His flashlight revealed the General, a humped-up figure on the bank of a little frozen stream.
"Go home, Derry," he said, as he recognized his son. "I want to sit by myself."
His tone was truculent.
Derry attempted lightness. "You'll be a lump of ice in the morning, Dad. We'd have to chip you off in chunks."
"You go home with Bronson, son, He is up there. Go home—"
He had once commanded a brigade. There were moments when he was hard pushed that he remembered it.
"Go home, Derry."
"Not till you come with me."
"I'm not coming."
Derry spread his rug on the icy ground. "Sit on this and wrap up your legs—you'll freeze out here."
His father did not move. "I am puf-feckly comfa'ble."
The General rarely got his syllables tangled. Things at times happened to his legs, but he usually controlled his tongue.
"I am puf-feckly comfa'ble—go home, Derry."
"I can't leave you, Dad."
"I want to be left."
He had never been quite like this. There had been moods of rebellion, but usually he had yielded himself to his son's guidance.
"Dad, be reasonable."
"I'd rather sit here and freeze—than go home with a—coward."
It was out at last. It struck Derry like a whiplash. He sprang to his feet. "You don't mean that, Dad. You can't mean it."
"I do mean it."
"I am not a coward, and you know it."
"Then why don't you go and fight?"
Silence! The only sound the chuckle of living waters beneath the ice of the little stream.
"Why don't you go and fight like other men?"
The emphasis was insulting. Derry had only one idea—to escape from that taunting voice. "You'll be sorry for this, Dad," he flung out at white heat, and scrambled up the bank.
When he reached the bridge, he paused. He couldn't leave that old man down there to die of the cold—the wind was rising and rattled in the bare trees.
But Derry's blood was boiling. He sat down on the parapet, thick blackness all about him. Whatever had been his father's shortcomings, they had always clung together—and now they were separated by words which had cut like a knife. It was useless to tell himself that his father was not responsible. Out of the heart the mouth had spoken.
And there were other people who felt as his father did—there had been Drusilla's questions, the questions of others—there had been, too, averted faces. He saw the little figure in the cloak of heavenly blue as she had been the other night,—in her gray furs as she had been this morning—; would her face, too, be turned from him?
Words formed themselves in his mind. He yearned to toss back at his father the taunt that was on his lips. To fling it over the parapet, to shout it to the world—!
He had never before felt the care of his father a sacrifice. There had been humiliating moments, hard moments, but always he had been sustained by a sense of the rightness of the thing that he was doing and of its necessity.
Then, out of the darkness, came a shivering old voice, "Derry, are you there?"
"Yes, Dad."
"Come down—and help me—"
The General, alone in the darkness, had suffered a reaction. He felt chilled and depressed. He wanted warmth and light.
Mounting steadily with his son's arm to sustain him, he argued garrulously for a sojourn at the nearest hostelry, or for a stop at Chevy Chase. He would, he promised, go to bed at the Club, and thus be rid of Bronson. Bronson didn't know his place, he would have to be taught—
Arriving at the top, he was led to Derry's car. He insisted on an understanding. If he got in, they were to stop at the Club.
"No," Derry said, "we won't stop. We are going home."
Derry had never commanded a brigade. But he had in him the blood of one who had. He possessed also strength and determination backed at the moment by righteous indignation. He lifted his father bodily, put him in the car, took his seat beside him, shut the door, and drove off. He felt remarkably cheered as they whirled along at top speed.
The General, yielding gracefully to the inevitable, rolled himself up in the rugs, dropped his head against the padded cushions and, soothed by the warmth, fell asleep.
He waked to find himself being guided up his own stairway by Bronson and the butler.
"Put him into a hot bath, Bronson," Derry directed from the threshold of his father's room, and, the General, quite surprisingly, made no protest. He had his bath, hot drinks to follow, and hot water bags in his bed. When he drifted off finally, into uneasy dreams, he was watched over by Bronson as if he had been a baby.
Derry, looking at his watch, was amazed to find that the evening was yet early. He had lived emotionally through a much longer period than that marked by the clocks.
He had no engagements. He had found himself of late shrinking a little from his kind. The clubs and the hotels were crowded with officers. Private houses, hung with service flags, paid homage to men in uniform. He was aware that he was, perhaps, unduly sensitive, but it was not pleasant to meet the inquiring glance, the guarded question. He was welcomed outwardly as of old. But, then, he had a great deal of money. People did not like to offend his father's son. But if he had not been his father's son? What then?
He dined alone and in state in the great dining room. The portraits of his ancestors looked down on him. There was his mother's grandfather, who had the same fair hair and strongly marked brows. He had been an officer in the English army, and wore the picturesque uniform of the period. There were other men in uniform—ancestors—.
But of what earthly use was an ancestor in uniform to the present situation? It would have been better to have inherited Quaker blood. Derry smiled whimsically as he thought how different he might have felt if there had been benignant men in gray with broad-brimmed hats, staring down.
But to grant a man an inheritance of fighting blood, and then deny him the opportunity to exercise his birthright, was a sort of grim joke which he could not appreciate.
For dessert a great dish of fruit was set before him. He chose a peach!
Peaches in November! The men in the trenches had no peaches, no squabs, no mushrooms, no avacados—for them bully beef and soup cubes, a handful of dates, or by good luck a bit of chocolate.
He left the peach untasted—he had a feeling that he might thus, vicariously, atone for the hardships of those others who fought.
After dinner he walked downtown. Passing Dr. McKenzie's house he was constrained to loiter. There were lights upstairs and down. Was Jean McKenzie's room behind the two golden windows above the balcony? Was she there, or in the room below, where shaded lamps shone softly among the shadows?
He yearned to go in—to speak with her—to learn her thoughts—to read her heart and mind. As yet he knew only the message of her beauty. He fancied her as having exquisite sensibility, sweetness, gentleness, perceptions as vivid as her youth and bloom.
The front door opened, and Jean and her father came out. Derry's heart leaped as he heard her laugh. Then her clear voice, "Isn't it a wonderful night to walk, Daddy?" and her father's response, "Oh, you with your ecstasies!"
They went briskly down the other side of the street. Derry found himself following, found himself straining his ear for that light laugh, found himself wishing that it were he who walked beside her, that her hand was tucked into his arm as it was tucked into her father's.
Their destination was a brilliantly illumined palace on F Street, once a choice little playhouse, now given over to screen productions. The house was packed, and Jean and her father, following the flashlight of the usher, found harbor finally in a box to the left of the stage. Derry settled himself behind them. He was an eavesdropper and he knew it, but he was loath to get out of the range of that lovely laughter.
Yet observing the closeness of their companionship he felt himself lonely—they seemed so satisfied to be together—so sufficient without any other. Once Dr. McKenzie got up and went out. When he came back he brought a box of candy. Derry heard Jean's "Oh, you darling—" and thrilled with a touch of jealousy.
He wondered a little that he should care—his experiences with women had heretofore formed gay incidents in his life rather than serious epochs. He had carried in his heart a vision, and the girl in the Toy Shop had seemed to make that vision suddenly real.
The play which was thrown on the screen had to do with France; with Joan of Arc and the lover who failed her, with the reincarnation of the lover and his opportunity, after long years, to redeem himself from the blot of cowardice.
In the stillness, Derry heard the quick-drawn breath of the girl in front of him. "Daddy, I should hate a man like that."
"But, my dear—"
"I should hate him, Daddy."
The play was over.
The lights went up, and Jean stood revealed. She was pinning on her hat. She saw Derry and smiled at him. "Daddy," she said, "it is Mr. Drake—you know him."
Dr. McKenzie held out his hand. "How do you do? So you young people have met, eh?"
"In Emily's shop, Daddy. He—he came to buy my Lovely Dreams."
The two men laughed. "As if any man could buy your dreams, Jeanie," her father said, "it would take the wealth of the world."
"Or no wealth at all," said Derry quickly.
They walked out together. As they passed the portal of the gilded door, Derry felt that the moment of parting had come.
"Oh, look here, Doctor," he said, desperately, "won't you and your daughter take pity on me—and join me at supper? There's dancing at the Willard and all that—Miss McKenzie might enjoy it, and it would be a life-saver for me."
Light leaped into Jean's eyes. "Oh, Daddy—"
"Would you like it, dear?"
"You know I should. So would you. And you haven't any stupid patients, have you?"
"My patients are always stupid, Drake, when they take me away from her. Otherwise she is sorry for them." He looked at his watch. "When I get to the hotel I'll telephone to Hilda, and she'll know where to find us."
It was the Doctor who talked as they went along—the two young people were quite ecstatically silent. Jean was between her father and Derry. As he kept step with her, it seemed to him that no woman had ever walked so lightly; she laughed a little now and then. There was no need for words.
While her father telephoned, they sat together for a moment in the corridor. She unfastened her coat, and he saw her white dress and pearls. "Am I fine enough for an evening like this?" she asked him; "you see it is just the dress I wear at home."
"It seems to me quite a superlative frock—and I am glad that your hat is lined with blue."
"Why?"
"Your cloak last night was heavenly, and now this—it matches your eyes—"
"Oh." She sat very still.
"Shouldn't I have said that? I didn't think—"
"I am glad you didn't think—"
"Oh, are you?"
"Yes. I hate people who weigh their words—" The color came up finely into her cheeks.
When Dr. McKenzie returned, Derry found a table, and gave his order.
Jean refused to consider anything but an ice. "She doesn't eat at such moments," Doctor McKenzie told his young host. "She lives on star-dust, and she wants me to live on star-dust. It is our only quarrel. She'll think me sordid because I am going to have broiled lobster."
Derry laughed, yet felt that it was after all a serious matter. His appetite, too, was gone. He too wanted only an ice! The Doctor's order was, however, sufficiently substantial to establish a balance.
"May I dance with her?" Derry asked, as the music brought the couples to their feet.
"I don't usually let her. Not in a place like this. But her eyes are begging—and I spoil her, Drake."
Curious glances followed the progress of the young millionaire and his pretty partner. But Derry saw nothing but Jean. She was like thistledown in his arms, she was saying tremendously interesting things to him, in her lovely voice.
"I cried all through the scene where Cinderella sits on the door-step. Yet it really wasn't so very sad—was it?"
"I think it was sad. She was such a little starved thing—starved for love."
"Yes. It must be dreadful to be starved for love."
He glanced down at her. "You have never felt it?"
"No, except after my mother died—I wanted her—"
"My mother is dead, too."
The Doctor sat alone at the head of the table and ate his lobster; he ate war bread and a green salad, and drank a pot of black coffee, and was at peace with the world. Star-dust was all very well for those young things out there. He laughed as they came back to him. "Each to his own joys—the lobster was very good, Drake."
They hardly heard him. Jean had a rosy parfait with a strawberry on top. Derry had another.
They talked of the screen play, and the man who had failed. If he had really loved her he would not have failed, Jean said.
"I think he loved her," was Derry's opinion; "the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak."
Jean shrugged. "Well, Fate was kind to him—to give him another chance. Oh, Daddy, tell him the story the little French woman told at the meeting of the Medical Association."
"You should have heard her tell it—but I'll do my best. Her eloquence brought us to our feet. It was when she was in Paris—just after the American forces arrived. She stopped at the curb one morning to buy violets of an ancient dame. She found the old flower vendor inattentive and, looking for the cause, she saw across the street a young American trooper loitering at a corner. Suddenly the old woman snatched up a bunch of lilies, ran across the street, thrust them into the hands of the astonished soldier. 'Take them, American,' she said. 'Take the lilies of France and plant them in Berlin.'"
"Isn't that wonderful?" Jean breathed.
"Everything is wonderful to her," the Doctor told Derry, "she lives on the heights."
"But the lilies of France, Daddy—! Can't you see our men and the lilies of France?"
Derry saw them, indeed,—a glorious company—!
"Oh, if I were a man," Jean said, and stopped. She stole a timid glance at him. The question that he had dreaded was in her eyes.
They fell into silence. Jean finished her parfait. Derry's was untouched.
Then the music brought them again to their feet, and they danced. The Doctor smoked alone. Back of him somebody murmured, "It is Derry Drake."
"Confounded slacker," said a masculine voice. Then came a warning "Hush," as Derry and Jean returned.
"It is snowing," Derry told the Doctor. "I have ordered my car."
Late that night when the Doctor rode forth again alone in his own car on an errand of mercy, he thought of the thing which he had heard. Then came the inevitable question: why wasn't Derry Drake fighting?
=== THE SLACKER ===
It was at the Witherspoon dinner that Jean McKenzie first heard the things that were being said about Derry.
"I can't understand," someone had remarked, "why Derry Drake is staying out of it."
"I fancy he'll be getting in," Ralph Witherspoon had said. "Derry's no slacker."
Ralph could afford to be generous. He was in the Naval Flying Corps. He looked extremely well in his Ensign's uniform, and he knew it; he was hoping, in the spring, for active service on the other side.
"I don't see why Derry should fight. I don't see why any man should. I never did believe in getting into other people's fusses."
It was Alma Drew who said that. Nobody took Alma very seriously. She was too pretty with her shining hair and her sea-green eyes, and her way of claiming admiration.
Jean had recognised her when she first came in as the girl she had seen descending from her motor car with Derry Drake on the night of the Secretary's dinner. Alma again wore the diamond-encrusted comb. She was in sea-green, which matched her eyes.
"If I were a man," Alma pursued, "I should run away."
There was a rustle of uneasiness about the table. In the morning papers had been news of Italy—disturbing news; news from Russia—Kerensky had fled to Moscow—there had been pictures of our men in gas masks! It wasn't a thing to joke about. Even Alma might go too far.
Ralph relieved the situation. "Oh, no, you wouldn't run away," he said; "you don't do yourself justice, Alma. Before you know it you will be driving a car over there, and picking me up when I fall from the skies."
"Well, that would be—compensation—." Alma's lashes flashed up and fluttered down.
But she turned her batteries on Ralph in vain. Jean McKenzie was on the other side of him. It would never be quite clear to him why he loved Jean. She was neither very beautiful nor very brilliant. But there was a dearness about her. He hardly dared think of it. It had gone very deep with him.
He turned to her. Her eyes were blazing. "Oh," she said, under her breath, "how can she say things like that? If I knew a man who would run away, I'd never speak to him."
"Of course. That's why I fell in love with you—because you had red blood in your veins."
It was the literal truth. The first time that Ralph had seen Jean McKenzie, he had been riding in Rock Creek Park. She, too, was on horseback. It was in April. War had just been declared, and there was great excitement. Jean, taking the bridle path over the hills, had come upon a band of workers. A long-haired and seditious orator was talking to them. Jean had stopped her horse to listen, and before she knew it she was answering the arguments of the speaker. Rising a little in her stirrups, her riding-crop uplifted to emphasize her burning words, her cheeks on fire, her eyes shining, her hair blowing under her three-cornered hat, she had clearly and crisply challenged the patriotism of the speaker, and she had presented to Ralph's appreciative eyes a picture which he was never to forget.
She had not been in the least embarrassed by his arrival, and his uniform had made him seem at once her ally. "I am sure this gentleman will be glad to talk to you," she had said to her little audience. "I'll leave the field to him," and with a nod and a smile she had ridden off, the applause of the men following her.
Ralph, having put the long-haired one to rout, had asked the men if they knew the young lady who had talked to them. They had, it seemed, seen her riding with Dr. McKenzie. They thought she was his daughter. It had been easy enough after that to find Jean on his mother's visiting list. Mrs. Witherspoon and Mrs. McKenzie had exchanged calls during the life-time of the latter, but they had lived in different circles. Mrs. Witherspoon had aspired to smartness and to the friendship of the new people who brought an air of sophistication to the staid and sedate old capital. Mrs. McKenzie had held to old associations and to old ideals.
Mrs. Witherspoon was a widow and charming. Dr. McKenzie was a widower and an addition to any dinner table. In a few weeks the old acquaintance had been renewed. Ralph had wooed Jean ardently during the short furloughs which had been granted him, and from long distance had written a bit cocksurely. He had sent flowers, candy, books and then, quite daringly; a silver trench ring.
Jean had sent the ring back. "It was dear of you to give it to me, but I can't keep it."
"Why not?" he had asked when he next saw her.
"Because—"
"Because is no reason."
She had blushed, but stood firm. She was very shy—totally unawakened—a little dreaming girl—with all of real life ahead of her—with her innocence a white flower, her patriotism a red one. If only he might wear that white and red above his heart.
As a matter of fact, Jean resented, sub-consciously, his air of possession, the certainty with which he seemed to see the end of his wooing.
"You can't escape me," he had told her.
"As if I were a rabbit," she had complained afterwards to her father. "When I marry a man I don't want to be caught—I want to run to him, with my arms wide open."
"Don't," her father advised; "not many men would be able to stand it. Let them worship you, Jeanie, don't worship."
Jean stuck her nose in the air. "Falling in love doesn't come the way you want it. You have to take it as the good Lord sends it."
"Who told you that?"
"Emily—"
"What does Emily know of love?"
He had laughed and patted her hand. He was cynical generally about romance. He felt that his own perfect love affair with his wife had been the exception. He looked upon Emily as a sentimental spinster who knew practically nothing of men and women.
He did not realize that Emily knew a great deal about dolls that laughed and cried when you pulled a string. And that the world in Emily's Toy Shop was not so very different from his own.
Alma, having turned a cold shoulder to Ralph, was still proclaiming her opinion of Derry Drake to the rest of the table. "He is rich and young and he doesn't want to die—"
"There are plenty of rich young men dying, Alma," said Mrs. Witherspoon, "and it is probably as easy for them as for the poor ones—"
"The poor ones won't mind being muddy and dirty in the trenches," said Alma, "but I can't fancy Derry Drake without two baths a day—"
"I can't quite fancy him a slacker." There was a hint of satisfaction in Mrs. Witherspoon's voice. Her son and Derry Drake had gone to school together and to college. Derry had outdistanced Ralph in every way; but now it was Ralph who was leaving Derry far behind.
Jean wished that they would stop talking. She felt as she might had she seen a soldier stripped of sword and stripes and shamed in the eyes of his fellows.
"Wasn't he in the draft?" she asked Ralph.
"Too old. He doesn't look it, does he? It's a bit hard for the rest of us fellows to understand why he keeps out—"
"Doesn't he ever try to—explain?"
Ralph shook his head. "Not a word. And he's beginning to stay away from things. You see, he knows that people are asking questions, and you hear what they are calling him?"
"Yes," said Jean, "a coward."
"Well, not exactly that—"
"There isn't much difference, is there?"
And now Alma's cool voice summed up the situation. "A man with as much money as that doesn't have to be brave. What does he care about public opinion? After the war everybody will forgive and forget."
Coolly she challenged them to contradict her. "You all know it. How many of you would dare cut the fellow who will inherit his father's millions?"
Mrs. Witherspoon tried to laugh it off; but it was true, and Alma was right. They might talk about Derry Drake behind his back, but they'd never omit sending a card to him.
Jean ate her duckling in flaming silence, ate her salad, ate her ice, drank her coffee, and was glad when the meal ended.
The war from the beginning had been for her a sacred cause. She had yearned to be a man that she might stand in the forefront of battle. She had envied the women of Russia who had formed a Battalion of Death. Her father had laughed at her. "You'd be like a white kitten in a dog fight."
It seemed intolerable that tongues should be busy with this talk of young Drake's cowardice. He had seemed something so much more than that. And he was a man—with a man's right to leadership. What was the matter with him?
The night before she had slept little—Derry's voice—Derry's eyes! She had gone over every word that he had said. She had risen early in the morning to write in her memory book, and she had drawn a most entrancing border about the page, with melting strawberry ice, lilies of France, Cinderella slippers, and red-ink lobsters, rather nightmarishly intermingled!
He had seemed so fine—so—she fell back on her much overworked word wonderful—her heart had run to meet him, and now—it would have to run back again. How silly she had been not to see.
After dinner they danced in the Long Room, which was rather famous from a decorative point of view. It was medieval in effect, with a balcony and tapestries, and some precious bits of armor. There was a lion-skin flung over the great chair where Mrs. Witherspoon was enthroned.
Between dances, Jean and Ralph sat on the balcony steps, and talked of many things which brought the red to Jean's cheeks, and a troubled light into her eyes.
And it was from the balcony-steps that, as the evening waned, she saw Derry Drake standing in the great arched doorway.
There was a black velvet curtain behind him which accentuated his fairness. He did not look nineteen. Jean had a fleeting vision of a certain steel engraving of the "Princes in the Tower" which had hung in her grandmother's house. Derry was not in the least like those lovely imprisoned boys, yet she had an overwhelming sense of his kinship to them.
As young Drake's eyes swept the room, he was aware of Jean on the balcony steps. She was in white and silver, with a touch of that heavenly blue which seemed to belong to her. Her crinkled hair was combed quaintly over her ears and back from her forehead. He smiled at her, but she apparently did not see him.
He made his way to Mrs. Witherspoon. "I was so sorry to get here late. But my other engagements kept me. If I could have dined at two places, you should have had at least a half of me."
"We wanted the whole. You know Dr. McKenzie, Derry?"
The two men shook hands. "May I dance with your daughter?" Derry said, smiling.
"Of course. She is up there on the stairs."
Jean saw him coming. Ever since Derry had stood in the door she had been trying to make up her mind how she would treat him when he came. Somebody ought to show him that his millions didn't count. She hadn't thought of his millions last night. If he had been just the shabby boy of the Toy Shop, she would have liked his eyes just as much, and his voice!
But a slacker was a slacker! A coward was a coward! All the money in the world couldn't take away the stain. A man who wouldn't fight at this moment for the freedom of the world was a renegade! She would have none of him.
He came on smiling. "Hello, Ralph. Miss McKenzie, your father says you may dance with me—I hope you have something left?"
The blood sang in her ears, her cheeks burned.
"I haven't anything left—for you—" The emphasis was unmistakable.
Even then he did not grasp what had happened to him. "Ralph will let me have one of his—be a good sport, Ralph."
"Well, I like that," Ralph began. Then Jean's crisp voice stopped him. "I am not going to dance any more—my head aches. I—I shall ask Daddy to take me—home—"
It was all very young and obvious. Derry gave her a puzzled stare. Ralph protested. "Oh, look here, Jean. If you think you aren't going to dance any more with me."
"Well, I'm not. I am going home. Please take me down to Daddy."
It seemed a long time before the blurred good-byes were said, and Jean was alone with her father in the cozy comfort of the closed car.
"Do you love me, Daddy?"
"My darling, yes."
"May I live with you always—to the end of my days?"
He chuckled. "So that was it? Poor Ralph!"
"You know you are not sorry for him, Daddy. Don't be a hypocrite."
He drew her close to him. "I should be sorry for myself if he took you from me."
She clung to him. "He is not going to take me away."
"Was that what you were telling him on the balcony stairs?"
"Yes. And he said I was too young to know my own mind. That I was a sleeping Princess—and some day he would wake me—up—"
"Oh."
"And he is not the Prince, Daddy. There isn't any Prince."
She had shut resolutely away from her the vision of Derry Drake as she had seen him on the night of Cinderella. She would have no white-feathered knight! Princes were brave and rode to battle!
=== THE PROMISE ===
It was Alma who gave Derry Drake the key to Jean's conduct.
"Did your ears burn?" she asked, as they danced together after Jean and her father had gone.
"When?"
"We were talking about you at dinner."
"I hope you said nice things."
"I did, of course." Her lashes flashed up and fluttered down as they had flashed and fluttered for Ralph. Every man was for Alma a possible conquest. Derry was big game, and as yet her little darts had not pierced him. She still hoped, however. "I did, but the rest didn't."
He shrank from the things which she might tell him. "What did they say?" His voice caught.
"I shan't tell you. But it was about the war, and your not fighting. As if it made any difference. You are as brave as any of them."
He glanced down at her with somber eyes. Quite unreasonably he hated her for her defense of him. If all women defended men who wouldn't fight, what kind of a world would it be? Women who were worth anything girded their men for battle.
He knew now the reason for Jean's high head and burning cheeks, and in spite of his sense of agonizing humiliation, he was glad to think of that high-held head.
For such women, for such women men died!
But not for women like Alma Drew!
He got away from her as soon as possible. He got away from them all. He had a morbid sense of whispering voices and of averted glances. He fancied that Mrs. Witherspoon touched his hand coldly as he bade her "good-night."
Well, he would not come again until he could meet their eyes.
It was a perfectly clear night, and he walked home. With his face turned up to the stars, he told himself that the situation was intolerable—tomorrow morning, he would go to his father.
When he reached home, his father was asleep. Derry looked in on him and found Bronson sitting erect and wide-eyed beside a night lamp which threw the rest of the room into a sort of golden darkness. The General was in a great lacquered bed which he had brought with him years ago from China. Gilded dragons guarded it and princes had slept in it. Heavy breathing came from the bed.
"I think he has caught cold, sir," Bronson whispered. "I'm a bit afraid of bronchitis."
Derry's voice lacked sympathy. "I shouldn't worry, Bronson. He usually comes around all right."
"Yes, sir. I hope so, sir," and Bronson's spare figure rose to a portentous shadow, as he preceded Derry to the door.
On the threshold he said, "Dr. Richards has gone to the front. Shall I call Dr. McKenzie if we need someone—?"
"Has he been left in charge?"
"Yes, sir."
Derry stood for a moment undecided. "I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't call McKenzie. Do as you think best, Bronson."
On his way to his own room, Derry paused for a moment at the head of the great stairway. His mother's picture hung on the landing. The dress in which she was painted had been worn to a dinner at the White House during the first Cleveland Administration. It was of white brocade, with its ostrich feather trimming making it a rather regal robe. It had tight sleeves, and the neck was square. Around her throat was a wide collar of pearls with diamond slides. Her fair hair was combed back in the low pompadour of the period, and there were round flat curls on her temples. The picture was old-fashioned, but the painted woman was exquisite, as she had always been, as she would always be in Derry's dreams.
The great house had given to the General's wife her proper setting. She had trailed her satins and silks up and down the marble stairway. Her slender hands, heavy with their rings, had rested on its balustrade, its mirrors had reflected the diamond tiara with which the General had crowned her. In the vast drawing room, the gold and jade and ivory treasures in the cabinets had seemed none too fine for this greatest treasure of them all. In the dining room the priceless porcelains had been cheapened by her greater worth. The General had travelled far and wide, and he had brought the wealth of the world to lay at the feet of his young wife. He adored her and he adored her son.
"It is just you and me, Derry," the old man had said in the first moment of bereavement; "we've got to stick it out together—"
And they had stuck it out until the war had come, and patriotism had flared, and the staunch old soldier had spurned this—changeling.
It seemed to Derry that if his mother could only step down from the picture she might make things right for him. But she would not step down. She would go on smiling her gentle painted smile as if nothing really mattered in the whole wide world.
Thus, with his father asleep in the lacquered bed, and his mother smiling in her gilded frame, the son stood alone in the great shell of a house which had in it no beating heart, no throbbing soul to answer his need.
Derry's rooms were furnished in a lower key than those in which his father's taste had been followed. There were gray rugs and gray walls, some old mahogany, the snuff-box picture of Napoleon over his desk, a dog-basket of brown wicker in a corner.
Muffin, Derry's Airedale, stood at attention as his master came in. He knew that the length of his sojourn depended on his manners.
A bright fire was burning, a long chair slanted across the hearthrug. Derry got into a gray dressing gown and threw himself into the chair. Muffin, with a solicitous sigh, sat tentatively on his haunches. His master had had no word for him. Things were very bad indeed, when Derry had no word for his dog.
At last it came. "Muffin—it's a rotten old world."
Muffin's tail beat the rug. His eager eyes asked for more.
It came—"Rotten."
Derry made room among the pillows, and Muffin curled up beside him in rapturous silence. The fire snapped and flared, flickered and died. Bronson tiptoed in to ask if Derry wanted him. Young Martin, who valeted Derry when Bronson would let him, followed with more proffers of assistance.
Derry sent them both away. "I am going to bed."
But he did not go to bed. He read a letter which his mother had written before she died. He had never broken the seal until now. For on the outside of the envelope were these words in fine feminine script: "Not to be opened until the time comes when my boy Derry is tempted to break his promise."
It began, "Boy dear—"
"I wonder if I shall make you understand what it is so necessary that you should understand? It has been so hard all of these years when your clear little lad's eyes have looked into mine to feel that some day you might blame—me. Youth is so uncompromising, Derry, dear—and so logical—so demanding of—justice. And life isn't logical—or just—not with the sharp-edged justice which gives cakes to the good little boys and switches to the bad ones. And you have always insisted on the cakes and switches, Derry, and that's why I am afraid of you.
"Even when you were only ten and I hugged you close in the night—those nights when we were alone, Derry, and your father was out on some wild road under the moonlight, or perhaps with the snow shutting out the moon, you used to whisper, 'But he oughtn't to do it, Mother—' And I knew that he ought not, but, oh, Derry, I loved him, and do you remember, I used to say, 'But he's so good to us, Laddie,—and perhaps we can love him enough to make him stop.'
"But you are a man now, Derry. I am sure you will be a man before you read this, for my little boy will obey me until he comes to man's estate, and then he may say 'She was only a foolish loving woman, and why should I be bound?'
"I know when that moment comes that all your father's money will not hold you. You will not sell your soul's honor for your inheritance. Haven't I known it all along? Haven't I seen you a little shining knight ready to do battle for your ideals? And haven't I seen the clash of those ideals with the reality of your father's fault?
"Well, there's this to think of now, Derry, now that you are a man—that life isn't white and black, it isn't sheep and goats—it isn't just good people and bad people with a great wall between. Life is gray and amethyst, it is a touch of dinginess on the fleece of the whole flock, and the men and women whom you meet will be those whose great faults are balanced by great virtues and whose little meannesses are contradicted by unexpected generosities.
"I am putting it this way because I want you to realize that except for the one fault which has shadowed your father's life, there is no flaw in him. Other men have gone through the world apparently untouched by any temptation, but their families could tell you the story of a thousand tyrannies, their clerks could tell you of selfishness and hardness, their churches and benevolent societies could tell you of their lack of charity. Oh, there are plenty of good men in the world, Derry, strong and fine and big, I want you to believe that always, but I want you to believe, too, that there are men who struggle continually with temptation and seem to fail, but they fight with an enemy so formidable that I, who have seen the struggle, have shut my eyes—afraid to look—.
"And now I shall go back to the very beginning, and tell you how it all happened. Your father was only a boy when the Civil War broke out. He came down from Massachusetts with a regiment which had in it the blood of the farmers who fired the shot heard round the world—. He felt that he was fighting for Freedom—he had all of your ideals, Derry; plus, perhaps, a few of his own.
"You know how the war dragged, four years of it—and much of the time that Massachusetts regiment was in swamp and field, on the edge of fever-breeding streams, never very well fed, cold in winter, hot in summer.
"They were given for medicine quinine and—whiskey. It kept them alive. Sometimes it kept them warm, sometimes it lifted them above reality and granted them a moment's reckless happiness.
"It was all wrong, of course. I am making no plea for its rightness; and it unchained wild beasts in some of the men. Your father for many years kept his chained, but the beasts were there.
"He was almost fifty when I married him, and he was not a General. That title was given to him during the Spanish War. I was twenty when I came here a bride. There was no deception on your father's part. He told me of the dragon he fought—he told me that he hoped with God's help and mine to conquer. And I hoped, too, Derry. I did more than that. I was so sure of him—my King could do no wrong.
"But the day came when he went on one of those desolate pilgrimages where you and I so often followed in later years. I am not going to try to tell you how we fought together, Derry; how I learned with such agony of soul that a man's will is like wax in the fire of temptation—oh, Derry, Derry—.
"I am telling you this for more reasons than one. What your father has been you might be. With all your ideals there may be in you some heritage of weakness, of appetite. Wild beasts can conquer you, too, if you let them in. And that's why I have preached and prayed. That's why I've kept you from that which overcame your father. You are no better, no stronger, than he was in the glory of his youth. But I have barred the doors against the flaming dragon.
"I have no words eloquent enough to tell you of his care of me, his consideration, his devotion. Yet nothing of all this helped in those strange moods that came upon him. Then you were forgotten, I was forgotten, the world was forgotten, and he let everything go—.
"I have kept what I have suffered to some extent from the world. If people have pitied they have had the grace at least not to let me see. The tragedy has been that you should have been sacrificed to it, your youth shadowed. But what could I do? I felt that you must know, must see, and I felt, too, that the salvation of the father might be accomplished through the son.
"And so I let you go out into the night after him, I let you know that which should, perhaps, have been hidden from you. But I loved him, Derry—I loved you—I did the best I could for both of you.
"And now because of the past, I plead for the future. I want you to stay with him, Derry. No matter what happens I beg that you will stay—for the sake of the boy who was once like you, for the sake of the man who held your mother always close to his heart, for the sake of the mother who in Heaven holds you to your promise."
The great old house was very still. Somewhere in a shadowed room an old man slept heavily with his servant sitting stiff and straight beside him, at the head of the stairway a painted bride smiled in the darkness, the dog Muffin stirred and whined.
Derry's head was buried deep in the cushion. His hands clutched the letter which had cut the knot of his desperate decision.
No—one could not break a promise to a mother in Heaven.…
He waked heavily in the morning. Bronson was beside his bed. "I am sorry to disturb you, sir, but Dr. McKenzie would like to speak to you."
"McKenzie?"
"Yes, sir. I had to call him last night. Your father was worse."
"Bring him right in here, Bronson, and have some coffee for us."
When Dr. McKenzie was ushered into Derry's sitting room, he found a rather pale and languid young man in the long chair.
"I hated to wake you, Drake. But it was rather necessary that I should talk your father's case over with you."
"Is he very ill?"
"It isn't that—there are complications that I don't care to discuss with servants."
"You mean he has been drinking?"
"Yes. Heavily. You realize that's a rather serious thing for a man of his age."
"I know it. But there's nothing to be done."
"What makes you say that?"
"We've tried specialists—cures. I've been half around the world with him."
The Doctor nodded. "It's hard to pull up at that age."
"My mother's life was spent in trying to help him. He's a dear old chap, really."
"There is, of course, the possibility that he may get a grip on himself."
Derry's languor left him. "Do you think there's the least hope of it? Frankly? No platitudes?"
"We are making some rather interesting experiments—psycho-analysis—things like that—"
He stood up. He was big and breezy. "What's the matter with you this morning? You ought to be up and out."
Derry flushed. "Nothing—much."
The Doctor sat down again. "I'd tell most men to take a cold shower and a two hours' tramp, but it's more than that with you—."
"It's a ease of suspended activity. I want to get into the war—"
"Why don't you?"
"I can't leave Dad. Surely you can see that."
"I don't see it. He must reap, every man must."
"But there's more than that. My mother tied me by a promise. And people are calling me a coward—even Dad thinks I am a slacker, and I can't say to him, 'If you were more than the half of a man I might be a whole one.'"
"Your mother couldn't have foreseen this war."
"It would have made no difference. Her world was centered in him. You know, of course, Doctor, that I wouldn't have spoken of this to anyone else—"
"My dear fellow, I am father confessor to half of my patients." The Doctor's eyes were kind. "My lips will be sealed. But if you want my advice I should throw the old man overboard. Let him sink or swim. Your life is your own."
"It has never been my own." He went to a desk and took out an envelope. "It's a rather sacred letter, but I want you to read it—I read it for the first time last night."
When at last the Doctor laid the letter down, Derry said very low, "Do you blame me?"
"My dear fellow; she had no right to ask it."
"But having asked—?"
"It is a moving letter, and you loved her—but I still contend she had no right to ask."
"I gave my sacred word."
"I question whether any promise should stand between a man and his country's need of him."
They faced each other. "I wonder—" Derry said, "I—I must think it over, Doctor."
"Give yourself a chance if you do. We can go too far in our sacrifice for others—." He resumed his brisk professional manner. "In the meantime you've a rather sick old gentleman on your hands. You'd better get a nurse."
=== HILDA ===
The argument came up at breakfast two days before Thanksgiving. It was a hot argument. Jean beat her little hands upon the table. Hilda's hands were still, but it was an irritating stillness.
"What do you think, Daddy?"
"Hilda is right. There is no reason why we should go to extremes."
"But a turkey—."
"Nobody has said that we shouldn't have a turkey on Thanksgiving—not even Hoover." Hilda's voice was as irritating as her hands.
"Well, we have consciences, Hilda. And a turkey would choke me."
"You make so much of little things."
"Is it a little thing to sacrifice our appetites?"
"I don't think it is a very big thing." The office bell rang, and Hilda rose. "If I felt as you do I should sacrifice something more than things to eat. I'd go over there and nurse the wounded. I could be of real service. But you couldn't. With all your big ideas of patriotism you couldn't do one single practical thing."
It was true, and Jean knew that it was true, but she fired one more shot. "Then why don't you go?" she demanded fiercely.
"I may," Hilda said slowly. "I have been thinking about it. I haven't made up my mind."
Dr. McKenzie glanced at her in surprise. "I didn't dream you felt that way."
"I don't think I do mean it in the way you mean. I should go because there was something worth doing—not as a grandstand play."
She went out of the room. Jean stared after her.
The Doctor laughed. "She got you there, girlie."
"Yes, she did. Do you really think she intends to go, Daddy?"
"It is news to me."
"Good news?"
He shook his head. "She is a very valuable nurse. I should hate to lose her." He sat for a moment in silence, then stood up. "I shouldn't hold out for a turkeyless Thanksgiving if I were you. It isn't necessary."
"Are you taking Hilda's part, Daddy?"
"No, my dear, of course not." He came over and kissed her. "Will you ride with me this morning?"
"Oh, yes—how soon?"
"In ten minutes. After I see this patient."
In less time than that she was ready and waiting for him in her squirrel coat and hat and her little muff.
Her father surveyed her. "Such a lovely lady."
"Do you like me, Daddy?"
"What a question—I love you."
Safe in the car, with the glass screen shutting away the chauffeur, Jean returned to the point of attack.
"Hilda makes me furious, Daddy. I came to talk about her."
"I thought you came because you wanted to ride with me."
"Well, I did. But for this, too."
Over her muff, her stormy eyes surveyed him. "You think I am unreasonable about meatless and wheatless days. But you don't know. Hilda ignores them, Daddy—you should see the breadbox. And the other day she ordered a steak for dinner, one of those big thick ones—and it was Tuesday, and I happened to go down to the kitchen and saw it—and I told the cook that we wouldn't have it, and when I came up I told Hilda, and she laughed and said that I was silly.
"And I said that if she had that steak cooked I would not eat it, and I should ask you not to eat it, and she just stood with her hands flat on your desk, you know the way she does—I hate her hands—and she said that of course if I was going to make a fuss about it she wouldn't have the steak, but that it was simply a thing she couldn't understand. The steak was there, why not eat it? And I said it was because of the psychological effect on other people. And she said we were having too much psychology and not enough common sense in this war!
"Well, after that, I went to my Red Cross meeting at the church. I expected to have lunch there, but I changed my mind and came home. Hilda was at the table alone, and, Daddy, she was eating the steak, the whole of it—." She paused to note the effect of her revelation.
"Well?"
"She was eating it when all the world needs food! She made me think of those dreadful creatures in the fairy books. She's—she's a ghoul—"
"My dear."
"A ghoul. You should have seen her, with great chunks of bread and butter."
"Hilda has a healthy appetite."
"Of course you defend her."
"My dear child—"
"Oh you do, Daddy, always, against me—and I'm your daughter—"
She wept a tear or two into her muff, then raised her eyes to find him regarding her quizzically. "Are you going to spoil my ride?"
"You are spoiling mine."
"We won't quarrel about it. And we'll stop at Small's. Shall it be roses or violets, to-day, my dear?"
She chose violets, as more in accord with her pensive mood, lighting the bunch, however, with one red rose. The question of Hilda was not settled, but she yielded as many an older woman has yielded—to the sweetness of tribute—to man's impulse to make things right not by justice but by the bestowal of his bounty.
From the florist's, they went to Huyler's old shop on F Street, where the same girl had served Jean with ice-cream sodas and hot chocolate for fifteen years. Administrations might come and administrations go, but these pleasant clerks had been cup-bearers to them all—Presidents' daughters and diplomats' sons—the sturdy children of plain Congressmen, the scions of noble families across the seas.
It was while Jean sat on a high stool beside her father, the sunshine shining on her through the wide window, that Derry Drake, coming down Twelfth, saw her!
Well, he wanted a lemonade. And the fact that she was there in a gray squirrel coat and bunch of violets with her copper-colored hair shining over her ears wasn't going to leave him thirsty!
He went in. He bowed to the Doctor and received a smile in return. Jean's eyes were cold above her chocolate. Derry bought his check, went to a little table on the raised platform at the back of the room, drank his lemonade and hurried out.
"A nice fellow," said the Doctor, watching him through the window. "I wonder why he didn't stop and speak to us?"
"I'm glad he didn't."
"My dear, why?"
"I've found out things—"
"What things?"
"That he's a—coward," with tense earnestness. "He won't fight."
"Who told you that?"
"Everybody's saying it."
"Everybody is dead wrong."
"What do you mean, Daddy?"
"What I have just said. Everybody is dead wrong."
"How do you know?"
"A doctor knows a great many things which he is not permitted to tell. I am rather bound not to tell in this case."
"Oh, but you could tell me."
"Hardly—it was given in confidence."
"Did he? Oh, Daddy, did he tell you?"
"Yes."
"And he isn't a slacker?"
"No."
"I knew it—."
"You didn't. You thought he was a coward."
"Well, I ought to have known better. He looks brave, doesn't he?"
"I shouldn't call him exactly a heroic figure."
"Shouldn't you?"
She finished her chocolate in silence, and followed him in silence to his car. They sped up F Street, gay with its morning crowd.
Then at last it came. "Isn't it a wonderful day, Daddy?"
He smiled down at her. "There you go."
"Well, it is wonderful." She fell again into silence, then again bestowed upon him her raptures. "Wouldn't it be dreadful if we had loveless days, Daddy, as well as meatless ones and wheatless?"
That night, after Jean had gone to bed, the Doctor, having dismissed his last patient, came out of his inner office. Hilda, in her white nurse's costume, was busy with the books. He stood beside her desk. His eyes were dancing. "Jean told me about the steak."
"I knew she would—I suppose it was an awful thing to do. But I was hungry, and I hate fish—" She smiled at him lazily, then laughed.
He laughed back. He felt that it would be unbearable for Hilda to go hungry, to spoil her red and white with abstinence.
"My dear girl," he said, "what did you mean when you spoke of going away?"
"Haven't you been thinking of going?"
The color came up in his cheeks. "Yes, but how did you know it?"
"Well, a woman knows. Why don't you make up your mind?"
"There's Jean to think of."
"Emily Bridges could take care of her. And you ought to go. Men are seeing things over there that they'll never see again. And women are."
"If my country needs me—"
Hilda was cold. "I shouldn't go for that. As I told Jean, I am not making any grand stand plays. I should go for all that I get out of it, the experience, the adventure—."
He looked at her with some curiosity. Jean's words of the afternoon recurred to him. "She's a ghoul—"
Yet there was something almost fascinating in her frankness. She tore aside ruthlessly the curtain of self-deception, revealing her motives, as if she challenged him to call them less worthy than his own.
"If I go, it will be because I want to become a better nurse. I like it here, but your practice is necessarily limited. I should get a wider view of things. So would you. There would be new worlds of disease, men in all conditions of nervous shock."
"I know. But I'd hate to think I was going merely for selfish ends."
She shrugged. "Why not that as well as any other?"
He had a smouldering sense of irritation.
"When I am with Jean she makes me feel rather big and fine; when I am with you—" He paused.
"I make you see yourself as you are, a man. She thinks you are more than that."
All his laughter left ham. "It is something to be a hero to one's daughter. Perhaps some day I shall be a little better for her thinking so."
She saw that she had gone too far. "You mustn't take the things I say too seriously."
The bell of the telephone at her elbow whirred. She put the receiver to her ear. "It is General Drake's man; he thinks you'd better come over before you go to bed."
"I was afraid I might have to go. He is in rather bad shape, Hilda."
She packed his bag for him competently, and telephoned for his car. "I'll have a cup of coffee ready for you when you get back," she said, as she stood in the door. "It is going to be a dreadful night."
The streets were icy and the sleet falling. "You'd better have your overshoes," Hilda decided, and went for them.
As he put them on, she stood under the hall light, smiling. "Have you forgiven me?" she asked as he straightened up.
"For telling me the truth? Of course. You take such good care of me, Hilda."
Upstairs in her own room Jean was writing a letter. It was a very pretty room, very fresh and frilly with white dimity and with much pink and pale lavender. The night-light which shone through the rose taffeta petticoats of a porcelain lady was supplemented at the moment by a bed-side lamp which flung a ring of gold beyond Jean's blotter to the edge of the lace spread. For Jean was writing in bed. All day her mind had been revolving around this letter, but she had had no time to write. She had spent the afternoon in the Toy Shop with Emily, and in the evening there had been a Red Cross sale. She had gone to the sale with Ralph Witherspoon and his mother. She had not been able to get out of going. All the time she had talked to Ralph she had thought of Derry. She had rather hoped that he might be there, but he wasn't.
The letter required much thought. She tore up, extravagantly, several sheets of note-paper with tiny embossed thistles at the top. Doctor McKenzie was intensely Scotch, and he was entitled to a crest, but he was also intensely American, and would have none of it. He had designed Jean's note-paper, and it was lovely. But it was also expensive, and it was a shame to waste so much of it on Derry Drake.
The note when it was finished seemed very simple. Just one page in Jean's firm, clear script:
"Dear Mr. Drake:—
"Could you spare me one little minute tomorrow? I shall be at home at four. It is very important—to me at least. Perhaps when you hear what I have to say, it will seem important to you. I hope it may.
"Very sincerely yours,
"JEAN MCKENZIE."
She read it over several times. It seemed very stiff and inadequate. She sealed it and stamped it, then in a panic tore it open for a re-reading. She was oppressed by doubts. Did nice girls ask men to come and see them? Didn't they wait and weary like Mariana of the Moated Grange—? "He cometh not, she said?"
New times! New manners! She had branded a man as a coward. She had condemned him unheard. She had slighted him, she had listened while others slandered—why should she care what other women had done? Would do? Her way was clear. She owed an apology to Derry Drake, and she would make it.
So with a new envelope, a new stamp, the note was again sealed.
It had to be posted that night. She felt that under no circumstance could she stand the suspense of another day.
She had heard her father go out. Hilda was coming up, the maids were asleep. She waited until Hilda's door was shut, then she slipped out of bed, tucked her toes into a pair of sandals, threw a furry motor coat around her, and sped silently down the stairs. She shrank back as she opened the front door. The sleet rattled on the steps, the pavements were covered with white.
The mail-box was in front of the house. She made a rush for it, dropped in the precious letter, and gained once more the haven of the warm hall.
She was glad to get back to her room. As she settled down among her pillows, she had a great sense of adventure, as if she had travelled far in a few moments.
As a matter of fact, she had made her first real excursion into the land of romance. She found her thoughts galloping.
At the foot of the bed her silver Persian, Polly Ann, lay curled on her own gray blanket.
"Polly Ann," Jean said, "if he doesn't come, I shall hate myself for writing that note."
Polly Ann surveyed her sleepily.
"But it would serve me right if he didn't, Polly Ann."
She turned off the light and tried to sleep. Downstairs the telephone rang. It rang, too, in Hilda's room. Hilda's door opened and shut. She came across the hall and tapped on Jean's door. "May I come in?"
"Yes."
"Your father has just telephoned," Hilda said from the threshold, "that General Drake's nurse is not well, and will have to be taken off the case. I shall have to go in her place. There is a great shortage at the hospital. Will you be afraid to stay alone, or shall I wake up Ellen and have her sleep on the couch in your dressing room?"
"Of course I am not afraid, Hilda. Nothing can happen until father comes back."
As Hilda went away, Jean had a delicious feeling of detachment. She would be alone in the house with her thoughts of Derry.
She got out of bed to say her prayers. With something of a thrill she prayed for Derry's father. She was not conscious as she made her petitions of any ulterior motive. Yet a placated Providence would, she felt sure, see that the General's sickness should not frustrate the plans which she had quite daringly made for his son.
=== THE SHADOWED ROOM ===
Derry had dined that night with his cousin, Margaret Morgan. Margaret's husband was somewhere in France with Pershing's divisions. Margaret was to have news of him this evening, brought by a young English officer, Dawson Hewes, who had been wounded at Ypres, and who had come on a recruiting mission, among his countrymen in America.
The only other guest was to be Drusilla Gray.
Derry had gone over early to have the twilight hour with Margaret's children. There was Theodore, the boy, and Margaret-Mary, on the edge of three. They had their supper at five in the nursery, and after that there was always the story hour, with nurse safely downstairs for her dinner, their mother, lovely in a low-necked gown, and father coming in at the end. For several months their father had not come, and the best they could do was to kiss his picture in the frame with the eagle on it, to put flowers in front of it, and to say their little prayers for the safety of men in battle.
It was Cousin Derry who dropped in now at the evening hour. He was a famous story-teller, and they always welcomed him uproariously.
Margaret Morgan, perhaps better than any other, knew in those days what was in Derry's heart. She knew the things against which he had struggled, and she had rebelled hotly, "Why should he be sacrificed?" she had asked her husband more than once during the three years which had preceded America's entrance into the war. "He wants to be over there driving an ambulance—doing his bit. Aunt Edith always idealized the General, and Derry is paying the price."
"Most women idealize the men they love, honey-girl." Winston Morgan was from the South, and he drew upon its store of picturesque endearments to express his joy and pride in his own Peggy. "And if they didn't where should we be?"
She had leaned her head against him. "I don't need to idealize you," she had said, comfortably, "but the General is different. Aunt Edith made Derry live his father's life, not his own, and it has moulded him into something less than he might have been if he had been allowed more initiative."
Winston had shaken his head. "Discipline is a mighty good thing in the Army, Peggy, and it's a mighty good thing in life. Derry Drake is as hard as steel, and as finely tempered. If he ever does break loose, he'll be all the more dynamic for having held himself back."
Margaret, conceding all that, was yet constrained to pour out upon Derry the wealth of her womanly sympathy. It was perhaps the knowledge of this as well as his devotion to her children which brought him often to her door.
Tonight she was sitting on a low-backed seat in front of the fire with a child on each side of her. She was in white, her dark hair in a simple shining knot, a little pearl heart which had been Captain Morgan's parting gift, her only ornament.
"Go on with your story," he said, as he came in. "I just want to listen and do nothing."
She glanced up at him. He looked tired, unlike himself, depressed.
"Anything the matter?"
"Father isn't well. Dr. McKenzie has taken the case. Richards has gone to the front. Bronson will call me if there are any unfavorable developments."
Margaret-Mary, curled up like a kitten in the curve of Cousin Derry's arm, was exploring his vest pocket. She found two very small squares of Washington taffy wrapped in wax paper, one for herself and one for Teddy. It was Derry's war-time offering. No other candies were permitted by Margaret's patriotism. Her children ate molasses on their bread, maple sugar on their cereal. Her soldier was in France, and there were other soldiers, not one of whom should suffer because of the wanton waste of food by the people who stayed softly at home.
"You tell us a story, Uncle Derry," Teddy pleaded as he ate his taffy.
"I'd rather listen to your mother."
"They are tired of me," Margaret told him.
"We are not ti-yard," her small son enunciated carefully, "but you said you had to fix the f'owers."
"Well, I have. May I turn them over to you, Derry?"
"For a minute. But you must come back."
She came back presently, to find the lights out and only the glow of the fire to illumine faintly the three figures on the sofa. She stood unseen in the door and listened.
"And so the Tin Soldier stood on the shelf where the little boy had put him, and nothing happened in the old, old house. There was just an old, old man, and walls covered with old, old portraits, and knights in armor, and wooden trumpeters carved on the door who blew with all their might, 'Trutter-a-trutt, Trutter-a-trutt'—. But the old man and the portraits and the wooden trumpeters had no thought for the Tin Soldier who stood there on the shelf, alone and longing to go to the war. And at last the Tin Soldier cried out, 'I can't stand it. I want to go to the wars—I want to go to the wars!' But nobody listened or cared."
"Poor 'itte sing," Margaret-Mary crooned.
"If I had been there," Teddy proclaimed, "I'd have put him on the floor and told him to run and run and run!"
"But there was nobody to put him on the floor," said Derry, "so at last the Tin Soldier could stand it no longer. 'I will go to the wars, I will go to the wars,' he cried, and he threw himself down from the shelf."
The story stopped suddenly. "Go on, go on," urged the little voices in the dark.
"Perhaps you think that was the end of it, and that the Tin Soldier ran away to the wars, to help his country and save the world from ruin. But Fate wasn't as kind to him as that. For when the little boy came again to the old house, he looked for the Tin Soldier. But he wasn't on the shelf. And he looked and looked and, the old man looked, and the wooden trumpeters blew out their cheeks, 'Trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt—where is the Tin Soldier?—trutter-a-trutt—.'
"But they did not find him, for the Tin Soldier had fallen through a crack in the floor, and there he lay as in an open grave."
Drusilla's voice was heard in the lower hall, and the deeper voice of Captain Hewes. Margaret sped down to meet them, leaving the story, reluctantly, in that moment of heart-breaking climax.
When later Derry followed her, she had a chance to say, "I hope you gave it a happy ending."
"Oh, did you hear? Yes. They found him in time to send him away to war. But Hans Andersen didn't end it that way. He knew life."
She stared at him in amazement. Was this the Derry whose supply of cheerfulness had seemed inexhaustible? Whose persistent optimism had been at times exasperating to his friends?
Throughout the evening she was aware of his depression. She was aware, too, of the mistake which she had made in bringing Derry and Captain Hewes together.
The Captain had red hair and a big nose. But he was a gentleman in the fine old English sense; he was a soldier with but one idea, that every physically able man should fight. Every sentence that he spoke was charged with this belief, and every sentence carried a sting for Derry.
More than once Peggy found it necessary to change the subject frantically. Drusilla supplemented her efforts.
But gradually the Captain's manner froze. With a sort of military sixth sense, he felt that he had been asked to break bread and eat salt with a slacker, and he resented it.
After dinner Drusilla sang for them. Sensitive always to atmosphere, she soothed the Captain with old and familiar songs, "Flow gently, sweet Afton," and "Believe me if all those endearing young charms."
Then straight from these to "I'm going to marry 'Arry on the Fifth of January."
"Oh, I say—Harry Lauder," was Captain Hewes' eager comment. "I heard him singing to the chaps in the trenches just before I sailed—a little stocky man in a red kilt. He'd laugh, and you'd want to cry."
Drusilla gave them "Wee Hoose among the Heather," with the touch of pathos which the little man in the red kilt had imparted to it as he had sung it in October in New York before an audience which had wept as it had welcomed him.
"Queer thing," Captain Hewes mused, "what the war has done to him, set him preaching and all that."
"Oh, it isn't queer," Margaret was eager. "That is one of the things the war is doing, bringing men back to—God—" A sob caught in her throat.
Drusilla's hands strayed upon the keys, and into the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
"I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on—"
It was an old tune, but the words were new to Captain Hewes—as the girl chanted them, in that repressed voice that yet tore the heart out of him.
"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat,
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant my feet,
Our God is marching on—"
The Captain sat on the edge of his chair. His face was illumined.
"By Jove," he ejaculated, "that's topping!"
Drusilla stood up with her back to the piano, and sang without music.
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea—
With the glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me,
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on—"
She wore a gown of sheer dull blue, there was a red rose in her hair—her white arms, her white neck, the blue and red, youth and fire, strength and purity.
When she finished the room was very still. The big Englishman had no words for such a moment. The music had swept him up to unexpected heights of emotion. While Drusilla sang he had glimpsed for the first time the meaning of democracy, he had seen, indeed, in a great and lofty sense, for the first time—America.
Among the shadows a young man shrank in his seat. His vision was not of Democracy, but of a freezing night—of a ragged old voice rising from the blackness of a steep ravine—
"Oh, be swift, my soul—to answer—Him—
Be jubilant my feet—"
Why had Drusilla chosen that of all songs? Oh, why had she sung at all?
A maid came in to say that Mr. Drake was wanted at the telephone. The message was from Dr. McKenzie. The General was much worse. It might be well for Derry to come home.
So Derry, with a great sense of relief, got away from the frigid Captain, and from the flaming Drusilla, and from Peggy with her flushed air of apology, and went out into the stormy night. He had preferred to walk, although his shoes were thin. "It isn't far," he had said when Margaret expostulated, "and I'll send my car for Drusilla and Captain Hewes."
The sleet drove against his face. His feet were wet before he reached the first corner, the wind buffeted him. But he felt none of it. He was conscious only of his depression and of his great dread of again entering the big house where a sick man lay in a lacquered bed and where a painted lady smiled on the stairs. Where there was nothing alive, nothing young, nothing with lips to welcome him, or with hands to hold out to him.
He found when at last he arrived that the Doctor had sent for Hilda Merritt.
She came presently, in her long blue cloak and small blue bonnet. Hilda made no mistakes in the matter of clothes. She realized the glamour which her nurse's uniform cast over her. In evening dress she was slightly commonplace. In ordinary street garb not an eye would have been turned upon her, but the nun's blue and white of her uniform added the required spiritual effect to her rather full-blown beauty.
As she passed the painted lady at the head of the stairway she gave her a slight glance. Then on and up she went to her appointed task.
"It is pneumonia," Dr. McKenzie told Derry; "that's why I wanted Miss Merritt. She is very experienced, and in these days of war it is hard to get good nurses."
Derry found his voice shaking. "Is there any danger?"
"Naturally, at his age. But I think we are going to pull him through."
Derry went into the shadowed room. His father was breathing heavily. Something clutched at the boy's heart—the fear of the Thing which lurked in the darkness—a chill and sinister figure with a skeleton hand.
He could not have his father die. He would feel as if his thoughts had killed him—a murderer in intention if not in deed. Not thus must the Obstacle be removed. He raised haggard eyes to the Doctor's face. "You—you mustn't think that I store things up against him. He's all I have."
The Doctor's keen glance appraised him. "Don't get morbid over it; he has everything in his favor—and Miss Merritt is famous in such cases."
Hilda took his praise with downcast eyes. Her manner with the Doctor when others were present was professionally deferential. It was only when they were alone that the nurse was submerged in the woman.
With her bonnet off and a white cap in its place, she moved about the room. "I shall be very comfortable," she said, when Derry inquired if anything could be done for her.
"We haven't any women about the place but Cook," he explained. "She has been in our family forever—"
"I'll put a day nurse on tomorrow," the Doctor said, "but I want Hilda with him at night; she can call me up if there's any change, and I'll come right over."
When the Doctor had gone, Derry, seeking his room, found Muffin waiting. Bronson bustled in to see that his young master got out of his wet clothes and into a hot bath. "All the time the Doctor was talking to you, I was worrying about your shoes. Your feet are soaked, sir. Whatever made you walk in the rain?"
"I couldn't ride—I couldn't."
The old man on his knees removing the wet shoes looked up. "Restless, sir?"
"Yes. There are times, Bronson, when I want my mother."
He could say it in this room to Bronson and Muffin—to the gray old dog and the gray old man who adored him.
Bronson put him to bed, settled Muffin among his blankets in a basket by the hot water pipes, opened the windows wide, said "God bless you," and went away.
"Sweet dreams, Muffin," said Derry from the big bed.
The old dog whuffed discreetly.
It was their nightly ceremony.
The sleet came down in golden streaks against the glow of the street lights. Derry lay watching it, and it was a long time before he slept. Not since his mother's death had he been so weighed down with heaviness.
He kept seeing Jean with her head up, declining to dance with him; on the high stool at the confectioner's, her eyes cold above her chocolate; the English Captain and his contemptuous stare; Alma, basely excusing him; Drusilla, in her red and blue and white—singing—!
He waked in the morning with a sore throat. Young Martin came in to light the fire and draw the water for his bath. Later Bronson brought his breakfast and the mail.
"You'd better stay in bed, Mr. Derry."
"I think I shall. How is Dad?"
"The nurse says he is holding his own."
"I am glad of that."
Bronson, feeding warm milk and toast to Muffin, ventured an opinion, "I am not sure that I like the nurse, sir."
"Why not?"
"She's not exactly a lady, and she's not exactly a nurse."
"I see." Derry, having glanced over a letter or two, had picked up an envelope with embossed thistles on the flap. "But she is rather pretty, Bronson."
"Pretty is as pretty does," sententiously.
Silence. Bronson looked across at the young man propped up among the pillows. He was rereading the letter with the thistles on the flap. The strained look had gone out of his eyes, and his lips were smiling.
"I think I'll get up."
"Changed your mind, sir?"
"Yes." He threw back the covers. "I've a thousand things to do."
But there was just one thing which he was going to do which stood out beyond all others. Neither life nor death nor flood nor fire should keep him from presenting himself at four o'clock at Jean McKenzie's door, in response to the precious note which in a moment had changed the world for him.
=== ROSE-COLOR! ===
Jean found the day stretching out ahead of her in a series of exciting events. At the breakfast table her father told her that Hilda would stay on General Drake's case, and that she had better have Emily Bridges up for a visit.
"I don't like to have you alone at night, if I am called away."
"It will be heavenly, Daddy, to have Emily—"
And how was he to know that there were other heavenly things to happen? She had resolved that if Derry came, she would tell her father afterwards. But he might not come, so what was the use of being premature?
She sallied down to the Toy Shop in high feather. "You are to stay with us, Emily."
"Oh, am I? How do you know that I can make it convenient?"
"But you will, darling."
Jean's state of mind was beatific. She painted Lovely Dreams with a touch of inspiration which resulted in a row of purple camels: "Midnight on the Desert," Jean called them.
"Oh, Emily," she said, "we must have them in the window on Christmas morning, with the Wise Men and the Star—"
Emily, glancing at the face above the blue apron, was struck by the radiance of it.
"Is it because Hilda is away?" she asked.
"Is what—?"
"Your—rapture."
Jean laughed. "It is because Hilda is away, and other things. But I can't tell you now."
Then for fear Emily might be hurt by her secrecy, she flew to kiss her and again call her "Darling."
At noon she put on her hat and ran home, or at least her heart ran, and when she reached the house she sought the kitchen.
"I am having company for tea, Ellen—at four. And I want Lady-bread-and-butter, and oh, Ellen, will you have time for little pound cakes?"
She knew of course that pound cakes were—verboten. She felt, however, that even Mr. Hoover might sanction a fatted calf in the face of this supreme event.
She planned that she would receive Derry in the small drawing room. It was an informal room which had been kept by her mother for intimate friends. There was a wide window which faced west, a davenport in deep rose velvet, some chairs to match, and there were always roses in an old blue bowl.
Jean knew the dress she was going to wear in this room—of blue to match the bowl, with silver lace, and a girdle of pink brocade.
Alone in her room with Polly-Ann to watch proceedings, she got out the lovely gown.
"Oh, I do want to be pretty, Polly-Ann," she said with much wistfulness.
Yet when she was all hooked and snapped into it, she surveyed herself with some dissatisfaction in the mirror.
"Why not?" she asked the mirror. "Why shouldn't I wear it?"
The mirror gave back a vision of beauty—but behind that vision in the depths of limitless space Jean's eyes discerned something which made her change her gown. Quite soberly she got herself into a little nun's frock of gray with collars and cuffs of transparent white, and above it all was the glory of her crinkled hair.
Neither then nor afterwards could she analyze her reasons for the change. Perhaps sub-consciously she was perceiving that this meeting with Derry Drake was to be a serious and stupendous occasion. Throughout the world the emotions of men and women were being quickened to a pace set by a mighty conflict. Never again would Jean McKenzie laugh or cry over little things. She would laugh and cry, of course, but back of it all would be that sense of the world's travail and tragedy, made personal by her own part in it.
Julia, the second maid, was instructed to show Mr. Drake into the little drawing room. Jean came down early with her knitting, and sat on the deep-rose Davenport. The curtains were not drawn. There was always the chance of a sunset view. Julia was to turn on the light when she brought in the tea.
There was the whir of a bell, the murmur of voices. Jean sat tense. Then as her caller entered, she got somewhat shakily on her feet.
But the man in the door was not Derry Drake!
In his intrusive and impertinent green, pinched-in as to waist, and puffed-out as to trousers, his cheeks red with the cold, his brown eyes bright with eagerness, Ralph Witherspoon stood on the threshold.
"Of all the good luck," he said, "to find you in."
She shook hands with him and sat down.
"I thought you had gone back to Bay Shore. You said yesterday you were going."
"I got my orders in the nick of time. We are to go to Key West. I am to join the others on the way down."
"How soon?"
He sat at the other end of the davenport. "In three days, and anything can happen in three days."
He moved closer. She had a sense of panic. Was he going to propose to her again, in this room which she had set aside so sacredly for Derry Drake?
"Won't you have some tea?" she asked, desperately. "I'll have Julia bring it in."
"I'd rather talk."
But she had it brought, and Julia, wheeling in the tea-cart, offered a moment's reprieve. And Ralph ate the Lady-bread-and-butter, and the little pound cakes with the nuts and white frosting which had been meant for Derry, and then he walked around the tea-cart and took her hand, and for the seventh time since he had met her he asked her to marry him.
"But I don't love you." She was almost in tears.
"You don't know what love is—I'll teach you."
"I don't want to be taught."
"You don't know what it means to be taught—"
Jean had a stifling sense as of some great green tree bending down to crush her. She put out her hand to push it away.
In the silence a bell whirred—.
Derry Drake, ushered in by Julia, saw the room in the rosy glow of the lamp. He saw Ralph Witherspoon towering insolently in his aviator's green. He saw Jean, blushing and perturbed. The scene struck cold against the heat of his anticipation.
He sat down in one of the rose-colored chairs, and Julia brought more tea for him, more Lady-bread-and-butter, more pound cakes with nuts and frosting.
Ralph was frankly curious. He was also frankly jealous. He was aware that Derry had met Jean for the first time at his mother's dinner dance. And Derry's millions were formidable. It did not occur to Ralph that Derry, without his millions, was formidable. Ralph's idea of a man's attractiveness for women was founded on his belief in their admiration of good looks, and their liking for the possession of, as he would himself have expressed it, "plenty of pep" and "go." From Ralph's point of view Derry Drake was not handsome, and he was utterly unaware that back of Derry's silver-blond slenderness and apparent languidness were banked fires which could more than match his own.
And there was this, too, of which he was unconscious, that Derry's millions meant nothing to Jean. Had he remained the shabby son of the shabby old man in the Toy Shop, her heart would still have followed him.
So, fatuously hopeful, Ralph stayed. He stayed until five, until half-past five. Until a quarter of six.
And he talked of the glories of war!
Derry grew restless. As he sat in the rose-colored chair, he fingered a tassel which caught back one of the curtains of the wide window. It was a silk tassel, and he pulled at one strand of it until it was flossy and frayed. He was unconscious of his work of destruction, unconscious that Jean's eyes, lifted now and then from her knitting, noted his fingers weaving in and out of the rosy strands.
Ralph talked on. With seeming modesty he spoke of the feats of other men, yet none the less it was Ralph they saw, poised like a bird at incredible heights, looping the loop, fearless, splendid—beating the air with strong wings.
Six o'clock, and at last Ralph rose. Even then he hesitated and hung back, as if he expected that Derry might go with him. But Derry, stiff and straight beside the rose-colored chair, bade him farewell!
And now Derry was alone with Jean!
They found themselves standing close together in front of the fire. The garment of coldness and of languor which had seemed to enshroud Derry had dropped from him. The smile which he gave Jean was like warm wine in her veins.
"Well—?"
"I asked you to come—to say—that I am,—sorry—," her voice breaking. "Daddy told me that he knew why—you couldn't fight—"
"I didn't intend that he should tell."
"He didn't," eagerly, "not your reasons. He said it was a—confidence, and he couldn't break his word. But he knew that you were brave. That the things the world is saying are all wrong. Oh, I ought to go down on my knees."
Her face was white, her eyes deep wells of tears.
"It is I," he said, very low, "who should be on my knees—do you know what it means to me to have you tell me this?"
"I wasn't sure that I ought to write. To some men I couldn't have written—"
His face lighted. "When your note came—I can't tell you what it meant to me. I shouldn't like to think of what this day would have been for me if you had not written. Everybody is calling me—a coward. You know that. You heard Witherspoon just now pitying me, not in words, but his manner."
"Oh, Ralph," how easily she disposed of him. "Ralph crows, like a—rooster."
They looked at each other and tried to laugh. But they were not laughing in their hearts.
He lifted her hand and kissed it—then he stood well away from her, anchoring himself again to the silken tassel. "Now that you know a part," he said, from that safe distance, "I'd like to tell you all of it, if I may."
As he talked her fingers were busy with her knitting, but there came moments when she laid it down and looked up at him with eyes that mirrored his own earnestness.
"It—it hasn't been easy," he said in conclusion, "but—but if you will be my friend, nothing will be hard."
She tried to speak—was shaken as if by a strong wind, and her knitting went up as a shield.
"My dear, you are crying," he said, and was on his knees beside her.
And now they were caught in the tide of that mighty wave which was sweeping the world!
When at last she steadied herself, he was again anchored to the rose-colored tassel.
"You—you must forgive me—but—it has been so good to talk it out—to some one—who cared. I had never dreamed until that night in the Toy Shop of anybody—like you. Of anybody so—adorable. When your note came this morning, I couldn't believe it. But now I know it is true. And that night of Cinderella you were so—heavenly."
It was a good thing that Miss Emily came in at that moment—for his eloquence was a burning flood, and Jean was swept up and on with it.
The entrance of Emily, strictly tailored and practical, gave them pause.
"You remember Mr. Drake, don't you, Emily?"
Emily did, of course. But she had not expected to see him here. She held out her hand. "I remember that he was coming back for more of your Lovely Dreams."
"I want all of her dreams," said Derry, and something in the way that he said it took Miss Emily's breath away. "Please don't sell them to anyone else. You have a wholesale order from me."
Miss Emily looked from one to the other. She was conscious of something which touched the stars—something which all her life she had missed, something which belongs to youth and ecstasy.
"Wholesale orders are not in my line," she said. "You can settle that with Jean."
She surveyed the tea-wagon. "I'm starved. And if I eat I shall spoil my dinner."
"I can ring for hot water, Emily, and there are more of the pound cakes."
"My dear, no. I must go upstairs and dress. Your father sent for my bag, and Julia says it is in my room."
She bade Derry a cheerful good-bye, and left them alone.
"I must go, too," said Derry, and took Jean's hand. He stood looking down at her. "May I come tomorrow?"
"Oh,—yes—"
"There's one thing that I should like more than anything, if we could go to church together—to be thankful that—that we've found each other—"
Tears in the shining eyes!
"Why are you crying?"
"Because it is so—sweet."
"Then you'll go?"
"I'd love it."
He dropped her hand and got away. She was little and young, so divinely innocent. He felt that he must not take unfair advantage of that mood of exaltation.
He drove straight downtown and ordered flowers for her. Remembering the nun's dress, he sent violets in a gray basket, with a knot on the handle of heavenly blue.
The flowers came while Jean was at dinner. Emily was in Hilda's place, a quiet contrast in her slenderness and modest black to Hilda's opulence. Dr. McKenzie had not had time to dress.
"I am so busy, Emily."
"But you love the busy-ness, don't you? I can't imagine you without the hours crammed full."
"Just now I wish that I could push it away as Richards pushed it—"
Jean looked up. "But Dr. Richards went to France, Daddy."
"I envy him."
"Oh, do you—?" Then her flowers came, and she forgot everything else.
The Doctor whistled as Julia set the basket in front of Jean. "Ralph is generous."
Jean had opened the attached envelope and was reading a card. A wave of self-conscious color swept over her cheeks. "Ralph didn't send them. It—it was Derry Drake."
"Drake? How did that happen?"
"He was here this afternoon for tea, and Ralph, and Emily—only Emily was late, and the tea was cold—"
"So you've made up?"
"We didn't have to make up much, Daddy, did we?" mendaciously.
Miss Emily came to the rescue. "He seems very nice."
"Splendid fellow. But I am not sure that I want him sending flowers to my daughter. I don't want anyone sending flowers to her."
Miss Emily took him up sharply. "That's your selfishness. Life has always been a garden where you have wandered at will. And now you want to shut the gate of that garden against your daughter."
"Well, there are flowers that I shouldn't care to have her pluck."
"Don't you know her well enough to understand that she'll pluck only the little lovely blooms?"
His eyes rested on Jean's absorbed face. "Yes, thank God. And thank you, too, for saying it, Emily."
After dinner they sat in the library. Doctor McKenzie on one side of the fire with his cigar, Emily on the other side with her knitting. Jean between them in a low chair, a knot of Derry's violets fragrant against the gray of her gown, her fingers idle.
"Why aren't you knitting?" the Doctor asked.
"I don't have to set a good example to Emily."
"And you do to Hilda?" He threw back his head and laughed.
"You needn't laugh. Isn't it comfy with Emily?"
"It is." He glanced at the slender black figure. He was still feeling the fineness of the thing she had said about Jean. "But when she is here I am jealous."
"Oh, Daddy."
"And I am never jealous of Hilda. If you had Emily all the time you'd love her better than you do me."
He chuckled at their hot eyes. "If you are teasing," Jean told him, "I'll forgive you. But Emily won't, will you, Emily?"
"No." Emily's voice was gay, and he liked the color in her cheeks. "He doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Some day he is going to be devoured by a green-eyed monster, like a bad little boy in a Sunday School story."
Her needles clicked, and her eyes sparkled. There was no doubt that there was a sprightliness about Emily that was stimulating.
"But one's only daughter, Emily. Isn't jealousy pardonable?"
"Not in you."
"Why not?"
"Well," with obvious reluctance, "you're too big for it."
"Oh," he was more pleased than he was willing to admit, "did you hear that, Jean?"
But Jean, having drifted away from them, came back with, "I am going to church with him tomorrow."
"Him? Whom?"
"Derry Drake, Daddy, and may I bring him home to dinner?"
"Do you think a man like that goes begging for invitations? He has probably been asked to a dozen places to eat his turkey."
"He can't eat it at a dozen places, Daddy. And anyhow I should like to ask him. I—I think he is lonely—"
"A man with millions is never lonely."
She did not attempt to argue. She felt that her father could not possibly grasp the truth about Derry Drake. Her own understanding of his need had been a blinding, whirling revelation. He had said, "I wanted some one—who cared—." Not for a moment since then had the world been real to her. She had seemed in the center of a golden-lighted sphere, where Derry's voice spoke to her, where Derry's smile warmed her, where Derry, a silver-crested knight, knelt at her feet.
Julia came in to say that Miss Jean was wanted at the telephone.
Miraculously Derry's voice came over the wire. Was she going to the dance at the Willard? The one for the benefit of the Eye and Ear Hospital? The President and his wife would be there—the only ball they had attended this season—everybody would be there. Could he come for Jean and her father? And he'd bring Drusilla and Marion Gray. She knew Drusilla?
Jean on tiptoe. Oh, yes. But she was not sure about her father.
"But you—you—?"
"I'll ask."
She flew on winged feet and explained excitedly.
"Tonight? Tonight, Jean?"
"Yes, Daddy."
"But what time is it?"
"Only ten. He'll come at eleven—"
"But you can't leave Emily alone, dear."
"Emily won't mind—darling—will you, Emily?"
"Of course not. I am often alone."
It was said quietly, without bitterness, but Dr. McKenzie was quite suddenly and unreasonably moved by the thought of all that Emily had missed. He felt it utterly unfair that she should sit alone by an empty hearth while he and Jean frivolled. He had never thought of Hilda by an empty hearth—and she had been often alone—but there was this which made the difference, he would not have asked Hilda to meet his daughter's friends. She had her place in his household, but it was not the place which Emily filled.
Yet he missed her. He missed her blond picturesqueness at the dinner table, her trim whiteness as she served him in his office.
He came back to the question of Emily. "You can tell Drake we will go, if Emily can accompany us."
"But, Doctor, I'd rather not."
"Why not?"
"I'm not included in the invitation."
"Don't be self-conscious."
"And I haven't anything to wear."
"You never looked better than you do at this moment. And Jean can get you that scarf of her mother's with the jet and spangles."
"The peacocky one—oh, yes, Daddy." Jean danced back to the telephone.
Derry was delighted to include Miss Bridges. "Bring a dozen if you wish."
"I don't want a dozen. I want just Daddy and Emily."
"And me?"
"Of course—silly—"
Laughter singing along the wire. "May I come now?"
"I have to change my dress."
"In an hour, then?"
"Yes."
"I can't really believe that we are going together!"
"Together—"
=== A MAN WITH MONEY ===
White and silver for Jean, the peacocky scarf making Emily shine with the best of them, Dr. McKenzie called away at the last moment, and promising to join them later; Derry catching his breath when he saw his violets among Jean's laces; Drusilla wondering a little at this transfigured Derry; Marion Gray settling down to the comfort of a chat with Emily—what had these to do with a Tin Soldier on a shelf?
"How is your father, Derry?"
"Better, Drusilla. He has a fine nurse. Dr. McKenzie sent her."
"And I have Emily," Jean sang from the corner of the big car where Derry had her penned in, with the fragrance of her violets sweeping over him as he sat next to her. "I want Emily always, but Daddy has to have a nurse in the office, and Emily won't give up her toys. And in the meantime Hilda and I are ready to scratch each other's eyes out. Please keep her as long as you can on your father's case, Mr. Drake."
"Say 'Derry,'" he commanded under cover of the light laughter of the women.
"Not before—-everybody—"
"Whisper it, then."
"Derry, Derry."
His pulses pounded. During the rest of the drive, he spoke to his other guests and seemed to listen, but he heard nothing—nothing but the whisper of that beloved voice.
As Derry had said, all the world of Washington was at the ball. The President and his wife in a flag-draped box, she in black with a turquoise fan, he towering a little above her, more than President in these autocratic days of war. They looked down on men in the uniforms of the battling world—Scot and Briton and Gaul—in plaid and khaki and horizon blue—.
They looked down on women knitting.
Mrs. Witherspoon and a party of young people sat in a box adjoining Derry's. Ralph was there and Alma Drew, and Alma was more than ever lovely in gold-embroidered tulle.
Ralph knew what had happened when he saw Jean dancing with Derry. There was no mistaking the soft raptures of the youthful pair. In the days to come Ralph was to suffer wounds, but none to tear his heart like this. And so when he danced with Jean a little later he did not spare her.
"A man with money always gets what he wants."
"I don't know what you mean."
"I think you do. You are going to marry Derry Drake."
She shrank at this. She had in her meetings with Derry never looked beyond the bliss of the moment. To have Ralph's rough fingers tearing at the veil of her future was revolting.
She breathed quickly. "I shan't dance with you, if you speak of it again."
"You shall dance with me," grimly, "this moment is my own—"
She was like wax in his strong arms. "Oh, how dare you." She was cold with auger. "I want to stop."
"And I could dance forever. That's the irony of it—that I cannot make you. But if I had Drake's money, I'd make you."
"Do you think it is his money?"
"Perhaps not. But the world will think it."
"If—if he wanted me, I'd marry him if he were a beggar in the streets."
"Has it gone as far as that? But you wouldn't marry a beggar. A troubadour beneath your balcony, yes. But not a beggar. You'd want him silken and blond and singing, and staying at home while other men fought—"
She stopped at once. "If you knew what you were talking about; I'd never speak to you again. But because I was fool enough once to believe that Derry Drake was a coward, I am going to forgive you. But I shall not dance with you again; ever—"
Making her way back alone to the box, she saw with a throb of relief that her father had joined Emily and Marion Gray.
He uttered a quick exclamation as she came up. "What's the matter, daughter?"
Her throat was dry. "I can't tell you now—there are too many people. It was Ralph. I hate him, Daddy."
"My dear—"
"I do."
"But why?"
"Please, I don't want to talk about it—wait until we get home."
Looking out over the heads of the swaying crowd, she saw that Derry was dancing with Alma Drew. And it was Alma who had said at the Witherspoon dinner, "Everybody will forgive a man with money."
And that was what Ralph had thought of her, that she was like Alma—that money could buy her—that she would sell the honor of her country for gold—.
But worse than any hurt of her own was the hurt of the thing for Derry. Ralph Witherspoon had dared to point a finger of scorn at him—other people had dared—
She suffered intensely, not as a child, but as a woman.
Alma, out on the floor, was saying to Derry, "I saw you dancing with Jean McKenzie. She's a quaint little duck."
"Not a duck, Alma," he was smiling, "a white dove—or a silver swan." The look that he sent across the room to Jean was a revelation.
Like Ralph, she grew hateful. "So that's it? Well, a man with money can get anything."
He had no anger for her. Jean might blaze in his defense, but his own fires were not to be fanned by any words of Alma Drew. If he lost his fortune, Jean would still care for him. It was fore-ordained, as fixed as the stars.
So he went back to her, and when she saw him coming, the burden of her distress fell from her. The world became once more hers and Derry's, with everybody else shut out. When they had supper with the Witherspoon party joining them, and Ralph palely repentant beside her, she even, to the utter bewilderment of her father, smiled at him, and talked as if their quarrel had never been.
Drusilla watched her with more than a tinge of envy. She was aware that her own vivid charm was shadowed and eclipsed by the white flame of Jean's youth and innocence. "And he loves her," she thought with a tug of her heartstrings; "he loves her, and there'll never be anything like it for him again."
She sat rather silently between Captain Hewes and Dr. McKenzie. Dr. McKenzie had always admired Drusilla, but tonight his attention was rather more than usual fixed upon her by a remark which Captain Hewes had made when the two men had stood alone together watching the dancers. "I have seen very little of American women—but to me Drusilla Gray seems the supreme type."
"She is very attractive."
"She is more than that. She is inspiring, the embodiment of your best ideals. When she sings one wonders that all men have not fought for democracy."
That was something to say of a woman. Doctor McKenzie wondered if it could be said of his own daughter. Set side by side with Drusilla, Jean seemed a childish creature, unstable, swayed by the emotion of the moment. Yet her fire matched Drusilla's, her dreams outran Drusilla's dreams.
Two officers passed the table.
"How any man can keep out of it," Drusilla said. "Some day I shall put on a uniform and pass for a boy—"
"Why not go over as you are?"
"They won't let me now. But some day they will. I can drive a car—there ought to be a place for me."
"There is one for me," he said, "and my decision must be made tonight. They are asking me to head a hospital staff in France. A letter came this morning, and I've got to answer it."
Her eyes went to the flame-white maiden on the other side of the table. "What does Jean say?"
"I haven't asked her. She wouldn't keep me back. But I am all she has, and it would hurt."
"It would hurt. But you are not all that she has—you might as well try to sweep back the sea as to stop what is going on over there. I have been sitting here green with envy. Oh, if love might only come to me like that."
"Like what?"
"Heaven-sent—never a doubt, never a speculation; just knowing and believing—souls stripped bare of all pretence."
How splendid she was—how beautiful! He bent down to her. "Why shouldn't it come to you?"
"Men don't love me that way. They admire and respect and then love. But Jean? She's a moon maiden, luring them to—madness." She smiled up at him.
"Captain Hewes says you are the supreme type—the perfect American."
"Yes, but he thinks of me as a type. Some day perhaps he will think of me as a woman."
She brought the conversation back to Jean. "You need not let the thought of her loneliness trouble you."
"You think then that I am going to lose her?"
"You have lost her already."
Sparks burned in the Doctor's eyes. "I don't believe it. She has known him a few days—and I've given her my whole life."
"'Forsaking all others,'" murmured Drusilla.
"Yet she loves me."
"It isn't that she loves you less—she loves him more."
"Don't," he lifted his hand. "I am not sure that I can stand it."
"It makes your way clear. That's why I have said it. There will be nothing now to keep you back from France."
Once upon a time she had said to Derry, "I can feel things, and I can make others feel." She had, perhaps, tonight, been a little cruel, but she had been cruel with a purpose.
All the way home Doctor McKenzie was very silent. When he kissed his daughter before she went upstairs, he held her close and smoothed her hair, but not a word did he say of the thing which had come to him.
He asked Emily, however, to wait a moment. "I have a letter to answer. I should like your advice."
Wondering a little, she sat down by the fire. The peacocky scarf gave out glittering lights of blue and green. She was tired and there were shadows under her eyes.
He came at once to his proposition. "I am thinking of going to France, Emily. If I do, can you stay with Jean?"
She turned her startled gaze upon him. "To France? Why?"
He told her. "They have been writing to me for weeks, and now the moment for my decision has come. I haven't said anything to Jean. But she won't keep me back. You know how she feels. But unless you can come, I can't leave her."
"I should have to be all day in my shop."
"I know, but you could be here in the evening and at night, and she could, of course, be with you in the shop, she likes that—and it would keep her from brooding. Or, if you will give up the shop, I should like to make it financially possible for you, Emily."
She shook her head. "No. You will be coming back, and then my occupation would be gone." She hesitated. "But if I come—what of Hilda?"
"She may decide to go over, too, as a nurse. We work well together."
She was silent, searching for the words which she felt that she ought to say. So that was it? They would go together, and the tongues of the world would wag. And Hilda would know that they were wagging, and would not care. But he, with his mind on bigger things, would never know, and would blunder unseeing into the net which was set for him. She felt that she ought to warn him, that the good friendship which existed between them demanded it. Yet it was a hard thing to say, and she hated it. So the moment passed.
It was he who spoke first—of Jean and Derry. "What do you think of it, Emily?"
"He is very much in love with her."
"And Jean?"
"Oh, I think you know. You saw her tonight."
He felt a sudden sense of age and loneliness. "She won't miss me, then?"
"Do you think that anyone could make up to your little Jean for the loss of her father?"
He covered his face with his hand. "You are feeling it like that?" she asked, gently.
"Yes. She is all I have, Emily. And I am jealous—desperately—desperately."
She searched for words to comfort him, and at last they came. "She will be very proud of her Daddy in France."
"Do you think she will?"
"I know it."
"And yet—I am not really worthy of all that she gives—"
She leaned forward, her white hands in her lap. Jean's comment echoed once more in his ears. "I like Emily's hands much better than Hilda's." They seemed, indeed, to represent all that was lovely in Emily, her refinement, her firmness, her gentle spirit.
"Bruce," she said—she rarely called him that—"your dear wife would never have loved you if you hadn't been worthy of love."
"I need her—to hold me to my best."
"Hold yourself to it, Bruce—" She stood up. "I must go to bed, and so must you. We have busy days before us."
He spoke impulsively. "You are a good woman, Emily—there's no one in the world that I would trust to stay with Jean but you."
She smiled a little wistfully as she went upstairs. She had perhaps comforted him, but she had left unsaid the words she should have spoken. "You must not take Hilda with you. If you take her with you, will your Jean be proud of her Daddy in France?"
=== HILDA WEARS A CROWN ===
At two o'clock on Thanksgiving morning the light burned low in the General's room. Hilda, wide awake, was reading. Derry stopped at the door.
She rose at once and went to him.
"Is he all right, Miss Merritt?"
"Yes. He's sound asleep."
"Then you think he's better?"
"Much better."
"Good. I hope you can stay on the case. Dr. McKenzie says it is all because of your splendid care of him. I just left McKenzie, by the way. I took him and his daughter to the ball at the Willard. We had a corking time."
Her eyes saw a change in him. This was not the listless Derry with whom she had talked the day before—here were flushed cheeks and shining eyes—gay youth and gladness—.
"A corking time," Derry reiterated. "The President was there, and his wife—and we danced a lot—and—" he caught himself up. "Well, good-night, Miss Merritt."
"Good-night." She went back to the shadowed room.
Bronson, following Derry, came back in a half hour with a dry, "Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Merritt?" and then the house was still.
And now Hilda was alone with the old man in the lacquered bed. There would be no interruptions until morning. It was the moment for which she had waited ever since the hour when the General had sent her into his wife's room for a miniature of Derry, which was locked in the safe.
The suite which had belonged to Mrs. Drake consisted of three rooms—a sitting room, a bedroom and a sun-parlor which had been Derry's nursery. Nothing had been changed since her death. Every day a maid cleaned and dusted, and at certain seasons the clothes in the presses were brushed and aired and put back again. In a little safe in the wall were jewels, and the key was on the General's ring. He had given the key to Hilda when he had sent her for the miniature. His fever had been high, and he had not been quite himself. Even a nurse with a finer sense of honor might have argued, however, that her patient must be obeyed. So she knew now where his treasure was kept—behind a Chinese scroll, which when rolled up revealed the panel which hid the safe.
Hilda had never worn a jewel of value in her life. She possessed, it is true, a few trinkets, a gold ring with her monogram engraved in it, a string of Roman pearls, and a plain wrist watch. But such brilliance as that which met her startled eyes when she had first looked into the safe was beyond anything conceived by her rather limited imagination.
She opened the door between the rooms quietly, and went in, leaving a crack that she might hear any movement on the part of her patient. She crossed the sitting room in the dark. Reaching the bedroom she pulled the chain of the lamp, then set a screen to hide any ray of light which might escape.
The room was furnished with a feeling for delicate color—gold and ivory—Japanese prints—pale silks and crêpes—a bit of jade—a cabinet inlaid with mother-of-pearl. But Hilda's eyes were not for these. Indeed, she knew nothing of their value, nothing, indeed, of the value of the Chinese scroll which so effectually hid the panel in the wall.
Within the safe was a large velvet box, and several smaller ones. It was from the big box that Hilda had taken the miniature, and it contained also the crown which she yearned to wear.
She called it a crown! It was a tiara of diamonds, peaked up to a point in front. There was, also, the wide collar of pearls with the diamond slides which had been worn by the painted lady on the stairs. In the smaller boxes were more pearls, long strings of them; sapphires like a midnight sky, opals, fire in a mist; rubies, emeralds—. They should have been locked in a vault at the General's bank, but he had wanted nothing taken away, nothing disturbed. Yet with that touch of fever upon him he had given the key to Hilda.
She took off her cap and turned in the neck of her white linen gown. The pearl collar was a bit small for her, but she managed to snap the three slides. She set the sparkling circlet on her head.
Then she stood back and surveyed herself in the oval mirror!
Gone was the Hilda Merritt whom she had known, and in her place was a queen with a crown! She smiled at her reflection and nodded. For once she was swayed from her stillness and stolidity. She loaded her long hands with rings, and held them to her cheeks; then, struck by the contrast of her white linen sleeve, she rummaged in one of the big closets, and threw on the bed a drift of exquisite apparel.
The gowns were all too small for her, but there was a cloak of velvet and ermine. The General's wife had worn it to the White House dinner over the gown in which she had been painted. Hilda drew the cloak about her shoulders, and laughed noiselessly. She could look like this, and she had never known it! But now that she knew—!
There was the soft click of the telephone in the General's room. Fearful lest the sound should waken her patient, she tore off the tiara, turned up the neck of her dress to hide the shining collar, dropped the cloak, pulled the chain of the lamp, then sped breathless to the shadowed room.
Dr. McKenzie was at the other end of the wire.
"I am coming over, Hilda."
"You need not,"—her voice was a whisper—"he is sound asleep."
"I want to see you for a moment. It is very important."
She hesitated. "It is very late."
"Has young Drake arrived?"
"Yes. He has gone to bed."
"I'll be there in ten minutes. You can meet me downstairs."
The General stirred. "Miss Merritt."
She hung up the receiver and went to him at once.
"Has the Doctor come?"
"No. But he has just telephoned. He will be here shortly."
His sick old eyes surveyed her. "I never saw you before without your cap—"
"No."
"You are very pretty."
She smiled down at him. "It is nice of you to say it."
"Don't wear your cap again, I don't like uniforms for women."
"But when I am on duty I must wear it. You know enough of discipline to understand that I must."
"Yes. But women don't need discipline, God bless 'em." His old eyes twinkled. "Has Derry come in?"
"Yes, and gone to bed. He asked after you."
"And it's Thanksgiving morning?"
"Yes."
"And no turkey for me. But you'll get me a glass of wine?"
"I'm not sure. I'll ask the Doctor."
She sat beside him until he again dozed. Then made her way once more to the room where the lovely gowns were piled high on the bed, and the jewels sparkled on the dressing-table. Quickly and noiselessly she put them in place. Then she tried to take off the collar, but the snaps held. She tugged and pressed, but with no result. She was afraid to pull too hard lest she break the snaps.
At last she was forced to button the collar of her linen gown above it. She smoothed her hair and put on her cap. The room as she surveyed it showed no sign of her occupation. She put out the light and returned to her patient.
She was at the front door to let the Doctor in when he arrived.
"The General is awake, and wants to see you. I'll come down when you go, and we can talk."
As they entered the shadowed room together, the old man opened his eyes. "Hello, McKenzie. Nurse, what made you put on your cap? I don't like it."
"I shouldn't dare leave it off when the Doctor's here."
"Does she have to take your orders or mine, McKenzie?"
"Mine," smiling; "that's one of the perquisites of my profession, to have all the nurses under my thumb."
"Don't you try to please your patients?"
"Yes."
"Then tell her to leave off her cap."
He began to cough. The Doctor bent over him. Hilda helped to make the old man comfortable.
When at last the General drifted into slumber, the two went down together. The hall clock pointed to four.
They stood at the foot of the great stairway. From the landing the painted lady smiled at them.
"Hilda, I am going to France."
She expressed no surprise. "When did you make up your mind?"
"In a sense it is not made up. I think I am waiting for you to confirm my decision. They want me at the head of a hospital staff, to deal with cases of shock. I should like to have you in charge of my nurses."
She meditated. "I am not sure that I care to go."
He showed his surprise. "I understood that if I went, you would go—"
"I don't think I said that."
"Perhaps not. But it didn't occur to me that you would back out." His voice showed the irritation of a man balked in the thing he wants.
"I haven't backed out. I don't know what I want to do. I have to think it over."
He ran his fingers through his hair. "What made you change your mind?"
"I like to be comfortable. And it isn't comfortable over there."
"For Heaven's sake, Hilda—don't make yourself out as selfish as that."
"I am not any more selfish than other people, but I am honest. I don't go around deceiving myself with the idea that if I go I shall be doing something wonderful. But you—that's why you are going—to be wonderful in your own eyes, and Jean's eyes and in the eyes of the world."
"I don't think it is that," he said soberly. "I hope not. I have tried to see straight. I sometimes think it is you who are seeing crooked, Hilda."
They faced each other squarely. Her chin was slightly lifted. He caught the gleam of jewels at her throat.
"Hilda," he said, sharply, "where did you get those diamonds?"
Her hand flew up to them. She was not in the least disconcerted. "I might as well tell you. They belonged to the General's wife. I didn't have anything to do tonight, so I've been trying them on. There isn't any harm in that, is there?"
"It's rather dangerous," slowly; "why didn't you take the collar off?"
"The snap caught just as you came, and I couldn't unfasten it."
"Did the General know that you tried them on?"
"Of course not. He was asleep."
"Bend your head down, and let me look at the snap."
She leaned towards him, bringing her neck against his hand. The little curls of bright hair sprang up towards his fingers as he worked at the obstinate catch. But he did his work steadily, and as she straightened up again, he dropped the collar into her hand.
"If you will take my advice," he said, "you won't do a thing like that again. People might not understand."
"You mean that they might think I had stolen it? I am not a thief, Doctor—"
"Of course not. Do you think you have to tell me that? And are we quarrelling, Hilda?"
She swung back to her normal calm. "I am tired and cross—"
"I know you are tired. I hope the day nurse will relieve you. I can get two nurses, and let you off entirely."
She shook her head. "I'll stay here. I am interested in the case. And I want to see it through. By the way, he has asked again for wine."
"He can't have it, I told you. You must say that my orders are strict."
He held out his hand. "Then you won't go to France with me?"
"Let me sleep on it,"—her fingers were firm on his own—"and don't scold me any more."
"Did I scold?"
"Yes."
"I am sorry."
She smiled at him. The slow smile which transformed her. "I'll forgive you. Call me up in the morning, please."
She let him out, and went silently up the stairs. The General was again awake. "I want to talk," he told her; "take off your cap, and sit where I can look at you."
He was still feverish, still not quite responsible for what he might say.
She sat with the light falling full upon her. She never made an unnecessary movement, and her stillness soothed him. She was a good listener, and he grew garrulous.
At last he spoke of his wife. "Sometimes I think she is here and I find myself speaking. A little while ago, I thought I heard her moving in her room, but when I opened my eyes you were bending over me. Sometimes I seem to hear her singing—there is never a moment that I do not miss her. If I were good enough I might hope to meet her—perhaps the Lord will let the strength of my love compensate for the weakness of my will."
So on and on in the broken old voice.
Bronson came at six, and Hilda went away to have some sleep. While the General drowsed she had put the collar safely away behind the Chinese scroll.
As she passed through the hall, she stopped for a moment at the head of the stairs. The painted lady smiled at her, the painted lady who was loved by the old man in the shadowed room.
No, Hilda was not a thief. Yet as she stood there, in the cold dawn of that Thanksgiving morning, she had it in her mind to steal from the painted lady things more precious than a pearl collar or an ermine cloak or the diamonds in a crown!
=== WHEN THE MORNING STARS SANG ===
Jean was having her breakfast in bed. Emily had slipped downstairs to drink an early cup of coffee with the Doctor and to warn him, "Don't tell her to-day."
"Why not?"
"It will spoil her feast. Derry Drake is coming to dinner."
"The robber—"
"Do you really feel that way about it?"
"I don't know how I feel."
He rose and went to the window. "It's a rotten morning."
"It is Thanksgiving."
"I haven't much to be thankful for," moodily. "I am, you tell me, about to lose my daughter. I am, also, it would seem, to part company with my best nurse."
"Hilda?"
"Yes. I wanted her to take charge of things for me in France. She elects to stay here."
"But why?"
"She's a—woman."
"You don't mean that. And I must say that I am rather glad that she is not going."
It was out at last! She had a feeling as if she had taken a cold plunge and had survived it!
"Glad? What do you mean, Emily?"
"Every time I waked in the night, I thought of Jean and of how she would feel if Hilda went with you. Do you realize that if she goes, there are things that the world will say?"
His face was stern. "You are very brave to tell me that, Emily."
"It had to be said, and last night I shirked it."
"But Hilda is a very good nurse."
"Do you think of her only as a—good nurse?"
He turned that over in his mind. "No. In a sense she's rather attractive. She satisfies a certain side of me—."
"The best side?"
He avoided an answer to that. "When she is away I miss her."
And now Miss Emily, shaking a little, but not showing it, made him face the situation squarely.
"Have you ever thought that, missing her, you might want to marry her?"
"I have thought of it. Why not, Emily?"
"Have you thought that it would make her your Jean's—mother—?"
His startled look met her steadfast one. His mind flew back to Hilda as she had bent down to him the night before, that he might unfasten the necklace. He thought of the evil that her eyes saw in him, and in the rest of the world. He thought of Jean, and of her white young dreams.
"No," he said, as if to himself, "not that—"
She laid her hand on his arm, "Go by yourself—there's a big work over there, and you can do it best—alone."
He looked down at her, smiling a little, but smiling sadly. "If Jean's mother had lived I should not have been such a weathercock. Will you write to me—promise me that you will write."
"Of course," cheerfully. "Oh, by the way, Julia tells me that dinner will be at three, and that two soldier boys are coming. I rather think I shall like that."
He ran his fingers through his crinkled hair. "What a lot you get out of life, Emily."
"What makes you say that?"
"Little things count so much with you. You are like Jean. She is in seventh Heaven over a snowstorm—or a chocolate soda. It's the youth in her—and it's the youth, too, in you—"
She liked that, and flushed a little. "Perhaps it is because there have been so few big things, Bruce, that the little ones look big."
He had a fleeting sense of what Emily would be like with some big thing in her life—how far would it swing her from her sedate course?
"You have done me a lot of good," he said heartily when she left him to go upstairs to Jean.
Jean was still in bed. "I must run down to the shop," Emily informed her. "But I'll be back in plenty of time to dress for dinner."
"Darling—" Jean reminded her, "you must go to church."
"Of course. I shall stop on my way down."
"Pray for me, Emily." She reached out her arms. Emily came to them and they clung together. "I am so happy, darling—" Jean whispered, "but there isn't anything to tell, not really—yet—Emily—"
When Emily had gone, Jean got out her memory books. She had made of breakfast a slight affair. How could one eat in the face of such astounding events. Already this morning flowers had arrived for her, heather and American Beauties. And Derry had written on his card, "The heather because of you—the roses because of the day—"
There were two hours on her hands before church. She could dress in one—the intervening time must be filled.
Her memory books were great fat volumes kept on a shelf by themselves, and forming a record of everything that had happened to her since her first day at boarding school. They were in no sense diaries, nor could they be called scrap-books. They had, rather, been compiled with an eye to certain red-letter events—and their bulkiness had been enhanced by the insertion between the leaves of various objects not intended for such limited space. There was a mask which she had worn at Hallowe'en; the tulle which had tied her roses at graduation; a little silver ring marking a childish romance; a flattened and much-dried chocolate drop with tender associations; dance-favors, clippings, photographs, theater programs, each illumined and emphasized by a line or two of sentiment or of nonsense in Jean's girlish scrawl.
Even now, as she turned the leaves, she found herself laughing over a rhyme which her father had cut from his daily paper, and had sent in response to her wild plea for a box of something good to eat:
"Mary had a little lamb,
A little pork, a little jam,
A little egg on toast,
A little potted roast,
A little stew with dumplings white,
A little shad,
For Mary had,
A little appetite."
The big box had followed—how dear Daddy had always been—but had she ever wanted to eat like that?
There were letters which her father had written, pasted in, envelopes and all, to be read in certain longing moments when she had missed him and her mother. There were love letters from certain callow college boys—love—! She laughed now as she thought of the pale passion they had offered her.
Derry had had no word for her the night before when he had left her at her door. Her father had been with her, so Derry could only press her hand and watch her as she went in. But there had been no need for words. All the evening what they had felt had flamed between them—.
So with the desire to preserve a record of these marvellous moments which were crowding into her life, she chose a perfectly new book to be devoted to Derry. And on the first page she pasted, not the faded violet from the basket which had come to her yesterday—oh, day of days!—not the dance program on which Derry's name was most magically scrawled, nor the spring of heather, nor a handful of rose leaves from the offering of the morning—no, the very first thing that went into Jean's memory book was a frayed silken tassel that had been cut from a rose-colored curtain! She had carried down her little scissors the night before, and had snipped it, and here it was—an omen for her own rose-colored future!
Starry-eyed she lay back among her pillows.
"Oh, Polly-Ann, Polly-Ann," she said tensely, to the small cat on the cushions, "if I should ever wake up and find that it wasn't true—"
Polly-Ann stared at her with mystical green orbs. She could offer no help, but she served as a peg upon which Jean could hang her eloquence. She stretched herself luxuriously and purred.
"But it is true, Polly-Ann," Jean said, "and I am going to church with him—wasn't it beautiful that he should think of going to church with me on Thanksgiving morning, Polly-Ann?"
She dressed herself presently, making a sort of sacred rite of it—because of Derry. She was glad that she was pretty—because of Derry. Glad that her gray fur coat was becoming—glad of the red rose against it.
He came in his car, but they decided to walk.
"I always walk to church," said Jean.
"There's sleet falling," said Derry.
"I don't care," said Jean.
"Nor I," said Derry.
And so they started out together!
It was a dismal day, but they did not know it. They knelt together in the old church. They prayed together. And when at last the benediction had been said and they stood together for a moment alone in the pew, Derry looked down at her and said, "Beloved," and the morning stars sang—!
When they went out, the sleet was coming thick and fast, and Derry's car was waiting. And when they were safe inside, he turned to her and his voice exulted, "I haven't even told you that I love you—I haven't asked you to marry me—I haven't done any of the conventional things—it hasn't needed words, and that's the wonder of it."
"Yes."
"But you knew."
"Yes."
"From the first?"
"I think it was from the first—"
"In the Toy Shop?"
"Yes."
"And you thought I was poor—and I thought you were just the girl in the shop?"
"Isn't it wonderful?"
It was more wonderful than they knew.
"Do you know that my money has always been more important to some people than I have been? I have thought they cared for me because of it."
"Ralph said last night that I cared—for the money."
She would not tell him of the other things that Ralph had said. And even as she thought of him, across the path of her rapture fell the shadow of Ralph's scorn of Derry.
He bent down to her. "Jean, if I had been that shabby boy that you first saw in the shop would you have been happy with me, in a plain little house? Would you?"
Up the streets came the people from the churches—the crowds of people who had thanked the Lord soberly, feeling meantime a bit bewildered as to the workings of His Providence. Most of them were going home to somewhat modified feasts. Many of them were having a soldier or two to dine with them. And presently these soldiers whom they feasted would be crossing the sea to that dread land of death and desolation.
Should they thank the Lord for that?
Some of the clergymen, craving light, had sought it in the Old Testament. But one, more inspired than the rest, had found it in the New.
"And there was war in Heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels. And prevailed not—neither was their place found any more in Heaven."
Those who came from that church spoke of a Holy War, and were thankful that there were men in America going forth to fight the Dragon.
The two soldiers who were to dine at Dr. McKenzie's were plain young fellows from an upper county in Maryland. They were waiting somewhat awkwardly in the drawing-room when Jean arrived. She took them at once to the less formal library, left Derry with them and went upstairs to dress.
As she came into the fresh and frilly room so identified with her child life and her girl life, she stopped on the threshold.
Oh, little room, little room, the child that once lived here will never come again!
She knelt beside the bed, her face buried in her hands. No words came, but in her heart she was saying, "My beloved is mine—and I am his—"
When she went down, Dr. McKenzie was there, and Emily, and the two young soldiers had lost their awkwardness. When they found out afterwards that the young Drake who talked to them so simply and unaffectedly was DeRhymer Drake, the multi-millionaire, they refused to believe it. "He was a mighty nice chap. He didn't put on a bit of side, and the dinner was some feast."
And how could they know that Derry was envying them their cavalry yellow and their olive drab?
As for Jean, throughout the afternoon they gazed upon her as upon an enchanting vision. When they told her "Good-bye" it was the boldest who asked, with a flush on his hard cheek, if he might have a bit of the heather which she wore. "I am Scotch myself, and my mother was, and it would seem a sort of mascot."
If she hesitated for a moment it was only Derry who noticed it. And he helped her out. "It will be a proud day for the heather."
So she gave away a part of his gift, and thanked him with her eyes.
It was after the boys had gone that Derry had a talk alone with Dr. McKenzie.
"But you haven't known her a month—"
"I have wanted her all my life."
"I see—how old are you?"
"Thirty-one."
"You don't look it."
"No. And I don't feel it. Not to-day."
"And you think that she cares?"
"What do you think, sir?"
The Doctor threw up his hands. "Oh, lad, lad, there's all the wonder of it in her eyes when she looks at you."
When Derry went at last to find Jean, she was not in the library. He crossed the hall to the little drawing-room. His love sat by the fire alone.
"My darling—"
Thus she came to his arms. But even then he held her gently, worshipping her innocence and respecting it.
The next morning he brought her a ring. It was such a wonderful ring that she held her breath. She sat on the rose-colored davenport while he put it on her finger.
"If I had been the girl in the Toy Shop," she told him, "and you had been the shabby boy, you would have given me a gold band with three little stones—and I should have liked that, too."
"You shall have the gold ring some day, and it won't have stones in it—and it will be a wedding ring."
"Oh—"
"And when yon wear it I shall call you—Friend Wife—"
=== ARE MEN MADE ONLY FOR THIS? ===
In the afternoon the lovers made a triumphant pilgrimage to the place where they had first met. All the toys in the little shop stared at them—the clowns and the dancers in pink and yellow and the bisque babies and the glassy-eyed dogs and cats.
The white elephant was again in the window. "He seemed so lonely," Emily explained, "and with Christmas coming I couldn't feel comfortable to think of him away from it all."
Jean showed Derry her midnight camels. "I am going to do peacocks next," she told him. "I am so proud."
He bought all of the camels and a lot of other things. "We'll take them to Margaret Morgan's kiddies tomorrow; I want you to meet her."
Miss Emily found her lavish customer interesting, but demoralizing. "Run away with him, Jean," she said. "I am not used to Croesuses. He won't leave anything to sell, and then what shall I say to the people who want to buy?"
"Shut up your shop and go to tea with us at Chevy Chase," Derry suggested.
Emily smiled at him. "It is good of you to ask me, but I can't. I am not in love, and I have my day's work to do. But I think if you would like to take Jean—"
"Alone?" eagerly. "Do you think I might?"
"Why not?"
"I was almost afraid to suggest it."
"I am not a dragon. And there will never be a day like this for you again."
Jean broke in at that. "Oh, Emily, they will be wonderfuller!"
"But not this day—"
Derry knew what she meant. "How sweet you are."
Miss Emily, flushing, was a transformed Miss Emily. "Well, old people are apt to forget, and I have not forgotten."
"Darling, darling," Jean chanted. "I am going to paint dragons, and they shall all have lovely faces, and I shall call them the Not-Forgetting Dragons."
It was all very superlative. Miss Emily tried to send them away, but they still lingered. Jean set the music boxes going to celebrate the occasion, then stopped them because the only tunes they played were German tunes.
Derry laughed at her, then came to silence before a box of tin soldiers. They were little French soldiers, flat on their backs, bright with paint—
"I wonder how they feel about it?" he asked Jean.
"About what?"
"Shut up in a box, doing nothing—"
As the lovers drove away, Emily stood at the window looking after them. There was one customer in the shop, but Miss Emily had a feeling that he would keep himself amused until she was ready to wait on him. She had intuitions about the people who came to buy, and this tall spare man with the slight droop of his shoulders, his upstanding bush of gray hair, his shell glasses on a black ribbon was, she was aware, having the time of his life. No little boy could have spent more time over the toys. He fingered them lovingly as he peered through his big horn glasses.
He saw Miss Emily looking at him and smiling. "It was the white elephant that brought me in. He was made in Germany?"
"Yes."
"It is not easy to get them any more?"
"No. You see I have a little card on him 'Not for sale.'"
He nodded. "I should like to buy him—"
She shook her head. "I have refused many offers."
"I can understand that. Yet, perhaps if I should tell you?"
There was a slight trace of foreign accent in his speech. She stiffened. She felt that he was capable of calling her "Fräulein." There was not the least doubt in her mind as to the Teutonic extraction of this gentleman who was shamelessly trying to induce her to sell her elephant.
"I can't imagine any reason that would make me change my mind."
"My father is German; he makes toys."
She showed her surprise. "Makes toys?"
"Yes. He is an old man—eighty-five. He was born in Nuremberg. Until he was twenty-five he made elephants like the one in your window. Now do you see?"
She was not sure that she did see. "Well?"
"I want him for my father's Christmas present."
"Impossible," coldly; "he is not for sale."
He was still patient. "He will make you another—many others."
He had her attention now. "Make—elephants?"
"Yes. He needs only a pattern. There are certain things he has forgotten. I should like to make him happy."
Miss Emily, hostilely convinced that it was not her business to contribute to the happiness of any octogenarian Hun, shook her head, "I'm sorry."
"Then you won't sell him?"
"Certainly not."
He still lingered. "You love your toys—I have been here before, and I have watched you. They are not just sawdust and wood and cloth and paint to you—they are real—"
"Yes."
"My father is like that. They are real to him. There's an old wax doll that was my mother's. He loves her and talks to her—. Because she was made in that Germany which is dead—"
The fierceness in his voice, the flash of his eye; the thrust of his hand as if it held a rapier!
"Dead?"
"The Germany he knew died when Prussia throttled her. Her poetry died, her music—there is no echo now from the Rhine but that of—guns."
"You feel—that way—?"
"Yes."
"Then sit down and tell me—tell me—" She was eager.
"Tell you what?"
"About your father, about the toys, about the Germany that is—dead."
He was glad to tell her. It poured forth, with now and then an offending phrase, "Gott in Himmel, do they think we have forgotten? My father came to America because he loved freedom—he fought in the Civil War for freedom—he loves freedom still; and over there they are fighting for slavery. The slavery of the little nations, the slavery of those who love democracy. They want Prussia, and more Prussia, and more Prussia—" He struck his hand on the counter so that all the dolls danced.
"They are fighting to get the whole world under an iron heel—to crush—to grind—to destroy. My father reads it and weeps. He is an old man, Fräulein, and his mind goes back to the Germany which sang and told fairy tales, and made toys; do you see?
"Yet there are people here who do not understand, who point their fingers at him, at me. Who think because I am Ulrich Stölle that I am not—American. Yet what am I but that?"
He got up and walked around the room restlessly. "I am an American. If I was not born here, can I help that? But my heart has been moulded here. For me there is no other country. Germany I love—yes, but as one loves a woman who has been led away—because one thinks of the things she might have been, not of the thing she is."
He came back to her. "Will you sell me your elephant, Fräulein?"
She held out her hand to him. Her eyes were wet. "I will lend him to your father. Indeed, I cannot sell him."
He took her hand in a strong grasp. "I knew you were kind. If you could only see my father."
"Bring him here some day."
"He is too old to be brought. He sticks close to his chair. But if you would come and see him? You and perhaps the young lady who waited on me when I came before, and who was here to-day with the young man whose heart is singing."
"Oh, you saw that?"
"It was there for the whole world to see, was it not? A man in love hides nothing. You will bring them then? We have flowers even in December in our hothouses; you will like that, and you shall see my father. I think you will love my father, Fräulein."
After he had gone she wondered at herself. She had trusted her precious elephant to a perfect stranger. He might be anything, a spy, a thief, with his "Gotts in Himmel" and his "Fräuleins"—how Jean would laugh at her for her softheartedness!
Oh, but he wasn't a thief, he wasn't a spy. He was a poet and a gentleman. She made very few mistakes in her estimates of the people who came to her shop. She had made, she was sure, no mistake in trusting Ulrich Stölle.
Jean and Derry motoring to Chevy Chase were far away from the world of the Toy Shop. As they whirled along the country roads the bare trees seemed to bud and bloom for them, the sky was gold.
The lovely clubhouse as they came into it was gay with big-flowered curtains and warm with its roaring fires.
As they crossed the room together, they attracted much attention. There was about them a fine air of exaltation—.
"Young blood, young blood," said an old gentleman in a corner. "Gad, I envy him. Look at her eyes—!"
But there was more than her eyes to look at. There were her cheeks, and her crinkled copper hair under the little hat, and the flower that she wore, and her white hands as she poured the tea.
They drank unlimited quantities of Orange Pekoe, and ate small mountains of toast. They were healthily happy and quite unexpectedly hungry, and the fact that they were sitting alone at the table gave the whole thing an enchanting atmosphere of domesticity.
"Ralph spoiled it the other day," Jean confided, "I had everything ready for you."
"How I hated him when I came in."
"Oh, did you?"
"Of course," and then they both laughed, and the old gentleman in the corner said to the woman who sat with him, "Let's get away. I can't stand it."
"I don't see why."
"You wouldn't see. But there was a time once when I loved a girl like that."
Drusilla and Captain Hewes coming in, after a canter through the Park, broke in upon the Paradise of the young pair.
Drusilla in riding togs still managed to preserve the picturesque quality of her beauty—a cockade in her hat, a red flower in her lapel, a blue tie against her white shirt.
"And she does it so well," Derry said, as the two came towards them. "In most women it would have an air of bad taste, but Drusilla never goes too far—"
Captain Hewes in tow showed himself a captured man. "I didn't know that American women could ride until Miss Gray showed me—today. It was rippin'."
Drusilla laughed. "It is worth more than the ride to have you say 'rippin'' like that."
"She makes fun of me," the Captain complained; "some day I shall take her over to England and show her how our gentle maidens look up to me."
"Your gentle maidens," Drusilla stated, "are driving ambulances or making munitions. When the Tommies come marching home again they will find comrades, not clinging vines."
"And they'll jolly well like it," said the big Englishman; "a man wants a woman who understands—"
This was law and gospel to Derry. "Of course. Jean, dear, may I tell Drusilla?"
"As if you had to tell me," Drusilla scoffed; "it is written all over you."
"Is it?" Derry marvelled.
"It is. The whole room is lighted up with it. You are a lucky man, Derry,"—for a moment her bright eyes were shadowed—"and Jean is a lucky girl." She leaned down and kissed the woman that Derry loved. "Oh, you Babes in the Wood—"
"By Jove," the Captain ejaculated, much taken by the little scene, "do you mean that they are going to be married?"
"Rather," Drusilla mocked him. "But don't shout it from the housetops. Derry is a public personage, and it might get in the papers."
"It is not to get in the papers yet," Derry said. "Dr. McKenzie won't let me tell Dad—he's too ill—but we told you because you are my good friend, Drusilla."
She might have been more than that, but he did not know it. When he went away with Jean, she looked after him wistfully.
"Good-bye, little Galahad," she said.
The Captain stared. "Oh, I say, do you call him that?"
She nodded.
"He's a knight in shining armor—"
"I can't understand why he's not fightin'."
"Nobody understands. There's something back of it, and meantime people are calling him a coward—"
"Doesn't look like a slacker."
"He isn't. I have sometimes thought," said wise Drusilla, "that it might be his father. He's a gay old bird, and Derry has to jack him up."
"Drink?"
"Yes. They say that Derry has followed him night after night—getting him home if he could; if not, staying with him."
"Hard lines—"
"And yet he is asking little Jean to marry him. I wonder if she will keep step with him."
"Why shouldn't she?"
"Because Derry is going to travel far and fast in the next few months," Drusilla prophesied.
Her face settled into tired lines. For the first time the Captain saw her divorced from her radiance. He set himself to cheer her.
"What is troubling you, dear woman?"
She was very frank, and she told him the truth. "I should have been glad to keep step with him myself."
He laid his hand over hers. "If you had, where would I be? From the moment I saw you, you filled my heart."
So, after all, she had been to him from the first, not a type but a woman. It had come to him like that, but not to her. "You're the bravest and best man I have ever met," she told him, "but I don't love you."
"I should be glad to wait," said the poor Captain, "until you could find something in me to like."
"I find a great deal to like," she said, "but it wouldn't be fair to give you anything less than love."
"At least you'll let me have your friendship—to take back with me."
She looked at him, startled. "Oh, you are going back?"
"I may get my orders any day. There are things I can be doing over there."
Some day she was to see him "over there," to see him against a background of fire and flame and smoke, to see him transfigured by heroism, and she was to remember then with an aching heart this moment when he had told her that he loved her.
It was dark when Derry brought Jean home. There had been a sunset and an afterglow, and a twilight, and an evening star to ravish them as they rode, to say nothing of the moon—they came to the Doctor's door quite dizzy with the joy of it.
Derry was loath to leave. "Can't we all go to a play tonight?" he asked Jean's father. "You and Miss Bridges and the two of us?"
"Certainly not. Jean has done enough to-day. She isn't made of iron."
"She is made of fire and dew," Derry flung at him, lightly.
"Heavens, has it come to that? Well, she is still my daughter. I won't have her ill on my hands."
"But, Daddy!"
"You are to have a quiet dinner with me, my dear, and go to bed—and young Lochinvar may call for you in the morning—"
Young Lochinvar was repentant. "I didn't think it would tire her."
"Henceforth you will have to think."
"I know, sir."
He was so meek that the Doctor melted. "Run along and say 'Good-bye' to her. I'll give you ten minutes."
They wanted ten eternities. But there was, of course, tomorrow. They comforted themselves with that.
At dinner, the Doctor spoke of Derry's father. "All real danger is past, but he will have to be careful."
"When is Hilda coming back?"
"She told me last night that she'd rather stay until there was no further need for a nurse. The General hates a change, and he has asked her to stay."
"Does she like it?"
"She is very comfortable."
"Derry says that his father is an old dear."
"He would think so, naturally."
There were things about the General's case which were troubling Dr. McKenzie, and of which he could not speak. The old man had, undoubtedly been given something to drink on Thanksgiving Day.
Hilda had had strict orders, and the day nurse, and the only other person who had had access to the General's room was Bronson. He had made up his mind to speak to Derry about Bronson.
The meal progressed rather silently. The Doctor was preoccupied, taciturn. Miss Emily made futile efforts at conversation. Jean dallied with her dinner.
"My dear," the Doctor commented as she pushed away her salad, "you can't live on love."
"I'm not hungry. We had tea at the Club. Drusilla was there—and—we told her."
"Told her what?"
Blushing furiously, "That Derry and I are going to be—married."
"But you are not. Not for months. If that cub thinks he can carry you off from under my eyes he is mistaken. You've got to get acquainted with each other—I have seen too many unhappy marriages."
"But we are not going to be unhappy, Daddy."
"How do you know?"
Her cheeks were blazing. Miss Emily interposed. "Don't tease her, she's too tired."
"If he is teasing, I don't care," Jean said, "but it always sounds as if he meant it."
After dinner, the Doctor laid his hand on his daughter's shoulder. "I want to talk to you, daughter."
"Is it about Derry, Daddy?"
"About myself."
Emily, understanding, left them alone. Jean sat in her low chair in front of the fire, her earnest eyes on her father. "Well, Daddy."
He patted her hand. It was hard for him to speak.
She saw his emotion. "Is—is it because I am going to marry Derry?"
"That, and more than that. Jean, dear, I must go to France—"
"To France?"
"Yes. They want me to head a hospital. I don't see how I can refuse, and keep my self-respect. But it means—leaving you."
"Leaving me—"
"My little girl—don't look like that." He reached out his arms to her.
She came, and clung to him. "How soon?"
"As soon as I can wind things up here."
"It—it seems as if I couldn't let you."
"Then you'll miss me, dearest?"
"You know I will, Daddy."
"But you will have your Derry." His jealousy forced that.
"As if it makes any difference about—you."
She hid her face against his coat. She felt suddenly that the war was assuming a new and very personal aspect. Of course men had to go. But she and her father had never been separated—not for more than a day or week, or a month when she was at the shore.
"How long, Daddy?"
"God knows, dearest. Until I am not needed."
"But—" her lip trembled.
"You are going to be my brave little girl."
"I'll try—" the tears were running down her cheeks.
"You wouldn't have me not go, would you?"
She shook her head and sobbed on his shoulder. He soothed her and presently she sat up. Quite gallantly she agreed that she would stay with Emily. If he thought she was too young to marry Derry now, she would wait. If Derry went into it, it might be easier to let him go as a lover than as a husband—she thought it might be easier. Yes, she would try to sleep when she went upstairs—and she would remember that her old Daddy loved her, loved her, and she was to ask God to bless him—and keep him—when they were absent one from the other—.
She kissed him and clung to him and then went upstairs. She undressed and said her prayers, put Polly-Ann on her cushion, turned off the light, and got into bed.
Then she lay in the dark, facing it squarely.
The things she had said to her father were not true. She didn't want him to go to France. She didn't want Derry to go. She was glad that Derry's mother had made him promise. She didn't care who called him a coward. She cared only to keep her own.
There wasn't any sense in it, anyhow. Why should Daddy and Derry be blown to pieces—or made blind—or not come back at all? Just because a barbarian had brought his hordes into Belgium? Well, let Belgium take care of herself—and France.
She shuddered deeper down into the bed. She wasn't heroic. Hilda had been right about that. She was willing to knit miles and miles of wool, to go without meat, to go without wheat, to wear old clothes, to let the furnace go out and sit shivering in one room by a wood fire, she was willing to freeze and to starve, but she was not willing to send her men to France.
She found herself shaking, sobbing—.
Hitherto war had seemed a glorious thing, an inspiring thing. She had thrilled to think that she was living in a time which matched the days of Caesar and Alexander and of Napoleon, of that first Richard of England, of Charlemagne, of Nelson and of Francis Drake, of Grant and Lee and Lincoln.
Even in fiction there had been Ivanhoe and—and Alan Breck—and even poor Rawdon Crawley at Waterloo—fighters all, even the poorest of them, exalted in her eyes by their courage and the clash of arms.
But there wasn't any glory, any romance in this war. It was machine guns and bombs and dirt, and cold and mud; and base hospitals, and men screaming with awful wounds—and gas, and horrors, and nerve-shock and—frightfulness. She had read it all in the papers and in the magazines. And it had not meant anything to her, it had been just words and phrases, and now it was more than words and phrases—.
When the hordes of people had swept into Washington, changing it from its gracious calm into a seething and unsettling center of activities, she had been borne along on the wings of enthusiasm and of high endeavor. She had scolded women who would not work, she had scorned mothers and wives who had sighed and sobbed because their men must go. She had talked of patriotism!
Well, she wasn't patriotic. Derry would probably hate her when she told him. But she was going to tell him. She wouldn't have him blown to pieces or made blind or not come back at all. And in the morning, she would beg Daddy—she would beg and beg!
As she sat up in bed and looked wildly about her, it seemed as if all the corners of the little room were haunted by specters. A long time ago she had seen Maude Adams in "L'Aiglon." She remembered now those wailing voices of the dead at Wagram. And in this war millions of men had died. It seemed to her that their souls must be pressing against the wall which divided them from the living—that their voices must penetrate the stillness which had always shut them out. "How dare you go on with it? Are men made only for this?"
She remembered now the thing that her father had said on the night after "Cinderella."
"If I had my way, it should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. For every man that they have tortured, we must torture one of theirs. For every child mutilated, we must mutilate a child—for every woman—"
Her Daddy had said that. Her kind and tender Daddy. Was that what the war made of men? Would Daddy and Derry, when they went over, do that? Torture and mutilate? Would they, would they? And would they come back after that and expect her to love them and live with them?
Well, she wouldn't. She would not. She would be afraid of them—of both of them.
If they loved her, they would stay with her. They wouldn't go away and leave her to be afraid—alone and crying in the dark, with all of those dead voices.
----Emily tapped at the door. Came in. "My dear, my dear—. Oh, my poor little Jean."
----After a long time her father was there, and he was giving her a white tablet and a drink of water.
"It will quiet her nerves, Emily. I didn't dream that she would take it like this."
=== SHINING SOULS ===
The next morning Jean was ill. Derry, having the news conveyed to him over the telephone, rushed in to demand tragically of Dr. McKenzie, "Was it my fault?"
"It was the fault of too much excitement. Seventh heaven with you for hours, and then my news on top of it."
"What news?"
The Doctor explained. "It is going to tear me to pieces if she takes it like this. She was half-delirious all night, and begged and begged—"
"She doesn't want you to go?"
The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, we've been a lot to each other. But she's such a little sport—and patriotic—nobody more so. She won't feel this way when she's herself again."
Derry stood drearily at the window looking out. "You think then she won't be able to see me for several days? I had planned such a lot of things."
The Doctor dropped a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Life has a way of spoiling our plans, hasn't it? I had hoped for old age with Jean's mother."
That was something for youth to think of—of life spoiling things—of lonely old age!
"I wish," Derry said, after a pause, "that you'd let me marry her before you go."
"No, no," sharply, "she's too young, Drake. And you haven't known each other long enough."
"Things move rapidly in these days, sir."
The Doctor agreed. "It is one of the significant developments. We had become material. And now fire and flame. But all the more reason why I should keep my head. Jean will be safe here with Emily. And you may go any day."
"I wish I might think so. I'd be there now if I weren't bound."
"It won't hurt either of you to wait until I come back," was the Doctor's ultimatum, and Derry, longing for sympathy, left him presently and made his way to the Toy Shop.
"If we were to wait ten years do you think I'd love her any more than I do now?" he demanded of Emily. "I should think he'd understand."
"Men never do understand," said Emily—"fathers. They think their own romance was unique, or they forget that there was ever any romance."
"If you could put in a word for us," ventured Derry.
"I am not sure that it would do any good; Bruce is a Turk."
A customer came, and Derry lingered disconsolately while Emily served her. More customers, among them a tall spare man with an upstanding bush of gray hair. He had a potted plant in his arms, wrapped in tissue paper. He set it on the counter and went away.
When Miss Emily discovered the plant, she asked Derry, "Who put it there?"
Derry described the man. "You were busy. He didn't stop."
The plant was a cyclamen, blood-red and beautiful.
Miss Emily managed to remark casually that she had loaned his father an elephant, perhaps he had felt that he ought to make some return—but he needn't—.
"An elephant?"
"Not a real one. But the last of my plush beauties."
She set the cyclamen on a shelf, and wrapped up the parcel of toys which Derry had bought the day before, "I may as well take them to Margaret Morgan's kiddies," he told her. "I want to tell her about Jean."
After Derry had gone, Miss Emily stood looking at the cyclamen on the shelf. It was a lovely thing, with a dozen blooms. She wished that her benefactor had stayed to let her thank him. She was not sure that she even knew where to send a note.
She hunted him up in the telephone book, and found him—Ulrich Stölle. His hot-houses were on the old Military Road. She remembered now to have seen them, and to have remarked the house, which was peaked up in several gables, and had quaint brightly-colored iron figures set about the garden—with pointed caps like the graybeards in Rip van Winkle, or the dwarf in Rumpelstiltzkin.
When Derry's car slid up to Margaret's door, he saw the two children at an upper window. They waved to him as he rang the bell. He waited several moments and no one came to open the door. He turned the knob and, finding it unlatched, let himself in.
As he went through the hall he was aware of a strange stillness. Not a maid was in sight. Passing Margaret's room on the second floor he heard voices.
The children were alone in the nursery. He was flooded with sunlight. Margaret-Mary's pink wash frock, Teddy's white linen—yellow jonquils in a blue bow—snowy lambs gambolling on a green frieze—Bo-peeps, flying ribbons—it was a cheering and charming picture.
"How gay you are," said Derry.
"We are not gay in our hearts," Teddy told him.
"Why not?"
"Mother's crying—we heard her, and then Nurse went down and left us, and we looked out of the window and you came."
Derry's heart seemed to stop beating. "Crying?"
Even as he spoke, Margaret stood on the threshold. There were no tears, but it was worse than tears.
He started towards her, but with a gesture she stopped him.
"I am so glad you are—here," she said.
"My dear—what is it?"
She put her hand up to her head. "Teddy, dearest," she asked, "can you take care of Margaret-Mary until Cousin Derry comes back? I want to talk to him."
Teddy's grave eyes surveyed her. "You've been cryin'," he said, "I told Cousin Derry—"
"Yes. I have had—bad news. But—I am not going to cry—any more. And you'll take care of sister?"
"I tell you, old chap," said Derry resourcefully, "you and Margaret-Mary can open my parcel, and when I come back we'll all play together."
Outside with Margaret, with the door shut on the children, he put his arm about her. "Is it Win—is he—hurt?"
"He is—oh, Derry, Derry, he is dead!"
Even then she did not cry. "The children mustn't know. Not till I get a grip on myself. They mustn't think of it as—sad. They must think of it as—glorious—that he went—that way—."
Held close in his arms, she shook with sobs, silent, hard. He carried her down to her room. The maids were gathered there—Nurse utterly useless in her grief. It came to Derry, as he bent over Margaret, that he had always thought of Nurse as a heartless automaton, playing Chorus to Teddy, yet here she was, a weeping woman with the rest of them.
He sent all of the servants away, except Nurse, and then Margaret told him, "He was in one of the French towns which the Germans had vacated, and he happened to pick up a toy—that some little child might have dropped—-and there was an explosive hidden in it—and that child's toy killed him, Derry, killed him—"
"My God, Margaret—"
"They had put it there that it might kill a—child!"
"Derry, the children mustn't know how it happened. They mustn't think of him as—hurt. They know that something is the matter. Can you tell them, Derry? So that they will think of him as fine and splendid, and going up to Heaven because God loves brave men—?"
It was a hard task that she had set him, and when at last he left her, he went slowly up the stairs.
The children had strung the Midnight Camels across the room, the purple, patient creatures that Jean had made.
"The round rug is an oasis," Teddy explained, "and the jonquil is a palm—and we are going to save the dates and figs from our lunch."
"I want my lunch," Margaret-Mary complained.
Derry looked at his watch. It was after twelve. The servants were all demoralized. "See here," he said, "you sit still for a moment, and I'll go down for your tray."
He brought it up himself, presently, bread and milk and fruit.
They sat on the oasis and ate, with the patient purple camels grouped in the shade of the jonquil palm.
Then Derry asked, "Shall I tell you the story of How the Purple Camels Came to Paradise?"
"Yes," they said, and he gathered little Margaret-Mary into his arms, and Teddy lay flat on the floor and looked up at him, while Derry made his difficult way towards the thing he had to tell.
"You see, the purple camels belonged to the Three Wise Men, the ones who journeyed, after the Star—do you remember? And found the little baby who was the Christ? And because the purple camels had followed the Star, the good Lord said to them, 'Some day you shall journey towards Paradise, and there you shall see the shining souls that dwell in happiness.'"
"Do their souls really shine?" Teddy asked.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because of the light in Paradise—the warm, sweet light, clearer than the sunshine, Teddy, brighter than the moon and the stars—."
The children sighed rapturously. "Go on," Teddy urged.
"So the patient camels began their wonderful pilgrimage—they crossed the desert and rounded a curve of the sea, and at last they came to Paradise, and the gate was shut and they knelt in front of it, and they heard singing, and the sound of silver trumpets, and at last the gate swung back, and they saw—what do you think they saw?"
"The shining souls," said Teddy, solemnly.
"Yes, the shining souls in all that lovely light—there were the souls of happy little children, and of good women, but best of all," his voice wavered a little, "best of all, there were the souls of—brave men."
"My father is a brave man."
Was, oh, little Teddy!
"And the purple camels said to the angels who guarded the gate, 'We have come because we saw the little Christ in the manger.'
"And the angel said, 'It is those who see Him who enter Paradise,' So the patient purple camels went in and the gates were shut behind them, and there they will live in the warm, sweet light throughout the deathless ages."
"What are de-yethless ages, Cousin Derry?"
"Forever and ever."
"Is that all?"
"It is all about the camels—but not all about the shining souls."
"Tell us the rest."
He knew that he was bungling it, but at last he brought them to the thought of their father in Paradise, because the dear Lord loved to have him there.
"But if he's there, he can't be here," said the practical Teddy.
"No."
"I want him here. Doesn't Mother want him here?"
"Well—yes."
"Is she glad to have him go to Paradise?"
"Not exactly—glad."
"Was that why she was crying?"
"Yes. Of course she will miss him, but it is a wonderful thing just the same, Teddy, when you think of it—when you think of how your own father went over to France because he was sorry for all the poor little children who had been hurt, and for all the people who had suffered and suffered until it seemed as if they must not suffer any more—and he wanted to help them, and—and—"
But here he stumbled and stopped. "I tell you, Teddy," he said, as man to man, "it is going to hurt awfully, not to see him. But you've got to be careful not to be too sorry—because there's your Mother to think of."
"Is she crying now?"
"Yes. Down there on her bed. Could you be very brave if you went down, and told her not to be sorry?"
"Brave, like my Daddy?"
"Yes."
Margaret-Mary was too young to understand—she was easily comforted. Derry sang a little song and her eyes drooped.
But downstairs the little son who was brave like his father, sat on the edge of the bed, and held his mother's hand. "He's in Paradise with the purple camels, Mother, and he's a shining soul—."
It was a week before Jean went with Derry to see Margaret. It had been a week of strange happenings, of being made love to by Derry and of getting Daddy ready to go away. She had reached heights and depths, alternately. She had been feverishly radiant when with her lover. She had resolved that she would not spoil the wonder of these days by letting him know her state of mind.
The nights were the worst. None of them were as bad as the first night, but her dreams were of battles and bloodshed, and she waked in the mornings with great heaviness of spirit.
What Derry had told her of Margaret's loss seemed but a confirmation of her fears. It was thus that men went away and never returned—. Oh, how Hilda would have triumphed if she could have looked into Jean's heart with its tremors and terrors!
She came, thus, into the room, where Margaret sat with her children.
"I want you two women to meet," Derry said, as he presented Jean, "because you are my dearest—"
"He has told me so much about you,"—Margaret put her arm about Jean and kissed her—"and he has used all the adjectives—yet none of them was adequate."
Jean spoke tensely. "It doesn't seem right for us to bring our happiness here."
"Why not? This has always been the place of happiness?" She caught her breath, then went on quickly, "You mustn't think that I am heartless. But if the women who have lost should let themselves despair, it would react on the living. The wailing of women means the weakness of men. I believe that so firmly that I am afraid to—cry."
"You are braver than I—" slowly.
"No. You'd feel the same way, dear child, about Derry."
"No. I should not. I shouldn't feel that way at all. I should die—if I lost Derry—"
Light leaped in her lover's eyes. But he shook his head. "She'd bear it like other brave women. She doesn't know herself, Margaret."
"None of us do. Do you suppose that the wives and mothers of France ever dreamed that it would be their fortitude which would hold the enemy back?"
"Do you think it did, really?" Jean asked her.
"I know it. It has been a barrier as tangible as a wall of rock."
"You put an awful responsibility upon the women."
"Why not? They are the mothers of men."
They sat down after that; and Jean listened frozenly while Margaret and Derry talked. The children in front of the fire were looking at the pictures in a book which Derry had brought.
Teddy, stretched at length on the rug in his favorite attitude, was reading to Margaret-Mary. His mop of bright hair, his flushed cheeks, his active gestures spoke of life quick in his young body—.
And his father was—dead—!
Oh, oh, Mothers of men—!
=== HILDA BREAKS THE RULES ===
It was Dr. McKenzie who told Hilda of Jean's engagement to Derry Drake.
"I thought it best for them not to say anything to the General until he is better. So you may consider it confidential, Hilda."
"Of course."
She had come to his office to help him with his books. The nurse who somewhat inadequately supplied her place was having an afternoon off. The Doctor had been glad to see her, and had told her so. "I am afraid things are in an awful muddle."
"Not so bad that they can't be straightened out in an hour or two."
"I don't see why you insist upon staying on the General's case. I shouldn't have sent you if I had thought you'd keep at it like this."
"I always keep at things when I begin them, don't I?"
He knew that she did. It was one of the qualities which made her valuable. "I believe that you are staying away to let me see how hard it is to get along without you."
"It wouldn't be a bad idea, but that's not the reason. I am staying because I like the case." She shifted the topic away from herself.
"People will say that Jean has played her cards well."
He blazed, "What do you mean, Hilda?"
"He has a great deal of money."
"What has that to do with it?"
Her smile was irritating. "Oh, I know you are not mercenary. But a million or two won't come amiss in any girl's future—and two country houses, and a house in town."
"You seem to know all about it."
"The General talks a lot—and anyhow, all the world knows it. It's no secret."
"I rather think that Jean doesn't know it. I haven't told her. She realizes that he is rich, but it doesn't seem to have made much impression on her."
"Most people will think she is lucky to have caught him."
"He is not a fish," with rising anger, "and as for Jean, she'd marry him if he hadn't a penny, and you know it, Hilda."
Hilda considered that for a moment. Then she said, "Is it his money or his father's?"
"Belongs to the old man. Derry's mother had nothing but an irreproachable family tree."
Hilda's long hands were clasped on the desk, her eyes were upon them. "If he shouldn't like his son's marriage, he might make things uncomfortable."
"Why shouldn't he like my Jean?"
"He probably will. But there's always the chance that he may not. He may be more ambitious."
Dr. McKenzie ran his fingers through his crinkled hair. "She's good enough for—a king."
"You think that, naturally, but he isn't the doting father of an only daughter."
"If he thinks that my daughter isn't good enough for his son—"
"You needn't shout at me like that," calmly; "but he knows as well as you do that Derry Drake's millions could get him any girl."
He had a flashing sense of the coarse fiber of Hilda's mental make-up. "My Jean is a well-born and well-bred woman," he said, slowly. "It is a thing that money can't buy."
"Money buys a very good counterfeit. Lots of the women who come here aren't ladies, not in the sense that you mean it, but on the surface you can't tell them apart."
He knew that it was true. No one knows better than a doctor what is beneath the veneer of social convention and personal hypocrisy.
"And as for Jean," her quiet voice analyzed, "what do you know of her, really? You've kept her shut away from the things that could hurt her, but how do you know what will happen when you open the gate?"
Yet Emily had said—? His hand came down on top of the desk. "I think we won't discuss Jean."
"Very well, but you brought it on yourself. And now please go away, I've got to finish this and get back—"
He went reluctantly, and returned to say, "You'll come over again before I sail, and straighten things out for me?"
"Of course."
"You don't act as if you cared whether I went or not."
"I care, of course. But don't expect me to cry. I am not the crying kind." The little room was full of sunlight. She was very pink and white and self-possessed. She smiled straight up into his face. "What good would it do me to cry?"
After she had left him he was restless. She had been for so long a part of his life, a very necessary and pleasant part of it. She never touched his depths or rose to his heights. She seemed to beckon, yet not to care when he came.
He spoke of her that night to Emily. "Hilda was here to-day and she reminded me that people might think that my daughter is marrying Derry Drake for his money."
"She would look at it like that."
"When Hilda talks to me"—he was rumpling his hair—"I have a feeling that all the people in the world are unlovely—"
"There are plenty of unlovely people," said Emily, "but why should we worry with what they think?"
She was knitting, and he found himself watching her hands. "You have pretty hands," he told her, unexpectedly.
She held them out in front of her. "When I was a little girl my mother told me that I had three points of beauty—my hands, my feet, and the family nose," she smiled whimsically, "and she assured me that I would therefore never be common-place. 'Any woman may be beautiful,' was her theory, 'but only a woman with good blood in her veins can have hands and feet and a nose like yours—.' I was dreadfully handicapped in the beginning of my life by my mother's point of view. I am afraid that even now if the dear lady looks down from Heaven and sees me working in my Toy Shop she will feel the family disgraced by this one member who is in trade. It was only in the later years that I found myself, that I realized how I might reach out towards things which were broader and bigger than the old ideals of aristocratic birth and inherited possessions."
He thought of Hilda. "Yet it gave you something, Emily," he said, slowly, "that not every woman has: good-breeding, and the ability to look above the sordid. You are like Jean—all your world is rose-colored."
She was thoughtful. "Not quite like Jean. I heard a dear old bishop ask the other day why we should see only the ash cans and garbage cans in our back yards when there was blue sky above? I know there are ash cans and garbage cans, but I make myself look at the sky. Jean doesn't know that the cans are there."
"The realists will tell you that you should keep your eyes on the cans."
"I don't believe it," said Miss Emily, stoutly; "more people are made good by the contemplation of the fine and beautiful than by the knowledge of evil. Eve knew that punishment would follow the eating of the apple. But she ate it. If I had a son I should tell him of the strength of men, not of their weaknesses."
He nodded. "I see. And yet there is this about Hilda. She does not deceive herself;—perhaps you do—and Jean."
"Perhaps it is Hilda who is deceived. All the people in the world are not unlovely—all of them are not mercenary and deceitful and selfish." Her cheeks were flushed.
"Nobody knows that better than a doctor, Emily. I am conscious that Hilda draws out the worst in me—yet there is something about her that makes me want to find things out, to explore life with her—"
He was smiling into the fire. Miss Emily girded herself and gave him a shock. "The trouble with you is that you want the admiration of every woman who comes your way. Most of your patients worship you—Jean puts you on a pedestal—even I tell you that you have a soul. But Hilda withholds the admiration you demand, and you want to conquer her—to see her succumb with the rest of us."
"The rest of you! Emily, you have never succumbed."
"Oh, yes, I have. I seem to be saying, 'He may have a few weaknesses, but back of it all he is big and fine.' But Hilda's attitude indicates, 'He is not fine at all.' And you hate that and want to show her."
He chuckled. "By Jove, I do, Emily. Perhaps it is just as well that I am getting away from her."
"I wouldn't admit it if I were you. I'd rather see you face a thing than run away."
"If Eve had run away from the snake in the apple tree, she would not have lost her Eden—poor Eve."
"Poor Adam—to follow her lead. He should have said, 'No, my dear, apples are not permitted by the Food Administrator; we must practice self-denial.'"
"I think I'd rather have him sinning than such a prig."
"It depends on the point of view."
He enjoyed immensely crossing swords with Emily. There was never any aftermath of unpleasantness. She soothed him even while she criticised.
They spoke presently of Jean and Derry.
"They want to get married."
"Well, why not?"
"She's too young, Emily. Too ignorant of what life means—and he may go to France any day. He is getting restless—and he may see things differently—that his duty to his country transcends any personal claim—and then what of Jean?—a little wife—alone."
"She could stay with me."
"But marriage, marriage, Emily—why in Heaven's name should they be in such a hurry?"
"Why should they wait, and miss the wonder of it all, as I have missed it—all the color and glow, the wine of life? Even if he should go to France, and die, she will bear his beloved name—she will have the right to weep."
He had never seen her like this—the red was deep in her cheeks, her voice was shaken, her bosom rose and fell with her agitation.
"Emily, my dear girl—"
"Let them marry, Bruce, can't you see? Can't you see. It is their day—there may be no tomorrow."
"But there are practical things, Emily. If she should have a child?"
"Why not? It will be his—to love. Only a woman with empty arms knows what that means, Bruce."
And this was Emily, this rose-red, wet-eyed creature was Emily, whom he had deemed unemotional, cold, self-contained!
"Men forget, Bruce. You wouldn't listen to reason when you wooed Jean's mother. You were a demanding, imperative lover—you wanted your own way, and you had it."
"But I had known Jean's mother all my life."
"Time has nothing to do with it."
"My dear girl—"
"It hasn't."
She was illogical, and he liked it. "If I let them marry, what then?"
"They will love you for it."
"They ought to love you instead."
"I shall be out of it. They will be married, and you will be in France, and I shall sell—toys—"
She tried to laugh, but it was a poor excuse. He glanced at her quickly. "Shall you miss me, Emily?"
Her hands went out in a little gesture of despair. "There you go, taking my tears to yourself."
He was a bit disconcerted. "Oh, I say—"
"But they are not for you. They are for my lost youth and romance, Bruce. My lost youth and romance."
Leaning back in his chair he studied her. Her eyes were dreamy—the rose-red was still in her cheeks. For the first time he realized the prettiness of Emily; it was as if in her plea for others she had brought to life something in herself which glowed and sparkled.
"Look here," he said. "I want you to write to me."
"I am a busy woman."
"But a letter now and then—"
"Well, now and then—"
He was forced to be content with that. She was really very charming, he decided as he got into his car. She was such a gentlewoman—she created an atmosphere which belonged to his home and hearth.
When he came in late she was not waiting up for him as Hilda had so often waited. There was a plate of sandwiches on his desk, coffee ready in the percolator to be made by the turning on of the electricity. But he ate his lunch alone.
Yet in spite of the loneliness, he was glad that Emily had not waited up for him. It was a thing which Hilda might do—Hilda, who made a world of her own. But Emily's world was the world of womanly graciousness and dignity—the world in which his daughter moved, the world which had been his wife's. For her to have eaten alone with him in his office in the middle of the night would have made her seem less than he wanted her to be.
Before he went to bed, he called up Hilda. "I forgot to tell you when you were here this afternoon that I asked young Drake about Bronson. He says that it isn't possible that the old man is giving the General anything against orders. You'd better watch the other servants and be sure of the day nurse—"
"I am sure of her and of the other servants—but I still have my doubts about Bronson."
"But Drake says—"
"I don't care what he says. Bronson served the General before he served young Drake—and he's not to be trusted."
"I should be sorry to think so; he impresses me as a faithful old soul."
"Well, my eyes are rather clear, you know."
"Yes, I know. Good-night, Hilda."
She hung up the receiver. She had talked to him at the telephone in the lower hall, which was enclosed, and where one might be confidential without feeing overheard.
She sat very still for a few moments in the little booth, thinking; then she rose and went upstairs.
The General was awake and eager.
"Shall I read to you?" Hilda asked.
"No, I'd rather talk."
She shaded the light and sat beside the little table. "Did you like your dinner?"
"Yes. Bronson said you made the broth. It was delicious."
"I like to cook—-when I like the people I cook for."
He basked in that.
"There are some patients—oh, I have wanted to salt their coffee and pepper their cereal. You have no idea of the temptations which come to a nurse."
"Are you fond of it—nursing?"
"Yes. It is nice in a place like this—and at Dr. McKenzie's. But there are some houses that are awful, with everybody quarrelling, the children squalling—. I hate that. I want to be comfortable. I like your thick carpets here, and the quiet, and the good service. And the good things to eat, and the little taste of wine that we take together." Her low laugh delighted him.
"The wine? You are going to drink another glass with me before I go to sleep."
"Yes. But it is our secret. Dr. McKenzie would kill me if he knew, and a nurse must obey orders."
"He need never know. And it won't hurt me."
"Of course not. But he has ideas on the subject."
"May I have it now?"
"Wait until Bronson goes to bed."
"Bronson has nothing to do with it. A servant has neither ears nor eyes."
"It might embarrass him if the Doctor asked him. And why should you make him lie?"
Bronson, pottering in, presently, was told that he would not be needed. "Mr. Derry telephoned that he would be having supper after the play at Miss Gray's. You can call him there if he is wanted."
"Thank you, Bronson. Good-night."
When the old man had left them, she said to the General, "Do you know that your son is falling in love?"
"In love?"
"Yes, desperately—at first sight?"
He laughed. "With whom?"
"Dr. McKenzie's daughter."
"What?" He raised himself on his elbow.
"Yes. Jean McKenzie. I am not sure that I ought to tell you, but somehow it doesn't seem right that you are not being told—"
He considered it gravely. "I don't want him to get married," he said at last. "I want him to go to war. I can't tell you, Miss Merritt, how bitter my disappointment has been that Derry won't fight."
"He may have to fight."
"Do you think I want him dragged to defend the honor of his country? I'd rather see him dead." He was struggling for composure.
"Oh, I shouldn't have told you," she said, solicitously.
"Why not? It is my right to know."
"Jean is a pretty little thing, and you may like her."
"I like McKenzie," thoughtfully.
She glanced at him. His old face had fallen into gentler lines. She gave a hard laugh. "Of course, a rich man like your son rather dazzles the eyes of a young girl like Jean."
"You think then it is his—money?"
"I shouldn't like to say that. But, of course, money adds to his charms."
"He won't have any money," grimly, "unless I choose that he shall. I can stop his allowance tomorrow. And what would the little lady do then?"
She shrugged. "I am sure I don't know. She'd probably take Ralph Witherspoon. He's in the race. She dropped him after she met your son."
The General's idea of women was somewhat exalted. He had an old-fashioned chivalry which made him blind to their faults, the champion of their virtues. He had always been, therefore, to a certain extent, at the mercy of the unscrupulous. He had loaned money and used his influence in behalf of certain wily and weeping females who had deserved at his hands much less than they got.
In his thoughts of a wife for Derry, he had pictured her as sweet and unsophisticated—a bit reserved, like Derry's mother—
The portrait which Hilda had subtly presented was of a mercenary little creature, lured by the glitter of gold—off with the old and on with the new, lacking fineness.
"I can stop his allowance," he wavered. "It would be a good test. But I love the boy. The war has brought the first misunderstandings between Derry and me. It would have hurt his mother."
Hilda was always restless when the name was introduced of the painted lady on the stairs. When the General spoke of his wife, his eyes grew kind—and inevitably his thoughts drifted away from Hilda to the days that he had spent with Derry's mother.
"She loved us both," he said.
Hilda rose and crossed the room. A low bookcase held the General's favorite volumes. There was a Globe edition of Dickens on the top shelf, little fat brown books, shabby with much handling. Hilda extracted one, and inserted her hand in the hollow space back of the row. She brought out a small flat bottle and put the book back.
"I always keep it behind 'Great Expectations,'" she said, as she approached the bed. "It seems rather appropriate, doesn't it?"
The old eyes, which had been soft with memories, glistened.
She filled two little glasses. "Let us drink to our—secret."
Then while the wine was firing his veins, she spoke again of Jean and Derry. "It really seems as if he should have told you."
"I won't have him getting married. He can't marry unless he has money."
"Please don't speak of it to him. I don't want to get into trouble. You wouldn't want to get me into trouble, would you?"
"No."
She filled his glass again. He drank. Bit by bit she fed the fire of his doubts of his son. When at last he fell asleep in his lacquered bed he had made up his mind to rather drastic action.
She sat beside him, her thoughts flying ahead into the years. She saw things as she wanted them to be—Derry at odds with his father; married to Jean; herself mistress of this great house, wearing the diamond crown and the pearl collar; her portrait in the place of the one of the painted lady on the stairs; looking down on little Jean who had judged her by youth's narrow standards—whose husband would have no fortune unless he chose to accept it at her hands.
Thus she weighed her influence over the sleeping sick man, thus she dreamed, calm as fate in her white uniform.
=== JEAN-JOAN ===
Drusilla Gray's little late suppers were rather famous. It was not that she spent so much money, but that she spent much thought.
Tonight she was giving Captain Hewes a sweet potato pie. "He has never eaten real American things," she said to Jean. "Nice homey-cooked things—"
"No one but Drusilla would ever think of pie at night," said Marion Gray, "but she has set her heart on it."
There were some very special hot oyster sandwiches which preceded the pie—peppery and savory with curls of bacon.
"I hope you are hungry," said Drusilla as her big black cook brought them in. "Aunt Chloe hates to have things go back to the kitchen."
Nothing went back. There was snow without, a white whirl in the air, piling up at street corners, a night for young appetites to be on edge.
"Jove," said the Captain, as he leaned back in his chair, "how I shall miss all this!"
Jean turned her face towards him, startled. "Miss it?"
"Yes. I am going back—got my orders today."
Drusilla was cutting the pie. "Isn't it glorious?"
Jean gazed at her with something like horror. Glorious! How could Drusilla go on, like Werther's Charlotte, calmly cutting bread and butter? Captain Hewes loved her, anybody with half an eye could see that—and whether she loved him or not, he was her friend—and she called his going "glorious!"
"I was afraid my wound might put me on the shelf," the Captain said.
"He is ordered straight to the front," Drusilla elucidated. "This is his farewell feast."
After that everything was to Jean funeral baked meats. The pie deep in its crust, rich with eggs and milk, defiant of conservation, was as sawdust to her palate.
Glorious!
Well, she couldn't understand Margaret. She couldn't understand Drusilla. She didn't want to understand them.
"Some day I shall go over," Drusilla was saying. "I shall drive something—it may be a truck and it may be an ambulance. But I can't sit here any longer doing nothing."
"I think you are doing a great deal," said Jean. "Look at the committees you are managing."
"Oh, things like that," said Drusilla contemptuously. "Women's work. I'm not made to knit and keep card indexes. I want a man's job."
There was something almost boyish about her as she said it. She had parted her hair on the side, which heightened the effect. "In the old days," she told Captain Hewes, "I should have worn doublet and hose and have gone as your page."
"Happy old days—."
"And I should have written a ballad about you," said Marion, "and have sung it to the accompaniment of my harp—and my pot-boilers would never have been. And we should all have worn trains and picturesque headdresses instead of shirtwaists and sports hats, and I should have called some man 'my Lord,' and have listened for his footsteps instead of ending my days in single blessedness with a type-writer as my closest companion."
Everybody laughed except Jean. She broke her cheese into small bits with her fork, and stared down at it as if cheese were the most interesting thing in the whole wide world.
It was only two weeks since they had had the news of Margaret's husband—only a month since he had died. And Winston had been Captain Hewes' dear friend; he had been Derry's. Would anybody laugh if Derry had been dead only fourteen days?
She tried, however, to swing herself in line with the others. "Shall you go before Christmas?" she asked the Captain.
"Yes. And Miss Gray had asked me to dine with her. You can see what I am missing—my first American Christmas."
"We are going to have a little tree," said Drusilla, "and ask all of you to come and hang presents on it."
Jean had always had a tree at Christmas time. From the earliest days of her remembrance, there had been set in the window of the little drawing room, a young pine brought from the Doctor's country-place far up in Maryland. On Christmas Eve it had been lighted and the doors thrown open. Jean could see her mother now, shining on one side of it, and herself coming in, in her nurse's arms.
There had been a star at the top, and snow powdered on the branches—and gold and silver balls—and her presents piled beneath—always a doll holding out its arms to her. There had been the first Rosie-Dolly, more beloved than any other; made of painted cloth, with painted yellow curls, and dressed in pink with a white apron. Rosie was a wreck of a doll now, her features blurred and her head bald with the years—but Jean still loved her, with something left over of the adoration of her little girl days. Then there was Maude, named in honor of the lovely lady who had played "Peter Pan," and the last doll that Jean's mother had given her. Maude had an outfit for every character in which Jean had seen her prototype—there were the rowan berries and shawl of "Babbie," the cap and jerkin of "Peter Pan," the feathers and spurs of "Chantecler"—such a trunkful, and her dearest mother had made them all—.
And Daddy! How Daddy had played Santa Claus, in red cloth and fur with a wide belt and big boots, every year, even last year when she was nineteen and ready to make her bow to society. And now he might never play Santa Claus again—for before Christmas had come he would be on the high seas, perhaps on the other side of the seas—at the edge of No Man's Land. And there would be no Star, no dolls, no gold and silver balls—for the nation which had given Santa Claus to the world, had robbed the world of peace and of goodwill. It had robbed the world of Christmas!
She came back to hear the Captain saying, "I want you to sing for me—Drusilla."
They rose and went into the other room.
"Tired, dearest?" Derry asked, as he found a chair for her and drew his own close to it.
"No, I am not tired," she told him, "but I hate to think that Captain Hewes must go."
"I'd give the world to be going with him."
Her hands were clasped tightly. "Would you give me up?"
"You? I should never have to give you up, thank God. You would never hold me back."
"Shouldn't I, Derry?"
"My precious, don't I know? Better than you know yourself."
Drusilla and the Captain were standing by the wide window which looked out over the city. The snow came down like a curtain, shutting out the sky.
"Do you think she loves him?" Jean asked.
"I hope so," heartily.
"But to send him away so—easily. Oh, Derry, she can't care."
"She is sending him not easily, but bravely. Margaret let her husband go like that."
"Would you want me to let you go like that, Derry?"
"Yes, dear."
"Wouldn't you want me to—cry?"
"Perhaps. Just a little tear. But I should want you to think beyond the tears. I should want you to know that for us there can be no real separation. You are mine to the end of all eternity, Jean."
He believed it. And she believed it. And perhaps, after all, it was true. There must be a very separate and special Heaven for those who love once, and never love again.
Drusilla came away from the window to sing for them—a popular song. But there was much in it to intrigue the imagination—a vision of the heroic Maid—a hint of the Marseillaise—and so the nations were singing it—.
"Jeanne d'Arc, Jeanne d'Arc,
Oh, soldats! entendez vous?
'Allons, enfants de la patrie,'
Jeanne d'Arc, la victoire est pour vous—"
There was a new note in Drusilla's voice. A note of tears as well as of triumph—and at the last word she broke down and covered her face with her hands.
In the sudden stillness, the Captain strode across the room and took her hands away from her face.
"Drusilla," he said before them all, "do you care as much as that?"
She told him the truth in her fine, frank fashion.
"Yes," she said, "I do care, Captain, but I want you to go."
"And oh, Derry, I am so glad she cried," Jean said, when they were driving home through the snow-storm. "It made her seem so—human."
Derry drew her close. "Such a thing couldn't have happened," he said, "at any other time. Do you suppose that a few years ago any of us would have been keyed up to a point where a self-contained Englishman could have asked a girl, in the face of three other people, if she loved him, and have had her answer like that? It was beautiful, beautiful, Jean-Joan—"
She held her breath. "Why do you call me that?"
"She lived for France. You shall live for France—and me."
The snow shut them in. There was the warmth of the car, of the fur rugs and Derry's fur coat, Jean's own velvet wrap of heavenly blue, the fragrance of her violets. Somewhere far away men were fighting—there was the mud and cold of the trenches—somewhere men were suffering.
She tried not to think of them. Her cheek was against Derry's. She was safe—safe.
----Captain Hewes went away that night Drusilla's accepted lover. He put a ring on her finger and kissed her "good-bye," and with his head high faced the months that he must be separated from her.
"I will come back, dear woman."
"I shall see you before that," she told him. "I am coming over."
"I shall hate to have you in it all. But it will be Heaven to see you."
When he had gone, Drusilla went into Marion Gray's study.
Marion looked up from her work. She was correcting manuscript, pages and pages of it. "Well, do you want me to congratulate you, Drusilla?"
Drusilla sat down. "I don't know, Marion. He is the biggest and finest man I have ever met, but—"
"But what?"
"I wanted love to come to me differently, as it has come to Jean and Derry—without any doubts. I wanted to be sure. And I am not sure. I only know that I couldn't let him go without making him happy."
"Then is it—pity?"
"No. He means more to me than that. But I gave way to an impulse—the music, and his sad eyes. And then I cried, and he came up to me—fancy a man coming up before you all like that—"
"It was quite the most dramatic moment," said the lady who wrote. "Quite unbelievable in real life. One finds those things occasionally in fiction."
"It was as if there were just two of us alone in the world," Drusilla confessed, "and I said what I did because I simply couldn't help it. And it was true at the moment; I think it is always going to be true. If I marry him I shall care a great deal. But it has not come to me just as I had—dreamed."
"Nothing is like our dreams," said Marion, and dropped her pen. "That's why I write. I can give my heroine all the bliss for which she yearns."
Drusilla stood up. "You mustn't misunderstand me, Marion. I am very happy in the thought of my good friend, of my great lover. It is only that it hasn't quite measured up to what I expected."
"Nothing measures up to what we expect."
"And now Jean belongs to Derry, and I belong to my gallant and good Captain. I shall thank God before I sleep tonight, Marion."
"And he'll thank God—."
They kissed each other, and Drusilla went to bed, and the next morning she wrote a letter to her Captain, which he carried next to his heart and kissed when he got a chance.
=== THE WHITE CAT ===
Derry, going quietly to his room that night, did not stop at the General's door. He did not want to speak to Hilda, he did not want to speak to anyone, he wanted to be alone with his thoughts of Jean and that perfect ride with her through the snow.
He was, therefore, a little impatient to find Bronson waiting up for him.
"I thought I told you to go to bed, Bronson."
"You did, sir, but—but I have something to tell you."
"Can't it wait until morning?"
"I should like to say it now, Mr. Derry." The old man's eyes were anxious. "It's about your father—"
"Father?"
"Yes. I told you I didn't like the nurse."
"Miss Merritt? Well?"
"Perhaps I'd better get you to bed, sir. It's a rather long story, and you'd be more comfortable."
"You'd be more comfortable, you mean, Bronson." The impatient note had gone out of Derry's voice. Temporarily he pigeon-holed his thoughts of Jean, and gave his attention to this servant who was more than a servant, more even than a friend. To Derry, Bronson wore a sort of halo, like a good old saint in an ancient woodcut.
Propped up at last among his pillows, pink from his bath and in pale blue pajamas, Derry listened to what the old man had to say to him.
Bronson sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair with Muffin at his knees. "From the first day I had a feeling that she wasn't just—straight. I don't know why, but I felt it. She had one way with the General and another with us servants. But I didn't mind that, not much, until she went into your mother's room."
"My mother's room?" sharply. "What was she doing there, Bronson?"
"That's what I am going to tell you, sir. You know that place on the third floor landing, where I sits and looks through at your father when he ain't quite himself, and won't let me come in his room? Well, there was one night that I was there and watched her—"
Derry's quick frown rebuked him. "You shouldn't have done that, Bronson."
"I had a feeling, sir, that things were going wrong, and that the General wasn't always himself. I shouldn't ever have said a thing to you, Mr. Derry," earnestly, "if I hadn't seen what I did."
He cleared his throat. "That first night I saw her open the door between your father's room and the sitting room, and she did it careful and quiet like a person does when they don't want anybody to know. The sitting room was dark, but I went down and stood behind the curtain in the General's door, and I could see through, and there was a light in your mother's room and a screen set before it."
"I took a big chance, but I slid into the sitting room, and I could see her on the other side of the screen, and she had opened the safe behind the Chinese scroll, and she was trying on your mother's diamonds."
"What!"
Bronson nodded solemnly. "Yes, sir, she had 'em on her head and her neck and her fingers—."
"You don't mean—that she took anything."
"Oh, no, sir, she's no common thief. But she looked at herself in the glass and strutted up and down, up and down, up and down, bowing and smiling like a—fool."
"Then the telephone rang, and I had to get out pretty quick, before she came to answer it. I went to bed, but I didn't sleep much, and the next night I watched her again. I watch every night."
Derry considered the situation. "I don't like it at all, Bronson. But perhaps it was just a woman's vanity. She wanted to see how she looked."
"Well, she's seen—and she ain't going to be satisfied with that. She'll want to wear them all the time—"
"Of course, she can't, Bronson. She isn't as silly as to think she can."
"Perhaps not, sir." Bronson opened his lips and shut them again.
"There's something else, sir," he said, after a pause. "I've found out that she's giving the General things to drink."
"Hilda?" Derry said, incredulously. "Oh, surely not, Bronson, The Doctor has given her strict orders—."
"She's got a bottle behind the books, and she pours him a glass right after dinner, and another before he goes to sleep, and—and—you know he'd sell his soul for the stuff, Mr. Derry."
Derry did know. It had been the shame of all his youthful years that his father should stoop to subterfuge, to falsehood, to everything that was foreign to his native sense of honor and honesty, for a taste of that which his abnormal appetite demanded.
"If anyone had told me but you, Bronson, I wouldn't have believed it."
"I didn't want to tell you, but I had to. You can see that, can't you, sir?"
"Yes. But how in the world did she know where the diamonds were?"
"He gave her his key one day when I was there—made me get it off his ring. He sent her for your picture—the one that your mother used to wear. I thought then that he wasn't quite right in his head, with the fever and all, or he would have sent me. But a woman like that—"
"Dr. McKenzie has the greatest confidence in her."
"I know, sir, and she's probably played square with him—but she ain't playing square here."
"It can't go on, of course. I shall have to tell McKenzie."
Bronson protested nervously. "If she puts her word against mine, who but you will believe me? I'd rather you saw it yourself, Mr. Derry, and left my name out of it."
"But I can't sit on the steps and watch."
"No, sir, but you can come in unexpected from the outside—when I flash on the third floor light for you."
Derry slept little that night. Ahead of him stretched twenty-four hours of suspense—twenty-four hours in which he would have to think of this thing which was hidden in the big house in which his mother had reigned.
In the weeks since he had met Jean, he had managed to thrust it into the back of his mind—he had, indeed, in the midst of his happiness, forgotten his bitterness, his sense of injustice—he wondered if he had not in a sense forgotten his patriotism. Life had seemed so good, his moments with Jean so transcendent—there had been no room for anything else.
But now he was to take up again the burden which he had dropped. He was to consider his problem from a new angle. How could he bring Jean here? How could he let her clear young eyes rest on that which he and his mother had seen? How could he set, as it were, all of this sordidness against her sweetness? Money could, of course, do much. But his promise held him to watchfulness, to brooding care, to residence beneath this roof. His bride would be the General's daughter, she would live in the General's house, she would live, too, beneath the shadow of the General's tragic fault.
Yet—she was a brave little thing. He comforted himself with that. And she loved him. He slept at last with a desperate prayer on his lips that some new vision might be granted him on the morrow.
But the first news that came over the telephone was of Jean's flitting. "Daddy wants me to go with him to our old place in Maryland. He has some business which takes him there, and we shall be gone two days."
"Two days?"
"Yes. We are to motor up."
"Can't I go with you?"
"I think—Daddy wants me to himself. You won't mind, Derry—some day you'll have me all the time."
"But I need you now, dearest."
"Do you really," delightedly. "It doesn't seem as if you could—"
"If you knew how much."
She could not know. He hung up the receiver. The day stretched out before him, blank.
But it passed, of course. And Hilda, having slept her allotted number of hours, was up in time to superintend the serving of the General's dinner. Later, Derry stopped at the door to say that he was going to the theater and might be called there. The General, propped against his pillows and clothed in a gorgeous mandarin coat, looked wrinkled and old. The ruddiness had faded from his cheeks, and he was much thinner.
Hilda, sitting by the little table, showed all the contrast of youth and bloom. Her long hands lay flat on the table. Derry had a fantastic feeling, as if a white cat watched him under the lamp.
"Are you going alone, son?" the General asked.
"Yes."
"Why don't you take a girl?" craftily.
Derry smiled.
"The only girl I should care to take is out of town."
The white cat purred. "Lucky girl to be the only one."
Derry's manner stiffened. "You are good to think so."
After Derry had gone, Hilda said, "You see, it is Jean McKenzie. The Doctor said that he and Jean would be up in Maryland for a day or two. She has a good time. She doesn't know what it means to be poor, not as I know it. She doesn't know what it means to go without the pretty things that women long for. You wouldn't believe it, General, but when I was a little girl, I used to stand in front of shop windows and wonder if other girls really wore the slippers and fans and parasols. And when I went to Dr. McKenzie's, and saw Jean in her silk dressing gowns, and her pink slippers and her lace caps, she seemed to me like a lady in a play. I've worn my uniforms since I took my nurse's training, and before that I wore the uniform of an Orphans' Home. I—I don't know why I am telling you all this—only it doesn't seem quite fair, does it?"
He had all of an old man's sympathy for a lovely woman in distress. He had all of any man's desire to play Cophetua.
"Look here," he said. "You get yourself a pink parasol and a fan and a silk dress. I'd like to see you wear them."
She shook her head. "What should I do with things like that?" Her voice had a note of wistfulness. "A woman in my position must be careful."
"But I want you to have the things," he persisted.
"I shouldn't have a place to wear them," sadly. "No, you are very good to offer them. But I mustn't."
The General slept after that. Hilda read under the lamp—a white cat watched by a little old terrier on the stairs!
And now the big house was very still. There were lights in the halls of the first and second floors. Bronson crouching in the darkness of the third landing was glad of the company of the painted lady on the stairs. He knew she would approve of what he was doing. For years he had served her in such matters as this, saving her husband from himself. When Derry was too small, too ignorant of evil, too innocent, to be told things, it was to the old servant that she had come.
He remembered a certain night. She was young then and new to her task. She and the General had been dining at one of the Legations. She was in pale blue and very appealing. When Bronson had opened the door, she had come in alone.
"Oh, the General, the General, Bronson," she had said. "We've got to go after him."
She was shaking with the dread of it, and Bronson had said, "Hadn't you better wait, ma'am?"
"I mustn't. We stopped at the hotel as we came by, and he said he would run in and get a New York paper. And we waited, and we waited, and he didn't come out again, and at last I sent McChesney in, and he couldn't find him. And then I went and sat in the corridor, thinking he might pass through. It isn't pleasant to sit alone in the corridor with the men—staring at you—at night. And then I asked the man at the door if he had seen him, and he said, 'yes,' that he had called a cab, and then I came home."
They had gone out again together, with Bronson, who was young and strong, taking the place of the coachman, McChesney, because Mrs. Drake did not care to have the other servants see her husband at times like these. "You know how good he is," had been her timid claim on him from the first, "and you know how hard he tries." And because Bronson knew, and because he had helped her like the faithful squire that he was, she had trusted him more and more with this important but secret business.
She had changed her dress for something dark, and she had worn a plain dark hat and coat. She had not cried a tear and she would not cry. She had been very brave as they travelled a beaten path, visiting the places which the General frequented, going on and on until they came to the country, and to a farm-house where they found him turning night into day, having roused the amazed inmates to ask for breakfast.
He had paid them well for it, and was ready to set forth again with the dawn when his wife drove in.
"My dear," he had said, courteously, as his little wife's face peered out at him from the carriage, "you shouldn't have come."
Sobered for the moment, he had made a handsome figure, as he stood with uncovered head, his dark hair in a thick curl between his eyes. The morning was warm and he carried his overcoat on his arm. His patent leather shoes and the broadcloth of his evening clothes showed the dust and soil of his walk through the fields. He had evidently dismissed his cab at the edge of the city and had come crosscountry.
His wife had reached out her little hand to him. "I came because I was lonely. The house seems so big when you are—away—"
It had wrung Bronson's heart to see her smiling. Yet she had always met the General with a smile and with the reminder of her need of him. There had been never a complaint, never a rebuke—at these moments. When he was himself, she strove with him against his devils. But to strive when he was not himself, would be to send him away from her.
Her hands were clasped tightly, and her voice shook as she talked on the way back to the husband who seemed so unworthy of the love she gave.
Yet she had not thought him unworthy. "If I can only save him," she had said so many times. "Oh, Bronson, I mustn't let him go down and down, with no one who loves him to hold him back."
In the years that had followed, Bronson had seen her grow worn and weary, but never hopeless. He had seen her hair grow gray, he had seen the light go out of her face so that she no longer smiled as she had smiled in the picture.
But she had never given up the fight. Not even at the last moment. "You will stay with him, Bronson, and help Derry."
And now this other woman had come to undo all the work that his beloved mistress had done. And there in the shadowed room she was weaving her spells.
Outside, snug against the deadly cold in his warm closed car, Derry waited alone for Bronson's signal.
There was movement at last in the shadowed room. The General spoke from the bed. Hilda answered him, and rose. She arranged a little tray with two glasses and a plate of biscuits. Then she crossed the room towards the bookcase.
Bronson reached up his hand and touched the button which controlled the lights on the third floor. He saw Hilda raise a startled head as the faint click reached her. She listened for a moment, and he withdrew himself stealthily up and out of sight. If she came into the hall she might see him on the stairs. He had done what he could. He would leave the rest to Derry.
"What's the matter?" the General asked.
"I thought I heard a sound—but there's no one up. This is our hour, isn't it?"
She brought the bottle out from behind the books. Then she came and stood by the side of the bed.
"Will you drink to my happiness, General?"
She was very handsome. "To our happiness," he said, eagerly, and unexpectedly, as he took the glass.
Hilda, pouring out more wine for herself, stood suddenly transfixed. Derry spoke from the threshold. "Dr. McKenzie has asked you repeatedly not to give my father wine, Miss Merritt."
He was breathing quickly. His hat was in his hand and he wore his fur coat. "Why are you giving it to him against the Doctor's orders?"
The General interposed. "Don't take that tone with Miss Merritt, Derry. I asked her to get it for me, and she obeyed my orders. What's the matter with that?"
"Dr. McKenzie said, explicitly, that you were not to have it."
"Dr. McKenzie has nothing to do with it. You may tell him that for me, I am not his patient any longer."
"Father—"
"Certainly not. Do you think I am going to take orders from McKenzie—or from you?"
"But, Miss Merritt is his nurse, under his orders."
"She is not going to be his nurse hereafter. I have other plans for her."
Derry stood staring, uncomprehending. "Other plans—"
"I have asked her to be my wife."
Oh, lovely painted lady on the stairs, has it come to this? Have your prayers availed no more than this? Have the years in which you sacrificed yourself, in which you sacrificed your son, counted no more than this?
Derry felt faint and sick. "You can't mean it, Dad."
"I do mean it. I—am a lonely man, Derry. A disappointed man. My wife is dead. My son is a slacker—"
It was only the maudlin drivel of a man not responsible for what he was saying. But Derry had had enough. He took a step forward and stood at the foot of the bed. "I wouldn't go any farther if I were you, Dad. I've not been a slacker. I have never been a slacker. I am not a coward. I have never been a coward. I am going to tell you right now why I am not in France. Do you think I should have stayed out of it for a moment if it hadn't been for you? Has it ever crossed your mind that if you had been half a man I might have acted like a whole one? Have you ever looked back at the years and seen me going out into the night to follow you and bring you back? I am not whining. I loved you, and I wanted to do it; but it wasn't easy. And I should still be doing it; but of late you've said things that I can't forgive. I've stood by you because I gave a promise to my mother—that I wouldn't leave you. And I've stayed. But now I shan't try any more. I am going to France. I am going to fight. I am not your son, sir. I am the son of my mother."
Then the General said what he would never have said if he had been himself.
"If you are not my son, then, by God, you shan't have any of my money."
"I don't want it. Do you think that I do? I shall get out of here tonight, and I shan't come back. There is only one thing that I want besides my own personal traps—and that is my mother's picture on the stairs."
The General was drawing labored breaths. "Your mother's picture—?"
"Yes, it has no place here. Do you think for as instant that you can meet her eyes?"
There was a look of fright on the drawn old face. "I am not well, give me the wine."
Derry reached for the bottle. "He shall not have it."
Hilda came up to him swiftly. "Can't you see? He must. Look at him."
Derry looked and surrendered. Then covered his face with his hands.
----All that night, Derry, trying to pack, with Bronson in agitated attendance, was conscious of the sinister presence of Hilda in the house. There was the opening and shutting of doors, her low orders in the halls, her careful voice at the telephone, and once the sound of her padded steps as she passed Derry's room on her way to her own. The new doctor came and went. Hilda sent, at Derry's request, a bulletin of the patient's condition. The General must be kept from excitement; otherwise there was not reason for alarm.
But Derry was conscious, as the night wore on, and Bronson left him, and he sat alone, of more than the physical evidences of Hilda's presence; he was aware of the spiritual effect of her sojourn among them. She had stolen from them all something that was fine and beautiful. From Derry his faith in his father. From the General his constancy to his lovely wife. The structure of ideals which Derry's mother had so carefully reared for the old house had been wrecked by one who had first climbed the stairs in the garb of a sister of mercy.
He saw his father's future. Hilda, cold as ice, setting his authority aside. He saw the big house, the painted lady smiling no more on the stairs. Hilda's strange friends filling the rooms, the General's men friends looking at them askance, his mother's friends staying away.
Poor old Dad, poor old Dad. All personal feeling was swept away in the thought of what might come to his father. Yet none the less his own path lay straight and clear before him. The time had come for him to go.
Through the Crack
"I will go to the wars! I will go to the wars!" the Tin Soldier cried as loud as he could, and he threw himself from the shelf.…
What could have become of him? The old man looked, and the little boy looked. "I shall find him," the old man said, but he did not find him. For the Tin Soldier had fallen through a crack in the floor, and there he lay as in an open grave.
=== THE BROAD HIGHWAY ===
The Doctor's house in Maryland was near Woodstock, and from the rise of the hill where it stood one could see the buildings of the old Jesuit College, and the river which came so soon to the Bay.
In his boyhood the priests had been great friends of Bruce McKenzie. While of a different faith, he had listened eagerly to the things they had to tell him, these wise men, the pioneers of missionary work in many lands, teachers and scholars. His imagination had been fired by their tales of devotion, and he had many arguments with his Covenanter grandfather, to whom the gold cross on the top of the college had been the sign and symbol of papacy.
"But, grandfather, the things we believe aren't so very different, and I like to pray in their chapel."
"Why not pray in your own kirk?"
"It's so bare."
"There's nothing to distract your thoughts."
"And I like the singing, and the lights and the candles—"
"We need no candles; we have light enough in our souls."
But Bruce had loved the smell of the incense, and the purple and red of the robes, and, seeing it all through the golden haze of the lights, his sense of beauty had been satisfied, as it was not satisfied in his own plain house of worship.
Yet it had been characteristic of the boy as it was of the man that neither kirk nor chapel held him, and he had gone through life liking each a little, but neither overmuch.
Something of this he tried to express to Jean as, arriving at Woodstock in the early afternoon, they passed the College. "I might have been a priest," he said, "if I hadn't been too much of a Puritan or a Pagan. I am not sure which held me back—"
Jean shuddered. "How can people shut themselves away from the world?"
"They have a world of their own, my dear," said the Doctor, thoughtfully, "and I'm not sure that it isn't as interesting as our own."
"But there isn't love in it," said Jean.
"There's love that carries them above self—and that's something."
"It is something, but it isn't much," said his small daughter, obstinately. "I don't want to love the world, Daddy. I want to love Derry—"
The Doctor groaned. "I thought I had escaped him, for a day."
"You will never escape him," was the merciless rejoinder, but she kissed him to make up for it.
In spite of the fact of her separation for the moment from her lover, she had enjoyed the ride. There had been much wind, and a little snow on the way. But now the air was clear, with a sort of silver clearness—the frozen river was gray-green between its banks, there were blue shadows flung by the bare trees. As they passed the College, a few black-frocked fathers and scholastics paced the gardens.
Jean wished that Derry were there to see it all. It was to her a place of many memories. Most of the summers of her little girlhood had been spent there, with now and then a Christmas holiday.
The house did not boast a heating plant, but there were roaring open fires in all the rooms, except in the Connollys' sitting room, which was warmed by a great black stove.
The Connollys were the caretakers. They occupied the left wing of the house, and worked the farm. They were both good Catholics, and Mrs. Connolly looked after the little church at the crossroads corner, where the good priests came from the College every week to say Mass. She was a faithful, hard-working, pious soul, with her mind just now very much on her two sons who had enlisted at the first call for men, and were now in France.
She talked much about them to Jean, who came into the kitchen to watch her get supper. The deep, dark, low-ceiled room was lighted by an oil lamp. The rocking chair in which Jean sat had a turkey-red cushion, and there was another turkey-red cushion in the rocking chair on the other side of the cookstove. They ate their meals on the table under the lamp. It was only when guests were in the house that the dining room was opened.
The Doctor and Jim Connolly were at the barn, where were kept two fat mules, a fat little horse, a fat little cow, and a pair of fat pigs. There were also a fat house dog, and a brace of plump pussies, for the Connollys were a plump and comfortable couple who wanted everything about them comfortable, and who had had little to worry them until the coming of the war.
Yet even the war could not shake Mrs. Connolly's faith in the rightness of things.
"I was glad to have our country get into it, and to have my sons go. If they had stayed at home, I shouldn't have felt satisfied."
"Didn't it nearly break your heart?"
Mrs. Connolly, beating eggs for an omelette, shook her head. "Women's hearts don't break over brave men, Miss Jean. It is the sons who are weak and wayward who break their mothers' hearts—not the ones that go to war."
She poured the omelette into a pan. "When I have a bad time missing them, I remember how the Mother of God gave her blessed Son to the world. And He set the example, to give ourselves to save others. No, I don't want my boys back until the war is over."
Jean said nothing. She rocked back and forth and thought about what Mary Connolly had said. One of the fat pussies jumped on her lap and purred. It was all very peaceful, all as it had been since some other cook made omelettes for the little aristocrat of an Irish grandmother who would not under any circumstances have sat in the kitchen on terms of familiarity with a dependent. The world had progressed much in democracy since those days. Those who had fought in this part of the country for liberty and equality had not really known it. They had seen the Vision, but it was to be given to their descendants to realize it.
Jean rocked and rocked. "I hate war," she said, suddenly. "I didn't until Daddy said he was going, and then it seemed to come—so near—all the time I am trying to push the thought of it away. I wouldn't tell him, of course. But I don't want him to go."
"No, I wouldn't tell him. We women may be scared to death, but it ain't the time to tell our men that we are scared."
"Are you scared to death, Mrs. Connolly?"
The steady eyes met hers. "Sometimes, in the night, when I think of the wet and cold, and the wounded groaning under the stars. But when the morning comes, I cook the breakfast and get Jim off, and he don't know but that I am as cheerful as one of our old hens, and then I go over to the church, and tell it all to the blessed Virgin, and I am ready to write to my boys of how proud I am, and how fine they are—and of every little tiny thing that has happened on the farm."
Thus the heroic Mary Connolly—type of a million of her kind in America—of more than a million of her kind throughout the world—hiding her fears deep in her heart that her men might go cheered to battle.
The omelette was finished, and the Doctor and Jim Connolly had come in. "The stars are out," the Doctor said. "After supper we'll walk a bit."
Jean was never to forget that walk with her father. It was her last long walk with him before he went to France, her last intimate talk. It was very cold, and he took her arm, the snow crunched under their feet.
Faintly the chimes of the old College came up to them. "Nine o'clock," said the Doctor. "Think of all the years I've heard the chimes, I have lived over half a century—and my father before me heard them—and they rang in my grandfather's time. Perhaps they will ring in the ears of my grandchildren, Jean."
They had stopped to listen, but now they went on. "Do you know what they used to say to me when I was a little boy?
'The Lord watch
Between thee and—me—'"
"My mother and I used to repeat it together at nine o'clock, and when I brought your mother here for our honeymoon—that first night we, too, stood and listened to the chimes—and I told her what they said.
"Men drift away from these things," he continued, with something of an effort. "I have drifted too far. But, Jean, will you always remember this, that when I am at my best, I come back to the things my mother taught her boy? If anything should happen, you will remember?"
==THE SNOW QUEEN==
===FIRST STORY. Which Treats of a Mirror and of the Splinters===
Now then, let us begin. When we are at the end of the story, we shall know more than we know now: but to begin.
Once upon a time there was a wicked sprite, indeed he was the most mischievous of all sprites. One day he was in a very good humor, for he had made a mirror with the power of causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor and mean; but that which was good-for-nothing and looked ugly was shown magnified and increased in ugliness. In this mirror the most beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best persons were turned into frights, or appeared to stand on their heads; their faces were so distorted that they were not to be recognised; and if anyone had a mole, you might be sure that it would be magnified and spread over both nose and mouth.
“That's glorious fun!” said the sprite. If a good thought passed through a man's mind, then a grin was seen in the mirror, and the sprite laughed heartily at his clever discovery. All the little sprites who went to his school—for he kept a sprite school—told each other that a miracle had happened; and that now only, as they thought, it would be possible to see how the world really looked. They ran about with the mirror; and at last there was not a land or a person who was not represented distorted in the mirror. So then they thought they would fly up to the sky, and have a joke there. The higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly it grinned: they could hardly hold it fast. Higher and higher still they flew, nearer and nearer to the stars, when suddenly the mirror shook so terribly with grinning, that it flew out of their hands and fell to the earth, where it was dashed in a hundred million and more pieces. And now it worked much more evil than before; for some of these pieces were hardly so large as a grain of sand, and they flew about in the wide world, and when they got into people's eyes, there they stayed; and then people saw everything perverted, or only had an eye for that which was evil. This happened because the very smallest bit had the same power which the whole mirror had possessed. Some persons even got a splinter in their heart, and then it made one shudder, for their heart became like a lump of ice. Some of the broken pieces were so large that they were used for windowpanes, through which one could not see one's friends. Other pieces were put in spectacles; and that was a sad affair when people put on their glasses to see well and rightly. Then the wicked sprite laughed till he almost choked, for all this tickled his fancy. The fine splinters still flew about in the air: and now we shall hear what happened next.
SECOND STORY. A Little Boy and a Little Girl
In a large town, where there are so many houses, and so many people, that there is no roof left for everybody to have a little garden; and where, on this account, most persons are obliged to content themselves with flowers in pots; there lived two little children, who had a garden somewhat larger than a flower-pot. They were not brother and sister; but they cared for each other as much as if they were. Their parents lived exactly opposite. They inhabited two garrets; and where the roof of the one house joined that of the other, and the gutter ran along the extreme end of it, there was to each house a small window: one needed only to step over the gutter to get from one window to the other.
The children's parents had large wooden boxes there, in which vegetables for the kitchen were planted, and little rosetrees besides: there was a rose in each box, and they grew splendidly. They now thought of placing the boxes across the gutter, so that they nearly reached from one window to the other, and looked just like two walls of flowers. The tendrils of the peas hung down over the boxes; and the rose-trees shot up long branches, twined round the windows, and then bent towards each other: it was almost like a triumphant arch of foliage and flowers. The boxes were very high, and the children knew that they must not creep over them; so they often obtained permission to get out of the windows to each other, and to sit on their little stools among the roses, where they could play delightfully. In winter there was an end of this pleasure. The windows were often frozen over; but then they heated copper farthings on the stove, and laid the hot farthing on the windowpane, and then they had a capital peep-hole, quite nicely rounded; and out of each peeped a gentle friendly eye—it was the little boy and the little girl who were looking out. His name was Kay, hers was Gerda. In summer, with one jump, they could get to each other; but in winter they were obliged first to go down the long stairs, and then up the long stairs again: and out-of-doors there was quite a snow-storm.
“It is the white bees that are swarming,” said Kay's old grandmother.
“Do the white bees choose a queen?” asked the little boy; for he knew that the honey-bees always have one.
“Yes,” said the grandmother, “she flies where the swarm hangs in the thickest clusters. She is the largest of all; and she can never remain quietly on the earth, but goes up again into the black clouds. Many a winter's night she flies through the streets of the town, and peeps in at the windows; and they then freeze in so wondrous a manner that they look like flowers.”
“Yes, I have seen it,” said both the children; and so they knew that it was true.
“Can the Snow Queen come in?” said the little girl.
“Only let her come in!” said the little boy. “Then I'd put her on the stove, and she'd melt.”
And then his grandmother patted his head and told him other stories.
In the evening, when little Kay was at home, and half undressed, he climbed up on the chair by the window, and peeped out of the little hole. A few snow-flakes were falling, and one, the largest of all, remained lying on the edge of a flower-pot.
The flake of snow grew larger and larger; and at last it was like a young lady, dressed in the finest white gauze, made of a million little flakes like stars. She was so beautiful and delicate, but she was of ice, of dazzling, sparkling ice; yet she lived; her eyes gazed fixedly, like two stars; but there was neither quiet nor repose in them. She nodded towards the window, and beckoned with her hand. The little boy was frightened, and jumped down from the chair; it seemed to him as if, at the same moment, a large bird flew past the window.
The next day it was a sharp frost—and then the spring came; the sun shone, the green leaves appeared, the swallows built their nests, the windows were opened, and the little children again sat in their pretty garden, high up on the leads at the top of the house.
That summer the roses flowered in unwonted beauty. The little girl had learned a hymn, in which there was something about roses; and then she thought of her own flowers; and she sang the verse to the little boy, who then sang it with her:
 “The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet,
 And angels descend there the children to greet.”
 
And the children held each other by the hand, kissed the roses, looked up at the clear sunshine, and spoke as though they really saw angels there. What lovely summer-days those were! How delightful to be out in the air, near the fresh rose-bushes, that seem as if they would never finish blossoming!
Kay and Gerda looked at the picture-book full of beasts and of birds; and it was then—the clock in the church-tower was just striking five—that Kay said, “Oh! I feel such a sharp pain in my heart; and now something has got into my eye!”
The little girl put her arms around his neck. He winked his eyes; now there was nothing to be seen.
“I think it is out now,” said he; but it was not. It was just one of those pieces of glass from the magic mirror that had got into his eye; and poor Kay had got another piece right in his heart. It will soon become like ice. It did not hurt any longer, but there it was.
“What are you crying for?” asked he. “You look so ugly! There's nothing the matter with me. Ah,” said he at once, “that rose is cankered! And look, this one is quite crooked! After all, these roses are very ugly! They are just like the box they are planted in!” And then he gave the box a good kick with his foot, and pulled both the roses up.
“What are you doing?” cried the little girl; and as he perceived her fright, he pulled up another rose, got in at the window, and hastened off from dear little Gerda.
Afterwards, when she brought her picture-book, he asked, “What horrid beasts have you there?” And if his grandmother told them stories, he always interrupted her; besides, if he could manage it, he would get behind her, put on her spectacles, and imitate her way of speaking; he copied all her ways, and then everybody laughed at him. He was soon able to imitate the gait and manner of everyone in the street. Everything that was peculiar and displeasing in them—that Kay knew how to imitate: and at such times all the people said, “The boy is certainly very clever!” But it was the glass he had got in his eye; the glass that was sticking in his heart, which made him tease even little Gerda, whose whole soul was devoted to him.
His games now were quite different to what they had formerly been, they were so very knowing. One winter's day, when the flakes of snow were flying about, he spread the skirts of his blue coat, and caught the snow as it fell.
“Look through this glass, Gerda,” said he. And every flake seemed larger, and appeared like a magnificent flower, or beautiful star; it was splendid to look at!
“Look, how clever!” said Kay. “That's much more interesting than real flowers! They are as exact as possible; there is not a fault in them, if they did not melt!”
It was not long after this, that Kay came one day with large gloves on, and his little sledge at his back, and bawled right into Gerda's ears, “I have permission to go out into the square where the others are playing”; and off he was in a moment.
There, in the market-place, some of the boldest of the boys used to tie their sledges to the carts as they passed by, and so they were pulled along, and got a good ride. It was so capital! Just as they were in the very height of their amusement, a large sledge passed by: it was painted quite white, and there was someone in it wrapped up in a rough white mantle of fur, with a rough white fur cap on his head. The sledge drove round the square twice, and Kay tied on his sledge as quickly as he could, and off he drove with it. On they went quicker and quicker into the next street; and the person who drove turned round to Kay, and nodded to him in a friendly manner, just as if they knew each other. Every time he was going to untie his sledge, the person nodded to him, and then Kay sat quiet; and so on they went till they came outside the gates of the town. Then the snow began to fall so thickly that the little boy could not see an arm's length before him, but still on he went: when suddenly he let go the string he held in his hand in order to get loose from the sledge, but it was of no use; still the little vehicle rushed on with the quickness of the wind. He then cried as loud as he could, but no one heard him; the snow drifted and the sledge flew on, and sometimes it gave a jerk as though they were driving over hedges and ditches. He was quite frightened, and he tried to repeat the Lord's Prayer; but all he could do, he was only able to remember the multiplication table.
The snow-flakes grew larger and larger, till at last they looked just like great white fowls. Suddenly they flew on one side; the large sledge stopped, and the person who drove rose up. It was a lady; her cloak and cap were of snow. She was tall and of slender figure, and of a dazzling whiteness. It was the Snow Queen.
“We have travelled fast,” said she; “but it is freezingly cold. Come under my bearskin.” And she put him in the sledge beside her, wrapped the fur round him, and he felt as though he were sinking in a snow-wreath.
“Are you still cold?” asked she; and then she kissed his forehead. Ah! it was colder than ice; it penetrated to his very heart, which was already almost a frozen lump; it seemed to him as if he were about to die—but a moment more and it was quite congenial to him, and he did not remark the cold that was around him.
“My sledge! Do not forget my sledge!” It was the first thing he thought of. It was there tied to one of the white chickens, who flew along with it on his back behind the large sledge. The Snow Queen kissed Kay once more, and then he forgot little Gerda, grandmother, and all whom he had left at his home.
“Now you will have no more kisses,” said she, “or else I should kiss you to death!”
Kay looked at her. She was very beautiful; a more clever, or a more lovely countenance he could not fancy to himself; and she no longer appeared of ice as before, when she sat outside the window, and beckoned to him; in his eyes she was perfect, he did not fear her at all, and told her that he could calculate in his head and with fractions, even; that he knew the number of square miles there were in the different countries, and how many inhabitants they contained; and she smiled while he spoke. It then seemed to him as if what he knew was not enough, and he looked upwards in the large huge empty space above him, and on she flew with him; flew high over the black clouds, while the storm moaned and whistled as though it were singing some old tune. On they flew over woods and lakes, over seas, and many lands; and beneath them the chilling storm rushed fast, the wolves howled, the snow crackled; above them flew large screaming crows, but higher up appeared the moon, quite large and bright; and it was on it that Kay gazed during the long long winter's night; while by day he slept at the feet of the Snow Queen.
THIRD STORY. Of the Flower-Garden At the Old Woman's Who Understood Witchcraft
But what became of little Gerda when Kay did not return? Where could he be? Nobody knew; nobody could give any intelligence. All the boys knew was, that they had seen him tie his sledge to another large and splendid one, which drove down the street and out of the town. Nobody knew where he was; many sad tears were shed, and little Gerda wept long and bitterly; at last she said he must be dead; that he had been drowned in the river which flowed close to the town. Oh! those were very long and dismal winter evenings!
At last spring came, with its warm sunshine.
“Kay is dead and gone!” said little Gerda.
“That I don't believe,” said the Sunshine.
“Kay is dead and gone!” said she to the Swallows.
“That I don't believe,” said they: and at last little Gerda did not think so any longer either.
“I'll put on my red shoes,” said she, one morning; “Kay has never seen them, and then I'll go down to the river and ask there.”
It was quite early; she kissed her old grandmother, who was still asleep, put on her red shoes, and went alone to the river.
“Is it true that you have taken my little playfellow? I will make you a present of my red shoes, if you will give him back to me.”
And, as it seemed to her, the blue waves nodded in a strange manner; then she took off her red shoes, the most precious things she possessed, and threw them both into the river. But they fell close to the bank, and the little waves bore them immediately to land; it was as if the stream would not take what was dearest to her; for in reality it had not got little Kay; but Gerda thought that she had not thrown the shoes out far enough, so she clambered into a boat which lay among the rushes, went to the farthest end, and threw out the shoes. But the boat was not fastened, and the motion which she occasioned, made it drift from the shore. She observed this, and hastened to get back; but before she could do so, the boat was more than a yard from the land, and was gliding quickly onward.
Little Gerda was very frightened, and began to cry; but no one heard her except the sparrows, and they could not carry her to land; but they flew along the bank, and sang as if to comfort her, “Here we are! Here we are!” The boat drifted with the stream, little Gerda sat quite still without shoes, for they were swimming behind the boat, but she could not reach them, because the boat went much faster than they did.
The banks on both sides were beautiful; lovely flowers, venerable trees, and slopes with sheep and cows, but not a human being was to be seen.
“Perhaps the river will carry me to little Kay,” said she; and then she grew less sad. She rose, and looked for many hours at the beautiful green banks. Presently she sailed by a large cherry-orchard, where was a little cottage with curious red and blue windows; it was thatched, and before it two wooden soldiers stood sentry, and presented arms when anyone went past.
Gerda called to them, for she thought they were alive; but they, of course, did not answer. She came close to them, for the stream drifted the boat quite near the land.
Gerda called still louder, and an old woman then came out of the cottage, leaning upon a crooked stick. She had a large broad-brimmed hat on, painted with the most splendid flowers.
“Poor little child!” said the old woman. “How did you get upon the large rapid river, to be driven about so in the wide world!” And then the old woman went into the water, caught hold of the boat with her crooked stick, drew it to the bank, and lifted little Gerda out.
And Gerda was so glad to be on dry land again; but she was rather afraid of the strange old woman.
“But come and tell me who you are, and how you came here,” said she.
And Gerda told her all; and the old woman shook her head and said, “A-hem! a-hem!” and when Gerda had told her everything, and asked her if she had not seen little Kay, the woman answered that he had not passed there, but he no doubt would come; and she told her not to be cast down, but taste her cherries, and look at her flowers, which were finer than any in a picture-book, each of which could tell a whole story. She then took Gerda by the hand, led her into the little cottage, and locked the door.
The windows were very high up; the glass was red, blue, and green, and the sunlight shone through quite wondrously in all sorts of colors. On the table stood the most exquisite cherries, and Gerda ate as many as she chose, for she had permission to do so. While she was eating, the old woman combed her hair with a golden comb, and her hair curled and shone with a lovely golden color around that sweet little face, which was so round and so like a rose.
“I have often longed for such a dear little girl,” said the old woman. “Now you shall see how well we agree together”; and while she combed little Gerda's hair, the child forgot her foster-brother Kay more and more, for the old woman understood magic; but she was no evil being, she only practised witchcraft a little for her own private amusement, and now she wanted very much to keep little Gerda. She therefore went out in the garden, stretched out her crooked stick towards the rose-bushes, which, beautifully as they were blowing, all sank into the earth and no one could tell where they had stood. The old woman feared that if Gerda should see the roses, she would then think of her own, would remember little Kay, and run away from her.
She now led Gerda into the flower-garden. Oh, what odour and what loveliness was there! Every flower that one could think of, and of every season, stood there in fullest bloom; no picture-book could be gayer or more beautiful. Gerda jumped for joy, and played till the sun set behind the tall cherry-tree; she then had a pretty bed, with a red silken coverlet filled with blue violets. She fell asleep, and had as pleasant dreams as ever a queen on her wedding-day.
The next morning she went to play with the flowers in the warm sunshine, and thus passed away a day. Gerda knew every flower; and, numerous as they were, it still seemed to Gerda that one was wanting, though she did not know which. One day while she was looking at the hat of the old woman painted with flowers, the most beautiful of them all seemed to her to be a rose. The old woman had forgotten to take it from her hat when she made the others vanish in the earth. But so it is when one's thoughts are not collected. “What!” said Gerda. “Are there no roses here?” and she ran about amongst the flowerbeds, and looked, and looked, but there was not one to be found. She then sat down and wept; but her hot tears fell just where a rose-bush had sunk; and when her warm tears watered the ground, the tree shot up suddenly as fresh and blooming as when it had been swallowed up. Gerda kissed the roses, thought of her own dear roses at home, and with them of little Kay.
“Oh, how long I have stayed!” said the little girl. “I intended to look for Kay! Don't you know where he is?” she asked of the roses. “Do you think he is dead and gone?”
“Dead he certainly is not,” said the Roses. “We have been in the earth where all the dead are, but Kay was not there.”
“Many thanks!” said little Gerda; and she went to the other flowers, looked into their cups, and asked, “Don't you know where little Kay is?”
But every flower stood in the sunshine, and dreamed its own fairy tale or its own story: and they all told her very many things, but not one knew anything of Kay.
Well, what did the Tiger-Lily say?
“Hearest thou not the drum? Bum! Bum! Those are the only two tones. Always bum! Bum! Hark to the plaintive song of the old woman, to the call of the priests! The Hindoo woman in her long robe stands upon the funeral pile; the flames rise around her and her dead husband, but the Hindoo woman thinks on the living one in the surrounding circle; on him whose eyes burn hotter than the flames—on him, the fire of whose eyes pierces her heart more than the flames which soon will burn her body to ashes. Can the heart's flame die in the flame of the funeral pile?”
“I don't understand that at all,” said little Gerda.
“That is my story,” said the Lily.
What did the Convolvulus say?
“Projecting over a narrow mountain-path there hangs an old feudal castle. Thick evergreens grow on the dilapidated walls, and around the altar, where a lovely maiden is standing: she bends over the railing and looks out upon the rose. No fresher rose hangs on the branches than she; no appleblossom carried away by the wind is more buoyant! How her silken robe is rustling!
“'Is he not yet come?'”
“Is it Kay that you mean?” asked little Gerda.
“I am speaking about my story—about my dream,” answered the Convolvulus.
What did the Snowdrops say?
“Between the trees a long board is hanging—it is a swing. Two little girls are sitting in it, and swing themselves backwards and forwards; their frocks are as white as snow, and long green silk ribands flutter from their bonnets. Their brother, who is older than they are, stands up in the swing; he twines his arms round the cords to hold himself fast, for in one hand he has a little cup, and in the other a clay-pipe. He is blowing soap-bubbles. The swing moves, and the bubbles float in charming changing colors: the last is still hanging to the end of the pipe, and rocks in the breeze. The swing moves. The little black dog, as light as a soap-bubble, jumps up on his hind legs to try to get into the swing. It moves, the dog falls down, barks, and is angry. They tease him; the bubble bursts! A swing, a bursting bubble—such is my song!”
“What you relate may be very pretty, but you tell it in so melancholy a manner, and do not mention Kay.”
What do the Hyacinths say?
“There were once upon a time three sisters, quite transparent, and very beautiful. The robe of the one was red, that of the second blue, and that of the third white. They danced hand in hand beside the calm lake in the clear moonshine. They were not elfin maidens, but mortal children. A sweet fragrance was smelt, and the maidens vanished in the wood; the fragrance grew stronger—three coffins, and in them three lovely maidens, glided out of the forest and across the lake: the shining glow-worms flew around like little floating lights. Do the dancing maidens sleep, or are they dead? The odour of the flowers says they are corpses; the evening bell tolls for the dead!”
“You make me quite sad,” said little Gerda. “I cannot help thinking of the dead maidens. Oh! is little Kay really dead? The Roses have been in the earth, and they say no.”
“Ding, dong!” sounded the Hyacinth bells. “We do not toll for little Kay; we do not know him. That is our way of singing, the only one we have.”
And Gerda went to the Ranunculuses, that looked forth from among the shining green leaves.
“You are a little bright sun!” said Gerda. “Tell me if you know where I can find my playfellow.”
And the Ranunculus shone brightly, and looked again at Gerda. What song could the Ranunculus sing? It was one that said nothing about Kay either.
“In a small court the bright sun was shining in the first days of spring. The beams glided down the white walls of a neighbor's house, and close by the fresh yellow flowers were growing, shining like gold in the warm sun-rays. An old grandmother was sitting in the air; her grand-daughter, the poor and lovely servant just come for a short visit. She knows her grandmother. There was gold, pure virgin gold in that blessed kiss. There, that is my little story,” said the Ranunculus.
“My poor old grandmother!” sighed Gerda. “Yes, she is longing for me, no doubt: she is sorrowing for me, as she did for little Kay. But I will soon come home, and then I will bring Kay with me. It is of no use asking the flowers; they only know their own old rhymes, and can tell me nothing.” And she tucked up her frock, to enable her to run quicker; but the Narcissus gave her a knock on the leg, just as she was going to jump over it. So she stood still, looked at the long yellow flower, and asked, “You perhaps know something?” and she bent down to the Narcissus. And what did it say?
“I can see myself—I can see myself! Oh, how odorous I am! Up in the little garret there stands, half-dressed, a little Dancer. She stands now on one leg, now on both; she despises the whole world; yet she lives only in imagination. She pours water out of the teapot over a piece of stuff which she holds in her hand; it is the bodice; cleanliness is a fine thing. The white dress is hanging on the hook; it was washed in the teapot, and dried on the roof. She puts it on, ties a saffron-colored kerchief round her neck, and then the gown looks whiter. I can see myself—I can see myself!”
“That's nothing to me,” said little Gerda. “That does not concern me.” And then off she ran to the further end of the garden.
The gate was locked, but she shook the rusted bolt till it was loosened, and the gate opened; and little Gerda ran off barefooted into the wide world. She looked round her thrice, but no one followed her. At last she could run no longer; she sat down on a large stone, and when she looked about her, she saw that the summer had passed; it was late in the autumn, but that one could not remark in the beautiful garden, where there was always sunshine, and where there were flowers the whole year round.
“Dear me, how long I have staid!” said Gerda. “Autumn is come. I must not rest any longer.” And she got up to go further.
Oh, how tender and wearied her little feet were! All around it looked so cold and raw: the long willow-leaves were quite yellow, and the fog dripped from them like water; one leaf fell after the other: the sloes only stood full of fruit, which set one's teeth on edge. Oh, how dark and comfortless it was in the dreary world!
FOURTH STORY. The Prince and Princess
Gerda was obliged to rest herself again, when, exactly opposite to her, a large Raven came hopping over the white snow. He had long been looking at Gerda and shaking his head; and now he said, “Caw! Caw!” Good day! Good day! He could not say it better; but he felt a sympathy for the little girl, and asked her where she was going all alone. The word “alone” Gerda understood quite well, and felt how much was expressed by it; so she told the Raven her whole history, and asked if he had not seen Kay.
The Raven nodded very gravely, and said, “It may be—it may be!”
“What, do you really think so?” cried the little girl; and she nearly squeezed the Raven to death, so much did she kiss him.
“Gently, gently,” said the Raven. “I think I know; I think that it may be little Kay. But now he has forgotten you for the Princess.”
“Does he live with a Princess?” asked Gerda.
“Yes—listen,” said the Raven; “but it will be difficult for me to speak your language. If you understand the Raven language I can tell you better.”
“No, I have not learnt it,” said Gerda; “but my grandmother understands it, and she can speak gibberish too. I wish I had learnt it.”
“No matter,” said the Raven; “I will tell you as well as I can; however, it will be bad enough.” And then he told all he knew.
“In the kingdom where we now are there lives a Princess, who is extraordinarily clever; for she has read all the newspapers in the whole world, and has forgotten them again—so clever is she. She was lately, it is said, sitting on her throne—which is not very amusing after all—when she began humming an old tune, and it was just, 'Oh, why should I not be married?' 'That song is not without its meaning,' said she, and so then she was determined to marry; but she would have a husband who knew how to give an answer when he was spoken to—not one who looked only as if he were a great personage, for that is so tiresome. She then had all the ladies of the court drummed together; and when they heard her intention, all were very pleased, and said, 'We are very glad to hear it; it is the very thing we were thinking of.' You may believe every word I say,” said the Raven; “for I have a tame sweetheart that hops about in the palace quite free, and it was she who told me all this.
“The newspapers appeared forthwith with a border of hearts and the initials of the Princess; and therein you might read that every good-looking young man was at liberty to come to the palace and speak to the Princess; and he who spoke in such wise as showed he felt himself at home there, that one the Princess would choose for her husband.
“Yes, Yes,” said the Raven, “you may believe it; it is as true as I am sitting here. People came in crowds; there was a crush and a hurry, but no one was successful either on the first or second day. They could all talk well enough when they were out in the street; but as soon as they came inside the palace gates, and saw the guard richly dressed in silver, and the lackeys in gold on the staircase, and the large illuminated saloons, then they were abashed; and when they stood before the throne on which the Princess was sitting, all they could do was to repeat the last word they had uttered, and to hear it again did not interest her very much. It was just as if the people within were under a charm, and had fallen into a trance till they came out again into the street; for then—oh, then—they could chatter enough. There was a whole row of them standing from the town-gates to the palace. I was there myself to look,” said the Raven. “They grew hungry and thirsty; but from the palace they got nothing whatever, not even a glass of water. Some of the cleverest, it is true, had taken bread and butter with them: but none shared it with his neighbor, for each thought, 'Let him look hungry, and then the Princess won't have him.'”
“But Kay—little Kay,” said Gerda, “when did he come? Was he among the number?”
“Patience, patience; we are just come to him. It was on the third day when a little personage without horse or equipage, came marching right boldly up to the palace; his eyes shone like yours, he had beautiful long hair, but his clothes were very shabby.”
“That was Kay,” cried Gerda, with a voice of delight. “Oh, now I've found him!” and she clapped her hands for joy.
“He had a little knapsack at his back,” said the Raven.
“No, that was certainly his sledge,” said Gerda; “for when he went away he took his sledge with him.”
“That may be,” said the Raven; “I did not examine him so minutely; but I know from my tame sweetheart, that when he came into the court-yard of the palace, and saw the body-guard in silver, the lackeys on the staircase, he was not the least abashed; he nodded, and said to them, 'It must be very tiresome to stand on the stairs; for my part, I shall go in.' The saloons were gleaming with lustres—privy councillors and excellencies were walking about barefooted, and wore gold keys; it was enough to make any one feel uncomfortable. His boots creaked, too, so loudly, but still he was not at all afraid.”
“That's Kay for certain,” said Gerda. “I know he had on new boots; I have heard them creaking in grandmama's room.”
“Yes, they creaked,” said the Raven. “And on he went boldly up to the Princess, who was sitting on a pearl as large as a spinning-wheel. All the ladies of the court, with their attendants and attendants' attendants, and all the cavaliers, with their gentlemen and gentlemen's gentlemen, stood round; and the nearer they stood to the door, the prouder they looked. It was hardly possible to look at the gentleman's gentleman, so very haughtily did he stand in the doorway.”
“It must have been terrible,” said little Gerda. “And did Kay get the Princess?”
“Were I not a Raven, I should have taken the Princess myself, although I am promised. It is said he spoke as well as I speak when I talk Raven language; this I learned from my tame sweetheart. He was bold and nicely behaved; he had not come to woo the Princess, but only to hear her wisdom. She pleased him, and he pleased her.”
“Yes, yes; for certain that was Kay,” said Gerda. “He was so clever; he could reckon fractions in his head. Oh, won't you take me to the palace?”
“That is very easily said,” answered the Raven. “But how are we to manage it? I'll speak to my tame sweetheart about it: she must advise us; for so much I must tell you, such a little girl as you are will never get permission to enter.”
“Oh, yes I shall,” said Gerda; “when Kay hears that I am here, he will come out directly to fetch me.”
“Wait for me here on these steps,” said the Raven. He moved his head backwards and forwards and flew away.
The evening was closing in when the Raven returned. “Caw—caw!” said he. “She sends you her compliments; and here is a roll for you. She took it out of the kitchen, where there is bread enough. You are hungry, no doubt. It is not possible for you to enter the palace, for you are barefooted: the guards in silver, and the lackeys in gold, would not allow it; but do not cry, you shall come in still. My sweetheart knows a little back stair that leads to the bedchamber, and she knows where she can get the key of it.”
And they went into the garden in the large avenue, where one leaf was falling after the other; and when the lights in the palace had all gradually disappeared, the Raven led little Gerda to the back door, which stood half open.
Oh, how Gerda's heart beat with anxiety and longing! It was just as if she had been about to do something wrong; and yet she only wanted to know if little Kay was there. Yes, he must be there. She called to mind his intelligent eyes, and his long hair, so vividly, she could quite see him as he used to laugh when they were sitting under the roses at home. “He will, no doubt, be glad to see you—to hear what a long way you have come for his sake; to know how unhappy all at home were when he did not come back.”
Oh, what a fright and a joy it was!
They were now on the stairs. A single lamp was burning there; and on the floor stood the tame Raven, turning her head on every side and looking at Gerda, who bowed as her grandmother had taught her to do.
“My intended has told me so much good of you, my dear young lady,” said the tame Raven. “Your tale is very affecting. If you will take the lamp, I will go before. We will go straight on, for we shall meet no one.”
“I think there is somebody just behind us,” said Gerda; and something rushed past: it was like shadowy figures on the wall; horses with flowing manes and thin legs, huntsmen, ladies and gentlemen on horseback.
“They are only dreams,” said the Raven. “They come to fetch the thoughts of the high personages to the chase; 'tis well, for now you can observe them in bed all the better. But let me find, when you enjoy honor and distinction, that you possess a grateful heart.”
“Tut! That's not worth talking about,” said the Raven of the woods.
They now entered the first saloon, which was of rose-colored satin, with artificial flowers on the wall. Here the dreams were rushing past, but they hastened by so quickly that Gerda could not see the high personages. One hall was more magnificent than the other; one might indeed well be abashed; and at last they came into the bedchamber. The ceiling of the room resembled a large palm-tree with leaves of glass, of costly glass; and in the middle, from a thick golden stem, hung two beds, each of which resembled a lily. One was white, and in this lay the Princess; the other was red, and it was here that Gerda was to look for little Kay. She bent back one of the red leaves, and saw a brown neck. Oh! that was Kay! She called him quite loud by name, held the lamp towards him—the dreams rushed back again into the chamber—he awoke, turned his head, and—it was not little Kay!
The Prince was only like him about the neck; but he was young and handsome. And out of the white lily leaves the Princess peeped, too, and asked what was the matter. Then little Gerda cried, and told her her whole history, and all that the Ravens had done for her.
“Poor little thing!” said the Prince and the Princess. They praised the Ravens very much, and told them they were not at all angry with them, but they were not to do so again. However, they should have a reward. “Will you fly about here at liberty,” asked the Princess; “or would you like to have a fixed appointment as court ravens, with all the broken bits from the kitchen?”
And both the Ravens nodded, and begged for a fixed appointment; for they thought of their old age, and said, “It is a good thing to have a provision for our old days.”
And the Prince got up and let Gerda sleep in his bed, and more than this he could not do. She folded her little hands and thought, “How good men and animals are!” and she then fell asleep and slept soundly. All the dreams flew in again, and they now looked like the angels; they drew a little sledge, in which little Kay sat and nodded his head; but the whole was only a dream, and therefore it all vanished as soon as she awoke.
The next day she was dressed from head to foot in silk and velvet. They offered to let her stay at the palace, and lead a happy life; but she begged to have a little carriage with a horse in front, and for a small pair of shoes; then, she said, she would again go forth in the wide world and look for Kay.
Shoes and a muff were given her; she was, too, dressed very nicely; and when she was about to set off, a new carriage stopped before the door. It was of pure gold, and the arms of the Prince and Princess shone like a star upon it; the coachman, the footmen, and the outriders, for outriders were there, too, all wore golden crowns. The Prince and the Princess assisted her into the carriage themselves, and wished her all success. The Raven of the woods, who was now married, accompanied her for the first three miles. He sat beside Gerda, for he could not bear riding backwards; the other Raven stood in the doorway, and flapped her wings; she could not accompany Gerda, because she suffered from headache since she had had a fixed appointment and ate so much. The carriage was lined inside with sugar-plums, and in the seats were fruits and gingerbread.
“Farewell! Farewell!” cried Prince and Princess; and Gerda wept, and the Raven wept. Thus passed the first miles; and then the Raven bade her farewell, and this was the most painful separation of all. He flew into a tree, and beat his black wings as long as he could see the carriage, that shone from afar like a sunbeam.
FIFTH STORY. The Little Robber Maiden
They drove through the dark wood; but the carriage shone like a torch, and it dazzled the eyes of the robbers, so that they could not bear to look at it.
“'Tis gold! 'Tis gold!” they cried; and they rushed forward, seized the horses, knocked down the little postilion, the coachman, and the servants, and pulled little Gerda out of the carriage.
“How plump, how beautiful she is! She must have been fed on nut-kernels,” said the old female robber, who had a long, scrubby beard, and bushy eyebrows that hung down over her eyes. “She is as good as a fatted lamb! How nice she will be!” And then she drew out a knife, the blade of which shone so that it was quite dreadful to behold.
“Oh!” cried the woman at the same moment. She had been bitten in the ear by her own little daughter, who hung at her back; and who was so wild and unmanageable, that it was quite amusing to see her. “You naughty child!” said the mother: and now she had not time to kill Gerda.
“She shall play with me,” said the little robber child. “She shall give me her muff, and her pretty frock; she shall sleep in my bed!” And then she gave her mother another bite, so that she jumped, and ran round with the pain; and the Robbers laughed, and said, “Look, how she is dancing with the little one!”
“I will go into the carriage,” said the little robber maiden; and she would have her will, for she was very spoiled and very headstrong. She and Gerda got in; and then away they drove over the stumps of felled trees, deeper and deeper into the woods. The little robber maiden was as tall as Gerda, but stronger, broader-shouldered, and of dark complexion; her eyes were quite black; they looked almost melancholy. She embraced little Gerda, and said, “They shall not kill you as long as I am not displeased with you. You are, doubtless, a Princess?”
“No,” said little Gerda; who then related all that had happened to her, and how much she cared about little Kay.
The little robber maiden looked at her with a serious air, nodded her head slightly, and said, “They shall not kill you, even if I am angry with you: then I will do it myself”; and she dried Gerda's eyes, and put both her hands in the handsome muff, which was so soft and warm.
At length the carriage stopped. They were in the midst of the court-yard of a robber's castle. It was full of cracks from top to bottom; and out of the openings magpies and rooks were flying; and the great bull-dogs, each of which looked as if he could swallow a man, jumped up, but they did not bark, for that was forbidden.
In the midst of the large, old, smoking hall burnt a great fire on the stone floor. The smoke disappeared under the stones, and had to seek its own egress. In an immense caldron soup was boiling; and rabbits and hares were being roasted on a spit.
“You shall sleep with me to-night, with all my animals,” said the little robber maiden. They had something to eat and drink; and then went into a corner, where straw and carpets were lying. Beside them, on laths and perches, sat nearly a hundred pigeons, all asleep, seemingly; but yet they moved a little when the robber maiden came. “They are all mine,” said she, at the same time seizing one that was next to her by the legs and shaking it so that its wings fluttered. “Kiss it,” cried the little girl, and flung the pigeon in Gerda's face. “Up there is the rabble of the wood,” continued she, pointing to several laths which were fastened before a hole high up in the wall; “that's the rabble; they would all fly away immediately, if they were not well fastened in. And here is my dear old Bac”; and she laid hold of the horns of a reindeer, that had a bright copper ring round its neck, and was tethered to the spot. “We are obliged to lock this fellow in too, or he would make his escape. Every evening I tickle his neck with my sharp knife; he is so frightened at it!” and the little girl drew forth a long knife, from a crack in the wall, and let it glide over the Reindeer's neck. The poor animal kicked; the girl laughed, and pulled Gerda into bed with her.
“Do you intend to keep your knife while you sleep?” asked Gerda; looking at it rather fearfully.
“I always sleep with the knife,” said the little robber maiden. “There is no knowing what may happen. But tell me now, once more, all about little Kay; and why you have started off in the wide world alone.” And Gerda related all, from the very beginning: the Wood-pigeons cooed above in their cage, and the others slept. The little robber maiden wound her arm round Gerda's neck, held the knife in the other hand, and snored so loud that everybody could hear her; but Gerda could not close her eyes, for she did not know whether she was to live or die. The robbers sat round the fire, sang and drank; and the old female robber jumped about so, that it was quite dreadful for Gerda to see her.
Then the Wood-pigeons said, “Coo! Coo! We have seen little Kay! A white hen carries his sledge; he himself sat in the carriage of the Snow Queen, who passed here, down just over the wood, as we lay in our nest. She blew upon us young ones; and all died except we two. Coo! Coo!”
“What is that you say up there?” cried little Gerda. “Where did the Snow Queen go to? Do you know anything about it?”
“She is no doubt gone to Lapland; for there is always snow and ice there. Only ask the Reindeer, who is tethered there.”
“Ice and snow is there! There it is, glorious and beautiful!” said the Reindeer. “One can spring about in the large shining valleys! The Snow Queen has her summer-tent there; but her fixed abode is high up towards the North Pole, on the Island called Spitzbergen.”
“Oh, Kay! Poor little Kay!” sighed Gerda.
“Do you choose to be quiet?” said the robber maiden. “If you don't, I shall make you.”
In the morning Gerda told her all that the Wood-pigeons had said; and the little maiden looked very serious, but she nodded her head, and said, “That's no matter—that's no matter. Do you know where Lapland lies!” she asked of the Reindeer.
“Who should know better than I?” said the animal; and his eyes rolled in his head. “I was born and bred there—there I leapt about on the fields of snow.”
“Listen,” said the robber maiden to Gerda. “You see that the men are gone; but my mother is still here, and will remain. However, towards morning she takes a draught out of the large flask, and then she sleeps a little: then I will do something for you.” She now jumped out of bed, flew to her mother; with her arms round her neck, and pulling her by the beard, said, “Good morrow, my own sweet nanny-goat of a mother.” And her mother took hold of her nose, and pinched it till it was red and blue; but this was all done out of pure love.
When the mother had taken a sup at her flask, and was having a nap, the little robber maiden went to the Reindeer, and said, “I should very much like to give you still many a tickling with the sharp knife, for then you are so amusing; however, I will untether you, and help you out, so that you may go back to Lapland. But you must make good use of your legs; and take this little girl for me to the palace of the Snow Queen, where her playfellow is. You have heard, I suppose, all she said; for she spoke loud enough, and you were listening.”
The Reindeer gave a bound for joy. The robber maiden lifted up little Gerda, and took the precaution to bind her fast on the Reindeer's back; she even gave her a small cushion to sit on. “Here are your worsted leggins, for it will be cold; but the muff I shall keep for myself, for it is so very pretty. But I do not wish you to be cold. Here is a pair of lined gloves of my mother's; they just reach up to your elbow. On with them! Now you look about the hands just like my ugly old mother!”
And Gerda wept for joy.
“I can't bear to see you fretting,” said the little robber maiden. “This is just the time when you ought to look pleased. Here are two loaves and a ham for you, so that you won't starve.” The bread and the meat were fastened to the Reindeer's back; the little maiden opened the door, called in all the dogs, and then with her knife cut the rope that fastened the animal, and said to him, “Now, off with you; but take good care of the little girl!”
And Gerda stretched out her hands with the large wadded gloves towards the robber maiden, and said, “Farewell!” and the Reindeer flew on over bush and bramble through the great wood, over moor and heath, as fast as he could go.
“Ddsa! Ddsa!” was heard in the sky. It was just as if somebody was sneezing.
“These are my old northern-lights,” said the Reindeer, “look how they gleam!” And on he now sped still quicker—day and night on he went: the loaves were consumed, and the ham too; and now they were in Lapland.
SIXTH STORY. The Lapland Woman and the Finland Woman
Suddenly they stopped before a little house, which looked very miserable. The roof reached to the ground; and the door was so low, that the family were obliged to creep upon their stomachs when they went in or out. Nobody was at home except an old Lapland woman, who was dressing fish by the light of an oil lamp. And the Reindeer told her the whole of Gerda's history, but first of all his own; for that seemed to him of much greater importance. Gerda was so chilled that she could not speak.
“Poor thing,” said the Lapland woman, “you have far to run still. You have more than a hundred miles to go before you get to Finland; there the Snow Queen has her country-house, and burns blue lights every evening. I will give you a few words from me, which I will write on a dried haberdine, for paper I have none; this you can take with you to the Finland woman, and she will be able to give you more information than I can.”
When Gerda had warmed herself, and had eaten and drunk, the Lapland woman wrote a few words on a dried haberdine, begged Gerda to take care of them, put her on the Reindeer, bound her fast, and away sprang the animal. “Ddsa! Ddsa!” was again heard in the air; the most charming blue lights burned the whole night in the sky, and at last they came to Finland. They knocked at the chimney of the Finland woman; for as to a door, she had none.
There was such a heat inside that the Finland woman herself went about almost naked. She was diminutive and dirty. She immediately loosened little Gerda's clothes, pulled off her thick gloves and boots; for otherwise the heat would have been too great—and after laying a piece of ice on the Reindeer's head, read what was written on the fish-skin. She read it three times: she then knew it by heart; so she put the fish into the cupboard—for it might very well be eaten, and she never threw anything away.
Then the Reindeer related his own story first, and afterwards that of little Gerda; and the Finland woman winked her eyes, but said nothing.
“You are so clever,” said the Reindeer; “you can, I know, twist all the winds of the world together in a knot. If the seaman loosens one knot, then he has a good wind; if a second, then it blows pretty stiffly; if he undoes the third and fourth, then it rages so that the forests are upturned. Will you give the little maiden a potion, that she may possess the strength of twelve men, and vanquish the Snow Queen?”
“The strength of twelve men!” said the Finland woman. “Much good that would be!” Then she went to a cupboard, and drew out a large skin rolled up. When she had unrolled it, strange characters were to be seen written thereon; and the Finland woman read at such a rate that the perspiration trickled down her forehead.
But the Reindeer begged so hard for little Gerda, and Gerda looked so imploringly with tearful eyes at the Finland woman, that she winked, and drew the Reindeer aside into a corner, where they whispered together, while the animal got some fresh ice put on his head.
“'Tis true little Kay is at the Snow Queen's, and finds everything there quite to his taste; and he thinks it the very best place in the world; but the reason of that is, he has a splinter of glass in his eye, and in his heart. These must be got out first; otherwise he will never go back to mankind, and the Snow Queen will retain her power over him.”
“But can you give little Gerda nothing to take which will endue her with power over the whole?”
“I can give her no more power than what she has already. Don't you see how great it is? Don't you see how men and animals are forced to serve her; how well she gets through the world barefooted? She must not hear of her power from us; that power lies in her heart, because she is a sweet and innocent child! If she cannot get to the Snow Queen by herself, and rid little Kay of the glass, we cannot help her. Two miles hence the garden of the Snow Queen begins; thither you may carry the little girl. Set her down by the large bush with red berries, standing in the snow; don't stay talking, but hasten back as fast as possible.” And now the Finland woman placed little Gerda on the Reindeer's back, and off he ran with all imaginable speed.
“Oh! I have not got my boots! I have not brought my gloves!” cried little Gerda. She remarked she was without them from the cutting frost; but the Reindeer dared not stand still; on he ran till he came to the great bush with the red berries, and there he set Gerda down, kissed her mouth, while large bright tears flowed from the animal's eyes, and then back he went as fast as possible. There stood poor Gerda now, without shoes or gloves, in the very middle of dreadful icy Finland.
She ran on as fast as she could. There then came a whole regiment of snow-flakes, but they did not fall from above, and they were quite bright and shining from the Aurora Borealis. The flakes ran along the ground, and the nearer they came the larger they grew. Gerda well remembered how large and strange the snow-flakes appeared when she once saw them through a magnifying-glass; but now they were large and terrific in another manner—they were all alive. They were the outposts of the Snow Queen. They had the most wondrous shapes; some looked like large ugly porcupines; others like snakes knotted together, with their heads sticking out; and others, again, like small fat bears, with the hair standing on end: all were of dazzling whiteness—all were living snow-flakes.
Little Gerda repeated the Lord's Prayer. The cold was so intense that she could see her own breath, which came like smoke out of her mouth. It grew thicker and thicker, and took the form of little angels, that grew more and more when they touched the earth. All had helms on their heads, and lances and shields in their hands; they increased in numbers; and when Gerda had finished the Lord's Prayer, she was surrounded by a whole legion. They thrust at the horrid snow-flakes with their spears, so that they flew into a thousand pieces; and little Gerda walked on bravely and in security. The angels patted her hands and feet; and then she felt the cold less, and went on quickly towards the palace of the Snow Queen.
But now we shall see how Kay fared. He never thought of Gerda, and least of all that she was standing before the palace.
SEVENTH STORY. What Took Place in the Palace of the Snow Queen, and what Happened Afterward.
The walls of the palace were of driving snow, and the windows and doors of cutting winds. There were more than a hundred halls there, according as the snow was driven by the winds. The largest was many miles in extent; all were lighted up by the powerful Aurora Borealis, and all were so large, so empty, so icy cold, and so resplendent! Mirth never reigned there; there was never even a little bear-ball, with the storm for music, while the polar bears went on their hind legs and showed off their steps. Never a little tea-party of white young lady foxes; vast, cold, and empty were the halls of the Snow Queen. The northern-lights shone with such precision that one could tell exactly when they were at their highest or lowest degree of brightness. In the middle of the empty, endless hall of snow, was a frozen lake; it was cracked in a thousand pieces, but each piece was so like the other, that it seemed the work of a cunning artificer. In the middle of this lake sat the Snow Queen when she was at home; and then she said she was sitting in the Mirror of Understanding, and that this was the only one and the best thing in the world.
Little Kay was quite blue, yes nearly black with cold; but he did not observe it, for she had kissed away all feeling of cold from his body, and his heart was a lump of ice. He was dragging along some pointed flat pieces of ice, which he laid together in all possible ways, for he wanted to make something with them; just as we have little flat pieces of wood to make geometrical figures with, called the Chinese Puzzle. Kay made all sorts of figures, the most complicated, for it was an ice-puzzle for the understanding. In his eyes the figures were extraordinarily beautiful, and of the utmost importance; for the bit of glass which was in his eye caused this. He found whole figures which represented a written word; but he never could manage to represent just the word he wanted—that word was “eternity”; and the Snow Queen had said, “If you can discover that figure, you shall be your own master, and I will make you a present of the whole world and a pair of new skates.” But he could not find it out.
“I am going now to warm lands,” said the Snow Queen. “I must have a look down into the black caldrons.” It was the volcanoes Vesuvius and Etna that she meant. “I will just give them a coating of white, for that is as it ought to be; besides, it is good for the oranges and the grapes.” And then away she flew, and Kay sat quite alone in the empty halls of ice that were miles long, and looked at the blocks of ice, and thought and thought till his skull was almost cracked. There he sat quite benumbed and motionless; one would have imagined he was frozen to death.
Suddenly little Gerda stepped through the great portal into the palace. The gate was formed of cutting winds; but Gerda repeated her evening prayer, and the winds were laid as though they slept; and the little maiden entered the vast, empty, cold halls. There she beheld Kay: she recognised him, flew to embrace him, and cried out, her arms firmly holding him the while, “Kay, sweet little Kay! Have I then found you at last?”
But he sat quite still, benumbed and cold. Then little Gerda shed burning tears; and they fell on his bosom, they penetrated to his heart, they thawed the lumps of ice, and consumed the splinters of the looking-glass; he looked at her, and she sang the hymn:
“The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet, And angels descend there the children to greet.”
Hereupon Kay burst into tears; he wept so much that the splinter rolled out of his eye, and he recognised her, and shouted, “Gerda, sweet little Gerda! Where have you been so long? And where have I been?” He looked round him. “How cold it is here!” said he. “How empty and cold!” And he held fast by Gerda, who laughed and wept for joy. It was so beautiful, that even the blocks of ice danced about for joy; and when they were tired and laid themselves down, they formed exactly the letters which the Snow Queen had told him to find out; so now he was his own master, and he would have the whole world and a pair of new skates into the bargain.
Gerda kissed his cheeks, and they grew quite blooming; she kissed his eyes, and they shone like her own; she kissed his hands and feet, and he was again well and merry. The Snow Queen might come back as soon as she liked; there stood his discharge written in resplendent masses of ice.
They took each other by the hand, and wandered forth out of the large hall; they talked of their old grandmother, and of the roses upon the roof; and wherever they went, the winds ceased raging, and the sun burst forth. And when they reached the bush with the red berries, they found the Reindeer waiting for them. He had brought another, a young one, with him, whose udder was filled with milk, which he gave to the little ones, and kissed their lips. They then carried Kay and Gerda—first to the Finland woman, where they warmed themselves in the warm room, and learned what they were to do on their journey home; and they went to the Lapland woman, who made some new clothes for them and repaired their sledges.
The Reindeer and the young hind leaped along beside them, and accompanied them to the boundary of the country. Here the first vegetation peeped forth; here Kay and Gerda took leave of the Lapland woman. “Farewell! Farewell!” they all said. And the first green buds appeared, the first little birds began to chirrup; and out of the wood came, riding on a magnificent horse, which Gerda knew (it was one of the leaders in the golden carriage), a young damsel with a bright-red cap on her head, and armed with pistols. It was the little robber maiden, who, tired of being at home, had determined to make a journey to the north; and afterwards in another direction, if that did not please her. She recognised Gerda immediately, and Gerda knew her too. It was a joyful meeting.
“You are a fine fellow for tramping about,” said she to little Kay; “I should like to know, faith, if you deserve that one should run from one end of the world to the other for your sake?”
But Gerda patted her cheeks, and inquired for the Prince and Princess.
“They are gone abroad,” said the other.
“But the Raven?” asked little Gerda.
“Oh! The Raven is dead,” she answered. “His tame sweetheart is a widow, and wears a bit of black worsted round her leg; she laments most piteously, but it's all mere talk and stuff! Now tell me what you've been doing and how you managed to catch him.”
And Gerda and Kay both told their story.
And “Schnipp-schnapp-schnurre-basselurre,” said the robber maiden; and she took the hands of each, and promised that if she should some day pass through the town where they lived, she would come and visit them; and then away she rode. Kay and Gerda took each other's hand: it was lovely spring weather, with abundance of flowers and of verdure. The church-bells rang, and the children recognised the high towers, and the large town; it was that in which they dwelt. They entered and hastened up to their grandmother's room, where everything was standing as formerly. The clock said “tick! tack!” and the finger moved round; but as they entered, they remarked that they were now grown up. The roses on the leads hung blooming in at the open window; there stood the little children's chairs, and Kay and Gerda sat down on them, holding each other by the hand; they both had forgotten the cold empty splendor of the Snow Queen, as though it had been a dream. The grandmother sat in the bright sunshine, and read aloud from the Bible: “Unless ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
And Kay and Gerda looked in each other's eyes, and all at once they understood the old hymn:
“The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet, And angels descend there the children to greet.”
There sat the two grown-up persons; grown-up, and yet children; children at least in heart; and it was summer-time; summer, glorious summer!
 
==THE LEAP-FROG==
A Flea, a Grasshopper, and a Leap-frog once wanted to see which could jump highest; and they invited the whole world, and everybody else besides who chose to come to see the festival. Three famous jumpers were they, as everyone would say, when they all met together in the room.
“I will give my daughter to him who jumps highest,” exclaimed the King; “for it is not so amusing where there is no prize to jump for.”
The Flea was the first to step forward. He had exquisite manners, and bowed to the company on all sides; for he had noble blood, and was, moreover, accustomed to the society of man alone; and that makes a great difference.
Then came the Grasshopper. He was considerably heavier, but he was well-mannered, and wore a green uniform, which he had by right of birth; he said, moreover, that he belonged to a very ancient Egyptian family, and that in the house where he then was, he was thought much of. The fact was, he had been just brought out of the fields, and put in a pasteboard house, three stories high, all made of court-cards, with the colored side inwards; and doors and windows cut out of the body of the Queen of Hearts. “I sing so well,” said he, “that sixteen native grasshoppers who have chirped from infancy, and yet got no house built of cards to live in, grew thinner than they were before for sheer vexation when they heard me.”
It was thus that the Flea and the Grasshopper gave an account of themselves, and thought they were quite good enough to marry a Princess.
The Leap-frog said nothing; but people gave it as their opinion, that he therefore thought the more; and when the housedog snuffed at him with his nose, he confessed the Leap-frog was of good family. The old councillor, who had had three orders given him to make him hold his tongue, asserted that the Leap-frog was a prophet; for that one could see on his back, if there would be a severe or mild winter, and that was what one could not see even on the back of the man who writes the almanac.
“I say nothing, it is true,” exclaimed the King; “but I have my own opinion, notwithstanding.”
Now the trial was to take place. The Flea jumped so high that nobody could see where he went to; so they all asserted he had not jumped at all; and that was dishonorable.
The Grasshopper jumped only half as high; but he leaped into the King's face, who said that was ill-mannered.
The Leap-frog stood still for a long time lost in thought; it was believed at last he would not jump at all.
“I only hope he is not unwell,” said the house-dog; when, pop! he made a jump all on one side into the lap of the Princess, who was sitting on a little golden stool close by.
Hereupon the King said, “There is nothing above my daughter; therefore to bound up to her is the highest jump that can be made; but for this, one must possess understanding, and the Leap-frog has shown that he has understanding. He is brave and intellectual.”
And so he won the Princess.
“It's all the same to me,” said the Flea. “She may have the old Leap-frog, for all I care. I jumped the highest; but in this world merit seldom meets its reward. A fine exterior is what people look at now-a-days.”
The Flea then went into foreign service, where, it is said, he was killed.
The Grasshopper sat without on a green bank, and reflected on worldly things; and he said too, “Yes, a fine exterior is everything—a fine exterior is what people care about.” And then he began chirping his peculiar melancholy song, from which we have taken this history; and which may, very possibly, be all untrue, although it does stand here printed in black and white.
==THE ELDERBUSH==
Once upon a time there was a little boy who had taken cold. He had gone out and got his feet wet; though nobody could imagine how it had happened, for it was quite dry weather. So his mother undressed him, put him to bed, and had the tea-pot brought in, to make him a good cup of Elderflower tea. Just at that moment the merry old man came in who lived up a-top of the house all alone; for he had neither wife nor children—but he liked children very much, and knew so many fairy tales, that it was quite delightful.
“Now drink your tea,” said the boy's mother; “then, perhaps, you may hear a fairy tale.”
“If I had but something new to tell,” said the old man. “But how did the child get his feet wet?”
“That is the very thing that nobody can make out,” said his mother.
“Am I to hear a fairy tale?” asked the little boy.
“Yes, if you can tell me exactly—for I must know that first—how deep the gutter is in the little street opposite, that you pass through in going to school.”
“Just up to the middle of my boot,” said the child; “but then I must go into the deep hole.”
“Ah, ah! That's where the wet feet came from,” said the old man. “I ought now to tell you a story; but I don't know any more.”
“You can make one in a moment,” said the little boy. “My mother says that all you look at can be turned into a fairy tale: and that you can find a story in everything.”
“Yes, but such tales and stories are good for nothing. The right sort come of themselves; they tap at my forehead and say, 'Here we are.'”
“Won't there be a tap soon?” asked the little boy. And his mother laughed, put some Elder-flowers in the tea-pot, and poured boiling water upon them.
“Do tell me something! Pray do!”
“Yes, if a fairy tale would come of its own accord; but they are proud and haughty, and come only when they choose. Stop!” said he, all on a sudden. “I have it! Pay attention! There is one in the tea-pot!”
And the little boy looked at the tea-pot. The cover rose more and more; and the Elder-flowers came forth so fresh and white, and shot up long branches. Out of the spout even did they spread themselves on all sides, and grew larger and larger; it was a splendid Elderbush, a whole tree; and it reached into the very bed, and pushed the curtains aside. How it bloomed! And what an odour! In the middle of the bush sat a friendly-looking old woman in a most strange dress. It was quite green, like the leaves of the elder, and was trimmed with large white Elder-flowers; so that at first one could not tell whether it was a stuff, or a natural green and real flowers.
“What's that woman's name?” asked the little boy.
“The Greeks and Romans,” said the old man, “called her a Dryad; but that we do not understand. The people who live in the New Booths have a much better name for her; they call her 'old Granny'—and she it is to whom you are to pay attention. Now listen, and look at the beautiful Elderbush.
 * A row of buildings for seamen in Copenhagen.
“Just such another large blooming Elder Tree stands near the New Booths. It grew there in the corner of a little miserable court-yard; and under it sat, of an afternoon, in the most splendid sunshine, two old people; an old, old seaman, and his old, old wife. They had great-grand-children, and were soon to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage; but they could not exactly recollect the date: and old Granny sat in the tree, and looked as pleased as now. 'I know the date,' said she; but those below did not hear her, for they were talking about old times.
“'Yes, can't you remember when we were very little,' said the old seaman, 'and ran and played about? It was the very same court-yard where we now are, and we stuck slips in the ground, and made a garden.'
“'I remember it well,' said the old woman; 'I remember it quite well. We watered the slips, and one of them was an Elderbush. It took root, put forth green shoots, and grew up to be the large tree under which we old folks are now sitting.'
“'To be sure,' said he. 'And there in the corner stood a waterpail, where I used to swim my boats.'
“'True; but first we went to school to learn somewhat,' said she; 'and then we were confirmed. We both cried; but in the afternoon we went up the Round Tower, and looked down on Copenhagen, and far, far away over the water; then we went to Friedericksberg, where the King and the Queen were sailing about in their splendid barges.'
“'But I had a different sort of sailing to that, later; and that, too, for many a year; a long way off, on great voyages.'
“'Yes, many a time have I wept for your sake,' said she. 'I thought you were dead and gone, and lying down in the deep waters. Many a night have I got up to see if the wind had not changed: and changed it had, sure enough; but you never came. I remember so well one day, when the rain was pouring down in torrents, the scavengers were before the house where I was in service, and I had come up with the dust, and remained standing at the door—it was dreadful weather—when just as I was there, the postman came and gave me a letter. It was from you! What a tour that letter had made! I opened it instantly and read: I laughed and wept. I was so happy. In it I read that you were in warm lands where the coffee-tree grows. What a blessed land that must be! You related so much, and I saw it all the while the rain was pouring down, and I standing there with the dust-box. At the same moment came someone who embraced me.'
“'Yes; but you gave him a good box on his ear that made it tingle!'
“'But I did not know it was you. You arrived as soon as your letter, and you were so handsome—that you still are—and had a long yellow silk handkerchief round your neck, and a bran new hat on; oh, you were so dashing! Good heavens! What weather it was, and what a state the street was in!'
“'And then we married,' said he. 'Don't you remember? And then we had our first little boy, and then Mary, and Nicholas, and Peter, and Christian.'
“'Yes, and how they all grew up to be honest people, and were beloved by everybody.'
“'And their children also have children,' said the old sailor; 'yes, those are our grand-children, full of strength and vigor. It was, methinks about this season that we had our wedding.'
“'Yes, this very day is the fiftieth anniversary of the marriage,' said old Granny, sticking her head between the two old people; who thought it was their neighbor who nodded to them. They looked at each other and held one another by the hand. Soon after came their children, and their grand-children; for they knew well enough that it was the day of the fiftieth anniversary, and had come with their gratulations that very morning; but the old people had forgotten it, although they were able to remember all that had happened many years ago. And the Elderbush sent forth a strong odour in the sun, that was just about to set, and shone right in the old people's faces. They both looked so rosy-cheeked; and the youngest of the grandchildren danced around them, and called out quite delighted, that there was to be something very splendid that evening—they were all to have hot potatoes. And old Nanny nodded in the bush, and shouted 'hurrah!' with the rest.”
“But that is no fairy tale,” said the little boy, who was listening to the story.
“The thing is, you must understand it,” said the narrator; “let us ask old Nanny.”
“That was no fairy tale, 'tis true,” said old Nanny; “but now it's coming. The most wonderful fairy tales grow out of that which is reality; were that not the case, you know, my magnificent Elderbush could not have grown out of the tea-pot.” And then she took the little boy out of bed, laid him on her bosom, and the branches of the Elder Tree, full of flowers, closed around her. They sat in an aerial dwelling, and it flew with them through the air. Oh, it was wondrous beautiful! Old Nanny had grown all of a sudden a young and pretty maiden; but her robe was still the same green stuff with white flowers, which she had worn before. On her bosom she had a real Elderflower, and in her yellow waving hair a wreath of the flowers; her eyes were so large and blue that it was a pleasure to look at them; she kissed the boy, and now they were of the same age and felt alike.
Hand in hand they went out of the bower, and they were standing in the beautiful garden of their home. Near the green lawn papa's walking-stick was tied, and for the little ones it seemed to be endowed with life; for as soon as they got astride it, the round polished knob was turned into a magnificent neighing head, a long black mane fluttered in the breeze, and four slender yet strong legs shot out. The animal was strong and handsome, and away they went at full gallop round the lawn.
“Huzza! Now we are riding miles off,” said the boy. “We are riding away to the castle where we were last year!”
And on they rode round the grass-plot; and the little maiden, who, we know, was no one else but old Nanny, kept on crying out, “Now we are in the country! Don't you see the farm-house yonder? And there is an Elder Tree standing beside it; and the cock is scraping away the earth for the hens, look, how he struts! And now we are close to the church. It lies high upon the hill, between the large oak-trees, one of which is half decayed. And now we are by the smithy, where the fire is blazing, and where the half-naked men are banging with their hammers till the sparks fly about. Away! away! To the beautiful country-seat!”
And all that the little maiden, who sat behind on the stick, spoke of, flew by in reality. The boy saw it all, and yet they were only going round the grass-plot. Then they played in a side avenue, and marked out a little garden on the earth; and they took Elder-blossoms from their hair, planted them, and they grew just like those the old people planted when they were children, as related before. They went hand in hand, as the old people had done when they were children; but not to the Round Tower, or to Friedericksberg; no, the little damsel wound her arms round the boy, and then they flew far away through all Denmark. And spring came, and summer; and then it was autumn, and then winter; and a thousand pictures were reflected in the eye and in the heart of the boy; and the little girl always sang to him, “This you will never forget.” And during their whole flight the Elder Tree smelt so sweet and odorous; he remarked the roses and the fresh beeches, but the Elder Tree had a more wondrous fragrance, for its flowers hung on the breast of the little maiden; and there, too, did he often lay his head during the flight.
“It is lovely here in spring!” said the young maiden. And they stood in a beech-wood that had just put on its first green, where the woodroof at their feet sent forth its fragrance, and the pale-red anemony looked so pretty among the verdure. “Oh, would it were always spring in the sweetly-smelling Danish beech-forests!”
“It is lovely here in summer!” said she. And she flew past old castles of by-gone days of chivalry, where the red walls and the embattled gables were mirrored in the canal, where the swans were swimming, and peered up into the old cool avenues. In the fields the corn was waving like the sea; in the ditches red and yellow flowers were growing; while wild-drone flowers, and blooming convolvuluses were creeping in the hedges; and towards evening the moon rose round and large, and the haycocks in the meadows smelt so sweetly. “This one never forgets!”
“It is lovely here in autumn!” said the little maiden. And suddenly the atmosphere grew as blue again as before; the forest grew red, and green, and yellow-colored. The dogs came leaping along, and whole flocks of wild-fowl flew over the cairn, where blackberry-bushes were hanging round the old stones. The sea was dark blue, covered with ships full of white sails; and in the barn old women, maidens, and children were sitting picking hops into a large cask; the young sang songs, but the old told fairy tales of mountain-sprites and soothsayers. Nothing could be more charming.
“It is delightful here in winter!” said the little maiden. And all the trees were covered with hoar-frost; they looked like white corals; the snow crackled under foot, as if one had new boots on; and one falling star after the other was seen in the sky. The Christmas-tree was lighted in the room; presents were there, and good-humor reigned. In the country the violin sounded in the room of the peasant; the newly-baked cakes were attacked; even the poorest child said, “It is really delightful here in winter!”
Yes, it was delightful; and the little maiden showed the boy everything; and the Elder Tree still was fragrant, and the red flag, with the white cross, was still waving: the flag under which the old seaman in the New Booths had sailed. And the boy grew up to be a lad, and was to go forth in the wide world-far, far away to warm lands, where the coffee-tree grows; but at his departure the little maiden took an Elder-blossom from her bosom, and gave it him to keep; and it was placed between the leaves of his Prayer-Book; and when in foreign lands he opened the book, it was always at the place where the keepsake-flower lay; and the more he looked at it, the fresher it became; he felt as it were, the fragrance of the Danish groves; and from among the leaves of the flowers he could distinctly see the little maiden, peeping forth with her bright blue eyes—and then she whispered, “It is delightful here in Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter”; and a hundred visions glided before his mind.
Thus passed many years, and he was now an old man, and sat with his old wife under the blooming tree. They held each other by the hand, as the old grand-father and grand-mother yonder in the New Booths did, and they talked exactly like them of old times, and of the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding. The little maiden, with the blue eyes, and with Elder-blossoms in her hair, sat in the tree, nodded to both of them, and said, “To-day is the fiftieth anniversary!” And then she took two flowers out of her hair, and kissed them. First, they shone like silver, then like gold; and when they laid them on the heads of the old people, each flower became a golden crown. So there they both sat, like a king and a queen, under the fragrant tree, that looked exactly like an elder: the old man told his wife the story of “Old Nanny,” as it had been told him when a boy. And it seemed to both of them it contained much that resembled their own history; and those parts that were like it pleased them best.
“Thus it is,” said the little maiden in the tree, “some call me 'Old Nanny,' others a 'Dryad,' but, in reality, my name is 'Remembrance'; 'tis I who sit in the tree that grows and grows! I can remember; I can tell things! Let me see if you have my flower still?”
And the old man opened his Prayer-Book. There lay the Elder-blossom, as fresh as if it had been placed there but a short time before; and Remembrance nodded, and the old people, decked with crowns of gold, sat in the flush of the evening sun. They closed their eyes, and—and—! Yes, that's the end of the story!
The little boy lay in his bed; he did not know if he had dreamed or not, or if he had been listening while someone told him the story. The tea-pot was standing on the table, but no Elder Tree was growing out of it! And the old man, who had been talking, was just on the point of going out at the door, and he did go.
“How splendid that was!” said the little boy. “Mother, I have been to warm countries.”
“So I should think,” said his mother. “When one has drunk two good cupfuls of Elder-flower tea, 'tis likely enough one goes into warm climates”; and she tucked him up nicely, least he should take cold. “You have had a good sleep while I have been sitting here, and arguing with him whether it was a story or a fairy tale.”
“And where is old Nanny?” asked the little boy.
“In the tea-pot,” said his mother; “and there she may remain.”
==THE BELL==
People said “The Evening Bell is sounding, the sun is setting.” For a strange wondrous tone was heard in the narrow streets of a large town. It was like the sound of a church-bell: but it was only heard for a moment, for the rolling of the carriages and the voices of the multitude made too great a noise.
Those persons who were walking outside the town, where the houses were farther apart, with gardens or little fields between them, could see the evening sky still better, and heard the sound of the bell much more distinctly. It was as if the tones came from a church in the still forest; people looked thitherward, and felt their minds attuned most solemnly.
A long time passed, and people said to each other—“I wonder if there is a church out in the wood? The bell has a tone that is wondrous sweet; let us stroll thither, and examine the matter nearer.” And the rich people drove out, and the poor walked, but the way seemed strangely long to them; and when they came to a clump of willows which grew on the skirts of the forest, they sat down, and looked up at the long branches, and fancied they were now in the depth of the green wood. The confectioner of the town came out, and set up his booth there; and soon after came another confectioner, who hung a bell over his stand, as a sign or ornament, but it had no clapper, and it was tarred over to preserve it from the rain. When all the people returned home, they said it had been very romantic, and that it was quite a different sort of thing to a pic-nic or tea-party. There were three persons who asserted they had penetrated to the end of the forest, and that they had always heard the wonderful sounds of the bell, but it had seemed to them as if it had come from the town. One wrote a whole poem about it, and said the bell sounded like the voice of a mother to a good dear child, and that no melody was sweeter than the tones of the bell. The king of the country was also observant of it, and vowed that he who could discover whence the sounds proceeded, should have the title of “Universal Bell-ringer,” even if it were not really a bell.
Many persons now went to the wood, for the sake of getting the place, but one only returned with a sort of explanation; for nobody went far enough, that one not further than the others. However, he said that the sound proceeded from a very large owl, in a hollow tree; a sort of learned owl, that continually knocked its head against the branches. But whether the sound came from his head or from the hollow tree, that no one could say with certainty. So now he got the place of “Universal Bell-ringer,” and wrote yearly a short treatise “On the Owl”; but everybody was just as wise as before.
It was the day of confirmation. The clergyman had spoken so touchingly, the children who were confirmed had been greatly moved; it was an eventful day for them; from children they become all at once grown-up-persons; it was as if their infant souls were now to fly all at once into persons with more understanding. The sun was shining gloriously; the children that had been confirmed went out of the town; and from the wood was borne towards them the sounds of the unknown bell with wonderful distinctness. They all immediately felt a wish to go thither; all except three. One of them had to go home to try on a ball-dress; for it was just the dress and the ball which had caused her to be confirmed this time, for otherwise she would not have come; the other was a poor boy, who had borrowed his coat and boots to be confirmed in from the innkeeper's son, and he was to give them back by a certain hour; the third said that he never went to a strange place if his parents were not with him—that he had always been a good boy hitherto, and would still be so now that he was confirmed, and that one ought not to laugh at him for it: the others, however, did make fun of him, after all.
There were three, therefore, that did not go; the others hastened on. The sun shone, the birds sang, and the children sang too, and each held the other by the hand; for as yet they had none of them any high office, and were all of equal rank in the eye of God.
But two of the youngest soon grew tired, and both returned to town; two little girls sat down, and twined garlands, so they did not go either; and when the others reached the willow-tree, where the confectioner was, they said, “Now we are there! In reality the bell does not exist; it is only a fancy that people have taken into their heads!”
At the same moment the bell sounded deep in the wood, so clear and solemnly that five or six determined to penetrate somewhat further. It was so thick, and the foliage so dense, that it was quite fatiguing to proceed. Woodroof and anemonies grew almost too high; blooming convolvuluses and blackberry-bushes hung in long garlands from tree to tree, where the nightingale sang and the sunbeams were playing: it was very beautiful, but it was no place for girls to go; their clothes would get so torn. Large blocks of stone lay there, overgrown with moss of every color; the fresh spring bubbled forth, and made a strange gurgling sound.
“That surely cannot be the bell,” said one of the children, lying down and listening. “This must be looked to.” So he remained, and let the others go on without him.
They afterwards came to a little house, made of branches and the bark of trees; a large wild apple-tree bent over it, as if it would shower down all its blessings on the roof, where roses were blooming. The long stems twined round the gable, on which there hung a small bell.
Was it that which people had heard? Yes, everybody was unanimous on the subject, except one, who said that the bell was too small and too fine to be heard at so great a distance, and besides it was very different tones to those that could move a human heart in such a manner. It was a king's son who spoke; whereon the others said, “Such people always want to be wiser than everybody else.”
They now let him go on alone; and as he went, his breast was filled more and more with the forest solitude; but he still heard the little bell with which the others were so satisfied, and now and then, when the wind blew, he could also hear the people singing who were sitting at tea where the confectioner had his tent; but the deep sound of the bell rose louder; it was almost as if an organ were accompanying it, and the tones came from the left hand, the side where the heart is placed. A rustling was heard in the bushes, and a little boy stood before the King's Son, a boy in wooden shoes, and with so short a jacket that one could see what long wrists he had. Both knew each other: the boy was that one among the children who could not come because he had to go home and return his jacket and boots to the innkeeper's son. This he had done, and was now going on in wooden shoes and in his humble dress, for the bell sounded with so deep a tone, and with such strange power, that proceed he must.
“Why, then, we can go together,” said the King's Son. But the poor child that had been confirmed was quite ashamed; he looked at his wooden shoes, pulled at the short sleeves of his jacket, and said that he was afraid he could not walk so fast; besides, he thought that the bell must be looked for to the right; for that was the place where all sorts of beautiful things were to be found.
“But there we shall not meet,” said the King's Son, nodding at the same time to the poor boy, who went into the darkest, thickest part of the wood, where thorns tore his humble dress, and scratched his face and hands and feet till they bled. The King's Son got some scratches too; but the sun shone on his path, and it is him that we will follow, for he was an excellent and resolute youth.
“I must and will find the bell,” said he, “even if I am obliged to go to the end of the world.”
The ugly apes sat upon the trees, and grinned. “Shall we thrash him?” said they. “Shall we thrash him? He is the son of a king!”
But on he went, without being disheartened, deeper and deeper into the wood, where the most wonderful flowers were growing. There stood white lilies with blood-red stamina, skyblue tulips, which shone as they waved in the winds, and apple-trees, the apples of which looked exactly like large soapbubbles: so only think how the trees must have sparkled in the sunshine! Around the nicest green meads, where the deer were playing in the grass, grew magnificent oaks and beeches; and if the bark of one of the trees was cracked, there grass and long creeping plants grew in the crevices. And there were large calm lakes there too, in which white swans were swimming, and beat the air with their wings. The King's Son often stood still and listened. He thought the bell sounded from the depths of these still lakes; but then he remarked again that the tone proceeded not from there, but farther off, from out the depths of the forest.
The sun now set: the atmosphere glowed like fire. It was still in the woods, so very still; and he fell on his knees, sung his evening hymn, and said: “I cannot find what I seek; the sun is going down, and night is coming—the dark, dark night. Yet perhaps I may be able once more to see the round red sun before he entirely disappears. I will climb up yonder rock.”
And he seized hold of the creeping-plants, and the roots of trees—climbed up the moist stones where the water-snakes were writhing and the toads were croaking—and he gained the summit before the sun had quite gone down. How magnificent was the sight from this height! The sea—the great, the glorious sea, that dashed its long waves against the coast—was stretched out before him. And yonder, where sea and sky meet, stood the sun, like a large shining altar, all melted together in the most glowing colors. And the wood and the sea sang a song of rejoicing, and his heart sang with the rest: all nature was a vast holy church, in which the trees and the buoyant clouds were the pillars, flowers and grass the velvet carpeting, and heaven itself the large cupola. The red colors above faded away as the sun vanished, but a million stars were lighted, a million lamps shone; and the King's Son spread out his arms towards heaven, and wood, and sea; when at the same moment, coming by a path to the right, appeared, in his wooden shoes and jacket, the poor boy who had been confirmed with him. He had followed his own path, and had reached the spot just as soon as the son of the king had done. They ran towards each other, and stood together hand in hand in the vast church of nature and of poetry, while over them sounded the invisible holy bell: blessed spirits floated around them, and lifted up their voices in a rejoicing hallelujah!
==THE OLD HOUSE==
In the street, up there, was an old, a very old house—it was almost three hundred years old, for that might be known by reading the great beam on which the date of the year was carved: together with tulips and hop-binds there were whole verses spelled as in former times, and over every window was a distorted face cut out in the beam. The one story stood forward a great way over the other; and directly under the eaves was a leaden spout with a dragon's head; the rain-water should have run out of the mouth, but it ran out of the belly, for there was a hole in the spout.
All the other houses in the street were so new and so neat, with large window panes and smooth walls, one could easily see that they would have nothing to do with the old house: they certainly thought, “How long is that old decayed thing to stand here as a spectacle in the street? And then the projecting windows stand so far out, that no one can see from our windows what happens in that direction! The steps are as broad as those of a palace, and as high as to a church tower. The iron railings look just like the door to an old family vault, and then they have brass tops—that's so stupid!”
On the other side of the street were also new and neat houses, and they thought just as the others did; but at the window opposite the old house there sat a little boy with fresh rosy cheeks and bright beaming eyes: he certainly liked the old house best, and that both in sunshine and moonshine. And when he looked across at the wall where the mortar had fallen out, he could sit and find out there the strangest figures imaginable; exactly as the street had appeared before, with steps, projecting windows, and pointed gables; he could see soldiers with halberds, and spouts where the water ran, like dragons and serpents. That was a house to look at; and there lived an old man, who wore plush breeches; and he had a coat with large brass buttons, and a wig that one could see was a real wig. Every morning there came an old fellow to him who put his rooms in order, and went on errands; otherwise, the old man in the plush breeches was quite alone in the old house. Now and then he came to the window and looked out, and the little boy nodded to him, and the old man nodded again, and so they became acquaintances, and then they were friends, although they had never spoken to each other—but that made no difference. The little boy heard his parents say, “The old man opposite is very well off, but he is so very, very lonely!”
The Sunday following, the little boy took something, and wrapped it up in a piece of paper, went downstairs, and stood in the doorway; and when the man who went on errands came past, he said to him—
“I say, master! will you give this to the old man over the way from me? I have two pewter soldiers—this is one of them, and he shall have it, for I know he is so very, very lonely.”
And the old errand man looked quite pleased, nodded, and took the pewter soldier over to the old house. Afterwards there came a message; it was to ask if the little boy himself had not a wish to come over and pay a visit; and so he got permission of his parents, and then went over to the old house.
And the brass balls on the iron railings shone much brighter than ever; one would have thought they were polished on account of the visit; and it was as if the carved-out trumpeters—for there were trumpeters, who stood in tulips, carved out on the door—blew with all their might, their cheeks appeared so much rounder than before. Yes, they blew—“Trateratra! The little boy comes! Trateratra!”—and then the door opened.
The whole passage was hung with portraits of knights in armor, and ladies in silken gowns; and the armor rattled, and the silken gowns rustled! And then there was a flight of stairs which went a good way upwards, and a little way downwards, and then one came on a balcony which was in a very dilapidated state, sure enough, with large holes and long crevices, but grass grew there and leaves out of them altogether, for the whole balcony outside, the yard, and the walls, were overgrown with so much green stuff, that it looked like a garden; only a balcony. Here stood old flower-pots with faces and asses' ears, and the flowers grew just as they liked. One of the pots was quite overrun on all sides with pinks, that is to say, with the green part; shoot stood by shoot, and it said quite distinctly, “The air has cherished me, the sun has kissed me, and promised me a little flower on Sunday! a little flower on Sunday!”
And then they entered a chamber where the walls were covered with hog's leather, and printed with gold flowers.
 “The gilding decays,
 But hog's leather stays!”
 
said the walls.
And there stood easy-chairs, with such high backs, and so carved out, and with arms on both sides. “Sit down! sit down!” said they. “Ugh! how I creak; now I shall certainly get the gout, like the old clothespress, ugh!”
And then the little boy came into the room where the projecting windows were, and where the old man sat.
“I thank you for the pewter soldier, my little friend!” said the old man. “And I thank you because you come over to me.”
“Thankee! thankee!” or “cranky! cranky!” sounded from all the furniture; there was so much of it, that each article stood in the other's way, to get a look at the little boy.
In the middle of the wall hung a picture representing a beautiful lady, so young, so glad, but dressed quite as in former times, with clothes that stood quite stiff, and with powder in her hair; she neither said “thankee, thankee!” nor “cranky, cranky!” but looked with her mild eyes at the little boy, who directly asked the old man, “Where did you get her?”
“Yonder, at the broker's,” said the old man, “where there are so many pictures hanging. No one knows or cares about them, for they are all of them buried; but I knew her in by-gone days, and now she has been dead and gone these fifty years!”
Under the picture, in a glazed frame, there hung a bouquet of withered flowers; they were almost fifty years old; they looked so very old!
The pendulum of the great clock went to and fro, and the hands turned, and everything in the room became still older; but they did not observe it.
“They say at home,” said the little boy, “that you are so very, very lonely!”
“Oh!” said he. “The old thoughts, with what they may bring with them, come and visit me, and now you also come! I am very well off!”
Then he took a book with pictures in it down from the shelf; there were whole long processions and pageants, with the strangest characters, which one never sees now-a-days; soldiers like the knave of clubs, and citizens with waving flags: the tailors had theirs, with a pair of shears held by two lions—and the shoemakers theirs, without boots, but with an eagle that had two heads, for the shoemakers must have everything so that they can say, it is a pair! Yes, that was a picture book!
The old man now went into the other room to fetch preserves, apples, and nuts—yes, it was delightful over there in the old house.
“I cannot bear it any longer!” said the pewter soldier, who sat on the drawers. “It is so lonely and melancholy here! But when one has been in a family circle one cannot accustom oneself to this life! I cannot bear it any longer! The whole day is so long, and the evenings are still longer! Here it is not at all as it is over the way at your home, where your father and mother spoke so pleasantly, and where you and all your sweet children made such a delightful noise. Nay, how lonely the old man is—do you think that he gets kisses? Do you think he gets mild eyes, or a Christmas tree? He will get nothing but a grave! I can bear it no longer!”
“You must not let it grieve you so much,” said the little boy. “I find it so very delightful here, and then all the old thoughts, with what they may bring with them, they come and visit here.”
“Yes, it's all very well, but I see nothing of them, and I don't know them!” said the pewter soldier. “I cannot bear it!”
“But you must!” said the little boy.
Then in came the old man with the most pleased and happy face, the most delicious preserves, apples, and nuts, and so the little boy thought no more about the pewter soldier.
The little boy returned home happy and pleased, and weeks and days passed away, and nods were made to the old house, and from the old house, and then the little boy went over there again.
The carved trumpeters blew, “Trateratra! There is the little boy! Trateratra!” and the swords and armor on the knights' portraits rattled, and the silk gowns rustled; the hog's leather spoke, and the old chairs had the gout in their legs and rheumatism in their backs: Ugh! it was exactly like the first time, for over there one day and hour was just like another.
“I cannot bear it!” said the pewter soldier. “I have shed pewter tears! It is too melancholy! Rather let me go to the wars and lose arms and legs! It would at least be a change. I cannot bear it longer! Now, I know what it is to have a visit from one's old thoughts, with what they may bring with them! I have had a visit from mine, and you may be sure it is no pleasant thing in the end; I was at last about to jump down from the drawers.
“I saw you all over there at home so distinctly, as if you really were here; it was again that Sunday morning; all you children stood before the table and sung your Psalms, as you do every morning. You stood devoutly with folded hands; and father and mother were just as pious; and then the door was opened, and little sister Mary, who is not two years old yet, and who always dances when she hears music or singing, of whatever kind it may be, was put into the room—though she ought not to have been there—and then she began to dance, but could not keep time, because the tones were so long; and then she stood, first on the one leg, and bent her head forwards, and then on the other leg, and bent her head forwards—but all would not do. You stood very seriously all together, although it was difficult enough; but I laughed to myself, and then I fell off the table, and got a bump, which I have still—for it was not right of me to laugh. But the whole now passes before me again in thought, and everything that I have lived to see; and these are the old thoughts, with what they may bring with them.
“Tell me if you still sing on Sundays? Tell me something about little Mary! And how my comrade, the other pewter soldier, lives! Yes, he is happy enough, that's sure! I cannot bear it any longer!”
“You are given away as a present!” said the little boy. “You must remain. Can you not understand that?”
The old man now came with a drawer, in which there was much to be seen, both “tin boxes” and “balsam boxes,” old cards, so large and so gilded, such as one never sees them now. And several drawers were opened, and the piano was opened; it had landscapes on the inside of the lid, and it was so hoarse when the old man played on it! and then he hummed a song.
“Yes, she could sing that!” said he, and nodded to the portrait, which he had bought at the broker's, and the old man's eyes shone so bright!
“I will go to the wars! I will go to the wars!” shouted the pewter soldier as loud as he could, and threw himself off the drawers right down on the floor. What became of him? The old man sought, and the little boy sought; he was away, and he stayed away.
“I shall find him!” said the old man; but he never found him. The floor was too open—the pewter soldier had fallen through a crevice, and there he lay as in an open tomb.
That day passed, and the little boy went home, and that week passed, and several weeks too. The windows were quite frozen, the little boy was obliged to sit and breathe on them to get a peep-hole over to the old house, and there the snow had been blown into all the carved work and inscriptions; it lay quite up over the steps, just as if there was no one at home—nor was there any one at home—the old man was dead!
In the evening there was a hearse seen before the door, and he was borne into it in his coffin: he was now to go out into the country, to lie in his grave. He was driven out there, but no one followed; all his friends were dead, and the little boy kissed his hand to the coffin as it was driven away.
Some days afterwards there was an auction at the old house, and the little boy saw from his window how they carried the old knights and the old ladies away, the flower-pots with the long ears, the old chairs, and the old clothes-presses. Something came here, and something came there; the portrait of her who had been found at the broker's came to the broker's again; and there it hung, for no one knew her more—no one cared about the old picture.
In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it was a ruin. One could see from the street right into the room with the hog's-leather hanging, which was slashed and torn; and the green grass and leaves about the balcony hung quite wild about the falling beams. And then it was put to rights.
“That was a relief,” said the neighboring houses.
A fine house was built there, with large windows, and smooth white walls; but before it, where the old house had in fact stood, was a little garden laid out, and a wild grapevine ran up the wall of the neighboring house. Before the garden there was a large iron railing with an iron door, it looked quite splendid, and people stood still and peeped in, and the sparrows hung by scores in the vine, and chattered away at each other as well as they could, but it was not about the old house, for they could not remember it, so many years had passed—so many that the little boy had grown up to a whole man, yes, a clever man, and a pleasure to his parents; and he had just been married, and, together with his little wife, had come to live in the house here, where the garden was; and he stood by her there whilst she planted a field-flower that she found so pretty; she planted it with her little hand, and pressed the earth around it with her fingers. Oh! what was that? She had stuck herself. There sat something pointed, straight out of the soft mould.
It was—yes, guess! It was the pewter soldier, he that was lost up at the old man's, and had tumbled and turned about amongst the timber and the rubbish, and had at last laid for many years in the ground.
The young wife wiped the dirt off the soldier, first with a green leaf, and then with her fine handkerchief—it had such a delightful smell, that it was to the pewter soldier just as if he had awaked from a trance.
“Let me see him,” said the young man. He laughed, and then shook his head. “Nay, it cannot be he; but he reminds me of a story about a pewter soldier which I had when I was a little boy!” And then he told his wife about the old house, and the old man, and about the pewter soldier that he sent over to him because he was so very, very lonely; and he told it as correctly as it had really been, so that the tears came into the eyes of his young wife, on account of the old house and the old man.
“It may possibly be, however, that it is the same pewter soldier!” said she. “I will take care of it, and remember all that you have told me; but you must show me the old man's grave!”
“But I do not know it,” said he, “and no one knows it! All his friends were dead, no one took care of it, and I was then a little boy!”
“How very, very lonely he must have been!” said she.
“Very, very lonely!” said the pewter soldier. “But it is delightful not to be forgotten!”
“Delightful!” shouted something close by; but no one, except the pewter soldier, saw that it was a piece of the hog's-leather hangings; it had lost all its gilding, it looked like a piece of wet clay, but it had an opinion, and it gave it:
 “The gilding decays,
 But hog's leather stays!”
 
This the pewter soldier did not believe.
She clung to his arm. She had no words. Never again was she to hear the chimes without that poignant memory of her father begging her to remember the best—.
"I have been thinking," he said, out of a long silence, "of you and Derry. I—I want you to marry him, dear, before I go."
"Before you go—Daddy—"
"Yes. Emily says I have no right to stand in the way of your happiness. And I have no right. And some day, perhaps, oh, my little Jean, my grandchildren may hear the chimes—"
White and still, she stood with her face upturned to the stars. "Life is so wonderful, Daddy."
And this time she said it out of a woman's knowledge of what life was to mean.
They went in, to find that the Connollys had retired. Jean slept in a great feather-bed. And all the night the chimes in the College tower struck the hours—
In the morning, Jean went over to the church with Mrs. Connolly. It was Saturday, and things must be made ready for the services the next day. Jean had been taught as a child to kneel reverently while Mrs. Connolly prayed. To sit quietly in a pew while her good friend did the little offices of the altar.
Jean had always loved to sit there, to wonder about the rows of candles and the crucifix, to wonder about the Sacred Heart, and St. Agnes with the lamb, and St. Anthony who found things when you lost them, and St. Francis in the brown frock with the rope about his waist, and why Mrs. Connolly never touched any of the sacred vessels with bare hands.
But most of all she had wondered about that benignant figure in the pale blue garments who stood in a niche, with a light burning at her feet, and with a baby in her arms.
Mary—
Faintly as she gazed upon it on this winter morning, Jean began to perceive the meaning of that figure. Of late many women had said to her, "Was my son born for this, to be torn from my arms—to be butchered?"
Well, Mary's son had been torn from her arms—butchered—her little son who had lain in a manger and whom she had loved as much as any less-worshipped mother,—and he had told the world what he thought of sin and injustice and cruelty, and the world had hated him because he had set himself against these things—and they had killed him, and from his death had come the regeneration of mankind.
And now, other men, following him, were setting themselves against injustice and cruelty, and they were being killed for it. But perhaps their sacrifices, too, would be for the salvation of the world. Oh, if only it might be for the world's salvation!
She walked quite soberly beside Mrs. Connolly back to the house. She took her knitting to the kitchen. Mrs. Connolly was knitting socks. "I don't mind the fighting as much as I do the chance of their taking cold. And I'm afraid they won't have the sense to change their socks when they are wet. I have sent them pairs and pairs—but they'll never know enough to change—
"It is funny how a mother worries about a thing like that," she continued. "I suppose it is because you've always worried about their taking cold, and you've never had to worry much about their being killed. I always used to put them to bed with hot drinks and hot baths, and a lot of blankets, and I keep thinking that there won't be anybody to put them to bed."
Jean knitted a long row, and then she spoke. "Mrs. Connolly, I'm going to be married, before Daddy leaves for France."
"I am happy to hear that, my dear."
"I didn't know it until last night—Daddy wasn't willing. I—I feel as if it couldn't be really true—that I am going to be married, Mrs. Connolly."
There was a tremble of her lip and clasping of her little hands.
Mary Connolly laid down her work. "I guess you miss your mother, blessed lamb. I remember when she was married. I was young, too, but I felt a lot older with my two babies, and Jim and I were so glad the Doctor had found a wife. He needed one, if ever a man did—for he liked his gay good time."
"Daddy?" said Jean, incredulously. It is hard for youth to visualize the adolescence of its elders. Dr. McKenzie's daughter beheld in him none of the elements of a Lothario. He was beyond the pale of romance! He was fifty, which settled at once all matters of sentiment!
"Indeed, he was gay, my dear, and he had broken half the hearts in the county, and then your mother came for a visit. She didn't look in the least like you, except that she was small and slender. Her hair was dark and her eyes. You have your father's eyes and hair.
"But she was so pretty and so loving—and you never saw such a honeymoon. They were married in the spring, and the orchards were in bloom, and your father filled her room with apple blossoms, and the first day when Jim drove them up from the station, your father carried her in his arms over the threshold and up into that room, and when she came down, she said, 'Mary Connolly, isn't life—wonderful?'"
"Did she say that, Mrs. Connolly, really? Daddy always teases me when I go into raptures. He says that I think everything is wonderful from a sunset to a chocolate soda."
"Well, she did, too. Her husband was the most wonderful man, and her baby was the most wonderful baby—and her house was the most wonderful house. You make me think of her in every way. But you won't have apple blossoms for your honeymoon, my dear."
"No. But, oh, Mrs. Connolly—it won't make any real difference."
"Not a bit. And if you'll come up here, Jim and I will promise not to be in the way. Your mother said we were never in the way. And I'll serve your meals in front of the sitting-room fire. They used to have theirs out of doors. But you'll be just as much alone, with me and Jim eating in the kitchen."
It was very easy after that to tell Mrs. Connolly all about it. About Derry, and how he had fallen in love with her when he had thought she was just the girl in the Toy Shop. But there were things which she did not tell, of the shabby old gentleman and of the shadow which had darkened Derry's life.
Then when she had finished, Mary Connolly asked the thing which everybody asked—"Why isn't he fighting?"
Jean flushed. "He—he made a promise to his mother."
"I'd never make my boys promise a thing like that. And if I did, I'd hope they'd break it."
"Break it?" tensely.
"Of course. Their honor's bigger than anything I could ever ask them. And they know it."
"Then you think that Derry ought to break his promise?"
"I do, indeed, my dear."
"But—. Oh, Mrs. Connolly, I don't know whether I want him to break it."
"Why not?"
With her face hidden. "I don't know whether I could let him—go."
"You'd let him go. Never fear. When the moment came, the good Lord would give you strength—"
There were steps outside. Jean leaned over and kissed Mary Connolly on the cheek. "You are such a darling—I don't wonder that my mother loved you."
"Well, you'll always be more than just yourself to me," said Mary. "You'll always be your mother's baby. And after I get lunch for you and the men I am going back to the church and ask the blessed Virgin to intercede for your happiness."
So it was while Mary was at church, and the two men had gone to town upon some legal matter, that Jean, left alone, wandered through the house, and always before her flitted the happy ghost of the girl who had come there to spend her honeymoon. In the great south chamber was a picture of her mother, and one of her father as they looked at the time of their marriage. Her mother was in organdie with great balloon sleeves, and her hair in a Psyche knot. She was a slender little thing, and the young doctor's picture was a great contrast in its blondness and bigness. Daddy had worn a beard then, pointed, as was the way with doctors of his day, and he looked very different, except for the eyes which had the same teasing twinkle.
The window of this room looked out over the orchard, the orchard which had been bursting with bloom when the bride came. The trees now were slim little skeletons, with the faint gold of the western sky back of them, and there was much snow. Yet so vivid was Jean's impression of what had been, that she would have sworn her nostrils were assailed by a delicate fragrance, that her eyes beheld wind-blown petals of white and pink.
The long mirror reflecting her showed her in her straight frock of dark blue serge, with the white collars and cuffs. The same mirror had reflected her mother's organdie. It, too, had been blue, Mary had told her, but blue with such a difference! A faint forget-me-not shade, with a satin girdle, and a stiff satin collar!
Two girls, with a quarter of a century between them. Yet the mother had laughed and loved, and had looked forward to a long life with her gay big husband. They had had ten years of it, and then there had been just her ghost to haunt the old rooms.
Jean shivered a little as she went downstairs. She found herself a little afraid of the lonely darkening house. She wished that Mary would come.
Curled up in one of the big chairs, she waited. Half-asleep and half-awake; she was aware of shadow-shapes which came and went. Her Scotch great-grandfather, the little Irish great-grandmother; her copper-headed grandfather, his English wife, her own mother, pale and dark-haired and of Huguenot strain, her own dear father.
From each of these something had been given her, some fault, some virtue. If any of them had been brave, there must have been handed down to her some bit of bravery—if any of them had been cowards—
But none of them had been cowards.
"We came to a new country," said the great-grandparents. "There were hardships, but we loved and lived through them—"
"The Civil war tore our hearts," said the grand-parents. "Brother hated brother, and friend hated friend, but we loved and lived through it—"
"We were not tested," said her own parents. "You are our child and test has come to you. If you are brave, it will be because we have given to you that which came first to us—"
Jean sat up, wide-awake—"I am not brave," she said.
She stood, after that, at a lower window, watching. Far down the road a big black motor flew straight as a crow towards the hill on which the Doctor's house stood. It stopped at the gate. A man stepped out. Jean gave a gasp, then flew to meet him.
"Oh, Derry, Derry—"
He came in and shut the door behind him, took her in his arms, kissed her, and kissed her again. "I love you," he said, "I love you. I couldn't stay away—"
It seemed to Jean quite the most wonderful thing of all the wonderful things that had happened, that he should be here in this old house where her parents had come for their honeymoon—where her own honeymoon was so soon to be—.
She saved that news for him, however. He had to tell her first of how he had taken the wrong road after he had left Baltimore. He had gone without his lunch to get to her quickly. No, he wasn't hungry, and he was glad Mary Connolly was out, "I've so much to say to you."
Then, too, she delayed the telling so that he might see the farm before darkness fell. She wrapped herself in a hooded red cloak in which he thought her more than ever adorable.
The sun rested on the rim of the world, a golden disk under a wind-blown sky. It was very cold, but she was warm in her red cloak, he in his fur-lined coat and cap.
She told him about her father's honeymoon, hugging her own secret close. "They came here, Derry, and it was in May. I wish you could see the place in May, with all the appleblooms.
"It seems queer, doesn't it, Derry, to think of father honeymooning. He always seems to be making fun of things, and one should be serious on a honeymoon."
She flashed a smile at him and he smiled back. "I shall be very serious on mine."
"Of course. Derry, wouldn't you like a honeymoon here?"
"I should like it anywhere—with you—"
"Well," she drew a deep breath, "Daddy says we may—"
"We may what, Jean-Joan?"
"Get married—"
"Before he goes?"
"Yes."
She leaned forward to get the full effect of his surprise, to watch the dawn of his delight.
But something else dawned. Embarrassment? Out of a bewildering silence she heard him say, "I am not sure, dear, that it will be best for us to marry before he goes."
She had a stunned feeling that, quite unaccountably, Derry was failing her. A shamed feeling that she had offered herself and had been rejected.
Something of this showed in her face. "My dear, my dear," he said, "let us go in. I can tell you better there."
Once more in the warm sitting room with the door shut behind them, he lifted her bodily in his arms. "Don't you know I want it," he whispered, tensely. "Tell me that you know—"
When he set her down, his own face showed the stress of his emotion. "You are always to remember this," he said, "that no matter what happens, I am yours, yours—always, till the end of time."
Instinctively she felt that this Derry was in some way different from the Derry she had left the day before. There was a hint of masterfulness, a touch of decision.
"Will you remember?" he repeated, hands tight on her shoulders.
"Yes," she said, simply.
He bent and kissed her. "Then nothing else will matter." He placed a big chair for her in front of the fire, and drew another up in front of it. Bending forward, he took her hands. "I am glad I found you alone. What luck it was to find you alone!"
He tried then to tell her what he had come to tell. Yet, after all there was much that he left unsaid. How could he speak to her of the things he had seen in his father's shadowed house? How fill that delicate mind with a knowledge of that which seemed even to his greater sophistication unspeakable?
So she wondered over several matters. "How can he want to marry Hilda? I can't imagine any man wanting Hilda."
"She is handsome in a big fine way."
"But she is not big and fine. She is little and mean, but I could never make Daddy see it."
He wondered if McKenzie would see it now.
Mary Connolly, coming in through the back door to her warm kitchen, heard voices. Standing in the dark hall which connected the left wing with the house, she could see through into the living room where Jean sat with her lover.
There was much dark wood and the worn red velvet—low bookshelves lining the walls, a grand piano on a cover by the window. In the dimness Jean's copper head shone like the halo of a saint. Mary decided that Derry was "queer-looking," until gathering courage, she went in and was warmed by his smile.
"He hasn't had any lunch, Mary," Jean told her, "and he wouldn't let me get any for him."
"I'll have something in three whisks of a lamb's tail," said Mary with Elizabethan picturesqueness, and away she went on her hospitable mission.
"Marrying just now," said Derry, picking up the subject, where he had dropped it, when Mary came in, "is out of the question."
"Did you think that I was marrying you for your money?"
"No. But two months' pay wouldn't buy a gown like this,"—he lifted a fold with his forefinger—"to say nothing of your little shoes." He dropped his light tone. "Oh, my dear, can't you see?"
"No. I can't see. Daddy would let us have this house, and I have a little money of my own from my mother, and—and the Connollys would take care of everything, and we should see the spring come, and the summer."
He rose and went and stood with his back to the fire. "But I shan't be here in the spring and summer."
She clasped her hands nervously. "Derry, I don't want you to go."
"You don't mean that."
"I do. I do. At least not yet. We can be married—and have just a little, little month or two—and then I'll let you go—truly."
He shook his head. "I've stayed out of it long enough. You wouldn't want me to stay out of it any longer, Jean-Joan."
"Yes, I should. Other men can go, but I want to keep you—it's bad enough to give—Daddy—. I haven't anybody. Mary Connolly has her husband, but I haven't anybody—" her voice broke—and broke again—.
He came over and knelt beside her. "Let me tell you something," he said. "Do you remember the night of the Witherspoon dinner? Well, that night you cut me dead because you thought I was a coward—and I thanked God for the women who hated cowards."
"But you weren't a coward."
"I know, and so I could stand it—could stand your scorn and the scorn of the world. But what if I stayed out of it now, Jean?
"What if I stayed out of it now? You and I could have our little moment of happiness, while other men fought that we might have it. We should be living in Paradise, while other men were in Hell. I can't see it, dearest. All these months I have been bound. But now, my dear, my dear, do you love me enough not to keep me, but to let me go?"
There was a beating pause. She lifted wet eyes. "Oh, Derry, darling, I love you enough—I love you—"
Thus, in a moment, little Jean McKenzie unlatched the gate which had shut her into the safe and sunshiny garden of pampered girlhood and came out upon the broad highway of life, where men and women suffer for the sake of those who travel with them, sharing burdens and gaining strength as they go.
Dimly, perhaps, she perceived what she had done, but it was not given to her to know the things she would encounter or the people she would meet. All the world was to adventure with her, throughout the years, the poor distracted world, dealing death and destruction, yet dreaming ever of still waters and green pastures.
=== HILDA SHAKES A TREE ===
When Dr. McKenzie and Jim Connolly arrived, Derry said apologetically as he shook hands with the Doctor, "You see, you can't get rid of me—but I have such a lot of things to talk over with you."
It was after Jean had gone to bed, however, that they had their talk, and before that Derry and Jean had walked in the moonlight and had listened to the chimes.
There had, perhaps, never been such a moon. It hung in a sky that shimmered from horizon to horizon. Against this shimmering background the college buildings were etched in black—there was a glint of gold as the light caught the icicles and made candles of them.
In the months to come that same moon was to sail over the cantonment where Derry slept heavily after hard days. It was to sail over the trenches of France, where, perhaps, he slept not at all, or slept uneasily in the midst of mud and vermin. But always when he looked up at it, he was to see the Cross on the top of the College, and to hear the chimes.
They talked that night of the things that were deep in their hearts. She wanted him to go—yes, she wanted him to go, but she was afraid.
"If something should happen to you, Derry."
"Sometimes I wonder," he said, in his grave, young voice, "why we are so—afraid. I think we have the wrong focus. We want life, even if it brings unhappiness, even if it brings suffering, even if it brings disgrace. Anything seems better than to—die—"
"But to have things stop, Derry." She shuddered. "When there's so much ahead."
"Perhaps they don't stop, dear."
"If I could only believe that—"
"Why not? Do you remember 'Sherwood,' where Blondin rides through the forest singing:
'"Death, what is death?" he cried,
"I must ride on—"'"
His face was lifted to the golden sky. She was never to forget the look upon it. And with a great ache and throb of passionate renunciation, she told herself that it was for this that the men of her generation had been born, that they might fight against the powers of darkness for the things of the spirit.
She lay awake a long time that night, thinking it out. Of how she had laughed at other women, scolded, said awful things to them of how their cowardice was holding the world back. She had thought she understood, but she had not understood. It was giving your own—your own, which was the test. Oh, let those who had none of their own to give keep silent.
With her breath almost stopping she thought of those glorious young souls riding on and on through infinite space, the banner of victory floating above them. No matter what might come to the world of defeat or of disaster, these souls would never know it, they had given themselves in the cause of humanity—for them there would always be the sound of silver trumpets, the clash of cymbals, the song of triumph!
Downstairs, Dr. McKenzie was listening with a frowning face to what Derry had to tell him.
"Do you mean to say that Hilda was giving him—wine?"
"Yes. Bronson told me. But he didn't want you to depend upon his unsupported testimony. So we fixed up a scheme, and I stayed outside until he flashed a light for me; and then I went in and caught her."
"It is incredible. Why should she do such a thing? She has always been a perfect nurse—a perfect nurse, Drake." He rose and walked the floor. "But deliberately to disobey my orders—what could have been her object?"
Derry hesitated.
"I haven't told you the worst."
Doctor McKenzie stopped in front of him. "The worst?"
"Dad is going to marry her."
"What?"
Derry repeated what he had said.
The Doctor dropped into a chair. "Who told you?"
"Dad."
"And she admitted that it was—true?"
"Yes."
Derry gave the facts. "He wasn't himself, of course, but that doesn't change things for me."
The Doctor in the practice of his profession had learned to conceal his emotions. He concealed now what he was feeling, but a close observer might have seen in the fading of the color in his cheeks, the beating of his clenched fist on the arm of his chair, something of that which was stirring within him.
"And this has been going on ever since she went there. She has had it in mind to wear your mother's jewels—" Derry had graphically described Bronson's watch on the stairs—"to get your father's money. I knew she was cold-blooded, but I had always thought it a rather admirable quality in a woman of her attractive type."
Before his eye came the vision of Hilda's attractiveness by his fireside, at his table. And now she would sit by the General's fire, at his table.
"She didn't say a word," Derry's young voice went on, "when he told me that I was no longer—his son. I can't tell you how I felt about her. I've never felt that way about anyone before. I've always liked people—but it was as if some evil thing had swooped down on the old house."
The lad saw straight! That was the thought which suddenly illumined Dr. McKenzie's troubled mind. Hilda was not beautiful. So beauty of body could offset the ugliness of her distorted soul.
"And so I am poor," Derry was saying, heavily, "and I must wait to marry Jean."
The red surged up in the Doctor's face. He jerked himself forward in his chair. "You shall not wait. After this you are my son, if you are not your father's."
He laid his hand on Derry's shoulder. "I've money enough, God knows. And I shan't need it. It isn't a fortune, but it is enough to make all of us comfortable for the rest of our days—and I want Jean to be happy. Do you think I am going to let Hilda Merritt stand between my child and happiness?"
"It's awfully good of you, sir," Derry's voice was husky with feeling, "but—"
"There are no 'buts.' You must let me have my own way; I shall consider it a patriotic privilege to support one soldier and his little wife."
He was riding above the situation splendidly. He even had visions of straightening things out. "When I go back I shall tell Hilda what I think of her, I shall tell her that it is preposterous—that her professional reputation is at stake."
"What will she care for her professional reputation when she is my father's wife?"
The thought of Hilda with the world, in a sense, at her feet was maddening. The Doctor paced the floor roaring like an angry lion. "It may not do any good, but I've got to tell her what I think of her."
Derry had a whimsical sense of the meeting of the white cat and this leonine gentleman—would she purr or scratch?
"The sooner you and Jean are married the better. If Hilda thinks she is going to keep you and Jean apart she is mistaken."
"Oh—did she know of the engagement?"
"Yes," the Doctor confessed. "I told her the other day when she came to fix the books."
"Then that accounts for it."
"For what?"
"Dad's attitude. I thought it was queer he should fly up all in a moment. She wanted to make trouble, Doctor, and she has made it."
Long after Derry had gone to bed, the Doctor sat there pondering on Hilda's treachery. He was in some ways a simple man—swayed by the impulse of the moment. The thought of deliberate plotting was abhorrent. In his light way he had taken her lightly. He had laughed at her. He had teased Jean, he had teased Emily, calling their intuition jealousy. Yet they had known better than he. And why should not women know women better than men know them? Just as men know men in a way that women could never know. Sex erected barriers—there was always the instinct to charm, to don one's gayest plumage; even Hilda's frankness had been used as a lure; she knew he liked it. Would she have been so frank if she had not felt its stimulus to a man of his type? And, after all, had she really been frank?
Such a woman was like a poisonous weed; and he had thought she might bloom in the same garden with Jean—until Emily had told him.
He turned to the thought of Emily with relief. Thank God he could leave Jean in her care. If Derry went, there would still be Emily with her sweet sanity, and her wise counsels.
He felt very old as he went upstairs. He stood for a long time in front of his wife's picture. How sweet she had been in her forget-me-not gown—how little and tender! Their love had burned in a white flame—there would never be anything like that for him again.
He waked in the morning, however, ready for all that was before him. He was a man who dwelt little on the past. There was always the day's work, and the work of the day after.
His appetite for the work of the coming day was, it must be confessed, whetted somewhat by the thought of what he would say to Hilda.
They had an early breakfast, with Jean between her father and Derry and eating nothing for very happiness.
There was the start in the opal light of the early morning, with a faint rose sky making a background for the cross on the College, and the chimes saying "Seven o'clock."
Jim and Mary Connolly came out in the biting air to see them off. Then Mary went over to the church to pray for Jean and Derry. But first of all she prayed for her sons.
The Doctor, arriving at his office, at once called up Hilda.
"I must see you as soon as possible."
"What has Derry Drake been telling you?"
"How do you know that he has told me anything?"
"By your voice. And you needn't think that you are going to scold me."
"I shall scold you for disobeying orders. I thought you were to be trusted, Hilda."
"I am not a saint. You know that. And I am not sure that I want you to come. I shall send you away if you scold."
She hung up the receiver and left him fuming. Her high-handed indifference to his authority sent him storming to Derry, "I've half a mind to stay away."
"I think I would. It won't do any good to go—"
But the Doctor went. He still hoped, optimistically, that Hilda might be induced to see the error of her ways.
She received him in the blue room, where the General's precious porcelain was set forth in cabinets. It was a choice little room which had been used by Mrs. Drake for the reception of special guests. Hilda was in her uniform, but without her cap. It was as if in doffing her cap, she struck her first note of independence against the Doctor's rule.
He began professionally. "Doctor Bryer telephoned this morning that his attendance of the case had been only during my absence. That he did not care to keep it unless I definitely intended to withdraw. I told him to go ahead. I told him also that you were a good nurse. I had to whitewash my conscience a bit to say it, Hilda—"
Her head went up. "I am a good nurse. But I am more than a nurse, I am a woman. Oh, I know you are blaming me for what you think I have done. But if you stood under a tree and a great ripe peach hung just out of your reach, could you be blamed for shaking the tree? Well, I shook the tree."
She was very handsome as she gave her defense with flashing eyes.
"The General asked me to marry him, and that's more than you would ever have done. You liked to think that I was half in love with you. You liked to pretend that you were half in love with me. But would you ever have offered me ease and rest from hard work? Would you ever have thought that I might some day be your daughter's equal in your home? Oh, I have wanted good times. I used to sit night after night alone in the office while you and Jean went out and did the things I was dying to do. I wanted to go to dances and to the theater and to supper with a gay crowd. But you never seemed to think of it. I am young and I want pretty clothes—yet you thought I was satisfied to have you come home and say a few careless pleasant words, and to tease me a little. That was all you ever did for me—all you ever wanted.
"But the General wants more than that. He wants me here in the big house, to be his wife, and to meet his friends. He had a man come up the other day with a lot of rings, and he bought me this." She showed the great diamonds flashing on her third finger. "I have always wanted a ring like this, and now I can have as many as I want. Do you blame me for shaking the tree?"
He sat, listening, spellbound to her sophistry. But was it sophistry? Wasn't some of it true? He saw her for the first time as a woman wanting things like other women.
She swept out her hand to include the contents of the little room. "I have always longed for a place like this. I don't know a thing about china. But I know that all that stuff in the cabinet cost a fortune. And it's a pretty room, and some day when I am the General's wife, I'll ask you here to take tea with me, and I'll wear a silver gown like your daughter wears, and I think you'll be surprised to see that I can do it well."
He flung up his hand. "I can't argue it, Hilda. I can't analyze it. But it is all wrong. In all the years that you worked for me, while I laughed at you, I respected you. But I don't respect you now."
She shrugged. "Do you think I care? And a man's respect after all is rather a cold thing, isn't it? But I am sorry you feel as you do about it. I should have been glad to have you wish me happiness."
"Happiness—" His anger seemed to die suddenly. "You won't find happiness, Hilda, if you separate a son from his father."
"Did he tell you that? I had nothing to do with it. His father was angry at his—interference."
He stood up. "We won't discuss it. But you may tell him this. That I am glad his son is poor, for my daughter will marry now the man and not his money."
"Then he will marry her?"
"Yes. On Christmas Day."
She wished that she might tell him the date of her own wedding, but she did not know it. The General seemed in no hurry. He had carefully observed the conventions; had hired a housekeeper and a maid, and there was, of course, the day nurse. Having thus surrounded his betrothed with a sort of feminine bodyguard, he spoke of the wedding as happening in the spring. And he was hard to move. As has been said, the General had once commanded a brigade. He was immensely entertained and fascinated by the lady who was to be his wife. But he was not to be managed by her. She found herself, as he grew stronger, quite strangely deferring to his wishes. She found herself, indeed, rather unexpectedly dominated.
She came back to the Doctor. "Aren't you going to wish me happiness?"
"No. How can I, Hilda?"
After he had left her, she stood very still in the middle of the room. She could still see him as he had towered above her—his crinkled hair waving back from his handsome head. She had always liked the youth of him and his laughter and his boyish fun.
The rich man upstairs was—old—.
=== THE VISION OF BRAVE WOMEN ===
And now the Tin Soldier was to go to the wars!
Derry, swinging downtown, found himself gazing squarely into the eyes of the khaki-clad men whom he met. He was one of them at last!
He was on his way to meet Jean. The day before they had gone to church together. They had heard burning words from a fearless pulpit. The old man who had preached had set no limits on his patriotism. The cause of the Allies was the cause of humanity, the cause of humanity was the cause of Christ. He would have had the marching hymn of the Americans "Onward, Christian Soldiers." His Master was not a shrinking idealist, but a prophet unafraid. "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!… It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of Judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto Heaven, shall be brought down to hell …"
"I am too old to go myself," the old man had said, "but I have sent my sons. In the face of the world's need, no man has a right to hold another back. Personal considerations which might once have seemed sufficient must now be set aside. Things are at stake which involve not only the honor of a nation but the honor of the individual. To call a man a coward in the old days was to challenge his physical courage. To know him as a slacker in these modern times is to doubt the quality of his mind and spirit. 'I pray thee have me excused' is the word of one lost to the high meanings of justice—of love and loyalty and liberty—"
Stirring words. The lovers had thrilled to them. Derry's hand had gone out to Jean and her own hand clasped it. Together they saw the vision of his going forth, a shining knight, girded for the battle by a beloved woman—saw it through the glamour of high hopes and youthful ardor!
A troop of cavalry on the Avenue! Jackies in saucer caps, infantry, artillery, aviation! Blue and red and green cords about wide-brimmed hats. Husky young Westerners, slim young Southerners, square-chinned young Northerners—a great brotherhood, their faces set one way—and he was to share their hardships, to be cold and hungry with the best of them, wet and dirty with the worst. It would be a sort of glorified penance for his delay in doing the thing which too long he had left undone.
He was to have lunch with Jean in the House restaurant—he was a little early, and as he loitered through the Capitol grounds, in his ears there was the echo of fairy trumpets—"trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt—"
The old Capitol had always been for Derry a place of dreams. He loved every inch of it. The sunset view of the city from the west front; the bronze doors on the east, the labyrinthine maze of the corridors; the tesselated floors, the mottled marble of the balustrades; the hushed approach to the Supreme Court; the precipitous descent into the galleries of House and Senate, the rap of the Speaker's gavel—the rattle of argument as political foes contended in the legislative arena; the more subdued squabbles on the Senate floor; the savory smell of food rising from the restaurants in the lower regions; the climb to the dome, the look of the sky when one came out at the top; Statuary Hall and its awesome echoes; the Rotunda with its fringe of tired tourists, its frescoed frieze—Columbus, Cortez, Penn, Pizarro—; the mammoth paintings—Pocahontas, and the Pilgrims, De Soto, and the Surrender of Cornwallis, the Signing of the Declaration, and Washington's Resignation as Commander-in-Chief—Indian and Quaker, Puritan and Cavalier—these were some of the things which had ravished the eyes of the boy Derry in the days when his father had come to the Capitol to hobnob with old cronies, and his son had been allowed to roam at will.
But above and beyond everything else, there were the great mural paintings on the west wall of the House side, above the grand marble staircase.
"Westward the Course of Empire takes its way—!"
Oh, those pioneers with their faces turned towards the Golden West! The tired women and the bronzed men! Not one of them without that eager look of hope, of a dream realized as the land of Promise looms ahead!
Derry had often talked that picture over with his mother. "It was such men, Derry, who made our country—men unafraid—North, South, East and West, it was these who helped to shape the Nation's destiny, as we must help to shape it for those who come after us."
It was in front of this picture that he was to meet Jean. He had wanted to share with her the inspiration of it.
She was late, and he waited, leaning on the marble rail which overlooked the stairway. People were going up and down passing the picture, but not seeing it, their pulses calm, their blood cold. The doors of the elevators opened and shut, women came and went in velvet and fur, laughing. Men followed them, laughing, and the picture was not for them.
Derry wondered if it were symbolic, this indifference of the crowd. Was the world's pageant of horrors and of heroism thus unseen by the eyes of the unthinking?
And now Jean ascended, the top of her hat first—a blur of gray, then the red of the rose that he had sent her, a wave of her gray muff as she saw him. He went down to meet her, and stood with her on the landing. Beneath the painting, on one side, ran the inscription, "No pent up Utica confines our powers, but the boundless Continent is ours," on the other side, "The Spirit moves in its allotted space; the mind is narrow in a narrow sphere."
Thousands of men and women came and went and never read those words. But boys read them, sitting on the stairs or leaning over the rail—and their minds were carried on and on. Old men, coming back after years to read them again, could testify what the words had meant to them in the field of high endeavor.
Jean had seen the painting many times, but now, standing on the upper gallery floor with Derry, it took on new meanings. She saw a girl with hope in her eyes, a young mother with a babe at her breast; homely middle-aged women redeemed from the commonplace by that long gaze ahead of them; old women straining towards that sunset glow. She saw, indeed, the Vision of Brave Women. "If it could only be like that for me, Derry. Do you see—they go with their husbands, those women, and I must stay behind."
"You will go with me, beloved, in spirit—"
They fell into silence before the limitless vista.
And now more people were coming up the stairs, a drawling, familiar voice—Alma Drew on the landing below. With her a tall young man. She was turning on him all her batteries of charm.
Alma passed the picture and did not look at it, she passed the lovers and did not see them. And she was saying as she passed, "I don't know why any man should be expected to fight. I shouldn't if I were a man."
Jean drew a long breath. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Jean McKenzie."
Derry laughed. "You were never like that. Not for the least minute. You were afraid for the man you loved. It isn't fear with Alma."
But the thought of Alma did not trouble them long. There was too much else in their world today. As they walked through the historic halls, they had with them all the romance of the past—and so Robert Fulton with his boats, Père Marquette with his cross and beads, Frances Willard in her strange old-fashioned dress spoke to them of the dreams which certain inspired men and women have translated into action.
They talked of these things while they ate their lunch. The black waiter, who knew Derry, hovered about them. His freedom, too, had been the culmination of a dream.
"Men laugh at the dreamers," Derry said, "then honor them after they are dead."
"That's the cruelty, the sadness of it, isn't it?"
"Not to the dreamer. Do you think that Père Marquette cared for what smaller minds might think, or Frances Willard? They had their vision backed by a great faith in the rightness of things, and so Marquette followed the river and planted the cross, and Frances Willard blazed the way for the thing which has come to pass."
After lunch they motored to Drusilla's. They used one of Dr. McKenzie's cars. Derry had ceased to draw upon his father's establishment for anything. He lived at the club, and met his expenses with the small balance which remained to his credit in the bank.
"You can give Jean whatever you think best," he told the Doctor, "but I shall try to live on what I have until I go, and then on my pay."
"Your pay, my dear boy, will just about equal what you now spend in tips."
"I think I shall like it. It's an adventure for rich men when they have to be poor. That's why a lot of fellows have gone into it. They are tired of being the last word in civilization. They want to get down to primitive things."
"Mrs. Witherspoon can't imagine Derry Drake without two baths a day."
"Can't she? Well, Mrs. Witherspoon may find that Derry Drake is about like the rest of the fellows. No better and no worse. There is no disgrace in liking to be clean. The disgrace comes when one kicks against a thing that can't be helped."
In the Doctor's car, therefore, they arrived at Drusilla's.
"We have come to tell you that we are going to be married."
"You Babes in the Wood!"
"Will you come to the wedding?
"Of course I'll come. Marion, do you hear? They are going to be married."
"And after that, Drusilla,"—he smiled as he phrased it—"your Tin Soldier will go to the wars."
Jean glanced from one to the other. "Is that what she called you—a Tin Soldier?"
"It is what I called myself."
Marion having come forward to say the proper thing, added, "Drusilla's going, too."
"Drusilla?"
"Yes, with my college unit—to run errands in a flivver."
The next day, encountering Derry on the street, Drusilla opened her knitting bag and brought out a tiny parcel. "It's my wedding gift to you. I found it in Emily's toy shop."
It was a gay little French tin soldier. "For a mascot;" she told him, seriously. "Derry, dear, I shall not try to tell you how I feel about your marriage to Jean. About your going. If I could sing it, you'd know. But I haven't any words. It—it seems so—perfect that the Tin Soldier should go—to the wars—and that the girl he leaves behind him should be a little white maid like—Jean."
Thus Drusilla, with a shake in her voice, renouncing a—dream.
Derry, who was on his way to Margaret's showed the tin soldier to Teddy and his little sister. "He is going to the wars."
"With you?"
"Yes."
"When are you going?"
"As soon as I can—"
"I should think you wouldn't like to leave us."
"Well, I don't. But I am coming back."
"Daddy didn't come back."
"But some men do."
"Perhaps God doesn't love you as much as He did Daddy, and He won't want to keep you."
"Perhaps not—"
The things which the child had spoken stayed with Derry all that day. His feeling about death had always been that of a man who has long years before him. He had rather jauntily conceded that some men die young, but that the chances in his case were for a green old age. He might indeed have fifty years before him, and in fifty years one could—get ready—age had to do with serious things, people were peaceful and prepared.
But to get ready now. To face the thing squarely, saying, "I may not come back—there are, indeed, a thousand chances that I shall not come." Lacking those fifty years in which to grow towards the thought of dissolution, what ought one to do? Should a man make himself fit in some special fashion?
There was, too, the thought of those whom he might leave behind. Of Jean—his wife—whom he would leave. She would break her heart—at first. And then—? Would she remember? Would she forget? Would he and those millions of others who had gone down in battle become dim memories—pale shadows against the vivid background of the hurrying world?
He felt that he could not, must not speak of these things to Jean. So he talked of them to Emily.
"If anything should happen to me," he said, "I couldn't, of course, expect that Jean would go on—caring—. And if there should ever be anyone else—I—I should want her to be happy."
"Don't try to be magnanimous," Miss Emily advised. "You are human, and it isn't in the heart of man to want the woman he loves ever to turn to another. Let the years take care of that. But you can be very sure of one thing—that no one will ever take your place with Jean."
"But she may marry."
"Why should you torture yourself with that? You have given her something that no one else can ever give—the wonder and rapture of first love. And the heroes of a war like this will be in a very special manner set apart! 'A glorious company, the flower of men, to serve as models for the mighty world!'"
She laid her hand on his shoulder. "You must think now only of love and life and of coming back to Jean."
He reached up his hand and caught hers in a warm clasp. "Do you know you are the nearest, thing to a mother that I've known since I lost mine?"
He spoke, too, rather awkwardly, of the feeling about—getting ready.
"I have always thought that if I tried to live straight—I've thought, too, that it wouldn't come until I was old—that I should have plenty of time—and that by then, I should be more—spiritual."
"You will never be more spiritual than you are at this moment. Youth is nearer Heaven than age. I have always thought that. As we grow old—we are stricken by—fear—of poverty, of disease—of death. It is youth which has faith and hope."
Before he left her, he gave her a sacred charge. "If anything happens, I know what you'll be to—Jean—and I can't tell you what a help you've been this morning."
She was thrilled by that. And after he left her she thought much about him. Of what it would have meant to her to have a son like that.
Women had said to her, "You should be glad that you have no boy to send—." But she was not glad. Were they mad, these mothers, to want to hold their boys back? Had the days of peace held no dangers that they should be so afraid for them now?
For peace had dangers—men and women had been worshipping false gods. They had set up a Golden Calf and had bowed before it—and their children, lured by luxury, emasculated by ease of living, had wanted more ease, more luxury, more time in which to—play!
And now life had become suddenly a vivid Crusade, with everybody marching in one direction, and the young men were manly in the old ways of strength and heroism, and the young women were womanly in the old way of sending their lovers forth, and in a new way, when, like Drusilla, they went forth themselves to the front line of battle.
To have children in these days, meant to have something to give. One need not stand before suffering humanity empty-handed!
War was a monstrous thing, a murderous thing—but surely this war was a righteous one—a fire which would cleanse the world. Men and women, because of it, were finding in themselves something which could suffer for others, something in themselves which could sacrifice, something which went beyond body and mind, something which reached up and touched their souls.
So, in the midst of darkness, Miss Emily had a vision of Light. After the war was over, things could never be as they had been before. The spirit which had sent men forth in this Crusade, which had sent women, would survive, please God, and show itself in a greater sense of fellowship—of brotherhood. Might not men, even in peace, go on praying as they were praying it now in war, the prayer of Cromwell's men, "Oh, Lord, it's a hard battle, but it's for the rights of the common people—" Might not the rich young men who were learning to be the brothers of the poor, and the poor young men who were learning in a large sense of the brotherhood of the rich—might these not still clasp hands in a sacred cause?
Yes, she was sorry that she had no son. Slim and gray-haired, a little worn by life's struggle, her blood quickened at the thought of a son like Derry. The warmth of his handclasp, the glimpse of that inner self which he had given her, these were things to hold close to her heart. She had known on that first night that he was—different. She had not dreamed that she should hold him—close.
Rather pensively she arranged her window. It was snowing hard, and in spite of the fact that Christmas was only three days away, customers were scarce.
The window display was made effective by the use of Jean's purple camels—a sandy desert, a star overhead, blazing with all the realism of a tiny electric bulb behind it, the Wise Men, the Inn where the Babe lay, and in a far corner a group of shepherds watching a woolly flock—
Her cyclamen was dead. A window had been left open, and when she arrived one morning she had found it frozen.
She had thanked Ulrich Stölle for it, in a pleasantly worded note. She had not dared express her full appreciation, lest she seem fulsome. Few men in her experience had sent her flowers. Never in all the years of her good friendship with Bruce McKenzie had he bestowed upon her a single bloom.
Several days had passed, and there had been no answer to the note. She had not really expected an answer, but she had thought he might come in.
He came in now, with a great parcel in his arms. He was a picturesque figure in an enveloping cape and a soft hat pulled down over his gray hair, and with white flakes powdered over his shoulders.
"Good morning, Miss Bridges," he said; "did you think I was never coming?"
His manner of assuming that she had expected him quite took Emily's breath away. "I am glad you came," she said, simply. "It is rather dreary, with the snow, and this morning I found my cyclamen frozen on the shelf."
He glanced up at it. "We have other flowers," he said, and, with a sure sense of the dramatic effect, untied the string of his parcel.
Then there was revealed to Miss Emily's astonished eyes not the flowers that she had expected, but four small plush elephants, duplicates in everything but size of the one she had loaned to Ulrich, and each elephant carried on his back a fragrant load of violets cunningly kept fresh by a glass tube hidden in his trappings.
"There," said Ulrich Stölle, "my father sent them. It is his taste, not mine—but I knew that you would understand."
"But," Miss Emily gasped, "did he make them?"
"Most certainly. With his clever old fingers—and he will make as many more as you wish."
Thus came white elephants back to Miss Emily's shelves. "It seems almost too good to be true," she said, sniffing the violets and smiling at him.
"Nothing is too good to be true," he told her, "and now I have something to ask. That you will come and see my father."
"With pleasure."
He glanced around the empty shop. "Why not now? There are no customers—and the gray light makes things dreary—. And it is spring in my hothouses—there are a thousand cyclamens for the one you have lost, a thousand violets for every one on the backs of these little elephants—narcissus and daffodils—. Why not?"
Why not, indeed? Why not, when Adventure beckoned, go to meet it? She had tied herself for so many years to the commonplace and the practical.
And so Miss Emily closed her shop, and went in Ulrich's car, leaving a card tucked in the shop door, "Will reopen at three."
It was at one o'clock that Dr. McKenzie came and found that door shut against him. He shook the knob with some impatience, and stamped his foot impotently when no one answered. His orders had come and he must leave for France tomorrow. He had not told Jean, he had come to Emily to ask her to break the news—.
He stood there in the snow feeling quite unexpectedly forlorn. Heretofore he had always been able to put his finger on Emily when he had wanted her. He had needed only to beckon and she had followed.
And how could he know that she was at that very moment following other beckonings? That she had responded to a call that was not the call of selfish need, but of a subtle understanding of her rare charm. Bruce McKenzie had, perhaps, subconsciously felt that Emily would be fortunate to have a place by his fireside, to bask in his presence—Ulrich Stölle leading Emily through the moist fragrance of his hot-houses counted himself blessed by the gods to have her there. "You see," he said, "that here it is spring."
It was indeed spring, with birds singing, not in cages, but free to fly as they pleased; with the sound of water, as a little artificial stream wound its way over moss-covered rocks set where it might splash and fall over them—with ferns bending down to it and tiny flashing fish following it.
"My father did that," Ulrich explained, "when he was younger and stronger. But now he sits in his chair and works at his toys."
The workshop of Franz Stölle was entered through the door of the last hothouse; he had thus always a vista of splashing color—red and purples and yellows—great stretches, and always with the green to rest his eyes; with the door opened between there came to him the fragrance, and the singing of birds, and the sound of the little stream.
He sat in a big chair, bent a little, plump and ruddy-faced, with a fringe of white hair. He wore horn spectacles—and a velvet coat. He rose when Emily entered, elegant of manner, in spite of his rotundity.
"So it is the lady of the elephants, Ulrich? When you telephoned I thought it was too good to be true."
"Your son says that nothing is too good to be true," Emily told him, sitting down in the chair that Ulrich placed for her, "but I have a feeling that this will all vanish in a moment like Aladdin's palace—" She waved her hands towards the shelves that went around the room. "I never expected to see such toys again."
For there they were—the toys of Germany. The quaint Noah's arks, the woolly dogs and the mewing cats—the moon-faced dolls.
"I don't see how you have made them all."
"Many of them were made years ago, Fräulein, and I have kept them for remembrance, but many of them are new. When my son told me that it was hard for you to get toys, I gathered around me a few old friends who learned their trade in Nuremberg. We have done much in a few days. We will do more. We are all patriotic. We will show the Prussians that the children of America do not lack for toys. What does the Prussian know of play? He knows only killing and killing and killing."
The old man beat his fist upon the table, "Killing!"
"You see," Ulrich said to Emily, "there are many of us who feel that way. Yet unthinking people cannot see that we are loyal, that our hearts beat with the hearts of those who have English blood and French blood and Italian blood and Dutch blood in their veins, and who have but one country—America."
The old man had recovered himself. "We are not here to talk of killing, but of what I and my friends shall make for you. And you are to have lunch with us? I have planned it, and I won't take 'no,' Fräulein. You and I have so much to say to each other."
Emily wondered if it were really her middle-aged and prosaic self who sat later at the table, being waited on by a very competent butler, and deferred to by the two men as if she were a queen.
It was she and the old man who did most of the talking, but always she was conscious of Ulrich's attentive eyes, of the weight of the quiet words which he interjected now and then in the midst of his father's volubility.
"Germany, my mother, is dead," wailed the old man. "I have wept over her grave; those who wage this war against humanity are bastards, the real sons and daughters of that sweet old Germany are here in America—they have come to their foster-mother, and they love her.
"If I had been younger," he went on, "I should have fought. My son would have fought. But as it is we can make toys—and we shall say to the Prussians across the sea, 'You have killed our mother—your people are no longer our people, nor your God our God.'"
Ulrich took Emily home. She carried with her a Noah's Ark, and a precious pot of cyclamen. She had chosen the cyclamen out of all the rest. "It is such a cheerful thing blooming in my shop."
"There are other cheerful things in your shop," he told her.
As she met his smiling eyes, she smiled back, "Do you mean that I am a cheerful thing?"
"A rose, mein Fräulein, when your cheeks are red, like this."
Emily, alone at last in the Toy Shop, took off her hat in front of the mirror and saw her red cheeks. She set the cyclamen safely in a warm corner. The four elephants with their fragrant freight of violets made an exotic and incongruous addition to the Christmas scene in the window.
Bruce McKenzie, coming in, asked, "Where did you get them?"
"The elephants? Ulrich Stölle brought them. Do you know him?"
"Yes. But I didn't know that you did."
"His father makes toys. I lent him my white elephant, and he made these—"
She spoke without self-consciousness, and McKenzie's mind was on his own matters, so they swept away from the subject of Ulrich Stölle. "Emily," Bruce said, "I have my orders. Tomorrow at twelve I must leave for France."
She gazed at him stupidly. "Tomorrow—?"
"Yes."
"But—Jean—?"
"I haven't told her. I don't know how to tell her."
"You won't be here for the wedding—?"
"No."
"It will break her heart."
"You needn't tell me that. Don't I know it?" His voice was sharp with the tension of suppressed emotion.
He dropped into a chair, then jumped up and placed one for her. "Sit down, sit down," he said, "and don't make me forget my manners. Somehow this thing gets me as nothing has ever gotten me before. It isn't that I mind going—I mind hurting—Jean—"
"You have always hated to hurt people," Emily said. "In some ways it's a sign of weakness."
"Don't scold," he begged. "I know I'm not much of a fellow, but you'll be sorry for me a little, won't you, Emily?"
She did not melt as he had expected to the appeal in his voice. "The thing we have to think of now," she said, "is not being sorry for you, but how we can get Jean married before twelve o'clock tomorrow—"
"Oh, of course we can't."
"Of course we can—if we make up our minds to it, and it's the only thing to do."
"But nothing is ready."
"Things can be made ready. They can stand up in the rose drawing-room at ten, and you can give her away."
He looked at her admiringly. "I didn't know that you had so much initiative."
She might have told him that it was a quality on which she rather prided herself, but that hitherto it had not seemed to attract him. "There are several things as yet undiscovered by you," she remarked casually, as she locked up her toys.
Watching her, he wondered idly if there were really worlds to discover in Emily. It might be interesting to—find out—.
"Shall you miss me?" he asked.
"Of course. And now if you'll see that the back shutters are barred, we'll be ready to go."
Thus she checked his small attempt at sentiment, and on the way home they talked about Jean. "If Derry goes, you and she must live together in my house. Let that be understood. I'd rather have her with you than with anyone else in the whole wide world."
Thus again the sacred charge, but this time not as a favor, but in lordly fashion, as one who claims a right.
Jean and Derry were having tea at the club, but could not be reached by phone. "They had probably motored out into the country," Emily decided. "We'll have to do things before they come."
The things that she did were stupendous.
She had a florist up in two hours—and the rose-colored drawing room was rosier than ever, and as fragrant as a garden.
She telephoned the clergyman—"At ten o'clock tomorrow."
She telephoned the caterer—"A wedding breakfast—"
She telephoned the dressmaker—"Miss McKenzie's gown—"
She telephoned Margaret and Marion Gray—.
"Is there anyone else?" she asked the Doctor. "I suppose we really ought to tell the General."
"Certainly not."
"But Bronson—? Derry will want him."
"If he can keep a secret—yes."
Jean and Derry, arriving after dark, were swept into a scene of excitement.
Florists on the stairs!
A frenzied dressmaker waiting with Jean's wedding gown!
Maids with mops and men with vacuums!
Julia and the cook helping at loose ends and dinner late!
What did it all mean?
"It means," said the Doctor, "that you are going to be married, my dear, at ten o'clock in the morning."
"But why, Daddy—" fear showed in her eyes—
"Ask Emily."
"Is he—going away,—Emily?"
"Yes, dear."
"But he mustn't. Derry, do you hear? He is going to France—and he mustn't—"
Derry took her trembling hands in his firm clasp. "He must go, you know that, dearest." His touch steadied her.
He leaned down to her and sang:—
"Jeanne D'Arc, Jeanne D'Arc—
Jeanne D'Arc, la victoire est pour vous."
Her head went up. The color came back to her cheeks.
"Of course," she said, and put away childish things that she might measure up to the stature of her lover's faith in her.
And it was Jean, the Woman, who talked long that night with her father before he went to France.
=== DERRY'S WIFE ===
It snowed hard the next morning. The General, waking, found the day nurse in charge. Bronson came in to get him ready for his breakfast. There was about the old man an air of suppressed excitement. He hurried a little in his preparations for the General's bath. But everything was done with exactness, and it was not until the General was shaved and sitting up in his gorgeous mandarin robe that Bronson said, "I'd like to go out for an hour or two this morning, if you can spare me, sir—"
"In this snow? I thought you hated snow. You've always been a perfect pussy cat about the cold, Bronson."
"Yes, sir, but this is very important, sir."
The General ran his eye over the spruce figure.
"And you are all dressed up. I hope you are not going to be married, Bronson."
It was an old joke between them. Bronson was a pre-destined bachelor, and the General knew it.
But he liked to tease him.
"No, sir. I'll be back in time to look after your lunch, sir."
The General had been growing stronger, so that he spent several hours each day in his chair. When Bronson had gone, he rose and moved restlessly about the room. The day nurse cautioned him. "The Doctor doesn't want you to exert yourself, General Drake."
He was always courteous, but none the less he meant to have his own way. "Don't worry, Miss Martin. I'll take the responsibility."
He shuffled out into the hall. When she would have followed, he waved her back. "I am perfectly able to go alone," he told her.
She stood on the threshold watching him. She was very young and she was a little afraid of him. Her eyes, as she looked upon him, saw an obstinate old man in a gay dressing gown. And the man in the gay dressing gown felt old until he faced suddenly his wife's picture on the stairs.
It had been weeks since he had seen it, and in those weeks much had happened. Her smiling presence came to him freshly, as the spring might come to one housed through a long winter, or the dawn after a dark night.
"Edith!"
He leaned upon the balustrade. The nurse, coming out, warned him. "Indeed, you'd better stay in your room."
"I'm all right. Please don't worry. You 'tend to your knitting, and I'll take care of myself."
She insisted, however, on bringing out a chair and a rug. "Perhaps it will be a change for you to sit in the hall," she conceded, and tucked him in, and he found himself trembling a little from weakness, and glad of the support which the chair gave him.
It seemed very pleasant to sit there with Edith smiling at him. For the first time in many weeks his mind was at rest. Ever since Hilda had come he had felt the pressure of an exciting presence. He felt this morning free from it, and glad to be free.
What a wife Edith had been! Holding him always to his highest and best, yet loving him even when he stumbled and fell. Bending above him in her beautiful charity and understanding, raising him up, fostering his self-respect in those moments of depression when he had despised himself.
What other woman would have done it? What other woman would have kept her love for him through it all? For she had loved him. It had never been his money with her. She would have clung to him in sickness and in poverty.
But Hilda loved his money. He knew it now as absolutely as if she had said it. For the first time in weeks he saw clearly. Last night his eyes had been opened.
He had been roused towards morning by those soft sounds in the second room, which he had heard more than once in the passing weeks. In his feverish moments, it had not seemed unlikely that his wife might be there, coming back to haunt, with her gentle presence, the familiar rooms. There was, indeed, her light step, the rustle of her silken garments—.
Half-asleep he had listened, then had opened his eyes to find the night-lamp burning, Hilda's book under it and Hilda gone!
The minutes passed as still his ears were strained. There was not a sound in the house but that silken rustle. He wondered if he sought Edith if she would speak to him. He rose and reached for his dressing gown.
Hilda had grown careless; there was no screen in front of the second door, and the crack was wide. The General standing in the dark saw her before his wife's mirror, wearing his wife's jewels, wrapped in the cloak which his wife had worn—triumphant—beautiful!
It was that air of triumph which repelled him. It was a discordant note in the Cophetua theme. He had liked her in her nurse's white. In the trappings which did not belong to her she showed herself a trifle vulgar—less than a lady.
He had crept back to bed, and wide-awake, he had worked it all out in his mind. It was his money which Hilda wanted, the things that he could give her; he meant to her pink parasols and satin slippers, and diamonds and pearls and ermines and sables, and a check-book, with unlimited credit everywhere.
And to get the things that she wanted, she had given him that which had stolen away his brains, which might indeed have done more than that—which might have killed his soul.
He had heard her come in, but he had simulated sleep. She had seated herself by the little table, and had gone on with her book. Between his half-closed eyes he had studied her—seeing her with new eyes—the hard line of her lips, the long white hands, the heaviness of her chin.
Then he had slept, and had waked to find the day nurse on duty. He felt that he should be glad never to see Hilda again. He dreaded the night when he must once more speak to her.
He was very tired sitting there in his chair. The rug had slipped from his knees. He tried to reach for it and failed. But he did not want to call the day nurse. He wanted some one with him who—cared. He raised his poor old eyes to the lady in the picture. He was cold and tired.
He wished that Bronson would come back—good old Bronson, to pull up the rug. He wished that Derry might come.
A door below opened and shut. Some one was ascending the stairs. Some one who walked with a light step—some one slim and youthful, in a white gown—!
"Edith—?"
But Edith's hair had not been crinkled and copper-colored, and Edith would have come straight up to him; she would not have hesitated on the top step as if afraid to advance.
"Who are you?"
"Jean—"
"Jean?"
"Derry's wife."
"Come here." He tried to reach out his hand to her, but could not. His tongue felt thick—.
She knelt beside his chair. Her head was bare. She wore no wrap. "We were married this morning. And my own father has gone—to France—and I wanted a father—"
"Did Derry tell you to come?"
"Bronson begged me. He was at the wedding—"
"Old Bronson?" He tried to smile, but the smile was twisted.
She was looking up at him fearfully, but her voice did not falter. "I came to tell you that Derry loves you. He doesn't want your money, oh, you know that he doesn't want it. But he is going away to the—war, and he may be killed, so many men are—killed. And he—loves you—"
"Where is he?"
"I wouldn't let him come. You see, you said things which were hard for him to forgive. I was afraid you might say such things again."
He knew that he would never say them. "Tell him that—I love him." He tried to sit up. "Tell him that he is—my son."
He fell back. He heard her quick cry, "Bronson—"
Bronson came running up the stairs, and the nurse who had watched the scene dazedly from the threshold of the General's room ran, too.
Weighted down by a sense of increasing numbness he lifted his agonized eyes to Jean. "Stay with me—stay—"
Hilda, waked by the day nurse, raged. "You should have called me at once when he left his room. Why didn't you call me?"
"Because I felt myself competent to manage the case."
"You see how you have managed it—I will be down in a minute. Get everybody out—"
Her composed manner when she came down showed nothing of that which was seething within her.
She found Jean in bridal-white sitting by the bed and holding the General's hand. The doctor had been sent for, Derry had been sent for—things were being swept out of her hands. She blamed it, still hiding her anger under a quiet manner, on Jean.
"He has had a stroke. It was probably the excitement of your coming."
The day nurse intervened. "It was before she came, Miss Merritt, that I saw him reach for the rug. I was puzzled and started to investigate, and then I saw her on the stairs—" She smiled at Jean. Never in her limited young life had the day nurse seen such a lovely bride, and she did not in the least like Miss Merritt.
Derry coming a little later held Jean's hand in his while he faced Hilda. "What does the doctor say?"
The truth came reluctantly. "He may be unconscious for days. He may never wake up—"
"I do not think we shall need your services—. I will send you a check for any amount you may name."
"But—"
"Whatever claim you may have upon him will be settled when he is in a condition to settle anything; until then, my wife and I shall stay—"
Hilda went upstairs and packed her bag. So her house of dreams tumbled about her. So she left behind her the tiara and the pearl collar with the diamond slides, and the velvet cloak with the ermine collar. Poor Hilda, with her head held high, going out of the shadowed house.
And taking Hilda's place, oh, more than taking her place, was Jean—and this was her wedding day. The little rose-colored drawing room had needed all of its rose to counteract the gray of the world outside, with the snow and Daddy's car standing ready to take him to the station.
But always there had been the thought of Derry to uphold her, and the wonder of their love. Nothing could rob her of that.
He had held her in his arms the night before, and had said, "Tomorrow we shall be in Woodstock, and shall listen to the chimes—"
And now it was tomorrow, and they were here in this great grim house with Death at the door.
Quite miraculously Emily arrived, and she and Bronson made a boudoir of Derry's sitting-room. They filled it with flowers, as was fitting for a bridal-bower. Jean's little trunk had been sent on to Woodstock, but there was her bag, and a supply of things which Emily brought from home.
A new night nurse came, and Miss Martin was retained for the day. The snow still fell, and the old man in the lacquered bed was still unconscious, his stertorous breathing sounding through the house.
And it was her wedding day!
They dined in the great room where Derry's ancestors gazed down on them. Emily was there, and it was a bridal feast, with things ordered hurriedly. Bronson, too, had seen to that. But they ate little. Emily talked and Derry ably supplemented her efforts.
But Jean was silent. It was all so different from what one might expect—! She still wore her white dress. It was a rather superlative frock with much cobwebby lace that had been her mother's, and in the place of her own small string of pearls was the longer string which had been her father's last gift to her. She had worn no veil, her crinkled copper hair in all its beauty had been uncovered.
"I can't believe that the lovely, lovely lady at the other end of the table is my wife," Derry told Miss Emily.
Jean smiled at him. She felt as if she were smiling from a great distance—and she had to look at him over a perfect thicket of orchids. "Shall I always have to sit so far away from you, Derry?" she asked in a very small voice.
"My dearest, no—" and he came and stood behind her, and reached for her little coffee cup and drank where her lips had touched, shamelessly, before the eyes of the sympathetic and romantic Miss Emily.
And now Emily had gone! And at last Jean and Derry were alone in the bridal bower, and Jean was telling Derry again what his father had said. "He begged me to stay—"
Their eyes met. "Dearest, dearest," Derry said, "what is life doing to me?"
"It has given you me, Derry"—such a little, little whisper.
"My beloved—yes."
The next morning they talked it over.
"What am I to do? He needs me more than ever—"
"There must be some way out, Derry."
But what way? The Tin Soldier had jumped from the shelf, but he had fallen through a crack! And the war was going on without him—!
=== JEAN PLAYS PROXY ===
Christmas morning found the General conscious. He was restless until Jean was brought to him. He had a feeling that she had saved him from Hilda. He wanted her where he could see her. "Don't leave me," he begged.
She slipped away to eat her Christmas dinner with Derry and Emily and Margaret. It was an early dinner on account of the children. They ate in the big dining room, and after dinner there was a tree, with Ulrich Stölle playing Father Christmas. It had come about quite naturally that he should be asked. It had been unthinkable that Derry could enter into the spirit of it, so Emily had ventured to suggest Ulrich. "He will make an ideal Santa Claus."
But it developed that he was not to be Santa Claus at all. He was to be Father Christmas, with a wreath of mistletoe instead of a red cap.
Teddy was intensely curious about the change. "But why isn't he Santa Claus?" he asked.
"Well, Santa Claus was—made in Germany."
"Oh!"
"But now he has joined the Allies and changed his name."
"Oh!"
"And he wears mistletoe, because mistletoe is the Christmas bush, and red caps don't really mean anything, do they?"
"No, but Mother—"
"Yes?"
"If Santa Claus has joined the Allies what will the little German children do?"
What indeed?
Jean had trimmed a little tree for the General, and the children carried it up to him carefully and sang a carol—having first arranged on his table, under the lamp, the purple camels, to create an atmosphere.
"'We three kings of Orient are,
Bearing gifts we traverse far
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star—'"
"Yonner 'tar," piped Margaret-Mary.
"Yon-der-er ste-yar," trailed Teddy's falsetto.
"'Oh, star of wonder, star of might,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to the perfect light—'"
Twenty-four hours ago Hilda's book had lain where the purple camels now played their little part in the great Christmas drama. In the soul of the stricken old man on the bed entered something of the peace of the holy season.
"Oh, 'tar of wonner—"
"Ste-yar of wonder-er—" chimed the little voices.
When the song was finished, Margaret-Mary made a little curtsey and Teddy made a manly bow, and then they took their purple camels and left the tree on the table with its one small candle burning.
The General laid his left hand over Jean's—his right was useless—and said to Derry: "Your mother's jewels are my Christmas gift to her. No matter what happens, I want her to have them."
The evening waned, and the General still held Jean's hand. Every bone in her body ached. Never before had she grown weary in the service of others. She told herself as she sat there that she had always been a sort of sugar-and-spice-and-everything-nice sort of person. It was only fair that she should have her share of hardness.
The nurse begged her in a whisper to leave the General. "He won't know." But when Jean moved, that poor left hand tightened on hers and she shook her head.
Then Derry came and sat with his arm about her.
"My darling, you must rest."
She laid her head against her husband's shoulder, as he sat beside her. After a while she slept, and the nurse unlocked the clinging old fingers, and Derry carried his little wife to bed.
And so Christmas passed, and the other days, wonderful days in spite of the shadow which hung over the big house. For youth and love laugh at forebodings and they pushed as far back into their minds as possible, the thought of the thing which had to be faced.
But at last Derry faced it. "It is my self-respect, Jean."
They were sitting in her room with Muffin, wistful and devoted, on the rug at Jean's feet. The old dog, having been banished at first by Bronson, had viewed his master's wife with distrust. Gradually she had won him over, so that now, when she was not in the room, he hunted up a shoe or a glove, and sat with it until she came back.
"It is my self-respect, Jean-Joan."
She admitted that. "But—?"
"I can't stay out of the fighting and call myself a man. It has come to that with me."
She knew that it had come to that. She had thought a great deal about it. She lay awake at night thinking about it. She thought of it as she sat by the General's bed, day after day, holding his hand.
The doctor's report had been cautious, but it had amounted to this—the General might live to a green old age, some men rallied remarkably after such a shock. He rather thought the General might rally, but then again he might not, and anyhow he would be tied for months, perhaps for years, to his chair.
The old man was giving to his daughter-in-law an affection compounded of that which he had given to his wife and to his son. It was as if in coming up the stairs in her white gown on her wedding day, Jean had brought a bit of Edith back to him. For deep in his heart he knew that without her, Derry would not have come.
So he clung pathetically to that little hand, which seemed the only anchor in his sea of loneliness. Pathetically his old eyes begged her to stay. "You won't leave me, Jean?" And she would promise, and sit day after day and late into the night, holding his hand.
And as she sat with him, there grew up gradually within her a conviction which strengthened as the days went by. She could tell the very moment when she had first thought of it. She had left the General with Bronson while she went to dress for dinner. Derry was waiting for her, and usually she would have flown to him, glad of the moment when they might be together. But something halted her at the head of the stairs. It was as if a hand had been put in front of her, barring the way.
The painted lady was looking at her with smiling eyes, but back of the eyes she seemed to discern a wistful appeal—"I want you to stay. No matter what happens I beg that you will stay."
But Jean didn't want to stay. All the youth in her rebelled against the thing that she saw ahead of her. She yearned to be free—to live and love as she pleased, not a prisoner in that shadowed room.
So she pushed it away from her, and so there came one morning a letter from her father.
"Drusilla went over on the same boat. It was a surprising thing to find her there. Since I landed, I haven't seen her. But I met Captain Hewes in Paris, and he was looking for her.
"I had never known how fine she was until those days on the boat. It was wonderful on the nights when everything was darkened and we were feeling our way through the danger zone, to have her sing for us. I believe we should all have gone to the bottom singing with her if a submarine had sunk us.
"I am finding myself busier than I have ever been before, finding myself, indeed, facing the most stupendous thing in the world. It isn't the wounded men or the dead men or the heart-breaking aspect of the refugees that gets me, it is the sight of the devastated country—made barren and blackened into hell not by devils, but by those who have called themselves men. When I think of our own country, ready soon to bud and bloom with the spring, and of this country where spring will come and go, oh, many springs, before there will be bud and bloom, I am overwhelmed by the tragic contrast. How can we laugh over there when they are crying here? Perhaps more than anything else, the difference in conditions was brought home to me as I motored the other day through a country where there was absolutely no sign of life, not a tree or a bird—except those war birds, the aeroplanes, hovering above the horizon.
"Well, as we stopped our car for some slight repairs, there rose up from a deserted trench, a lean cat with a kitten in her mouth. Oh, such a starved old cat, Jean, gray and war-worn. And her kitten was little and blind, and when she had laid it at our feet, she went back and got another. Then she stood over them, mewing, her eyes big and hungry. But she was not afraid of us, or if she was afraid, she stood her ground, asking help for those helpless babies.
"Jean, I thought of Polly Ann. Of all the petted Polly Anns in America, and then of this starved old thing, and they seemed so typical. You are playing the glad game over there, and it is easy to play it with enough to eat and plenty to wear, and away from the horror of it all. But how could that old pussy-cat be glad, how could she be anything but frightened and hungry and begging my help?
"Well, we took her in. We had some food with us, and we gave her all she could eat, and then she curled up on a pile of bags in the bottom of the car, and lay there with her kittens, as happy as if we were not going lickety-split over the shell-torn spaces.
"And that your tender heart may be at rest, I may as well tell you that she and the kittens are living in great content in a country house where one of the officers who was in the car with us is installed. We have named her Dolores, but it is ceasing to be appropriate. She is no longer sad, and while she is on somewhat slim fare like the rest of us, she is a great hunter and catches mice in the barn, so that she is growing strong and smooth, and she is not, perhaps, to be pitied as much as Polly Ann on her pink cushion.
"And here I am writing about cats, while the only thing that is really in my heart is—You.
"Ever since the moment I left you, I have carried with me the vision of you in your wedding gown—my dear, my dear. Perhaps it is just as well that I left when I did, for I am most inordinately jealous of Derry, not only because he has you, but because he has love and life before him, while I, already, am looking back.
"My work here is, as you would say, 'wonderful.' How I should like to hear you say it! There are things which in all my years of practice, I have never met before. How could I meet them? It has taken this generation of doctors to wrestle with the problem of treating men tortured by gas, and with nerves shaken by sights and sounds without parallel in the history of the world.
"But I am not going to tell you of it. I would rather tell you how much I love you and miss you, and how glad I am that you are not here to see it all. Yet I would have all Americans think of those who are here, and I would have you help until it—hurts. You must know, my Jean, how moved I am by it, when I ask you, whom I have always shielded, to give help until it hurts—
"I have had a letter from Hilda. She wants to come over. I haven't answered the letter. But when I do, I shall tell her that there may be something that she can do, but it will not be with me. I need women who can see the pathos of such things as that starved cat and kittens out there among the shell-holes, and Hilda would never have seen it. She would have left the cat to starve."
Jean found herself crying over the letter. "I am not helping at all, Derry."
"My dear, you are."
"I am not. I am just sitting on a pink cushion, like Polly Ann—-"
It was the first flash he had seen for days of her girlish petulance. He smiled. "That sounds like the Jean of yesterday."
"Did you like the Jean of yesterday better than the Jean of to-day?"
"There is only one Jean for me—yesterday, today and forever."
----She stood a little away from him. "Derry, I've been thinking and thinking—"
He put a finger under her chin and turned her face up to him. "What have you been thinking, Jean-Joan?"
"That you must go—and I will take care of your father."
"You?"
"Yes. Why not, Derry?"
"I won't have you sacrificed."
"But you want me to be brave."
"Yes. But not burdened. I won't have it, my dear."
"But—you promised your mother. I am sure she would be glad to let me keep your promise."
She was brave now. Braver than he knew.
"I can't see it," he said, fiercely. "I can see myself leaving you with Emily, in your own house—to live your own life. But not to sit in Dad's room, day after day, sacrificing your youth as I sacrificed my childhood and boyhood—my manhood—. I am over thirty, Jean, and I have always been treated like a boy. It isn't right, Jean; our lives are our own, not his."
"It is right. Nobody's life seems to be his own in these days. And you must go—and I can't leave him. He is so old, and helpless, Derry, like the poor pussy-cat over there in France. His eyes are like that—hungry, and they beg—. And oh, Derry, I mustn't be like Polly Ann, on a pink cushion—."
She tried to laugh and broke down. He caught her up in his arms. Light as thistledown, young and lovely!
She sobbed on his heart, but she held to her high resolve. He must go—and she would stay. And at last he gave in.
He had loved her dearly, but he had not looked for this, that she would give herself to hardness for the sake of another. For the first time he saw in his little wife something of the heroic quality which had seemed to set his mother apart and above, as it were, all other women.
=== The Bugle Calls ===
The wooden trumpeters that were carved on the door blew with all their might, so that their cheeks were much larger than before. Yes, they blew "Trutter-a-trutt—trutter-a-trutt—" …
=== CHAPTER XXIII ===
=== THE EMPTY HOUSE ===
Jean's world was no longer wonderful—not in the sense that it had once been, with all the glamour of girlish dreams and of youthful visions.
She had never thought of life as a thing like this in the days when she had danced down to the confectioner's, intent on good times.
But now, with her father away, with Derry away, with the city frozen and white, and with not enough coal to go around, with many of the rooms in the house shut that fuel might be conserved, with Margaret and the children and Nurse installed as guests at the General's until the weather grew warmer, with Emily transforming her Toy Shop into a surgical dressings station, and with her father-in-law turning over to her incredible amounts of money for the Red Cross and Liberty Bonds and War Stamps, life began to take on new aspects of responsibility and seriousness.
She could never have kept her balance in the midst of it all, if Derry had not written every day. Her father wrote every day, also, but there were long intervals between his letters, and then they were apt to arrive all at once, a great packet of them, to be read and re-read and passed around.
But Derry's letters, brought to her room every morning by Bronson, contained the elixir which sent her to her day's work with shining eyes and flushed cheeks. Sometimes she read bits of them to Bronson. Sometimes, indeed, there were only a few lines for herself, for Derry was being intensively trained in a Southern camp, working like an ant, with innumerable other ants, all in olive-drab, with different colored cords around their hats.
Sometimes she read bits of the letters to Margaret at breakfast, and after breakfast she would go up to the General and read everything to him except the precious words which Derry had meant for her very own self.
And then she and the General would tell each other how really extraordinary Derry was!
It was a never-failing subject, of intense interest to both of them. For there was always this to remember, that if the world was no longer a radiant and shining world, if the day's task was hard, and if now and then in the middle of the night she wept tears of loneliness, if there were heavy things to bear, and hard things and sad things, one fact shone brilliantly above all others, Derry was as wonderful as ever!
"There was never such a boy," the General would chant in his deep bass.
"Never," Jean would pipe in her clear treble.
And when they had chorused thus for a while, the General would dictate a letter to Derry, for his hand was shaky, and Jean would write it out for him, and then she would write a letter of her own, and after that the day was blank, and the night until the next morning when another letter came. So she lived from letter to letter.
"You have never seen Washington like this," she wrote one day in February, "we keep only a little fire in the furnace, and I am wearing flannels for the first time in my life. We dine in sweaters, and the children are round and rosy in the cold. And the food steams in the icy air of the dining room, and you can't imagine how different it all is—with the servants bundled up like the rest of us. We keep your father warm by burning wood in the fireplace of his room, and we have given half the coal in the cellar to people who haven't any."
"I am helping Cook with the conservation menus, and it is funny to see how topsy-turvy everything is. It is perfectly patriotic to eat mushrooms and lobsters and squabs and ducklings, and it is unpatriotic to serve sausages and wheat cakes. And Cook can't get adjusted to it. She will insist upon bacon for breakfast, because well-regulated families since the Flood have eaten bacon—and she feels that in some way we are sacrificing self-respect or our social status when we refrain.
"Your father is such an old dear, Derry. He has war bread and milk for lunch, and I carry it to him myself in the pretty old porcelain bowl that he likes so much.
"It was one day when I brought the milk that he spoke of Hilda. 'Where is she?'
"I told him that she was still in town, and that you had given her a check which would carry her over a year or two, and he said that he was glad—that he should not like to see her suffer. The porcelain bowl had reminded him of her. She had asked him once what it cost, and after she had found out, she had never used it. She evidently stood quite in awe of anything so expensive.
"Your mother and I are getting to be very good friends, dearest. When I am dreadfully homesick for you, I go and sit on the stairs, and she smiles at me. It is terribly cold in the hall, and I wrap myself up in your fur coat, and it is almost like having your arms around me."
She was surely making the best of things, this little Jean, when she found comfort in being mothered by a painted lady on the stairs, and in being embraced by a fur coat which had once been worn by her husband!
She kept Derry's tin soldier, which Drusilla had given him, on her desk. "You shall have him when you go to France, but until then he is a good little comrade, and I say; 'Good-morning' to him and 'Good-night.' Yet I sometimes wonder whether he likes it there on the shelf, and whether he is crying, 'I want to go to the wars—'"
She was very busy every morning in Emily's room, working on the surgical dressings. She hated it all. She hated the oakum and the gauze, the cotton and the compresses, the pneumonia jackets and the split-irrigation pads, the wipes, the triangulars, the many-tailed and the scultetus. Other women might speak lightly of five-yard rolls as dressing for stumps, of paper-backs "used in the treatment of large suppurating wounds." Jean shivered and turned white at these things. Her vivid imagination went beyond the little work-room with its white-veiled women to those hospitals back of the battle line where mutilated men lay waiting for the compresses and the wipes and the bandages, men in awful agony—.
But the lesson she was learning was that of harnessing her emotions to the day's work; and if her world was no longer wonderful in a care-free sense, it was a rather splendid world of unselfishness and self-sacrifice, although she was not conscious of this, but felt it vaguely.
She wore now, most of the time, her nun's frock of gray, which had seemed to foreshadow something of her future on that glorified day when Derry had first come to her. She had laid away many of her lovely things, and one morning Teddy remarked on the change.
"You don't dwess up any more."
Nurse stood back of his chair. "Dress—"
"Dur-wess."
"Don't you like this dress, Teddy?"
"I liked the boo one."
"Blue—"
"Ble-yew, an' the pink one, and all the shiny ones you used to wear at night."
"Blue dresses and pink dresses and shiny dresses cost a lot of money, Teddy, and I shouldn't have any money left for Thrift Stamps."
Thrift stamps were a language understood by Teddy, as he would not have understood the larger transactions of Liberty Bonds. He and the General held long conversations as to the best means of obtaining a large supply of stamps, and the General having listened to Margaret who wanted the boy to work for his offering, suggested an entrancing plan. Teddy was to feed the fishes in the dining-room aquarium, he was to feed Muffin, and he was to feed Polly Ann.
It sounded simple, but there were difficulties. In the first place he had to face Cook, and Cook hated to have children in the kitchen.
"But you'd have to face more than that if you were grown up and in the trenches. And Hodgson is really very kind."
"Well, she doesn't look kind, Mother."
"Why not?"
"Well, she doesn't smile, and her face is wed."
"Red, dear."
"Ur-ed—. And when I ask her for milk for Polly, she says 'Milk for cats,' and when she gets it out, she slams the 'frigerator door."
"Refrigerator, dear."
"Rif-iggerator."
But in the main Teddy went to his task valiantly. He conserved bones for Muffin and left-over corn-meal cakes. Polly Ann dined rather monotonously on fish boiled with war-bread crusts, on the back of Cook's big range. Hodgson was conscientious and salted it and cooled it, and kept it in a little covered granite pail, and it was from this pail that Teddy ladled stew into Polly Ann's blue saucer. "Mother says it is very good of you, Hodgson, to take so much trouble."
Hodgson, whose face was redder than ever, as she broiled mushrooms for lunch, grunted, "I'd rather do it than have other people messin' around."
Teddy surveyed her anxiously. "You don't mind having me here, do you, Hodgson?"
His cheeks were rosy, his bronze hair bright, his sturdy legs planted a trifle apart, Polly's dish in one hand, the big spoon in the other. "No, I don't mind," she admitted, but it was some time before she acknowledged even to herself how glad she was when that bright figure appeared.
Feeding the fishes presented few problems, and gradually thrift stamps filled the little book, and there was a war stamp, and more thrift stamps and more war stamps, and Muffin and Polly Ann waxed fat and friendly, and were a very lion and lamb for lying down together.
Then there came a day when Teddy, feeding the fishes in the aquarium, heard somebody say that Hodgson's son was in the war.
He went at once to the kitchen. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked the cook, standing in front of her where she sat cutting chives and peppers and celery on a little board for salad.
"Tell you what?"
"That your boy was in Fwance."
Hodgson's red face grew redder, and to Teddy's consternation, a tear ran down her cheek.
He stood staring at her, then flew upstairs to his mother. "Cook's cryin'."
"Teddy—"
"She is. Because her son is in Fwance."
After that when he went down to get things for Muffin and Polly Ann, he said how s'prised he was and how nice it was now that he knew, and wasn't she pr-roud? And he fancied that Hodgson was kinder and softer. She told him the name of her son. It was Charley, and she and Teddy talked a great deal about Charley, and Teddy sent him some chocolate, and Hodgson told Margaret. "He's a lovely boy, Mrs. Morgan. May you never raise him to fight."
"I should want him to be as brave as his father, Hodgson."
"Yes. My boy's brave, but it was hard to let him go." Then, struck by the look on Margaret's face, she said, "Forgive me, ma'am; if mine is taken from me, I'd like to feel as you do. You ain't makin' other people unhappy over it."
"I think it is because my husband still lives for me, Hodgson."
Hodgson cried into her apron. "It ain't all of us that has your faith. But if I loses him, I'll do my best."
And so the painted lady on the stairs saw all the sinister things that Hilda had brought into the big house swept out of it. She saw Hodgson the cook trying to be brave, and bringing up Margaret's tea in the afternoons for the sake of the moment when she might speak of her boy to one who would understand; she saw Emily, coming home dead tired after a hard day's work, but with her face illumined. She saw Margaret smiling, with tears in her heart, she saw Jean putting aside childish things to become one of the women that the world needed.
Brave women all of them, women with a vision, women raised to heroic heights by the need of the hour!
The men, too, were heroic. Indeed, the General, trying to control his appetite, was almost pathetically heroic. He had given up sugar, although he hated his coffee without it, and he had a little boy's appetite for pies and cakes.
"When the war is over," he told Teddy, "we will order a cake that's as high as a house, and we will eat it together."
Teddy giggled. "With frostin'?"
"Yes. I remember when Derry was a lad that we used to tell him the story of the people who baked a cake so big that they had to climb ladders to reach the top. Well, that's the kind of cake we'll have."
Yet while he made a joke of it, he confessed to Jean. "It is harder than fighting battles. I'd rather face a gun than deny myself the things that I like to eat and drink."
Bronson was contributing to the Red Cross and buying Liberty Bonds, and that was brave of Bronson. For Bronson was close, and the hardest thing that he had to do was to part with his money, or to take less interest than his rather canny investments had made possible.
And Teddy, the man of his family, came one morning to his mother. "I've just got to do it," he said in a rather shaky voice.
"Do what, dear?"
"Send my books to the soldiers."
She let him do it, although she knew how it tore his heart. You see, there were the Jungle Books, which he knew the soldiers would like, and "Treasure Island," and "The Swiss Family Robinson," and "Huckleberry Finn." He brought his fairy books, too, and laid them on the altar of patriotism, and "Toby Tyler," which had been his father's, and "Under the Lilacs," which he adored because of little brown-faced Ben and his dog, Sancho.
He was rapturously content when his mother decided that the fairy books and Toby and brown-faced Ben might still be his companions. "You see the soldiers are men, dear, and they probably read these when they were little boys."
"But won't I wead them when I grow up, Mother?"
"You may want to read older books."
But Teddy was secretly resolved that age should not wither nor custom stale the charms of the beloved volumes. And that he should love them to the end. His mother thought that he might grow tired of them some day and told him so.
"I can wead them to my little boys," he said, hopefully, "and to their little boys after that," and having thus established a long line of prospective worshippers of his own special gods, he turned to other things.
General Drake, growing gradually better, went now and then in his warm closed car for a ride through the Park. Usually Jean was with him, or Bronson, and now and then Nurse with the children.
It was one morning when the children were with him that he said to Nurse: "Take them into the Lion House for a half hour, I'll drive around and come back for you."
Nurse demurred. "You are sure that you won't mind being left, sir?"
"Why not?" sharply. "I am perfectly able to take care of myself."
He watched them go in, then he gave orders to drive at once to the Connecticut Avenue entrance.
A woman stood by the gate, a tall woman in a long blue cloak and a close blue bonnet. In the clear cold, her coloring showed vivid pink and white. The General spoke through the tube; the chauffeur descended and opened the door.
"If you will get in," the General said to the woman, "you can tell me what you have to say—"
"Perhaps I should not have asked it," Hilda said, hesitating, "but I had seen you riding in the Park, and I thought of this way—I couldn't of course, come to the house."
"No." He had sunk down among his robes. "No."
"I felt that perhaps you had been led to—misunderstand." She came directly to the point. "I wanted to know—what I had done—what had made the difference. I couldn't believe that you had not meant what you said."
He stirred uneasily. "I have been very ill—"
Her long white hands were ungloved, the diamonds that he had given her sparkled as she drew the ring off slowly. "I felt that I ought to give you this—if it was all really over."
"It is all over. But keep it—please."
"I should like to keep it," she admitted frankly, "because, you see, I've never had a ring like this."
It was the Cophetua and Beggar Maid motif but it left him cold. "Hilda," he said, "I saw you that night trying on my wife's jewels. That was my reason."
She was plainly disconcerted. "But that was child's play. I had never had anything—it was like a child—dressing up."
"It was not like that to me. I think I had been a rather fatuous fool—thinking that there might be in me something that you might care for. But I knew then that without my money—you wouldn't care—"
"People's motives are always mixed," she told him. "You know that."
"Yes, I know."
"You liked me because I was young and made you feel young. I liked you because you could give me things."
"Yes. But now the glamour is gone. You make me feel a thousand years old, Hilda."
"Why?" in great surprise.
"Because I know that if I had no wealth to offer you, you would see me for what I am, an aged broken creature for whom you have no tenderness—"
It was time for him to be getting back to the Lion House. They stopped again at the gate. "If you will keep the ring," he said, "I shall be glad to think that you have it. Jean gays Derry gave you a check. If it is not enough to buy pink parasols, will you let me give you another?" He was speaking with the ease of his accustomed manner.
"No; I am not an—adventuress, though you seem to think that I am, and to condemn me for it."
"I condemn you only for one thing—for that flat bottle behind the books."
"But you wanted it."
"For that reason you should have kept it away. You should have obeyed orders."
"You asked me to doff my cap, so I—doffed my discipline." She was standing on the ground, holding the door open as she talked; again he was aware of the charm of her pink and white.
"Good-bye, Hilda." He reached out his hand to her.
She took it. "I am going to France."
"When?"
"As soon as I can." She stepped back and the door was shut between them. As the car turned, Hilda waved her hand, and the General had a sense of sudden keen regret as the tall cloaked figure with its look of youth and resoluteness faded into the distance.
When he reached the Lion House the children were waiting. "Did you hear him roar?" Teddy asked as he climbed in.
"No."
"Well, he did, and we came out 'cause it fwightened Peggy."
"Frightened—" from Nurse.
"Fr-ightened. But I liked the leopards best."
"Why?"
"Because they're pre-itty."
"You can't always trust—pretty things."
"Can't you tre-ust—leopards—General Drake?"
The General was not sure, and presently he fell into silence. His mind was on a pretty woman whom he could not trust.
That night he said to Jean, "Hilda is going to France."
"Oh—how do you know?"
"I met her in the Park."
He was sitting, very tired, in his big chair. Jean's little hand was in his.
"Poor Hilda," he said at last, looking into the fire, as if he saw there the vision of his lost dreams.
"Oh, no—" Jean protested.
"Yes, my dear, there is so much that is good in the worst of us, and so much that is bad in the best—and perhaps she struggles with temptations which never assail you."
Jean's lips were set in an obstinate line. "Daddy was always saying things like that about Hilda."
"Well, we men are apt to be charitable—to beauty in distress." The General was keenly and humorously aware that if Hilda had been ugly, he might not have been so anxious about the pink parasol. He might not, indeed, have pitied her at all!
And now in Jean's heart grew up a sharply defined fear of Hilda. In the old days there had been cordial dislike, jealousy, perhaps, but never anything like this. The question persisted in the back of her mind. If Hilda went to France, would she see Daddy and weave her wicked spells. To find the General melting into pity, in spite of the chaos which Hilda's treachery had created, was to wonder if Daddy, too, might melt.
She wrote to Derry about it.
"I would try and see her if I knew what to say, but when I even think of it I am scared. I never liked her, and I feel now as if I should be glad to pin together the pages of my memory of her, as I pinned together the pages of one of my story books when I was a little girl. There was a shark under water in the picture and two men were trying to get away from him. I hated that picture and shivered every time I looked at it, so I stuck in a pin and shut out the sight of it.
"Your father has had two letters from her since the day when he saw her in the Park. Bronson always brings the mail to me, and you know what a distinctive hand Hilda writes, there is no mistaking it. Your father dropped the letters into the fire, but she ought not to write to him, Derry, and I should like to tell her so.
"But if I told her, she would laugh at me, and that would be the end of it. For you can't rage and tear and rant at a thing that is as cold as stone. Oh, my dearest, I need you so much to tell me what to do, and yet I would not have you here—
"I met Alma Drew the other day, and she said, as lightly as you please, 'Do you know, I can't quite fancy Derry Drake in the trenches.'
"I looked at her for a minute before I could answer, and then I said, 'I can fancy him with his back to the wall, fighting a thousand Huns—!'
"She shrugged her shoulders, 'You're terribly in love.'
"'I am,' I said, and I hope I said it calmly, 'but there's more than love in a woman's belief in her husband's bravery—there's respect. And it's something rather—sacred, Alma.' And then I choked up and couldn't say another word, and she looked at me in a rather stunned fashion for a moment, and then she said, 'Gracious Peter, do you love him like that?' and I said, 'I do,' and she laughed in a funny little way, and said, 'I thought it was his millions.'
"I was perfectly furious. But you can't argue with such people. I know I was as white as a sheet. 'If anything should happen to Derry,' I said, 'do you think that all the money in the world would comfort me?'
"She stopped smiling. 'It would comfort me,' then suddenly she held out her hand. 'But I fancy you're different, and Derry is a lucky fellow.' which was rather nice and human of her, wasn't it?
"Life is growing more complicated than ever here in Washington. The crowds pour in as if the Administration were a sort of Pied Piper and had played a time, and the people who have lived here all their lives are waking to something like activity. Great buildings are going up as if some Aladdin had rubbed a lamp—. None of us are doing the things we used to do. We don't even talk about the things we used to talk about, and we go around in blue gingham and caps, and white linen and veils, and we hand out sandwiches to the soldiers and sailors, and drive perfectly strange men in our cars on Government errands, and make Liberty Bond Speeches from many platforms, and all the old theories of what women should do are forgotten in the rush of the things which must be done by women. It is as if we had all been bewitched and turned into somebody else.
"Well, I wish that Hilda could be turned into somebody else. Into somebody as nice as—Emily—. But she won't be. She hasn't been changed the least bit by the war, and everybody else has, even Alma, or she wouldn't have said that about your being lucky to have me. Are you lucky, Derry?
"And when Hilda sets her mind on a thing—. Oh, I can't seem to talk of anything but Hilda—when she sets her mind on anything, she gets it in one way or another—and that's why I am afraid of her."
Derry wrote back.
"Don't be afraid of anything, Jean-Joan. And it won't do any good to talk to Hilda. I don't want you to talk to her. You are too much of a white angel to contend against the powers of darkness.
"As for my luck in having you, it is something which transcends luck—it just hits the stars, dearest.
"I wonder what the fellows do who haven't any wives to anchor themselves to in a time like this? Through, all the day I have this hour in mind when I can write to you—and I think there are lots of other fellows like that—for I can see them all about me here in the Hut, bending over their letters with a look on their faces which isn't there at any other time.
"By Jove, Jean-Joan, I never knew before what women meant in the lives of men. Here we are marooned, as it were, on an island of masculinity, yet it isn't what the other fellows think of us that counts, it is what you think who are miles away. Always in the back of our minds is the thought of what you expect of us and demand of us, and added to what we demand and expect of ourselves, it sways us level. We don't talk a great deal about you, but now and then some fellow says, 'My wife,' and we all prick up our ears and want to hear the rest of it.
"It is a great life, dearest, in spite of the hard work, in spite of the stress and strain. And to me who have known so little of the great human game it is a great revelation.
"In the first place, there has been brought to me the knowledge of the joy of real labor. I shall never again be sorry for the man who toils. You see, I had never toiled, not in the sense that a man does whose labor counts. I was always a rather anxious and lonely little boy, looking after my father and trying to help my mother, and feeling a bit of a mollycoddle because I had a tutor and did not go to school with the other chaps. In the eyes of the world I was looked upon as a lucky fellow, but I know now what I have missed. In these days I am rubbing elbows with fellows who have had to hustle, and I am discovering that life is a great game, and that I have missed the game. If Dad had been different, he might have pushed me into things, as some men with money push their sons, making them stand on their own feet. But Dad liked an easy life, and he was perhaps entitled to ease, for he had struggled in his younger years. But I have never struggled. I have always had somebody to brush my clothes and to bring my breakfast, and I think I have had a sort of hazy idea that life was like that for everybody—or if it wasn't, then the people who couldn't be brushed and breakfasted by others were much to be pitied.
"Oh, I've been a Tin Soldier, Jean-Joan, left out not only of the war but of life. I've been on the shelf all these years in our big house, with the wooden trumpets blowing, 'Trutter-a-trutt' while other men have striven.
"When I first came here I had a sort of detached feeling. I had no experiences to match with the experiences of other men. I had never had to rush in the morning to catch a subway, I had never eaten, to put it poetically, by candlelight, so that I might get to the store by eight. I had never sold papers, or plowed fields, or stood behind a counter. I had never sat at a desk, I had never in fact done anything really useful, I had just been rich, and that isn't much of a background as I am beginning to see it here—.
"I find myself having a rather strange feeling of exaltation as the days go by, because for the first time I am a cog in a great machine, for the first time I am toiling and sweating as I rather think it was intended that men should toil and sweat. And the friends that I am making are the sign and seal of the levelling effects of this great war. Not one of the men of what you might call my own class interests me half as much as Tommy Tracy, who before he entered the service drove the car of one of Dad's business associates. I have often ridden behind Tommy, but he doesn't know it. And I don't intend that he shall. He rather fancies that I am a scholarly chap torn from my books, and he patronizes me on the strength of his knowledge of practical things.
"Tommy likes to eat, and he talks a great deal about his mother's cooking. He says there was always tripe for Sunday mornings, and corned beef and cabbage on Mondays, and Monday was wash-day!
"I wish you could hear him tell what wash-day meant to him. It is a sort of poem, the way he puts it. He doesn't know that it is poetry, though Vachell Lindsay would, or Masters, or some of those fellows.
"It seems that he used to help his mother, because he was a strong little fellow, and could turn the wringer, and they would get up very early because he had to go to school, and in the spring and summer they washed out of doors, under a tree in the yard, and his mother's eyes were bright and her cheeks were red and her arms were white, and she was always laughing. There's a memory for a man on the battlefield, dearest, a healthy, hearty memory of the day's work of a boy, and of a bright-eyed mother, and of a good dinner at the end of hours of toil.
"Perhaps with such a mother it isn't surprising that Tommy has made so much of himself. He has aspirations far beyond driving some other man's car, and if he keeps on he'll have a little flivver of his own before he knows it—when the war ends, and he can strike out, with his energy at the boiling point.
"There are a lot of men who have belonged not to the idle rich, but to the idle poor, and the discipline of this life is just the thing for them as it is for me. It rather contradicts the kindergarten idea of play as a preparation for life. These busy men, forced to be busy, are a thousand times more self-respecting than if left to lead the listless lives that were theirs before their country called them. I wonder if, after all, Kipling isn't right, and that the hump and hoof and haunch of it all isn't obedience? Not slavish obedience, but obedience founded on a knowledge of one's place and value in the pack?"
Jean, striving to follow Derry's point of view, found herself floundering.
"I am glad you like it, but I don't see how you can. And you mustn't say that you've always been a Tin Soldier on a shelf. I won't have it. And you have played the game of life just as bravely as Tommy Tracy, only your problems were different—. And if you can't remember wash days you can remember other days—. But I like to have you tell me about it, because I can see you, listening to Tommy and laughing at him. I adore your laugh, Derry, though I shouldn't be telling you, should I—? I have pasted the picture you sent me of you and Tommy in my memory book and have written under it, 'When you and I were young, Tommy' and I've drawn a cloud of steam above Tommy, with washboilers—and tubs—and cabbages and soap suds, and his mother's face smiling in the midst of it all—. And in your cloud is your mother smiling, too, with her little crown on her head, and gold spoons for a border—and a frosted cake with candles—and a mountain of ice-cream. Perhaps you have other memories, but I had to do the best I could with my poor little rich boy—"
It was about this time that Jean's memory book! became chaotic. Most of the things in it had to do with Derry, a bit of pine from a young plume which Derry had sent her from the south—triangles cut from the letter paper on which he sometimes wrote—post-cards to say "Good-morning," telegrams to say "Good-night"—a service pin with its one sacred star.
There were reminders, too, of the things which were happening across the sea, a cartoon or two, a small reproduction of a terrible Raemaeker print; verse, much of it—
----They have taken your bells, O God,
The bells that hung in your towers,
That cried your grace in a lovely song,
And counted the praying hours!
The little birds flew away!
They will tell the clouds and the wind,
Till the uttermost places know
The sin that the Hun has sinned!
----Jean thought a great deal about the Huns. She always called them that. She hated to think about them, but she had to. She couldn't pin the pages together, as it were, of her thoughts. And the Huns were worse than the sharks that had frightened her in her little girl days. Oh, they were much worse than sharks, for the shark was only following an instinct when it killed, and the Huns had worked out diabolically their murderous, monstrous plan.
In the days when she had argued with Hilda, she had been told of the power and perfection of Prussian rule. "Everything is at loose ends in America," had been Hilda's accusation.
"Well, what if it is?" Jean had flung back at her hotly. "Having things in place isn't the end and aim of happiness. Just because a house is swept and garnished isn't any sign that it is a blissful habitation. When I was a child I used to visit my two great-aunts in Maryland. I loved to go to Aunt Mary's, but I dreaded Aunt Anne's. And the reason was this. Everything in Aunt Anne's house went by clock-work, and everything was polished and scrubbed and dusted within an inch of its life. When we arrived, we scraped our shoes before we kissed Aunt Anne, and when we departed, we felt that she literally swept us out—. We had hours for everything, and nobody thought of doing as she pleased. It was always as Aunt Anne pleased, and the meals were always on time, and nobody was ever expected to be late, and if she was late she was scolded or punished; and nobody ever dared throw a newspaper on the floor, or go out to the kitchen and make fudge, or pop corn by the sitting-room fire. Yet Aunt Anne was so efficient that her house-keeping was the admiration of the whole State.
"But we loved Aunt Mary's. She would come smiling down the stone walk to meet us, and she would leave the morning's work undone to wander with us in the fields or woods. And we had some of our meals under the trees, and some of them in the house, and when we made taffy, and it stuck to things, Aunt Mary smiled some more and said it didn't matter. And we loved the freedom of our life, and we went to Aunt Mary's as often as we could, and stayed away when we could from Aunt Anne's.
"And that's the way with America. It isn't perfect, it isn't efficient, but it is a lovely place to live in, because in a sense we can live as we please.
"Did you ever know a man who wanted to go back to slavery? As a slave he was fed and clothed and kept by his master, with no thought of responsibility—. Yet it was freedom he wanted, even though he had to go hungry now and then for the sake of it—"
"I like law and order," Hilda said. "We don't always have it here."
"I'd rather be a gipsy on the road," had been Jean's passionate declaration, "and free, than a princess with a 'verboten' sign at all the palace gates."
----There were wisps of gauze, too, in her memory book, a red cross, drawings in which were caricatured some of the women who worked in the surgical dressing rooms.
"Emily," Jean asked, as she showed one of the pictures to her friend, "do such women come because it's fashion or because they really feel—?"
"I fancy their motives are mixed," said Emily, "and you mustn't think because they wear high heels and fluff their hair out over their ears that they haven't any hearts."
"No, I suppose not," Jean admitted, "but I wonder what they think the veils are for when they fluff out their hair.
"And their rings," she went on. "You see, when they all have on white aprons and veils you can't tell whether they are Judy O'Grady or the Colonel's lady—so they load their hands with diamonds. As if the hands wouldn't tell the tale themselves. Why, Emily, if you and Hilda were hidden, all but your hands, the people would know the Colonel's lady from Judy O'Grady."
Emily smiled abstractedly, she was counting compresses. She stopped long enough to ask, "Is Hilda still in town?"
"Yes. I saw her yesterday on the other side of the street. I didn't speak, but some day when I get a good opportunity I am going to tell her what I think of her."
But when the opportunity came she did not say all that she had meant to say!
She went over one morning to her father's house to get some papers which he had left in his desk. The house had been closed for weeks and the hall, as she entered it, was cold with a chill that reached the marrow of her bones—it was dim with the half-gloom of drawn curtains and closed doors. Even the rose-colored drawing-room as she stood on the threshold held no radiance—it had the stiff and frozen look of a soulless body. Yet she remembered how it had throbbed and thrilled on the night that Derry had come to her. The golden air had washed in waves over her.
She shivered and went over to the window. She pulled up a curtain and looked out upon the grayness of the street. The clouds were low, and a strong wind was blowing. Those who passed, bent to the wind. She was slightly above the level of the street, and nobody looked up at her. She might have been a ghost in the ghostly house.
Well, she had to get the papers. She turned to face the gloom, and as she turned she heard a sound in the room above her.
It was the rather startling sound of muffled steps. She dared not go into the hall. She felt comparatively safe by the window—. If—anything came, she could open the window and call.
But she did not call, for it was Hilda who came presently on rubber-heels and stood in the door.
"I thought I heard some one," she said, calmly.
"How did you get in?" was Jean's abrupt demand.
"I had my key. I have never given it up."
"But this is no longer your home."
"It was never home," said Hilda, darkly. "It was never home. I lived here with you and your father, but it was never home."
Jean, more than ever afraid of this woman, had a sudden sense of something tragic in the fact of Hilda's homelessness.
"I don't quite see what you mean," she said, slowly.
"You couldn't see," Hilda told her, "and you will never see. Women like you don't."
"We didn't get on very well together," Jean said, almost timidly, "but that was because we were different."
"It wasn't because we were different that we didn't get on," Hilda said. "It was because you were afraid of me. You knew your father liked me."
With her usual frankness she spoke the truth as she saw it.
"I was not afraid," Jean faltered.
"You were. But we needn't talk about that. I am going to France."
"When?"
"As soon as I can get there. That's why I came here. To take away some things I wanted."
"Oh—"
"And one of the things I wanted was the picture of your father which hung in your room. I have taken that. You can get more of them. I can't. So I have taken it."
They faced each other, this shining child and this dark woman.
"But—but it is mine—Hilda."
"It is mine now, and if I were you, I shouldn't make a fuss about it."
"Hilda, how dare you!" Jean began in the old indignant way, and stopped. There was something so sinister about it all. She hated the thought that she and Hilda were alone in the empty house—
"Hilda, if you go to France, shall you see Daddy?"
"I shall try. I had a letter from him the other day. He told me not to come. But I am going. There is work to do, and I am going."
Jean had a stunned feeling, as if there was nothing left to say, as if Hilda were indeed a rock, and words would rebound from her hard surface.
"But after all, you didn't really care for Daddy—"
"What makes you say that?"
"You were going to marry the General."
"Well, I wanted a home. I wanted some of the things you had always had. I'm not old, and I am tired of being a machine."
For just one moment her anger blazed, then she laughed with something of toleration.
"Oh, you'd never understand if I talked a year. So what's the use of wasting breath?"
She said "Good-bye" after that, and Jean watched her go, hearing the padded steps—until the front door shut and there was silence.
After that, with almost a sense of panic, she sped through the empty rooms, finding the papers after a frantic search, and gaining the street with a sense of escape.
Yet even then, it was sometime before her heart beat normally, and always after that when she thought of Hilda, it was against the chill and gloom of the empty house, with that look upon her face of dark resentment.
=== THE SINGING WOMAN ===
Somewhere in France, Drusilla had found the Captain. Or, rather, he had found her. He had come upon her one rainy afternoon, and had not recognized her in her muddy uniform, with a strap under her chin. Then all at once he had heard her voice, crooning a song to a badly wounded boy whose head lay in her lap.
The Captain had stopped in his tracks. "Drusilla—"
The light in her eyes gave him his welcome, but she waved him away.
The boy died in her arms. When she joined her lover, she was much moved. "It is not my work to look after the wounded; I carry blankets and things to refugees. But now and then—it happens. A shell burst in the street, and that poor lad—! He asked me to sing for him—you see, I have been singing for them as they go through, and he remembered—"
He was holding both of her hands in his. "Dear woman, dear woman—" There were people all about them, but there were no conventions in war times, and nobody cared if he held her hands.
Her face was dirty, her hair wind-blown. She was muddy and without a trace of the smartness for which she had been famous. She was simply a hard-worked woman in clothes of masculine cut, yet never had she seemed so beautiful to her lover. He bent and kissed her in the market-place. He was an undemonstrative Englishman, but there was that in her eyes which carried him away from self-consciousness.
"I saw McKenzie in Paris," he said. "He told me that you were here."
"We came over together. Did you get my letter?"
"I have had no letters. But now that I have you, nothing matters."
"Really? Somehow I don't feel that I deserve it."
"Deserve what?"
"All that you are giving me. But I have liked to think of it. It has been a prop to lean on—"
"Only that—?"
"A shield and a buckler, dearest, a cross held high—" Her breath came quickly.
               * * * * * *
They sat side by side on the worn doorstep of a shattered building and talked.
"I am in a shack—a baraque,—they call it," Drusilla told him, "with three other women. We have fixed up one room a little better than the others, and whenever the men come through the town some of them drift in and are warmed by our fire, and I sing to them; they call me 'The Singing Woman.'"
She did not tell him how she had mothered the lads. She was not much older than some of them, but they had instinctively recognized the maternal quality of her interest in them. With all her beauty they had turned to her for that which was in a sense spiritual.
Hating the war, Drusilla yet loved the work she had to do. There was, of course, the horror of it, but there was, too, the stimulus of living in a world of realities. She wondered if she were the same girl who had burned her red candles and had served her little suppers, safe and sound and far away from the stress of fighting.
She wondered, too, if women over there were still thinking of their gowns, and men of their gold. Were they planning to go North in the summer and South in the winter? Were they still care-free and comfortable?
People over here were not comfortable, but how little they cared, and how splendid they were. She had seen since she came such incredibly heroic things—men as tender as women, women as brave as men—she had seen human nature at its biggest and best.
"I have never been religious," she told the Captain, earnestly; "our family is the kind which finds sufficient outlet in a cool intellectual conclusion that all's right with the world, and it doesn't make much difference what comes hereafter. You know the attitude? 'If there is future life, we shall be glad to explore, and if there isn't, we shall be content to sleep!'
"But since I have been over here, I have carried a little prayer-book, and I've read things to the men, and when I have come to that part 'Gladly to die—that we may rise again,' I have known that it is true, Captain—"
He laid his hand over hers. "May I have your prayer-book in exchange for mine?" He was very serious. With all his heart he loved her, and never more than at this moment when she had thrown aside all reserves and had let him see her soul.
She drew the little book from her pocket. It was bound in red leather, with a thin black cross on the cover. His own was in khaki.
"I want something else," he said, as he held the book in his hand.
"What?"
"This." He touched a lock of hair which lay against her cheek. "A bit of it—of you—"
A band of poilus—marching through the street, saw him cut it off. But they did not laugh. They had great respect for a thing like that—and it happened every day—when men went away from their women.
They separated with a promise of perhaps a reunion in Paris, if he could get leave and if she could be spared. Then she drove away through the mud in her little car, and he went back to his men.
Thus they were swept apart by that tide of war which threatened to submerge the world.
Drusilla, arriving late at her baraque, made tea, and sat by an infinitesimal stove.
She found herself alone, for the other women were away on various errands. She uncovered all the glory of her lovely hair, and in her little mirror surveyed pensively the ragged lock over her left ear.
A man like that, oh, a man like that. What more could a woman ask—than love like that?
Yet even in the midst of her thought of him, came the feeling that she was not predestined for happiness. She must go on riding over rough roads on her errands of mercy. Nothing must interfere with that, not love or matters of personal preference—nothing.
She was very tired. But there was no time for rest. A half dozen kilted Highlanders hailed her through the open door and asked for a song. She gave them "Wee Hoose Amang the Heather—" standing on the step. It was still raining, and they took with them a picture of a girl with glorious uncovered hair, and that cut tell-tale lock against her cheek.
Drusilla watching them go, wondered if she would ever see them again, with their pert caps, the bare knees of them—the strong swing of their bodies.
She stretched her arms above her head. "Oh, oh, I'm tired—"
She went in and poured another cup of tea. She left the door open. Indeed it always stood open that the room might shine its welcome.
Snatching forty winks, she waked to find a woman standing over her—a tall woman in a blue cloak and bonnet, who held in her hand a dripping umbrella.
She felt that she still dreamed. "It can't be Hilda Merritt?"
"Yes, it is." Hilda set the umbrella in the wood box. "I knew you were here."
"Who told you?"
"Dr. McKenzie."
"Oh, you are with him, then?"
"He won't have me. That's why I came to you."
"To me?"
"Yes. I want you to tell him not to—turn me away."
Drusilla showed her bewilderment. "But, surely nothing that I could say would have more weight with him than your own arguments."
"You are his kind. He'd listen. Things that you say count with him."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Well, I've offended him. And he won't forgive me. Not even for the sake of the work. And I'm a good nurse, Miss Gray. But he's as hard as nails. And—and he sent me away."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Drusilla said gently. Hilda was a dark figure of tragedy, as she sat there statuesquely in her blue cloak.
"You could make him see how foolish it is to refuse to have a good worker; men may die whom I could save. He thinks that—those things don't mean anything to me, that I am arguing from a personal standpoint. He wouldn't think that of you."
"I'll do what I can, of course," Drusilla said slowly. She was not sure that she wanted to get into it, but she was sorry for Hilda.
"Won't you have a cup of tea," she said impulsively, "and take off your cloak? I am afraid I haven't seemed a bit hospitable. I was so surprised."
Hilda gave a little laugh. "I'm not used to such courtesies—so I didn't miss it. But I should like the tea, and something to eat with it. I left Dr. McKenzie's hospital early this morning, and I haven't eaten since—I didn't want anything to eat—"
She watched Drusilla curiously as she set forth the food. "It must seem strange to you to live in a room like this."
"I like it."
"But you have always had such an easy life, Miss Gray."
Drusilla smiled. "It may have looked easy to you. But I give you my word that keeping up with the social game is harder than this."
"You say that," Hilda told her crisply, "not because it's true, but because it sounds true. Do you mean to tell me that you like to be muddy and dirty and live in a place like this?"
"Yes, I like it." Something flamed in the back Of Drusilla's eyes. "I like it because it means something, and the other didn't."
"Well, I don't like it," Hilda stated. "But nursing is all I am fit for. I came over with a lot of other nurses, and they tell me at the hospital I am the best of the lot—and in war times you can't afford to miss the experience. But then I am used to a hard life, and you are not."
"Neither are the men in the trenches used to it. That's the standard I apply to myself—for every hard thing I am doing, it is ten times harder for them. I wish all the people at home could see how wonderful they are."
"That's Jean McKenzie's word—wonderful. Everything was wonderful, and now she has married Derry Drake."
"Yes, she has married Derry," Drusilla stood staring into the little round stove.
She roused herself presently. "I call them Babes in the Wood. They seem so young, and yet Derry isn't really young—it is only that there's such a radiant air about him."
Hilda's bitterness broke forth. "Why shouldn't he be radiant? Life has given him everything. It has given her everything; in a way it has given you everything. I am the one who goes without—it looks as if I should always go without the things I want."
"Don't think that," Drusilla said in her pleasant fashion. "Nobody is set apart—and some day you will see it. Did you know that Derry may be over now at any time, and that Jean is to stay with the General?"
"Yes," Hilda moved restlessly. There came to her a vision of the big house, of the shadowed room, of the room beyond, and of herself in a tiara, with ermine on her cloak.
What a dream it had been, and she had waked to this!
She rose. "If Dr. McKenzie doesn't take me back he may be sorry. Will you write to him?"
"I shall see him Saturday—in Paris. I have promised to dine with him. Captain Hewes is coming, too, if he can."
Hilda, going away in the rain, dwelt moodily on Drusilla's opportunities. If only she, too, might dine in Paris with men like Dr. McKenzie and Captain Hewes. There were indeed, men who might ask her to dine with them, but not as Drusilla had been asked, as an equal and as a friend.
The way was long, the road was muddy. There was not much to look towards at the end. It was not that she minded the dreadfulness of sights and sounds—she had been too much in hospitals for that. But she hated the ugliness, the roughness, the grinding toil.
Yet had she been with Dr. McKenzie, she would have toiled gladly for him. There would have been the sight of his crinkled copper head, the sound of his voice, his teasing laugh to sustain her. And now it was Drusilla who would see him, who would sit with him at the table, who would tempt his teasing laugh.
Well—if he didn't take her back, he would be sorry. There had been a patient in the hospital who in his delirium had whispered things. When he had come to himself, she had told him calmly, "You are a spy." He had not whitened, but had measured her with a glance. "Help me, and you shall see the Emperor. There will be nothing too good for you."
Drusilla, after Hilda's departure, sat by her little stove and thought it over. She divined something which did not appear on the surface. She was glad that she had promised to plead Hilda's cause. The woman's face haunted her.
And now the other workers who shared Drusilla's shack returned, bringing news of many wounded and on the way. Then came the darkness of the night, the long line of ambulances, the ghastly procession that trailed behind.
And all through the night Drusilla sang to men who rested for a moment on their weary way, out of the shadows came eager voices asking for this song and that—then they would pass on, and she would throw herself down for a little sleep, to rouse again and lift her voice, while the other women poured the coffee.
She was hoarse in the morning, and white with fatigue, but when one of the women said, "You can't keep this up, Drusilla, you can't stand it," she smiled. "They stand it is the trenches, and some of them are so tired."
She was as fresh as paint, however, on Saturday, when she met Dr. McKenzie in Paris. "I have had two hot baths, and all my clothes are starched and ironed and fluted by an adorable Frenchwoman who opened her house for me," she announced as she sat down with him at a corner table. "I never wore fluted things before, but you can't imagine how civilizing it is after you've been letting yourself down."
The Doctor was tired, and he looked it. "No one has starched and fluted me."
"Poor man. I'm glad you ran away from it all for a minute with me. Captain Hewes thought he might be able to come. But I haven't heard from him, have you?"
"No. But he may blow in at any moment. It seems queer, doesn't it, Drusilla, that you and I should be over here with all the rest of them left behind."
She hesitated, then brought it out without prelude. "Hilda came to see me."
"To see you? Why?"
"She is broken-hearted because you won't let her work with you."
"I told her I could not. And she hasn't any heart to break."
"I wonder if you'd mind," Drusilla ventured, "telling me what's the matter."
"A rather squalid story," but he told it. "She wanted to marry the General."
"Poor thing."
He glanced at her in surprise. "Then you defend her?"
"Oh, no—no. But think of having to marry to get the—the fleshpots, and to miss all of the real meanings. I talked to Hilda for a long time, and somehow before she left she made me feel sorry. She wants so much that she will never have. And she will grow hard and bitter because life isn't giving her all that she demands."
"Did she ask you to plead her cause?"
"Yes," frankly. "She feels that you ought to give her another chance."
He ran his fingers through his crinkled hair. "I don't want her. I'm afraid of her."
"Afraid?"
"She sees the worst that is in me, and brings it to the surface. And when I protest, she laughs and insists that I don't know myself. That I am a sort of Dr. Jekyll, with the Mr. Hyde part of me asleep—"
"And you let her scare you like that?"
He nodded. "Every man has a weak spot, and mine is wanting the world to think well of me."
"Think well of yourself. What would Jean say if she heard you talking like this?"
"Jean?" she was startled by the breaking up of his face into deep lines of trouble. "Do you know what she is doing, Drusilla? She is staying in that great old house playing daughter to the General."
"Marion says the General's affection for her is touching—he doesn't want her out of his sight."
"And because he doesn't want her out of his sight, she must stay a prisoner. I say that he hasn't done anything to deserve such devotion, Drusilla. He hasn't done anything to deserve it."
"You are jealous."
"No. It isn't that. Though I'll confess that something pulls at my heart when I think of it—. But I want her to be happy."
"I think she is happy. Life is giving her the hard things—but you and I would not be without the—hard things; we have reached out our hands for them, because the world needs us. Are you going to deny your daughter that?"
"Oh, I suppose not. But I hate it. Women ought to be happy—care-free, not shut up in sick rooms or running around in the rain."
"Oh, you men, how little you know what makes a woman happy." She stopped, and half rose from her chair. "Captain Hewes is coming."
"I don't know that I am glad, Drusilla," the Doctor turned to survey the beaming officer, "for now you won't have eyes or ears for me."
But she was glad.
While the Captain held her hand in his as if he would never let her go, she told him about being fluted and starched. "I don't look as dishevelled as I did the other day."
"You looked beautiful the other day," he assured her with fervor, "but this is better, because you are rested and some of the sadness has gone out of your eyes."
Dr. McKenzie watched them enviously, "I realize," he reminded them, "that I am the fifth wheel, or any other superfluous thing, but you can't get rid of me. I am homesick—somebody's got to cheer me up."
"We don't want to get rid of you," Drusilla told him, smiling.
But he knew that her loveliness was all for the Captain. She was lighted up by the presence of her betrothed, made exquisite, softer, more womanly. Love had come slowly to Drusilla, but it had come at last.
When the Doctor left them, he was in a daze of loneliness. He wanted Jean, he wanted sympathy, understanding, good-comradeship.
For just one little moment temptation assailed him. There was of course, Hilda. She would bring with her the atmosphere of familiar things which he craved. There would be the easy give and take of speech which was such a relief after his professional manner, there would be his own teasing sense of how much she wanted, and of how little he had to give. There would be, too, the stimulus to his vanity.
A broken-hearted Hilda, Drusilla had said. There was something provocative in the situation—elements of drama. Why not?
He thought about it that night when once more back at his work he and his head nurse discussed a case of shell shock—a pitiful case of fear, loss of memory, complete prostration.
The nurse was a plain little thing, very competent, very quiet. She was, perhaps, no more competent than Hilda in the mechanics of her profession, but she had qualities which Hilda lacked. She was not very young, and there were younger nurses under her. Yet in spite of her plainness and quietness, she wielded an influence which was remarkable. The whole hospital force was feeling the effect of that influence. It was as if every nurse had in some rather high and special way dedicated herself—as nuns might to the conventual life, or sisters of charity to the service of the poor. There was indeed a heroic aspect to it, a spiritual aspect, and this plain little woman was setting the pace.
And Hilda, coming in, would spoil it all. Oh, he knew how she would spoil it. With her mocking laugh, her warped judgments, her skeptical point of view.
No, he did not want Hilda. The best in him did not want her, and please God, he was giving his best to this cause. However he might fail in other things, he would not fail in his high duty towards the men who came out of battle shattered and broken, holding up their hands to him for help.
"I am going to let Miss Shelby have the case," the plain little nurse was saying, "when he begins to come back. She will give him what he needs. She is so strong and young, so sure of the eternal rightness of things—and she's got to make him sure."
The Doctor nodded. "Some of us are not sure—"
She agreed gravely. "But we are learning to be sure, aren't we, over here? Don't you feel that all the things you have ever done are little compared to this? That men and women are better and bigger than you have believed?"
"If anyone could make me feel it," he said, "it would be you."
When she had gone, he wrote letters.
He wrote to Jean—he wrote every day to Jean.
He wrote to Hilda.
"You are splendidly fitted for just the thing that you are doing. Men come and go and you care for their wounds. But we have to care here for more than men's bodies, we care for their minds and souls—we piece them together, as it were. And we need women who believe that God's in his Heaven. And you don't believe it, Hilda. I fancy that you see in every man his particular devil, and like to lure it out for him to look at—"
He stopped there. He could see her reading what he had written. She would laugh a little, and write back:
"Are you any better than I? If I am too black to herd with the white sheep, what of you; aren't you tarred with the same brush—?"
He tore up the letter and sent a brief note. Why explain what he was feeling to Hilda? She was of those who would never know nor understand.
And he felt the need tonight of understanding—of sympathy.
And so he wrote to Emily.
=== WHITE VIOLETS ===
Bruce McKenzie's letter arriving in due time at the Toy Shop, found Emily very busy. There were many women to be instructed how to do things with gauze and muslin and cotton, so she tucked the letter in her apron pocket. But all day her mind went to it, as a feast to be deferred until the time came to enjoy it.
In the afternoon Ulrich Stölle arrived, bearing the inevitable tissue paper parcel.
"Do you know what day it is?" he asked.
"Thursday."
"There are always Thursdays. But this is a special Thursday."
"Is it?"
"And you ask me like that? It is a Thursday for valentines."
"Of course. But how could you expect me to remember? Nobody ever sends me valentines."
"My father has sent you one." It was a heart-shaped basket of pink roses; "but mine I couldn't bring. You must come and see it. Will you dine with us tonight?"
"Oh, I am so busy."
"You are not too busy for that. Let your little Jean take charge."
Jean, all in white with her white veil and red crosses was more than ever like a little nun. She was remote, too, like a nun, wrapped not in the contemplation of her religion, but of her love.
She still made toys, and the proceeds of the sale of Lovely Dreams had been contributed by herself and Emily for Red Cross purposes. There were rows and rows of the fantastic creatures behind glass doors on the shelves, and for Valentine's Day Jean had carved and painted pale doves which carried in their beaks rosy hearts and golden arrows and whose wings were outspread—.
There were also on the shelves the white plush elephants which Franz Stölle and his friends had made, and which were, too, being sold to swell the Red Cross fund.
Thus had the Toy Shop come into its own. "I have enough to live on," Emily had said, "at least for a while, and I am taking no more chances for future living, than the men who give up everything to fight."
So enlisted in this cause of mercy as men had enlisted in the cause of war, Miss Emily led where others followed, and the old patriarch of all the white elephants, who had been born in a country of blood and iron, looked down on women working to heal the wounds which his country had made.
"Let your little Jean look after things," Ulrich repeated.
"Do you mind, my dear?"
"Mind what, Emily—?"
"If I go with Mr. Stölle—to see his father about the—toys."
"Darling—no;" Jean kissed her. "I don't mind in the least, and the ride will do you good."
"But you are not going to see my father about toys," Ulrich told her, twinkling, as he followed her to the back of the shop.
"Do you think I was going to tell her that?"
She put on her coat and hat and off she went with Ulrich, leaving still unread in the pocket of the big apron the letter which Bruce McKenzie had written her.
All the way out Ulrich was rather silent. It was not, however, the silence of moodiness or dullness, it was rather as if he wanted to hear her speak. It was, indeed, a responsive, stimulating silence, and she glowed under his glance.
It seemed to her, as she talked, that these adventures with Ulrich Stölle were in every way the most splendid thing that had happened to her. They were always unexpected, and they were packed to the brim with pleasure of a rare quality.
When they reached their destination, Ulrich took her at once to the hothouses. As they passed down the fragrant aisles, she found that all the men and gone, their day's work over; only she and Ulrich were under the great glass roof.
"Anton comes back later," Ulrich explained, "but at this hour the houses are empty, and dinner will not be ready for as hour. We have it all to ourselves, Emily."
Her name, spoken with so much ease, without a sign of self-consciousness, startled her. Her inquiring glance showed her that he was utterly unaware that he had spoken it. Her breath came quickly.
The birds sang and the stream sang, and suddenly her heart began to sing.
You see it had been so many years since Emily had known romance;—indeed, she had never known it—there had always been, in her mother's time, her sense of the proper thing, and her sense of duty, and her sense of making the best of things—and now for the first time in her life there was no make-believe. This was a world of realities, with Ulrich leading the way, his hands gathering flowers for her.
He stopped at last at the entrance of a sort of grotto where great ferns towered—at their feet was a bed of white violets.
"You see," he said, "I could not bring it. I came here this morning to pick the violets—for you—to let them say, 'I love you'—"
Even the birds seemed silent, and the little stream!
"And suddenly they spoke to me, 'Let her see us here, where you have so often thought of her. Tell her here that you love her—'
"How much I love you," and now she found her hands in his, "I cannot tell you. It seems to me that the thought of you as my wife is so exquisite that I cannot believe it will ever come to pass. And I have so little to offer you. Even my name is hated because it is a German name, and my old house is German, and my father—
"But my heart's blood is for America. You know that, and so I have dared to ask it, not that you will love me now, but that you may come to think of loving me, so that some day you will care a little."
The birds were singing madly, the streams were shouting—Emily was trembling. Nobody had ever wanted her like this—nobody had ever made her feel so young and lovely and—wanted—. She had had a proposal or two, but there had been always the sense that she had been chosen for certain staid and sensible qualities; there had been nothing in it of red blood and rapture.
"If you should come to us, to me and my father, you would be a queen on a throne. If you could love me just a little in return—"
She could not answer, she just stood looking up at him, and suddenly his arms went around her. "Tell me, beloved."
----An hour later they went in to his father, and after that Emily was lifted up on the wings of an enthusiasm which left her breathless, but beatified. "I knew when I first saw you what we desired," said the old man, "and my son knew. All that I have is yours both now and afterwards—"
Dinner was a candle-lighted feast, with heart-shaped ices at the end.
"How sure you were," Emily told her lover, smiling.
"I was not sure. But I set the stage for success. It was only thus that I kept up my courage. There were so many chances that the curtain might drop on darkness—," his hand went over hers. "If it had been that way, I should have let the ices melt and the violets die—."
After dinner they went over the house. "Why should we wait," Ulrich had said, "you and I? There is nothing to wait for. Tell me what you want changed in this old house, and then come to it, and to my heart."
It was, she found, such a funny old place. It had been furnished by men, and by German men at that. There was heaviness and stuffiness, and all the bric-a-brac was fat and puffy, and all the pictures were highly-colored, with the women in them blonde and buxom, and the men blond and bold—.
But Ulrich's room was not stuffy or heavy. The windows were wide open, and the walls were white, and the cover on the canopy bed was white, and there were two pictures, one of Lincoln and one of Washington, and that was all.
"And when I have your picture, it will be perfect," he told her. "Where I can see you when I wake, and pray to you before I go to sleep."
"But why," she probed daringly, "do you want my picture?"
"Because you are so—beautiful—"
It was not to be wondered that such worship went to Miss Emily's head. She slipped out of the dried sheath of the years which had saddened and aged her, and emerged lovely as a flower over which the winter has passed and which blooms again.
"I don't want to change anything," Emily told her lover as they went downstairs, "at least not very much. I shall keep all of the lovely old carved things—with the fat cupids."
As she lay awake that night, reviewing it all, she thought suddenly of Bruce McKenzie's letter in her apron pocket. The apron was in the Toy Shop, and it was not therefore until the next morning that she read the letter.
In it Dr. McKenzie asked her to marry him.
"I should like to think that when I come back, you will be waiting for me, Emily. I am a very lonely man. I want someone who will sympathize and understand. I want someone who will love Jean, and who will hold me to the best that is in me, and you can do that, Emily; you have always done it."
It was a rather touching letter, and she felt its appeal strongly. Indeed, so stern was her sense of self-sacrifice, that she had an almost guilty feeling when she thought of Ulrich. If he had not come into her life at the psychological moment, she might have given herself to Bruce McKenzie.
But the letter had come too late. Oh, how glad she was that she had left it in her apron pocket!
She answered it that night.
"I am going to be very frank with you, Bruce, because in being frank with you I shall be frank with myself. If Ulrich Stölle had not come into my life, I should probably have thought I cared for you. Even now when I am saying 'no,' I realize that your charm has always held me, and that the prospect of a future by your pleasant fireside holds many attractions. But since you left Washington, something has happened which I never expected, and all of my preconceived ideas of myself have been overturned. Bruce, I am no longer the Emily you have known—a little staid, gray-haired, with pretty hands, but with nothing else very pretty about her; a lady who would, perhaps, fill gracefully, a position for which her aristocratic nose fits her. I am no longer the Emily of the Toy Shop, wearing spectacles on a black ribbon, eating her lunches wherever she can get them. No, I am an Emily who is young and beautiful, a sort of fairy-tale Princess, an Emily who, if she wishes, shall sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, but who doesn't wish it because she hates to sew, and would much rather work in her silver-bell-and-cockle shell garden—oh, such a wonderful garden as it is!
"And I am all this, Bruce, I am young and beautiful and all the rest, because I am seeing myself through the eyes of my lover.
"He is Ulrich Stölle, as I have said, and you mustn't think because his name is German that he is to be cast into outer darkness. He is as American as you with your Scotch blood, or as I with my English blood. And he is as loyal as any of us. He is too old to be accepted for service, but he is giving time and money to the cause.
"And he loves me rapturously, radiantly, romantically. He doesn't want me as a cushion for his tired head, he doesn't want me because he thinks it would be an act of altruism to provide a haven for me in my old age, he wants me because he thinks I am the most remarkable woman in the whole wide world, and that he is the most fortunate man to have won me.
"And you don't feel that way about it, Bruce. You know that I am not beautiful, there is no glamour in your love for me. You know that I am not wonderful, or a fairy Princess—. And you are right and he is wrong. But it is his wrongness which makes me love him. Because every woman wants to be beautiful to her lover, and to feel that she is much desired.
"You will ask why I am telling you all this. Well, there was one sentence in your letter which called it forth. You say that you want me because I will hold you to the best that is in you.
"Oh, Bruce, what would you gain if I held you? Wouldn't there be moments when in spite of me you would swing back to women like Hilda? You are big and fine, but you are spoiled by feminine worship—it is a temptation which assails clergymen and doctors—who have, as it were, many women at their feet.
"Does that sound harsh? I don't mean it that way. I only want you to come into your own. And if you ever marry I want you to find some woman you can love as you loved your wife, someone who will touch your imagination, set you on fire with dreams, and I could never do it.
"Yet even as I finish this letter, I am tempted to tear it up and tell you only of my real appreciation of the honor you have conferred upon me in asking me to be your wife. I know that you are offering me more in many ways than Ulrich Stölle. I don't like his name, because something rises up in me against Teuton blood and Teuton nomenclature. But he loves me, and you do not, and because of his love for me and mine for him, everything else seems too small to consider.
"Oh, you'd laugh at his house, Bruce, but I love even the fat angels that are carved on everything from the mahogany chests to the soup tureens. It is all like some old fairy-tale. I shall make few changes; it seems such a perfect setting for Ulrich and his busy old gnome of a father.
"When you get this, pray for my happiness. Oh, I do want to be happy. I have made the best of things, but there has been much more of gray than rose-color, and now as I turn my face to the setting sun, I am seeing—-loveliness and light—"
She read it over and sealed it and sent it away. It was several weeks before it reached Doctor McKenzie. He was very busy, for the spring drive of the Germans had begun, and shattered men were coming to him faster than he could handle them. But he found time at last to read it, and when he laid it down he sat quite still from the shock of it.
And the next time he saw Drusilla he said to her, "Emily Bridges is going to be married, and she is not going to marry me."
"I am glad of it," Drusilla told him.
"My dear girl, why?"
"Because you don't love her, and you never did."
=== THE HOPE OF THE WORLD ===
The great spring drive of the Germans brought headlines to the papers which men and women in America read with dread, and scoffed at when they talked it over.
"They'll never get to Paris," were the words on their lips, but in their hearts they were asking, "Will they—?"
Easter came at the end of March, and Good Friday found Jean working very early in the morning on fawn-colored rabbits with yellow ears. She worked in her bedroom because it was warmed by a feeble wood fire, and Teddy came up to watch her.
"The yellow in their ears is the sun shining through," Jean told him. "We used to see them in the country on the path in front of the house, and the light from the west made their ears look like tiny electric bulbs."
Margaret-Mary entranced by one small bunny with a splash of white for a cotton tail, sang, "Pitty sing, pitty sing."
"They don't weally lay eggs, do they?" Teddy ventured.
"I wouldn't ask such questions if I were you, Teddy."
"Why not?"
"Because you might find out that they didn't lay eggs, and then you'd feel terribly disappointed."
"Well, isn't it better to know?"
Jean shook her head. "I'm not sure—it's nice to think that they do lay eggs—blue ones and red ones and those lovely purple ones, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And if they don't lay them, who does?"
"Hens," said Teddy, rather unexpectedly, "and the rab-yits steal them."
"Who told you that?"
"Hodgson. And she says that she ties them up in rags and the colors come off on the eggs."
"Well, I wouldn't listen to Hodgson."
"Why not? I like to listen."
"Because she hasn't any imagination."
"What's 'magination?"
They were getting in very deep. Jean gave it up. "Ask your mother, Teddy."
So Teddy sought his unfailing source of information. "What's 'magination, Mother."
"It is seeing things, Teddy, with your mind instead of your eyes. When I tell you about the poor little children in France who haven't any food or any clothes except what the Red Cross gives them, you don't really see them with your eyes, but your mind sees them, and their cold little hands, and their sad little faces—"
"Yes." He considered that for a while, then swept on to the things over which his childish brain puzzled.
"Mother, if the Germans get to Paris what will happen?"
He saw the horror in her face.
"Do you hate the Germans, Mother?"
"My darling, don't ask me."
After he had gone downstairs, Margaret got out her prayer-book, and read the prayers for the day.
"Oh, merciful God, who hast made all men and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor desirest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live, have mercy on all Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of Thy word, and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to Thy flock, that they may be saved—"
She shut the book. No, she could not go on. She did not love her enemies. She was not in the least sure that she wanted the Germans to be saved!
On Easter morning, however, Teddy was instructed to pray for his enemies. "We mustn't have hate in our hearts."
"Why mustn't we, Mother?"
"Well, Father wouldn't want it. We hate the evil they do, but we must pray that they will be shown their wickedness and repent."
"If they re-pyent will they stop fighting?"
"My dearest, yes."
"How would they stop?"
Jean, who was ready for church and waiting, warned, "You'd better not try to give an answer to that, Margaret, there isn't any."
Teddy ignored her. "How would they stop, Mother?"
"Well, they'd just stop, dear—"
"Would they say they were sorry?"
Would William of Prussia ever be sorry?
"Can God stop it, Mother?"
Margaret wrenched her mind away from the picture which his words had painted for her, the Kaiser on his knees! Miserere mei, Deus—
With quick breath, "Yes, dear."
"Then why doesn't He stop it, Mother?"
Why? Why? Why? Older voices were asking that question in agony.
"He will do it in His own good time, dearest. Perhaps the world has a lesson to learn."
With Teddy walking ahead with nurse, Jean proclaimed to Margaret, "I shan't pray for them."
"I know how you feel."
"Shall you?"
"Yes," desperately, "I must."
"Why must you?"
"Because of—Win," Margaret said simply. In her widow's black, with her veil giving her height and dignity, she had never been more beautiful. "Because of Win, I must. There are wives in Germany who suffer as I suffer—who are not to blame. There are children, like my children, asking the same questions—. This drive has seemed to me like the slaughter of sheep, with a great Wolf behind them, a Wolf without mercy, sending them down to destruction, to—death—"
"And the Wolf—?"
Margaret raised her hand and let it drop, "God knows."
And now soldiers were being rushed overseas. Trains swept across the land loaded with men who gazed wistfully at the peaceful towns as they passed through, or chafed impotently when, imprisoned in day coaches, they were side-tracked outside of great cities.
And on the battle line those droves and droves of gray sheep were driven down and down—to death—by the Wolf.
The war was coming closer to America. A look of care settled on the faces of men and women who had, hitherto, taken things lightly. Fathers, who had been very sure that the war would end before their sons should go to France, faced the fact that the end was not in sight, and that the war would take its toll of the youth of America. Mothers, who had not been sure of anything, but had hidden their fears in their hearts, stopped reading the daily papers. Wives, who had looked upon the camp experiences of their husbands as a rather great adventure, knew now that there might be a greater adventure with a Dark Angel. The tram-sheds in great cities were crowded with anxious relatives who watched the troops go through, clutching at the hope of a last glimpse of a beloved face, a few precious moments in which to say farewell.
Yes, the war was coming near!
Derry wrote that he might go at any moment, but hoped for a short furlough. It was on this hope that Jean lived. She worked tirelessly, making the much-needed surgical dressings. When Emily tried to get her to rest, Jean would shake her head.
"Darling, I must. They are bringing the wounded over."
"But you mustn't get too tired."
"I want to be tired. So that I can sleep."
She was finding it hard to sleep. Often she rose and wrote in her memory book, which was becoming in a sense a diary because she confided to its pages the things she dared not say to Derry. Some day, perhaps, she might show him what she had written. But that would be when the war was over, and Derry had come back safe and sound. Until then she would have to smile in her letters, and she did not always feel like smiling!
But that was what Derry called them, "Smiling letters!"
"They smile up at me every morning, Jean."
So she wrote to him bravely, cheerfully, of her busy days, of how she missed him, of her love and longing, but not a word did she say of her world as it really was.
But there was no laughter in the things she said to the old memory book.
"I don't like big houses—not houses like this, with grinning porcelain Chinese gods at every turn of the hall, and gold dragons on the bed-posts. There are six of us here besides the servants, yet we are like dwarfs in a giant palace. Perhaps if we had the usual fires it wouldn't seem quite so forlorn. But the china in the cabinets is so cold—and the ceilings are so high—and the marble floors—.
"Perhaps if everyone were happy it would be different. But only Emily is happy. And I don't see how she can be. She is going to marry a Hun! Of course, he isn't really, and he'd be a darling dear if it weren't for his German name, and his German blood, and the German things he has in his house. But Emily says she loves his house, that it speaks to her of a different Germany—of the sweet old gay Germany that waltzed and sang and loved simple things. It seems so funny to think of Emily in love—she's so much older than people are usually when they are engaged and married.
"But Emily is the only happy one, except the children, and I sometimes think that even they have the shadow on them of the dreadful things that are happening. Margaret-Mary tries to knit, and tires her stubby little fingers with the big needles, and Teddy, poor chap, seems to feel that he must be the man of the family and take his father's place, and he is pathetically careful of his mother.
"I wonder if Margaret feels as I do about it all? She is so sweet and smiling—and yet I know how her heart weeps, and I know how she longs for her own house and her own hearth and her own husband—
"Oh, when my Derry comes back safe and sound—and he will come back safe, I shall say it over and over to myself until I make it true—when Derry comes back, we'll build a cottage, with windows that look out on trees and a garden—and there'll be cozy little rooms, and we'll take Polly Ann and Muffin—and live happy ever after—.
"I wonder how father stands it to be always with people who are sick? I never knew what it meant until now. The General is an old dear—but sometimes when I sit in that queer room of his with its lacquer and gold and see him in his gorgeous dressing gown, I feel afraid. It is rather dreadful to think that he was once young and strong like Derry, and that he will never be young and strong again.
"Oh, I want the war to end—I want Derry, and sunshine and well people. It seems a hundred years since I did anything just for the fun of doing it. It seems a million years since Daddy and I drove downtown together and drank chocolate sodas—
"But then nobody is drinking chocolate sodas—at least no one is doing it light-heartedly. You can't be light-hearted when the person you love best in the world is going to war. You can be brave, and you can make your lips laugh, but you can't make your heart laugh—you can't—you can't—.
"I talk a great deal to the women who come to Emily's Toy Shop. And I am finding out that some of those that seem fluffy-minded are really very much in earnest. There is one little blonde, who always wears white silk and chiffon, she looks as if she had just stepped from the stage. And at first I simply scorned her. I felt that she would be the kind to leave ravellings in her wipes, and things like that. But she doesn't leave a ravelling. She works slowly, but she does her work well—. But now and then her hands tremble and the tears fall; and the other day I went and sat down beside her and I found out that her husband is flying in France, and that her two brothers are at the front—. And one of them is among the missing; he may be a prisoner and he may be dead—. And she is trying to do her bit and be brave. And now I don't care if she does wear her earlocks outside of her veil and load her hands with diamonds—she's a dear—-and a darling. But she's scared just as I am—and as Mary Connolly is, and as all the women are, though they don't show it—. I wonder if Joan of Arc was afraid—in her heart as the rest of us are? Perhaps she wasn't, because she was in the thick of it herself, and we aren't. Perhaps if we were where we could see it and have the excitement of it all, we should lose our fear.
"But when women tell me that the women have the worst of it—that they must sit at home and weep and wait, I don't believe it. We suffer—of course, and there's the thought of it all like a bad dream, and when we love our loved ones—it is heartbreak. But the men suffer, daily, in all the little things. The thirst and the vermin, and the cold and wet—and the noise—and the frightfulness. And they grow tired and hungry and homesick,—and death is on every side of them, and horror—. Some of the women who come to the shop sentimentalize a lot. One woman recited, 'Break, break, break—, the other day, and the rest of them cried into the gauze, cried for themselves, if you please; 'For men must work and women must weep.' And then my little blonde told them what she thought of them. Her name is 'Maisie,' wouldn't you know a girl like that would be called 'Maisie'?
"'If you think,' she said, 'that you suffer—what in God's name will you think before the war is over? It hasn't touched you. You won't know what suffering means until your men begin to come home. You talk about hardships; not one of you has gone hungry yet—and the men over there may be cut off at any moment from food supplies, and they are always at the mercy of the camp cooks, who may or may not give them things that they can eat. And they lie out under the stars with their wounds, and if any of you has a finger ache, you go to bed with hot water bottles and are coddled and cared for. But our boys,—there isn't anyone to coddle them—they have to stick it out. And we've got to stick it out—and not be sorry for ourselves. Oh, why should we be sorry for ourselves!' The tears were streaming down her cheeks when she finished, and a gray-haired woman who had wept with the others got up and came over to her. 'My dear,' she said, 'I shall never pity myself again. My two sons are over there, and I've been thinking how much I have given. But they have given their young lives, their futures—their bodies, to be broken—' And then standing right in the middle of the Toy Shop that mother prayed for her sons, and for the sons of other women, and for the husbands and lovers, and that the women might be brave.
"Oh, it was wonderful—as she stood there like a white-veiled prophetess, praying.
"Yet a year ago she would have died rather than pray in public. She is a conservative, aristocratic woman, the kind that doesn't wear rings or try to be picturesque—and she has always kept her feelings to herself, and said her prayers to herself—or in church, but never in all her life has she been so fine as she was the other day praying in the Toy Shop.
"Yet in a way I am sorry for myself. Not for me as I am to-day, but for the Jean of Yesterday, who thought that patriotism was remembering Bunker Hill!
"Of course in a way it is that—for Bunker Hill and Lexington and Valley Forge are a part of us because our grandfathers were there, and what they felt and did is a part of our feeling and doing.
"I have always thought of those old days as a sort of picture—the embattled farmers in their shirt-sleeves and with their hair blowing, and the Midnight Ride, and the lantern in the old North Church—and the Spirit of '76. And it was the same with the Civil War; there was always the vision of cavalry sweeping up and down slopes as they do in the movies, and of the bugles calling, and bands playing 'Marching through Georgia' or 'Dixie' as the case might be—and flags flying—isn't it glorious to think that the men in gray are singing to-day, 'The Star Spangled Banner' with the rest of us?
"But my thoughts never had anything to do with money, though I suppose people gave it then, as they are giving now. But you can't paint pictures of men and women making out checks, and children putting thrift stamps in little books, so I suppose that in future the heroes and heroines of the emptied pocket-books will go down unsung—.
"It isn't a bit picturesque to give until it hurts, but it helps a lot. I saw Sarah Bernhardt the other day in a wonderful little play where she's a French boy, who dies in the end—and she dies, exquisitely, with the flag of France in her arms—the faded, lovely flag—I shall never forget. The tears ran down my cheeks so that I couldn't see, but her voice, so faint and clear, still rings in my ears—
"If she had died clutching a Liberty Bond or wearing a Red Cross button, it would have seemed like burlesque. Yet there are men and women who are going without bread and butter to buy Liberty Bonds, and who are buying them not as a safe investment, as rich men buy, but because the boys need the money. And there ought to be poems written and statues erected to commemorate some of the sacrifices for the sake of the Red Cross.
"Yet I think that, in a way, we have not emphasized enough the picturesque quality of this war, not on this side. They do it in France—they worship their great flyers, their great generals, their crack regiments, everything has a personality, they are tender with their shattered cathedrals as if something human had been hurt, and the result is a quickening on the part of every individual, a flaming patriotism which as yet we have not felt. We don't worship anything, we don't all of us know the words of 'The Star Spangled Banner'; fancy a Frenchman not knowing the words of the 'Marseillaise' or an Englishman forgetting 'God Save the King.' We don't shout and sing enough, we don't cry enough, we don't feel enough—and that's all there is to it. If we were hot for the triumph of democracy, there would be no chance of victory for the Hun. Perhaps as the war comes nearer, we shall feel more, and every day it is coming nearer—"
It was very near, indeed. Thousands of those gray sheep were lying dead on the plains of Picardy—the Allies fought with their backs to the wall—Americans who had swaggered, secure in the prowess of Uncle Sam, swaggered no longer, and pondered on the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins.
Slowly the nation waked to what was before it. In America now lay the hope of the world. The Wolf must be trapped, the sheep saved in spite of themselves, those poor sheep, driven blindly to slaughter.
The General was not quite sure that they were sheep, or that they were being driven. He held, rather, that they knew what they were about—and were not to be pitied.
Teddy, considering this gravely, went back to previous meditations, and asked if he prayed for his enemies.
"Bless my soul," said the old gentleman, "why should I?"
"Well, Mother says we must, and then some day they'll stop and say they are sorry—"
The General chuckled, "Your mother is optimistic."
"What's 'nopt'mistic?"
"It means always believing that nice things will happen."
"Don't you believe that nice things will happen?"
"Sometimes—"
"Don't you believe that the war will stop?"
"Not until we've thrown the full force of our fighting men into it—at what a sacrifice."
"Can't God make it stop?"
"He can, but He won't, not if He's a God of justice," said this staunch old patriot, "until America has brought them to their knees—"
"Will they say they are sorry then?"
"It won't make very much difference what they say—"
But Teddy, having been brought up to understand the things which belong to an officer and a gentleman, had his own ideas on the subject. "Well, I should think they'd ought to say they were sorry—."
=== CHAPTER XXVII ===
=== MARCHING FEET ===
The end of April brought much rain; torrents swept down the smooth streets, and the beauty of the carefully kept flower beds in the parks was blurred by the wet.
The General, limping from window to window, chafed. He wanted to get out, to go over the hills and far away; with the coming of the spring the wander-hunger gripped him, and with this restless mood upon him he stormed at Bronson.
"It's a dog's life."
"Yes, sir," said Bronson, dutifully.
"It is dead lonesome, Bronson, and I can't keep Jean tied here all of the time. She is looking pale, don't you think she is looking pale?"
"Yes, sir. I think she misses Mr. Derry."
"Well, she'll miss him a lot more before she gets him back," grimly. "He'll be going over soon—"
"Yes, sir."
"I wish I were going," the old man was wistful. "Think of it, Bronson, to be over there—in the thick of it, playing the game, instead of rotting here—"
It was, of course, the soldier's point of view. Bronson, being hopelessly civilian, did his best to rise to what was expected of him. "You like it then, sir?"
"Like it? It is the only life. We've lost something since men took up the game of business in place of the game of fighting."
"But you see, sir, there's no blood—in business." Bronson tried to put it delicately.
"Isn't there? Why, more men are killed in accidents in factories than are killed in war—murdered by money-greedy employers."
"Oh, sir, not quite that."
"Yes, quite," was the irascible response. "You don't know what you are talking about, Bronson. Read statistics and find out."
"Yes, sir. Will you have your lunch up now, sir?"
"I'll get it over and then you can order the car for me."
"But the rain—?"
"I like rain. I'm not sugar or salt."
Bronson, much perturbed, called up Jean. "The General's going out."
"Oh, but he mustn't, Bronson."
"I can't say 'mustn't' to him, Miss," Bronson reported dismally. "You'd better see what you can do—"
But when Jean arrived, the General was gone!
"We'll drive out through the country," the old man had told his chauffeur, and had settled back among his cushions, his cane by his side, his foot up on the opposite seat to relieve him of the weight.
And it was as he rode that he began to have a strange feeling about that foot which no longer walked or bore him lightly.
How he had marched in those bygone days! He remembered the first time he had tried to keep step with his fellows. The tune had been Yankee Doodle—with a fife and drum—and he was a raw young recruit in his queer blue uniform and visored cap—.
And how eager his feet had been, how strongly they had borne him, spurning the dust of the road—as they would bear him no more—.
There were men who envied him as he swept past them in the rain, men who felt that he had more than his share of wealth and ease, yet he would have made a glad exchange for the feet which took them where they willed.
He came at last to one of his old haunts, a small stone house on the edge of the Canal. From its wide porch he had often watched the slow boats go by, with men and women and children living in worlds bounded by weather-beaten decks. To-day in the rain there was a blur of lilac bushes along the tow path, but no boats were in sight; the Canal was a ruffled gray sheet in the April wind.
Lounging in the low-ceiled front room of the stone house were men of the type with whom he had once foregathered—men not of his class or kind, but interesting because of their very differences—human derelicts who had welcomed him.
But now, for the first time he was not one of them. They eyed his elegances with suspicion—his fur coat, his gloves, his hat—the man whose limousine stood in front of the door was not one of them; they might beg of him, but they would never call him "Brother."
So, because his feet no longer carried him, and he must ride, he found himself cast out, as it were, by outcasts.
He ordered meat and drink for them, gave them money, made a joke or two as he limped among them, yet felt an alien. He watched them wistfully, seeing for the first time their sordidness, seeing what he himself had been, more sordid than any, because of his greater opportunities.
Sitting apart, he judged them, judged himself. If all the world were like these men, what kind of world would it be?
"Why aren't you fellows fighting?" he asked suddenly.
They stared at him. Grumbled. Why should they fight? One of them wept over it, called himself too old—.
But there were young men among them. "For God's sake get out of this—let me help you get out." The General stood up, leaned on his cane. "Look here, I've done a lot of things in my time—things like this—" his arm swept out towards the table, "and now I've only one good foot—the other will never be alive again. But you young chaps, you've got two good feet—to march. Do you know what that means, to march? Left, right, left, right and step out bravely—. Yankee Doodle and your heads up, flags flying? And you sit here like this?"
Two of the men had risen, young and strong. The General's cane pounded—he had their eyes! "Left, right, left, right—all over the world men are marching, and you sit here—"
The years seemed to have dropped from him. His voice rang with a fire that had once drawn men after him. He had led a charge at Gettysburg, and his men had followed!
And these two men would follow him. He saw the dawn of their resolve in their faces. "There's fine stuff in both of you," he said, "and the country needs you. Isn't it better to fight than to sit here? Get into my car and I'll take you down."
"Aw, what's eatin' you," one of the older men growled. "What game's this? Recruitin'?"
But the young men asked no questions. They came—glad to come. Roused out of a lethargy which had bound them. Waked by a ringing old voice.
The General was rather quiet when he reached home. Jean and Bronson, who had suffered torments, watched him with concerned eyes. And, as if he divined it, he laid his hand over Jean's. "I did a good day's work, my dear. I got two men for the Army, and I'm going to get more—"
And he did get more. He went not only in the rain, but in the warmth of the sun, when the old fruit trees bloomed along the tow path, and the backs of the mules were shining black, and the women came out on deck with their washing.
And always he spoke to the men of marching feet—. Now and then he sang for them in that thin old voice whose thinness was so overlaid by the passion of his patriotism that those who listened found no flaw in it.
"He has sounded forth the trumpet that has never called retreat,
He is sifting forth the hearts of men before his Judgment seat,
O be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet,
Our God is marching on—"
There was no faltering now, no fumbled words. With head up, singing—"Be jubilant, my feet—"
Sometimes he took Jean with him, but not always. "There are places that I don't like to have you go, my dear, but those are where I get my men."
At other times when he came out to where she sat in the car there would flash before his eyes the vision of his wife's face, as she, too, had once sat there, waiting—
Sometimes he took the children, and rode with them on a slow-moving barge from one lock to another, with the limousine meeting them at the end.
So he travelled the old paths, innocently, as he might have travelled them throughout the years.
Yet if he thought of those difficult years, he said never a word. He felt, perhaps, that there was nothing to say. He took to himself no credit for the things he was doing. If age and infirmity had brought to him a realization of all that he had missed, he was surely not to be praised for doing that which was, obviously, his duty.
Yet it gave him a new zest for life, and left Jean freer than she had been before. It left her, too, without the fear of him, which had robbed their relationship of all sense of security.
"You see, I never knew," she wrote in her memory book, "what might happen. I had visions of myself going after him in the night as Derry had gone and his mother. I used to dream about it, and dread it."
Yet she had said nothing of her dread to Derry in her smiling letters, and as men think of women, he had thought of her in the sick room as a guardian angel, shining and serene.
----And now, faint and far came to the men in the cantonments the sound of battles across the sea. The bugles calling them each morning seemed to say, "Soon, soon, you will go, you will go, you will go—"
To Derry, listening, it seemed the echo of the fairy trumpets, "Trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt, you will go, you will go, you will go—"
It was strange how the thought of it drew him, drew him as even the thoughts of Jean his bride did not draw—. He remembered that years ago he had smiled with a tinge of tolerant sophistication over the old lines:
"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more—"
Yet here it was, a truth in his own life. A woman meaning more to him than she could ever have meant in times of peace, because he could go forth to fight for her, his life at stake, for her. It was for her, and for other women that his sword was unsheathed.
"If only they could understand it," he wrote to Jean. "You haven't any idea what rotten letters some of the women write. Blaming the men for going over seas. Blaming them for going into it at all. Taking it as a personal offense that their lovers have left them. 'If you had loved me, you couldn't have left me,' was the way one woman put it, and I found a poor fellow mooning over it and asked him what was the matter. 'It isn't a question of what we want to do, it is a question of what we've got to do, if we call ourselves men,' he said. But she couldn't see that, she was measuring her emotions by an inch rule.
"But, thank God, most of the women are the real thing—true as steel and brave. And it is those women that the men worship. It is a masculine trait to want to be a sort of hero in the eyes of the woman you love. When she doesn't look at it that way, your plumes droop!"
And now the bugles rang with a clearer note—not, "You will go, you will go—" but, "Do not wait, do not wait, do not wait."
The cry from abroad was Macedonian. "Come over and help us!" It was to America that the ghosts of those fighting hordes appealed.
"Take up our quarrel with the foe,
To you from falling hands we throw
The torch—be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' field—"
Gradually there had grown up in the hearts of simple men a flaming response to that sacred charge. Men whose dreams had never reached beyond a day's frivolity, found springing up in their souls a desire to do some deed to match that of the other fellow who slept "in Flanders field."
"To you from falling hands we throw the torch—be yours to hold it high—," the little man who had measured cloth behind a counter, the boy who had sold papers on the streets, the bank clerk who had bent over his books, the stenographer who had been bound to the wheel of everlasting dictation, were lighted by the radiance of that vision, "to hold it high—."
"Gee, I never used to think," said Tommy Tracy, "that I might have a chance to do a stunt like that."
"Like what?" Derry asked.
Tommy found it a thing rather hard to express. "Well, when you've been just a common sort of chap, to die—for the other fellow—"
So men's bodies grew and their muscles hardened. But their souls grew, too, expanding to the breadth and height of the things which were waiting for them to do across the sea.
And one morning Derry was granted a furlough, and started home. He sent no word ahead of him. He wanted to come upon them unawares. To catch the light that would be on Jean's face when she looked up and saw him.
There was rain and more rain when at last he arrived in Washington. The trees as his taxi traversed the wide avenues showed clear green, melting into vistas of amethyst and gray. The parks as he passed were starred with the bright yellow and pinks of flowering shrubs. Washington, in spite of the rain, was as lovely as a woman whose color blooms behind a veil.
He came into the great house unannounced, having his key with him. The General was out for a ride, the children with him, Margaret and Emily and Jean away, the servants in the back of the house.
Derry, going up the stairs, two steps at a time, stopped on the landing with head uncovered to greet his mother.
Oh, lovely painted lady, is this the little white-faced lad you loved, the big bronzed man, fresh from hardships, strong in the sense of the thing he has to do?
No promise made to you could hold him now. He has weighed your small demands is the balance with the world's great need.
He did not tarry long. Straight as an eagle to its mate, he swept through the hall and knocked at the door of Jean's room. There was no response. He knocked again, turned the handle, entered, and found the room empty. The tin soldier on the shelf shouted, "Welcome, welcome—comrade," but Derry had no ears to hear. Everywhere were signs of Jean; her fat memory book open on her desk, the ivory and gold appointments of her dressing table, her pink slippers, her prayer book—his own picture with flowers in front of it as before a shrine.
"My dear, my darling," his heart said when he saw that. What, after all, was he that she should worship him?
Impatient, he rang for Bronson, and the old man came—bewildered, hurried, joyful. "It's a great surprise, sir, but it's good to see you."
"It's good to see you, Bronson. Where's Miss Jean?"
"At Miss Emily's shop, sir."
"As late as this?"
"Sometimes later. She tries to get home in time for dinner."
"Where's Dad?"
"Driving with the children, and the ladies are out on war work."
A year ago women had played bridge at this hour in the afternoon, but there was no playing now.
"Don't tell Dad that I am here. I'll come back presently with Mrs. Drake."
And now down the hall came an old gray dog, wild with delight, outracing Polly Ann, who thought it was a play and leaped after him—Muffin had found his master!
But Derry left Muffin, left Bronson, left Polly Ana, a wistful trio at the front door. He must find Jean!
The day was darkening, and a light burned far back on the Toy Shop. Derry, standing outside, saw a room which was the very wraith of the gay little shop as he had left it—with its white tables, its long counters piled high with finished dressings; the white elephants in a spectral row behind glass doors on the top shelf the only reminder of what it once had been.
He saw, too, a small nun-like figure behind the counter, a figure all in white, with a white veil banded about her forehead and flowing down behind.
All of her bright hair was hidden, her eyes were on the compresses that she was counting. It seemed to him that there was a sharpened look on the little face.
He had not expected this. He had felt that he would find her glowing as she had been on that first night when he had followed his father through the rain—his dream had been of crinkled copper hair, of silver and rose, of youth and laughter and lightness—.
Her letters had been like that—gay, sparkling—there had been times when they had seemed almost too exuberant, times when he had wondered if she had really waked to the seriousness of the great struggle, and the part he was to play in it.
Yet now he saw signs of suffering. He opened the door. "Jean," he cried.
With the blood all drained from her face, she stared at him as if she saw a specter—"Derry," she whispered.
With his strong arms, he lifted her over the counter. "Jean-Joan, Jean-Joan—"
When at last she released herself, it was to laugh through her tears. "Derry, pull down the shades; what will people think?"
He cared little what people would think. And, anyway, very few people were passing at that late hour in the rain. But he pulled them down, and when he came back, he held her off at arm's length. "What have you been doing to yourself, dearest? You are a feather-weight."
"Well, I've been working."
"How does it happen that you are here alone?"
"Emily had to go down to order supplies, and Margaret went to a Liberty Loan meeting. I often stay like this to count and tie."
"Don't you get dreadfully tired?"
"Yes. But I think I like to get tired. It keeps me from thinking too much."
He drew her to him. "Take off your veil," he said, almost roughly. "I want to see your hair."
Divested of her headcovering, she was more like herself, but even then he was not content. He loosed a hairpin here and there and ran his fingers through the crinkled gold. "If you knew how I've dreamed of it, Jean-Joan."
But he had not dreamed of the dearness of the little face. "My darling, you have been pining, and I didn't know it."
"Well, didn't you like my smiling letters?"
"So that was it? You've been trying to cheer me up, and letting yourself get like this."
"I didn't want to worry you."
"Didn't you know that I'd want to be worried with anything that pertained to you? What's a husband for, dearest, if you can't tell him your troubles?"
"Yes, but a soldier-husband, Derry, is different. You've got to keep smiling—"
Her lips trembled and she clung to him. "It is so good to have you here, Derry."
She admitted, later, that she had confided her troubles to her memory book. "There weren't any big things, really—just missing you and all that—"
He was jealous of the memory book. "I shall read every word of it."
"Not until you come back from the war—and then we can laugh at it together."
They fell into silence after that. With his arms about her he thought that he might not come back, and she clinging to him had the same thought. But neither told the other.
"Do you know," she said at last, sitting up and sticking the hairpins into her crinkled knot. "Do you know that it's almost time for dinner, and that the General will wonder where I am?"
"I told Bronson not to tell him."
"Oh, really, Derry? Let's make it a great surprise."
Providentially the General was late. He and the children came home to find the house quite remarkably illumined, and Margaret flushed and excited, and in white.
"Is it a party, Mother?" Teddy asked, lending his shoulder manfully to the General's hand, as, with the chauffeur on the other side, they helped the old man up the stairs.
"No, but on such a rainy night Bronson and I thought we'd have a little feast. Don't you think that would be fun?"
The General was tired. "I had planned not to come down again—"
"Please do," she begged,
Bronson, knowing his master's moods, was on tip-toe with anxiety. "I've your things all laid out, sir."
"Well, well, I'll see."
Teddy, somewhat out of breath as they reached the top landing was inspired to remark, "We'll be 'spointed if you don't come down—"
"You want me, eh?"
"Yes, I do. There isn't any other man—"
The General chuckled. "Well, that's reason enough—. You can count on me, Ted, for masculine support."
The table was laid for six. Teddy appearing presently in the dining room pointed out the fact to Bronson, who was taking a last look.
"Is Margaret-Mary coming down?"
"She may later, for the sweets."
"Those aren't her spoons and forks."
"Well, well," said Bronson, "so they aren't"; but he did not have them changed.
The General in his dinner coat, perfectly groomed, immaculate, found Jean in rose and silver waiting for him.
"How gay we are," he said, and pinched her cheek.
Teddy in white linen and patent leathers also approved. "You've got on your spangly dwess, and it makes you pwetty—"
"Oh, Ted, is it just my clothes that make me pretty?"
"I didn't mean that. Only tonight you're so nice and—shining."
She shone, indeed, with such effulgence, that it was a wonder that the General did not suspect. But he did not, even when she said, "We have a surprise for you."
"For me, my dear?"
"Yes. A parcel—it came this afternoon. We want you to untie the string."
"Where is it?" Teddy demanded.
"On the table in the blue room."
Teddy rushed in ahead of the rest, came back and reported, "It's a big one."
It was a big one, cone-shaped and tied up in brown paper. It was set on a heavy carved table, a length of tapestry was under it and hid the legs of the table.
"It looks like a small tree," the General remarked. "But why all this air of mystery?"
He was plainly bored by the fuss they were making. He was tired, and he wanted his dinner.
But Jean, in an excited voice, was telling him to cut the string, and Bronson was handing him a knife.
And then—the paper dropped and everybody was laughing, and Teddy was screaming wildly and he was staring at the khaki-clad upper half of a tall young soldier whose silver-blond hair was clipped close, and whose hand went up in salute.
"It's Cousin Derry. It's Cousin Derry," Teddy was shouting, and Margaret-Mary piped up, "It's Tousin Dee."
Derry stepped out from behind the table, where leaning forward and wrapped up he had lent himself to the illusion, and put both hands on the General's shoulders. "Glad to see me, Dad?"
"Glad; my dear boy—" It was almost too much for him.
Yet as supported by his son's arm, they went a moment later into the dining room, he had a sense of renewed strength in the youth and vigor of this youth who was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. If his own feet could not march here were feet which would march for him.
There were flowers on the table, most extravagantly, for these war times, orchids; and there were tall white candles in silver holders.
Jean shining between the candles was a wonder for the world to gaze upon. Derry couldn't keep his eyes off her. This was no longer a little nun of the Toy Shop, yet he held the vision of the little nun in his heart, lest he should forget that she had suffered.
He talked to them all. But beating like a wave against his consciousness was always the thought of Jean. Of the things he had to tell her which he could tell to no one else. He knew now that he could reveal to her the depths of his nature. He had withheld so much, fearing to crush her butterfly wings, but she was not a butterfly. They had been playing at cross purposes, and writing letters that merely skimmed the surface of their emotions. It had taken those moments in the Toy Shop to teach them their mistake.
Teddy, feeling that the occasion called for a relaxing of the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard rule, asked questions.
"How long can you stay?"
"Ten days."
"Are you going to Fwance?"
"I hope so."
"Mother says I've got to pray for the Germans."
"Teddy," Margaret admonished.
"Well, I rather think I would," Derry told him. "They need it."
This was a new angle. "Shall you hate to kill them?"
There was a stir about the table. The old man and the women seemed to hang on Derry's answer.
"Yes, I shall hate it. I hate all killing, but it's got to be done."
He spoke presently, at length, of what many men thought of war.
"We are red-blooded enough, we Americans, but I think we hate killing the other man rather more than we fear being killed. It's sickening—bayonet practice. Killing at long range is different. The children of my generation were trained to tender-heartedness. We looked after the birds and rescued kittens, and were told that wars were impossible—long wars. But war is not impossible, and it has come upon us, and we are finding that men must be brave not merely in the face of losing their own lives, but in the face of taking the lives of—others. I sometimes wonder what it must have seemed to those Germans who went first into Belgium. Some of them must have been kind—some of them must have asked to be shot rather than be set at the work of butchery.
"I sometimes think," he pursued, "that if we could give moving pictures of the war just as it is—in all its horror and hideousness—show the pictures in every little town in every country in the world, that war would stop at once. If the Germans could see themselves in those towns in Belgium—if the world could see them. If we could see men mowed down—wounded, close up, as our soldiers see them. If our people should be forced to look at those pictures, as the people of war-ridden countries have been forced to gaze upon realities, money would be provided and men provided in such amounts and numbers that those who began the war would be forced to end it on the terms the world would set for them.
"The fact that men are going into this war in spite of their aversion to killing shows the stuff of which they are made. It is like drowning kittens," he smiled a little. "It has to be done or the world would be overrun by cats."
Teddy, wide-eyed, was listening. "Do people drown kittens?" he asked. "Oh, I didn't think they would." It was a sad commentary on the conditions of war that he was more heavily oppressed by the thought of drowned little cats than by the murder of men.
"My dear fellow," Derry said, "we won't talk about such things. I must beg your pardon for mentioning it."
The talk flowed on then in lighter vein. "Ralph Witherspoon is in town," Jean vouchsafed. "He had a bad fall and was sent home to get over it. Mrs. Witherspoon has asked me there to dine. I shall take you with me."
"I didn't know that people were dining out in these times."
"Mrs. Witherspoon prides herself on her conservation menus. She says that she serves war things, that she gives us nothing to eat that the men need, and she likes her friends about her."
"We shall miss Drusilla," Derry said. "I've been worried about her since the Huns recaptured those towns in France."
"Daddy wrote that she is not far from his hospital, doing splendid work, and that the men adore her."
"They would," said Derry. "She is a great-hearted creature. I can fancy her singing to them over there. You know what a wonder she was at that sort of thing—"
After dinner the General was eager to have his son to himself. "The women will excuse us while we smoke and talk."
Derry's eyes wandered to Jean. "All right," he said with an effort.
The General's heart tightened. His son was his son. The little girl in silver and rose was in a sense an outsider. She had not known Derry throughout the years, as his father had known him. How could she care as much?
Yet she did care. He realized how Derry's coming had changed her. He heard her laugh as she had not laughed in all the weeks of loneliness. She came up and stood beside Derry, and linked her arm in his and looked up at him with shining eyes.
"Isn't he—wonderful?" she asked, with a catch of her breath.
"Oh, take her away," the old gentleman said. "Go and talk to her somewhere."
Derry's face brightened. "You don't mind?"
"Of course not," stoutly. "Bronson says that the rain has stopped. There's probably a moon somewhere, if you'll look for it."
Margaret went up to put the children to bed. Emily, promising to come back, withdrew to write a letter. The old man sat alone.
He limped into the blue room, and gazed indifferently around on its treasures. Once he had cared for these plates and cups—his quest for rare porcelains had been eager.
And now he did not care. The lovely glazed things were for the eye, not for the heart. He would have given them all for the touch of a loving hand, for a voice that grew tender—.
There was the patter of little feet on the polished floor. Margaret-Mary in a diminutive blue dressing gown and infinitesimal slippers, with her curls brushed tidily up from the back of her neck and skewered with a hairpin, came over and laid her hand on his knee. "Dus a 'itte 'tory?" she asked ingratiatingly. She adored stories.
He picked her up, and she curled herself into the corner of his arm.
Her mother found her there. "Mother's naughty little girl," she said, "to run away—"
"Let her stay," the General begged. "Somehow my heart needs her tonight."
=== SIX DAYS ===
Four days of Derry's furlough had passed, four palpitating days, and now the hours that the lovers spent together began to take on the poignant quality of coming separation. Every moment counted, nothing must be lost, nothing must be left unsaid, nothing must be left undone which should emphasize their oneness of thought and purpose.
They read together, they walked together, they rode together, they went to church together. If they included the General in their plans it was because they felt his need of them, not theirs of him. They lived in a world created to survive for ten days and then to collapse like a pricked bubble—
And it was because of the dread of collapse that Jean began to plan a structure of remembrance which should endure after Derry's departure.
"Darling," she said, "there are only six days—What shall we do with them?"
THE FIFTH DAY
It was Sunday, and in the morning they went dutifully to church. They ate their luncheon dutifully with the whole family, and motored dutifully afterwards with the General. Then at twilight they sought the Toy Shop.
They had it all to themselves, and they had told Bronson that they would not be home for dinner. So Jean made chocolate for Derry as she had made it on that first night for his father. They toasted war bread on the electric grill, and there were strawberries.
They were charmed with their housekeeping. "It would have been like this," Derry said—all eyes for her loveliness, "if you had been the girl in the Toy Shop and I had been the shabby boy—"
Jean pondered. "I wonder if a big house is ever really a home?"
"Not ours. Mother tried to make it—but it has always been a sort of museum with Dad's collections."
"Do you think that some day we could have a little house?"
"We can have whatever you want." His smile warmed her.
"Wouldn't you want it, Derry?"
"If you were in it."
"Let's talk about it, and plan it, and put dream furniture in it, and dream friends—"
"More Lovely Dreams?"
"Well, something like that—a House o' Dreams, Derry, without any gold dragons or marble balls or queer porcelain things; just our own bits of furniture and china, and a garden, and Muffin and Polly Ann—" Her eyes were wistful.
"You shall have it now if you wish."
"Not until you can share it with me—"
And that was the beginning of their fantastic pilgrimage. In the time that was left to them they were to find a house of dreams, and as Jean said, expansively, "all the rest."
"We will start tonight," Derry declared. "There's such a moon."
It was the kind of moon that whitened the world; one swam in a sea of light. Derry's runabout was a fairy car. Jean's hair was molten gold, her lover's pale silver—as with bare heads, having passed the city limits, they took the open road.
It was as warm as summer, and there were fragrances which seemed to wash over them in waves as they passed old gardens and old orchards. There was bridal-wreath billowing above stone fences, snow-balls, pale globes among the green, beds of iris, purple-black beneath the moon.
They forded a stream—more silver, and a silver road after that.
"Where are we going?" Jean breathed.
"I know a house—"
It was a little house set on top of a hill, where indeed no little house should be set, for little houses should nestle, protected by the slopes back of them. But this little house was set up there for the view—the Monument a spectral shaft, miles away, the Potomac broadening out beyond it, the old trees of the Park sleeping between. This was what the little house saw by night; it saw more than that by day.
It was not an empty house. One window was lighted, a square of gold in a lower room.
They did not know who lived in the house. They did not care. For the moment it was theirs. Leaving the car, they sat on the grass and surveyed their property.
"Of course it is ours," Jean said, "and when you are over there, you can think of it with the moon shining on it."
"I like the sloping roof," her lover took up the refrain, "and the big chimney and the wide windows."
"I can sit on the window seat and watch for you, Derry, and there will be smoke coming out of the chimney on cold days, and a fire roaring on the hearth when you open the door—"
They decided that there ought to be eight rooms—, and they named them. The Log-Fire Room; The Room of Little Feasts; the Place of Pots and Pans—
"That's the first floor," said Jean.
"Yes."
The upper floor was harder—The Royal Suite; The Friendly Boom, for the dream maid of all work; The Spare Chamber—
"My grandmother had a spare chamber," Jean explained, "and I always liked the sound of it, as if she kept her hospitality pressed down and running over—"
Derry, who had written it all by the light of the moon, held his pencil poised. "There is one more," he said, "the little room towards the West—"
Jean hesitated for the breadth of a second. "Well, we may need another," she said, and left it nameless.
The door opened and a man came out. If he saw them, they meant nothing to him—a pair of lovers by the wayside; there were many such.
He paced back and forth on the gravel walk. They could hear the crunch of it under his feet. They saw the shining tip of his cigar—smelt its fragrance—.
Again the door opened, to frame a woman. She called and her voice was young.
"Dearest, it is late. Are you coming in?"
His young voice answered. His far-flung cigar-end trailed across the darkness, his eager steps gave quick response—the door was shut—.
"Oh, Derry, I'd call you like that—-"
"And I should come."
The light went out on the lower floor, and presently in a room above a window was illumined.
THE SIXTH DAY
A dream house must have dream furniture. There are old shops in Alexandria, where, less often than in earlier years, one may find treasures, bow-legged chairs and gate-legged tables, yellowed letters written by famous pens, steel engravings which have hung in historic halls, pewter and plate, Luster and Sèvres, Wedgwood and Willow, Chippendale and Hepplewhite, Adams and Empire, everything linked with some distinguished name, everything with a story, real or invented. One may buy an ancestor for a song, or at least the portrait of one, and silver with armorial bearings, and no one will know if you do not tell them that your heirlooms have come from a shop.
And Alexandria, as all the world knows, is reached from Washington by motor and trolley, train or ferry.
It was by ferry that the lovers preferred to go in the glory of this May morning, feeling the breeze fresh in their faces as with a motley crowd they stood on the lower deck and looked towards the old town.
Thus they came to the wharves, flanked by ancient warehouses in a straggly row along the water line. The windows of these ancient edifices had looked down on Revolutionary heroes, the old brick walls had echoed to the sound of fife and drum—the old streets had once been thronged by men in blue and buff. Since those days the quaint little city had basked in the pride of her traditions. She had tolerated nothing modern until within this very year she had waked to find that her red-coat enemy was now her friend, that the roads which George Washington had travelled were being trod once more by marching men; that in the church where he had worshipped prayers were being said once more for men in battle.
And into the shops, with their storied antiques, drifted now men in olive-drab and men in blue, and men in forester's green, who laughed at the flint locks and powder horns, saluted the Father of his Country whenever they passed his picture, gazed with reverence on ancient swords and uniforms, dickered for such small articles as might be bought out of their limited allowances, and paid in the end, cheerfully, prices which would have been scorned by any discriminating buyer.
"There must be a table for the Log-Fire Room," Jean told her husband, "and a fire-bench, not too high, and a big chair for you, and another chair for me—"
"And a stool for your little feet—."
"And a desk for you, Derry."
"And an oval mirror with a gold frame, for me to see your face in, Jean-Joan—"
Then there was a four-poster bed with pineapples, and an Adams screen, an old brass-bound chest, the most adorable things in Sheffield and crystal, and to crown it all, a picture of George Washington—a print, faintly colored, with the country's coat of arms carved on the frame.
Yet not one thing did they buy except a quite sumptuous and splendid marriage coffer which suggested itself at once as the only wedding present for Emily.
The price took Jean's breath away. "But, dearest—"
"Nothing is too good for Emily, Jean-Joan."
----That night Derry drew a picture of the house in Jean's memory book.
"I'll put a garden in front—"
"How can you put in a garden, Derry, when there isn't one?"
She wore a lace robe and a lace cap, and there were pink ribbons threaded in, and her cheeks were pink. "You can't put in a garden until there is one, Derry. When we find it, it must be a lovesome garden, with the old-fashioned flowers, and a fountain with a cupid—and a fish-pond."
With this settled, he proceeded, with facile pen, to furnish the house. There was the Log-Fire Room, with the print of George Washington over the mantel, with Jean's knitting on the table; Muffin on one side of the fire, and Polly Ann on the other. He even started to put Jean in one of the big chairs, but she made him rub it out. "Not yet, Derry. You see, I am not living in it yet. I am living here, with you alive and loving—"
He caught her to him. "When you are away from me," she whispered, "I'll live in it—and you'll be there—and I shall never feel alone—"
Yet later, Derry coming in unexpectedly after a talk with his father, found her sobbing with her head on the fat old book.
"My darling—"
"It isn't that I am unhappy, Derry—. It is just for that one little minute, I wanted it to be real—"
THE SEVENTH DAY
It was on the morning of the seventh day that a letter came from Drusilla.
"Dear Babes in the Wood:
"I am writing this to tell you that the next time I see Captain Hewes, I am going to marry him. That sounds a little like a hold-up, doesn't it? But it is the way we are doing things over here. He has wanted it for so long, and I am beginning to know that I want it, too. It has been hard to tell just what was really best in the face of all that is happening. It has seemed sometimes as if it were a sacrilege to think of love and life in the midst of death and destruction.
"I shan't have any trousseau; I shan't have a wedding journey. He will just blow in some day, and the chaplain will marry us, and the little old curé of this village will give us his blessing.
"I never expected to be married like this. You know the kind of mind I have. I must always see the picture of myself doing things, and there had always been a sort of dream of some great church with a blur of gold light at the far end, and myself floating up the aisle in a cloud of white veil, and a hushed crowd and the organ playing.
"And it won't be a bit like that. I shall wear a uniform and a flannel shirt, and I'll be lucky if my boots are not splashed with mud. It will seem queer to be married with my boots on, as men died in old romances.
"Perhaps by the time this reaches you, Drusilla Gray will be Drusilla Hewes, and so I ask your blessing, and your prayers.
"I should never have asked for your prayers a year ago. I should have been thanking you for your wedding present of glass and silver, and asking you to dine with me on Tuesday or Thursday as the case might be. But now, the only thought that holds me is whether God will give my Captain back to me, and the hope that if not, I may have the strength to bear it—.
"I am sure that Derry will feel the sublimity of it all when he comes—death is so near, yet so little feared; the men know that tonight or tomorrow they may be beyond the shadows, and it holds them to something bigger than themselves.
"But be sure of this, my dears, that when Derry goes the seas will not part you—. Spirit touches spirit, space has nothing to do with it. Often when I am alone, the Captain comes to me, speaks to me, cheers me; I think if he should die in battle, he would still come.
"If ever I have a home of my own, I shall build an altar not to the Unknown God but to the God whom I had lost and have found again. I go into old churches here to pray, and it is no longer a matter of feeling, no longer a matter of form, it is something more than that.
"And now I can't ask you to dance at my wedding, but I can ask you to wish me happiness and a long life with my lover, or failing that, the strength to give him up—"
She signed herself, "Always loving you both, DRUSILLA."
"Such a dear letter," said Jean.
"And such a different Drusilla. Do you think that the Drusilla of the old days would have built an altar?"
And it was because of Drusilla's letter that Derry took Jean that afternoon to the great Library with the gold dome and guided her to a corridor made beautiful by the brush of an artist who had painted "The Occupations of the Day"; in one lunette a primitive man and woman knelt before a pile of stones on which burned a sacred flame. Above them was blue sky—flowers grew within reach of their hands—the fields stretched beyond.
"We must build an altar, dearest."
"In our hearts—"
"And in our House of Dreams—"
THE EIGHTH DAY
There was no getting out of the Witherspoon dinner, and it was when Ralph greeted Jean that he said to her, "You are lovelier than ever."
She smiled at him. "It is because my heart is singing—"
"Do you feel like that?"
She nodded. "In three days the song will cease—the lights will go out, and the curtain will fall—the end of the world will come."
"Drake goes in three days?"
"He goes back to camp. I don't expect to see him again before he sails."
"Lucky fellow."
"To go?"
"To have you."
"Please don't."
"Let me say this—that I acted like a cad; I'd like to feel that you've forgiven me."
"I have forgotten, which is better, isn't it?"
"How sweet you are—and all the sweetness is Derry's. Well, when I go over, will you pray for me, my dear?"
He was in dead earnest. "There are so few women—who pray—but I rather fancy that you must—"
All around them was surging talk. "How strange it seems," Jean said, "that we should be speaking of such things, here—"
"No," Ralph said, "it is not strange. I have a feeling that I shan't come back."
Alma Drew on the other side of him claimed his attention. "War is the great sensational opportunity. And there are people who like patriotism of the sound-the-trumpet-beat-the-drum variety—"
"You said that rather cleverly, Alma," Ralph told her, "but you mustn't forget that was the kind of patriotism our forefathers had, and it seemed rather effective."
"Men aren't machines," Jean said hotly. "They are flesh and blood, and so are women—a fife and drum or a bag-pipe means more to them than just crude music; the blood of their ancestors thrilled to the sound."
"As savages thrill to a tom-tom."
They stared at her.
"It is all savage," Alma said, crisply and coolly, "We are all murderers. We are teaching our men to run Germans through with bayonets, and trying to make ourselves think that they aren't breaking the sixth commandment. Yet in times of peace, when a man kills he goes to the electric chair—"
It was Derry who answered that. "If in times of peace I heard you scream and saw you set upon by thieves and murderers, and stood with my hands in my pockets while you were tortured and killed, would you call my non-interference laudable?"
"That's different."
"It is the same thing. The only difference lies in the fact that thousands of defenceless women and little children are calling. Would you have the nation stand with its hands in its pockets?"
Alma, cold as ice, challenged him: "Why should they call to us? We'll be sorry some day that we went into it."
Out of a dead silence, a man said: "Not long ago, I went into a sweet shop in England. A woman came in with two children. They were rosy children and round. They carried muffs.
"She bought candy for them—and when she gave it to them, I saw that they had—no hands—"
A gasp went round the table.
"They were Belgian children."
That night Jean said to Derry with a sternness which set strangely upon her, "We must have friends in our House of Dreams. The latchstrings will always be out for people like Emily and Marion, and Drusilla, and Ulrich and Ralph—"
"Yes—"
"But not for Hilda and Alma."
THE NINTH DAY
It was on the ninth day that Derry waked his wife at dawn. "I've ordered the car. It rained in the night, and now—oh, there was never such a morning; there may never be such a morning for us again."
"What time is it, Derry?"
"Sunrise time—come and see."
Her window faced the east, and she saw all the pearl of it, and the faint rose and the amethyst and gold.
"We shall eat our breakfast ten miles from town," Derry said, as their car carried him out into the country, "and there's a lovesome garden—"
"With old-fashioned flowers and a fountain and a Cupid?"
"With all that—and more—"
The garden belonged to an old woman. For years and years she had planted flowers—-tulips and hyacinths and poppies and lilies and gladiolus and larkspur and phlox and ladyslipper—there had always been a riot of color.
She had an old gardener, and she would stand over him, leaning on her silver-topped ebony cane, with a lace scarf covering her hair, and would point out the places to plant things.
But now in her garden she had strawberries and Swiss chard and sweet herbs, and rows and rows of peas and young onions and potatoes, with a place left for corn at the back, and tomatoes in every spare space.
And there was lettuce, and an asparagus bed, and everything on this May morning was shouting to the sun.
"I had always thought," said the old lady to Derry, when he presented Jean, "that a vegetable garden was uninteresting. But it is a little world—with class distinctions of its own, if you please. All the really useful vegetables we call common; it is the ones we can do without which are the aristocrats. The potatoes and cabbages and onions are really important, but I am proudest of my young peas and my peppers and cucumbers and tomatoes, and that's the way of the world, isn't it? If there was only an aristocracy things would stop, but the common folk could go on alone until the end of time."
She gave Jean a blue bowl to pick strawberries in; and Derry dug asparagus—the creamy shoots were tipped with pale purple and pink, deepening into green where they had stood too long in the sun.
"Aren't there any flowers?" Jean was anxious.
"Come and see." The old woman went ahead of them, her cane tap-tapping on the stone flags.
She opened a gate which was flanked by brick walls. "These," she said, whimsically, "are my jewels."
All the sweetness which had once spread over her domain was concentrated here, fragrance and flame—roses, iris, peonies—honeysuckle—ruby and emerald, amethyst and gold; a Cupid riding a swan, with water pouring from his quiver into a shallow marble basin.
"I should not have dared keep this, if it had not been for the other—" the old woman told them. "I am very sure that in these days God walks in vegetable gardens—"
For breakfast they had strawberries and radishes, thin little corn cakes—and two fresh eggs from the chickens which most triumphantly occupied the conservatory.
"This is the only way I can do my bit," the old lady explained, "by helping with the world's food supply. My eyes are bad and I cannot sew, my fingers are twisted and I cannot knit, and Dennis is old—but we plan the garden and plant—"
And that night Jean said to Derry, "I am glad there were flowers to make it lovesome—and I am glad there were vegetables to make it right."
So he drew a waving field of corn back of the dream cottage, and tomatoes and peas to the right and left—with onions in a stiff row along the border, and potatoes storming the hillside. But the gate which led to the Lovesome Garden was open wide, so that one might see the Cupid as he rode his swan.
THE LAST DAY
It was on the tenth day that Derry said, "We have our house and the furniture for it, and we have built an altar, and found our friends, and we have planted a garden—what shall we do on the last day?"
And Jean said, rather unexpectedly, "We will go to the circus."
"To the circus?"
"Yes. And take the children—they are dying to go, and Margaret can't. It is up to you and me, Derry."
Even Nurse was to stay behind. "We'll have them all to ourselves."
Derry was dubious, a little hurt. "It seems rather queer, doesn't it, on our last day?"
"I—I think I should like it better than anything else, Derry."
And so they went.
It was warm with a hint of showers in the air, and both of the children were in white. Jean was also in white. They rode in the General's limousine to where the big tent with all its flags flying covered a vast space.
"Cousin Derry, Mother said I might have some peanuts."
"All right, old man."
"And Margaret-Mary mustn't. But there are some crackers in a bag."
It was all most entrancing, the gilded wagons, the restless beasts behind their bars, the spotted ponies, the swaying elephants, the bands playing, the crowds streaming—.
Teddy held tight to Jean's hand. Margaret-Mary was carried high on Derry's shoulder. All of her curls were bobbing, and her eyes were shining. Now and then she dropped a light kiss on the silver blond hair of her cavalier.
"Tousin Dee," she murmured, affectionately.
"She's an adorable kiddie," Derry told Jean as they found their seats.
"Cousin Derry," Teddy reminded him, "don't forget the peanuts."
And now the trumpets blared and the drums boomed, and the great parade writhed like a glittering serpent around the huge circle, then broke up into various groups as the performance began in the rings.
After that one needed all of one's eyes. Teddy sat spellbound for a while, but found time at last to draw a long breath. "Cousin Derry, that is the funniest clown—"
"The little one?"
"The big one; oh, well, the little one, too."
Silence again while the elephants did amazing things in one ring, with Japanese tumblers in another, with piebald ponies beyond, and things being done on trapezes everywhere.
Teddy slipped his hand into Derry's. "It's—it's almost like having Daddy," he confided. "I know he's glad I'm here."
Derry's big hand closed over the small one. "I'm glad, too, old chap."
Margaret-Mary having gazed her fill, slept comfortably in Jean's arms.
"Let me hold her," Derry said.
Jean shook her head. "I love to have her here."
She had taken off her hat, and as she bent above the child her hair made a halo of gold. In the midst of all the tawdriness she was a still and sacred figure—a Madonna with a child.
Teddy, when he reached home, told the General all about it.
"It was be-yeutiful—but Cousin Jean cwied—-"
"Cried?"
"I saw a tear rwunning down her cheek, and it splashed on Margaret-Mary's nose—"
And that night Derry said, "My darling, what shall I draw in our book?"
"The thing that you want most to remember, Derry."
So he drew her all in white, bending over a child of dreams.
he next morning, she told him "Good-bye." They had come along to the Toy Shop for their farewell, so that there was only the old white elephant to see her tears, and the Lovely Dreams to be sorry for her.
Yet her head was held high at the very last, and she was not sorry for herself. "I am glad and proud to have you go, dearest. I am glad and proud—"
And after he had gone, she worked until lunch time on the bandages and wipes, and rode with the General in the afternoon, with her hand in his, knowing that it comforted him.
But very late that night, when every one else is the big house was fast asleep, she crept out into the hall in her lace robe and lace cap and pink slippers and stood beneath the picture of the painted lady. "He will come back," she said. "He must come back—and—oh, oh, Derry's mother in Heaven—you must tell me how to live—without him—."
=== "AND, AFTER ALL, HE CAME TO THE WARS!" ===
A perfect day, with men lying dead by thousands on the battlefield; twilight, with a young moon; night and the stars—
Drusilla's throat was dry with singing—there had been so many hurt, and she had found that it helped them to hear her, so when a moaning, groaning, cursing ambulance load stopped a moment, she sang; when walking wounded came through sagging with pain and dreadful weariness, she sang; and when night fell, and an engine was stalled, and she took in her own car a man who must be rushed to the first collecting station, she found herself still singing—. And this time it was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
The man propped up beside her murmured, "My Captain liked that—he used to sing it—"
"Yes?" She was listening with only half an ear. There were so many Captains.
"He was engaged to an American."
She listened now. "Your Captain—?"
"Captain Hewes."
She guided the car steadily. "Dawson Hewes?"
"Yes. Do you know him?"
"I—I am the girl he is going to marry—"
He froze into silence. She bent towards him. "What made you say—was—?"
"He's—gone West—"
"Dead?"
"Yes."
"When?" She still drove steadily through the dark.
"To-day."
She looked up at the stars. So—he would never come blowing in with the sweet spring winds.
"I'd rather have been—shot—than to have told you that—" the man beside her was saying, "but, you see, I didn't know you were the girl—"
"Of course you couldn't. You mustn't blame yourself."
She delivered her precious charge at the hospital and put up her car for the night. Standing alone under the stars she wondered what she should do next. There was no one to tell—the women who had worked with her in the town which had since been recaptured by the Germans had gone to other towns. But she had stayed as near the front as possible, and she had never felt lonely because at any moment her lover might come—there had always been the thought that he might come—.
And now he would never come!
She had a room in the house of an old woman, all of whose sons were in the war. So far two of them had escaped death. But the old woman said often, fatalistically, "They will not always escape—but it will be for France."
The old woman had soup on the fire for Drusilla's supper. The room was faintly lighted. "What is it?" she asked, as the girl dropped down on the doorstep.
"My Captain is dead—"
The old woman rose and stood over her. "It comes to all."
"I know."
"Will you eat your soup? When the heart fails, the body must have strength."
Drusilla covered her face with her bands. The room was very still. The old woman went back to her chair by the fire and waited. At last she rose and filled a small bowl with the soup—she broke into it a small allowance of bread. Then she came and sat on the step beside the girl.
"Eat, Mademoiselle," she said, with something like authority, and Drusilla obeyed. And when she gave back the bowl, the old woman set it on the floor, and drew the girl's head to her breast.
And Drusilla lay there, crying softly, a lonely American mothered by this indomitable old woman of France.
Days passed, days in which men came and men went and Drusilla sang to them. And now new faces were seen among the tired and war-worn ones. Eager young Americans, pressing forward towards the front, found a countrywoman in the little town; and they wrote home about her. "She's a beauty, by jinks, and when she sings it pulls the heart out of you. She's the kind you want to say your prayers to."
So her fame went forth and took on gradually something of the supernatural—her tall, straight slenderness, her steady eyes, her halo of red hair grew to have a sort of sacred significance, like that of some militant young saint.
Then came a day when Derry's regiment marched through the town to the trenches, spent an interval, and came back, awed by what it had seen, but undaunted.
Drusilla, sitting on the doorstep of the stone house, saw a tall figure striding down the street. He stopped to speak to an old woman and doffed his hat, showing a clipped silver-blond head.
Drusilla went flying through the dusk. "Derry, Derry!"
He stared and stared again. "Is it you?" he asked. Nothing was vivid now about Drusilla except her hair.
"Yes."
He took her hands in his. "My dear girl." It was hard for either of them to speak.
"Did Bruce McKenzie tell you that my Captain has—gone West?"
"I had a letter. I haven't seen him. His hospital isn't far from here, I understand."
"Just outside. He—he has been a great help—to me, Derry."
She took him back to her doorstep and they sat down.
"Tell me about Jean."
He tried to tell her, wavered a little and spoke the truth. "The hardest thing was leaving her. I don't mind the fighting. I don't mind anything but the fact that she's over there and I'm over here. But it had to be—of course."
"Yes, everything had to be, Derry. I am believing that more and more. When my Captain went—I found how much I cared. I hadn't always been sure. But I am sure now, and I am sure, too, that he knows—"
"Love—in these times, Derry—isn't building a nest—and singing songs in the tree tops on a May morning; it goes beyond just the man and the woman; it even goes beyond the child. It goes as far as the future of mankind. What the future of the world will be depends not so much on how much you love Jean or she loves you, or on how much I loved and was loved, but on how much that love will mean to the world. If we can't give up our own for the sake of the world's ideal then love hasn't meant what it should to you and to me, Derry—"
She rose as a group of men approached. "They want me to sing for them. You won't mind?"
"My dear girl, I have heard of you everywhere. I believe that some of the fellows say their prayers to you at night—"
She stood up and sang. Her hair caught the light from the room back of her. She gave them a popular air or two, a hymn, "The Marseillaise—"
He missed nothing in her then. In spite of her paleness, the old fire was there, the passion of patriotism—there was, too, a new note of triumphant faith.
She needed no candles now, no red and white and blue for a background—she did not even need her beauty, her voice was enough—
When she sat down and the men had gone she said to Derry, "Do you remember when I last sang the 'Marseillaise' for you?"
"Yes."
He brought out from his pocket a tiny object and set it on the step, so that the light from the open door shone on it.
"You gave it to me, Drusilla."
"Oh, my little tin soldier."
"And after all, he came to the wars—"
Very proudly the little soldier shouldered his musket.
He had indeed come to the wars, and the winds of France blew upon him, the stars of France were over his head, the soil of France was beneath his feet.
Trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt—blew all the bugles of France, and the little tin soldier was at last content!
Derry had, too, in his pocket a letter from Jean; he read to Drusilla the part that belonged to her.
"Tell Drusilla that there's a chair in our dream house for her. I often shut my eyes and see her in it, and I see Daddy and you, Derry, all home safe from the war and the world at peace—"
"Safe and at home and the world at peace—. Will the time ever come, Derry?"
"You know it will come. It must—"
It was three days later that Dr. McKenzie motored over for a late supper with Drusilla and Derry. They were served by the old woman who had mothered the lonely girl.
"To think," the Doctor said, as they sat at their frugal board, "to think that we three should be here in the midst of all this; and yet a year ago I was wondering what to do with the rest of my life, Drusilla was running around telling people what kind of pictures to put on their walls, and what kind of draperies to put at their windows, and Derry was trying to pretend that he was not an elegant idler; and now—we are seeing a world made over—"
"You are seeing the world of men made over," said Drusilla, "but the most wonderful thing is seeing the women made over."
"I don't want to see the women made over," the Doctor groaned. "They are nice enough as it is. I want my little Jean gay and smiling—and Derry tells me that she is a nun in a white veil."
"She is more than that," Derry said, and a great light came into his eyes. "I sometimes feel that she and Drusilla are holding hands across the sea—two brave women in different spheres."
Drusilla, wise Drusilla pondered. "Perhaps the war will teach men like Bruce that women aren't playthings—"
"Don't be too hard on me, Drusilla."
"I am not hard. I am telling the truth."
"I'll forgive you, because in these weeks you've taught me a lot—" Bruce McKenzie's world would not have recognized in this tired and serious gentleman its twinkling, teasing man of medicine. Weary feet on the stones—
"I must go to them," Drusilla said.
She went out on the step. They saw the men cluster about her—French and English, Scotch—a few Americans.
Her voice soared:
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With the glory in his bosom which transfigures you and me.
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free—
While God is marching on—"
"Look," said the Doctor. "Do you see their faces, Derry?"
Gazing up at her as if they drank her in, the men listened. She was the daughter of a nation of dreamers, the daughter of a nation which made its dreams come true.
Tired and spent, they saw in her hope personified. They saw America coming fresh and unworn to fight a winning battle to the end. So they turned their faces towards Drusilla. She was more to them than a singing woman. Behind her stood a steadfast people—and God was marching on.
==THE HAPPY FAMILY==
Really, the largest green leaf in this country is a dock-leaf; if one holds it before one, it is like a whole apron, and if one holds it over one's head in rainy weather, it is almost as good as an umbrella, for it is so immensely large. The burdock never grows alone, but where there grows one there always grow several: it is a great delight, and all this delightfulness is snails' food. The great white snails which persons of quality in former times made fricassees of, ate, and said, “Hem, hem! how delicious!” for they thought it tasted so delicate—lived on dock-leaves, and therefore burdock seeds were sown.
Now, there was an old manor-house, where they no longer ate snails, they were quite extinct; but the burdocks were not extinct, they grew and grew all over the walks and all the beds; they could not get the mastery over them—it was a whole forest of burdocks. Here and there stood an apple and a plum-tree, or else one never would have thought that it was a garden; all was burdocks, and there lived the two last venerable old snails.
They themselves knew not how old they were, but they could remember very well that there had been many more; that they were of a family from foreign lands, and that for them and theirs the whole forest was planted. They had never been outside it, but they knew that there was still something more in the world, which was called the manor-house, and that there they were boiled, and then they became black, and were then placed on a silver dish; but what happened further they knew not; or, in fact, what it was to be boiled, and to lie on a silver dish, they could not possibly imagine; but it was said to be delightful, and particularly genteel. Neither the chafers, the toads, nor the earth-worms, whom they asked about it could give them any information—none of them had been boiled or laid on a silver dish.
The old white snails were the first persons of distinction in the world, that they knew; the forest was planted for their sake, and the manor-house was there that they might be boiled and laid on a silver dish.
Now they lived a very lonely and happy life; and as they had no children themselves, they had adopted a little common snail, which they brought up as their own; but the little one would not grow, for he was of a common family; but the old ones, especially Dame Mother Snail, thought they could observe how he increased in size, and she begged father, if he could not see it, that he would at least feel the little snail's shell; and then he felt it, and found the good dame was right.
One day there was a heavy storm of rain.
“Hear how it beats like a drum on the dock-leaves!” said Father Snail.
“There are also rain-drops!” said Mother Snail. “And now the rain pours right down the stalk! You will see that it will be wet here! I am very happy to think that we have our good house, and the little one has his also! There is more done for us than for all other creatures, sure enough; but can you not see that we are folks of quality in the world? We are provided with a house from our birth, and the burdock forest is planted for our sakes! I should like to know how far it extends, and what there is outside!”
“There is nothing at all,” said Father Snail. “No place can be better than ours, and I have nothing to wish for!”
“Yes,” said the dame. “I would willingly go to the manorhouse, be boiled, and laid on a silver dish; all our forefathers have been treated so; there is something extraordinary in it, you may be sure!”
“The manor-house has most likely fallen to ruin!” said Father Snail. “Or the burdocks have grown up over it, so that they cannot come out. There need not, however, be any haste about that; but you are always in such a tremendous hurry, and the little one is beginning to be the same. Has he not been creeping up that stalk these three days? It gives me a headache when I look up to him!”
“You must not scold him,” said Mother Snail. “He creeps so carefully; he will afford us much pleasure—and we have nothing but him to live for! But have you not thought of it? Where shall we get a wife for him? Do you not think that there are some of our species at a great distance in the interior of the burdock forest?”
“Black snails, I dare say, there are enough of,” said the old one. “Black snails without a house—but they are so common, and so conceited. But we might give the ants a commission to look out for us; they run to and fro as if they had something to do, and they certainly know of a wife for our little snail!”
“I know one, sure enough—the most charming one!” said one of the ants. “But I am afraid we shall hardly succeed, for she is a queen!”
“That is nothing!” said the old folks. “Has she a house?”
“She has a palace!” said the ant. “The finest ant's palace, with seven hundred passages!”
“I thank you!” said Mother Snail. “Our son shall not go into an ant-hill; if you know nothing better than that, we shall give the commission to the white gnats. They fly far and wide, in rain and sunshine; they know the whole forest here, both within and without.”
“We have a wife for him,” said the gnats. “At a hundred human paces from here there sits a little snail in her house, on a gooseberry bush; she is quite lonely, and old enough to be married. It is only a hundred human paces!”
“Well, then, let her come to him!” said the old ones. “He has a whole forest of burdocks, she has only a bush!”
And so they went and fetched little Miss Snail. It was a whole week before she arrived; but therein was just the very best of it, for one could thus see that she was of the same species.
And then the marriage was celebrated. Six earth-worms shone as well as they could. In other respects the whole went off very quietly, for the old folks could not bear noise and merriment; but old Dame Snail made a brilliant speech. Father Snail could not speak, he was too much affected; and so they gave them as a dowry and inheritance, the whole forest of burdocks, and said—what they had always said—that it was the best in the world; and if they lived honestly and decently, and increased and multiplied, they and their children would once in the course of time come to the manor-house, be boiled black, and laid on silver dishes. After this speech was made, the old ones crept into their shells, and never more came out. They slept; the young couple governed in the forest, and had a numerous progeny, but they were never boiled, and never came on the silver dishes; so from this they concluded that the manor-house had fallen to ruins, and that all the men in the world were extinct; and as no one contradicted them, so, of course it was so. And the rain beat on the dock-leaves to make drum-music for their sake, and the sun shone in order to give the burdock forest a color for their sakes; and they were very happy, and the whole family was happy; for they, indeed were so.
==THE STORY OF A MOTHER==
A mother sat there with her little child. She was so downcast, so afraid that it should die! It was so pale, the small eyes had closed themselves, and it drew its breath so softly, now and then, with a deep respiration, as if it sighed; and the mother looked still more sorrowfully on the little creature.
Then a knocking was heard at the door, and in came a poor old man wrapped up as in a large horse-cloth, for it warms one, and he needed it, as it was the cold winter season! Everything out-of-doors was covered with ice and snow, and the wind blew so that it cut the face.
As the old man trembled with cold, and the little child slept a moment, the mother went and poured some ale into a pot and set it on the stove, that it might be warm for him; the old man sat and rocked the cradle, and the mother sat down on a chair close by him, and looked at her little sick child that drew its breath so deep, and raised its little hand.
“Do you not think that I shall save him?” said she. “Our Lord will not take him from me!”
And the old man—it was Death himself—he nodded so strangely, it could just as well signify yes as no. And the mother looked down in her lap, and the tears ran down over her cheeks; her head became so heavy—she had not closed her eyes for three days and nights; and now she slept, but only for a minute, when she started up and trembled with cold.
“What is that?” said she, and looked on all sides; but the old man was gone, and her little child was gone—he had taken it with him; and the old clock in the corner burred, and burred, the great leaden weight ran down to the floor, bump! and then the clock also stood still.
But the poor mother ran out of the house and cried aloud for her child.
Out there, in the midst of the snow, there sat a woman in long, black clothes; and she said, “Death has been in thy chamber, and I saw him hasten away with thy little child; he goes faster than the wind, and he never brings back what he takes!”
“Oh, only tell me which way he went!” said the mother. “Tell me the way, and I shall find him!”
“I know it!” said the woman in the black clothes. “But before I tell it, thou must first sing for me all the songs thou hast sung for thy child! I am fond of them. I have heard them before; I am Night; I saw thy tears whilst thou sang'st them!”
“I will sing them all, all!” said the mother. “But do not stop me now—I may overtake him—I may find my child!”
But Night stood still and mute. Then the mother wrung her hands, sang and wept, and there were many songs, but yet many more tears; and then Night said, “Go to the right, into the dark pine forest; thither I saw Death take his way with thy little child!”
The roads crossed each other in the depths of the forest, and she no longer knew whither she should go! then there stood a thorn-bush; there was neither leaf nor flower on it, it was also in the cold winter season, and ice-flakes hung on the branches.
“Hast thou not seen Death go past with my little child?” said the mother.
“Yes,” said the thorn-bush; “but I will not tell thee which way he took, unless thou wilt first warm me up at thy heart. I am freezing to death; I shall become a lump of ice!”
And she pressed the thorn-bush to her breast, so firmly, that it might be thoroughly warmed, and the thorns went right into her flesh, and her blood flowed in large drops, but the thornbush shot forth fresh green leaves, and there came flowers on it in the cold winter night, the heart of the afflicted mother was so warm; and the thorn-bush told her the way she should go.
She then came to a large lake, where there was neither ship nor boat. The lake was not frozen sufficiently to bear her; neither was it open, nor low enough that she could wade through it; and across it she must go if she would find her child! Then she lay down to drink up the lake, and that was an impossibility for a human being, but the afflicted mother thought that a miracle might happen nevertheless.
“Oh, what would I not give to come to my child!” said the weeping mother; and she wept still more, and her eyes sunk down in the depths of the waters, and became two precious pearls; but the water bore her up, as if she sat in a swing, and she flew in the rocking waves to the shore on the opposite side, where there stood a mile-broad, strange house, one knew not if it were a mountain with forests and caverns, or if it were built up; but the poor mother could not see it; she had wept her eyes out.
“Where shall I find Death, who took away my little child?” said she.
“He has not come here yet!” said the old grave woman, who was appointed to look after Death's great greenhouse! “How have you been able to find the way hither? And who has helped you?”
“OUR LORD has helped me,” said she. “He is merciful, and you will also be so! Where shall I find my little child?”
“Nay, I know not,” said the woman, “and you cannot see! Many flowers and trees have withered this night; Death will soon come and plant them over again! You certainly know that every person has his or her life's tree or flower, just as everyone happens to be settled; they look like other plants, but they have pulsations of the heart. Children's hearts can also beat; go after yours, perhaps you may know your child's; but what will you give me if I tell you what you shall do more?”
“I have nothing to give,” said the afflicted mother, “but I will go to the world's end for you!”
“Nay, I have nothing to do there!” said the woman. “But you can give me your long black hair; you know yourself that it is fine, and that I like! You shall have my white hair instead, and that's always something!”
“Do you demand nothing else?” said she. “That I will gladly give you!” And she gave her her fine black hair, and got the old woman's snow-white hair instead.
So they went into Death's great greenhouse, where flowers and trees grew strangely into one another. There stood fine hyacinths under glass bells, and there stood strong-stemmed peonies; there grew water plants, some so fresh, others half sick, the water-snakes lay down on them, and black crabs pinched their stalks. There stood beautiful palm-trees, oaks, and plantains; there stood parsley and flowering thyme: every tree and every flower had its name; each of them was a human life, the human frame still lived—one in China, and another in Greenland—round about in the world. There were large trees in small pots, so that they stood so stunted in growth, and ready to burst the pots; in other places, there was a little dull flower in rich mould, with moss round about it, and it was so petted and nursed. But the distressed mother bent down over all the smallest plants, and heard within them how the human heart beat; and amongst millions she knew her child's.
“There it is!” cried she, and stretched her hands out over a little blue crocus, that hung quite sickly on one side.
“Don't touch the flower!” said the old woman. “But place yourself here, and when Death comes—I expect him every moment—do not let him pluck the flower up, but threaten him that you will do the same with the others. Then he will be afraid! He is responsible for them to OUR LORD, and no one dares to pluck them up before HE gives leave.”
All at once an icy cold rushed through the great hall, and the blind mother could feel that it was Death that came.
“How hast thou been able to find thy way hither?” he asked. “How couldst thou come quicker than I?”
“I am a mother,” said she.
And Death stretched out his long hand towards the fine little flower, but she held her hands fast around his, so tight, and yet afraid that she should touch one of the leaves. Then Death blew on her hands, and she felt that it was colder than the cold wind, and her hands fell down powerless.
“Thou canst not do anything against me!” said Death.
“But OUR LORD can!” said she.
“I only do His bidding!” said Death. “I am His gardener, I take all His flowers and trees, and plant them out in the great garden of Paradise, in the unknown land; but how they grow there, and how it is there I dare not tell thee.”
“Give me back my child!” said the mother, and she wept and prayed. At once she seized hold of two beautiful flowers close by, with each hand, and cried out to Death, “I will tear all thy flowers off, for I am in despair.”
“Touch them not!” said Death. “Thou say'st that thou art so unhappy, and now thou wilt make another mother equally unhappy.”
“Another mother!” said the poor woman, and directly let go her hold of both the flowers.
“There, thou hast thine eyes,” said Death; “I fished them up from the lake, they shone so bright; I knew not they were thine. Take them again, they are now brighter than before; now look down into the deep well close by; I shall tell thee the names of the two flowers thou wouldst have torn up, and thou wilt see their whole future life—their whole human existence: and see what thou wast about to disturb and destroy.”
And she looked down into the well; and it was a happiness to see how the one became a blessing to the world, to see how much happiness and joy were felt everywhere. And she saw the other's life, and it was sorrow and distress, horror, and wretchedness.
“Both of them are God's will!” said Death.
“Which of them is Misfortune's flower and which is that of Happiness?” asked she.
“That I will not tell thee,” said Death; “but this thou shalt know from me, that the one flower was thy own child! it was thy child's fate thou saw'st—thy own child's future life!”
Then the mother screamed with terror, “Which of them was my child? Tell it me! Save the innocent! Save my child from all that misery! Rather take it away! Take it into God's kingdom! Forget my tears, forget my prayers, and all that I have done!”
“I do not understand thee!” said Death. “Wilt thou have thy child again, or shall I go with it there, where thou dost not know!”
Then the mother wrung her hands, fell on her knees, and prayed to our Lord: “Oh, hear me not when I pray against Thy will, which is the best! hear me not! hear me not!”
And she bowed her head down in her lap, and Death took her child and went with it into the unknown land.
==THE FALSE COLLAR==
There was once a fine gentleman, all of whose moveables were a boot-jack and a hair-comb: but he had the finest false collars in the world; and it is about one of these collars that we are now to hear a story.
It was so old, that it began to think of marriage; and it happened that it came to be washed in company with a garter.
“Nay!” said the collar. “I never did see anything so slender and so fine, so soft and so neat. May I not ask your name?”
“That I shall not tell you!” said the garter.
“Where do you live?” asked the collar.
But the garter was so bashful, so modest, and thought it was a strange question to answer.
“You are certainly a girdle,” said the collar; “that is to say an inside girdle. I see well that you are both for use and ornament, my dear young lady.”
“I will thank you not to speak to me,” said the garter. “I think I have not given the least occasion for it.”
“Yes! When one is as handsome as you,” said the collar, “that is occasion enough.”
“Don't come so near me, I beg of you!” said the garter. “You look so much like those men-folks.”
“I am also a fine gentleman,” said the collar. “I have a bootjack and a hair-comb.”
But that was not true, for it was his master who had them: but he boasted.
“Don't come so near me,” said the garter: “I am not accustomed to it.”
“Prude!” exclaimed the collar; and then it was taken out of the washing-tub. It was starched, hung over the back of a chair in the sunshine, and was then laid on the ironing-blanket; then came the warm box-iron. “Dear lady!” said the collar. “Dear widow-lady! I feel quite hot. I am quite changed. I begin to unfold myself. You will burn a hole in me. Oh! I offer you my hand.”
“Rag!” said the box-iron; and went proudly over the collar: for she fancied she was a steam-engine, that would go on the railroad and draw the waggons. “Rag!” said the box-iron.
The collar was a little jagged at the edge, and so came the long scissors to cut off the jagged part. “Oh!” said the collar. “You are certainly the first opera dancer. How well you can stretch your legs out! It is the most graceful performance I have ever seen. No one can imitate you.”
“I know it,” said the scissors.
“You deserve to be a baroness,” said the collar. “All that I have is a fine gentleman, a boot-jack, and a hair-comb. If I only had the barony!”
“Do you seek my hand?” said the scissors; for she was angry; and without more ado, she CUT HIM, and then he was condemned.
“I shall now be obliged to ask the hair-comb. It is surprising how well you preserve your teeth, Miss,” said the collar. “Have you never thought of being betrothed?”
“Yes, of course! you may be sure of that,” said the hair-comb. “I AM betrothed—to the boot-jack!”
“Betrothed!” exclaimed the collar. Now there was no other to court, and so he despised it.
A long time passed away, then the collar came into the rag chest at the paper mill; there was a large company of rags, the fine by themselves, and the coarse by themselves, just as it should be. They all had much to say, but the collar the most; for he was a real boaster.
“I have had such an immense number of sweethearts!” said the collar. “I could not be in peace! It is true, I was always a fine starched-up gentleman! I had both a boot-jack and a hair-comb, which I never used! You should have seen me then, you should have seen me when I lay down! I shall never forget MY FIRST LOVE—she was a girdle, so fine, so soft, and so charming, she threw herself into a tub of water for my sake! There was also a widow, who became glowing hot, but I left her standing till she got black again; there was also the first opera dancer, she gave me that cut which I now go with, she was so ferocious! My own hair-comb was in love with me, she lost all her teeth from the heart-ache; yes, I have lived to see much of that sort of thing; but I am extremely sorry for the garter—I mean the girdle—that went into the water-tub. I have much on my conscience, I want to become white paper!”
And it became so, all the rags were turned into white paper; but the collar came to be just this very piece of white paper we here see, and on which the story is printed; and that was because it boasted so terribly afterwards of what had never happened to it. It would be well for us to beware, that we may not act in a similar manner, for we can never know if we may not, in the course of time, also come into the rag chest, and be made into white paper, and then have our whole life's history printed on it, even the most secret, and be obliged to run about and tell it ourselves, just like this collar.
==THE SHADOW==
It is in the hot lands that the sun burns, sure enough! there the people become quite a mahogany brown, ay, and in the HOTTEST lands they are burnt to Negroes. But now it was only to the HOT lands that a learned man had come from the cold; there he thought that he could run about just as when at home, but he soon found out his mistake.
He, and all sensible folks, were obliged to stay within doors—the window-shutters and doors were closed the whole day; it looked as if the whole house slept, or there was no one at home.
The narrow street with the high houses, was built so that the sunshine must fall there from morning till evening—it was really not to be borne.
The learned man from the cold lands—he was a young man, and seemed to be a clever man—sat in a glowing oven; it took effect on him, he became quite meagre—even his shadow shrunk in, for the sun had also an effect on it. It was first towards evening when the sun was down, that they began to freshen up again.
In the warm lands every window has a balcony, and the people came out on all the balconies in the street—for one must have air, even if one be accustomed to be mahogany!* It was lively both up and down the street. Tailors, and shoemakers, and all the folks, moved out into the street—chairs and tables were brought forth—and candles burnt—yes, above a thousand lights were burning—and the one talked and the other sung; and people walked and church-bells rang, and asses went along with a dingle-dingle-dong! for they too had bells on. The street boys were screaming and hooting, and shouting and shooting, with devils and detonating balls—and there came corpse bearers and hood wearers—for there were funerals with psalm and hymn—and then the din of carriages driving and company arriving: yes, it was, in truth, lively enough down in the street. Only in that single house, which stood opposite that in which the learned foreigner lived, it was quite still; and yet some one lived there, for there stood flowers in the balcony—they grew so well in the sun's heat! and that they could not do unless they were watered—and some one must water them—there must be somebody there. The door opposite was also opened late in the evening, but it was dark within, at least in the front room; further in there was heard the sound of music. The learned foreigner thought it quite marvellous, but now—it might be that he only imagined it—for he found everything marvellous out there, in the warm lands, if there had only been no sun. The stranger's landlord said that he didn't know who had taken the house opposite, one saw no person about, and as to the music, it appeared to him to be extremely tiresome. “It is as if some one sat there, and practised a piece that he could not master—always the same piece. 'I shall master it!' says he; but yet he cannot master it, however long he plays.”
One night the stranger awoke—he slept with the doors of the balcony open—the curtain before it was raised by the wind, and he thought that a strange lustre came from the opposite neighbor's house; all the flowers shone like flames, in the most beautiful colors, and in the midst of the flowers stood a slender, graceful maiden—it was as if she also shone; the light really hurt his eyes. He now opened them quite wide—yes, he was quite awake; with one spring he was on the floor; he crept gently behind the curtain, but the maiden was gone; the flowers shone no longer, but there they stood, fresh and blooming as ever; the door was ajar, and, far within, the music sounded so soft and delightful, one could really melt away in sweet thoughts from it. Yet it was like a piece of enchantment. And who lived there? Where was the actual entrance? The whole of the ground-floor was a row of shops, and there people could not always be running through.
One evening the stranger sat out on the balcony. The light burnt in the room behind him; and thus it was quite natural that his shadow should fall on his opposite neighbor's wall. Yes! there it sat, directly opposite, between the flowers on the balcony; and when the stranger moved, the shadow also moved: for that it always does.
“I think my shadow is the only living thing one sees over there,” said the learned man. “See, how nicely it sits between the flowers. The door stands half-open: now the shadow should be cunning, and go into the room, look about, and then come and tell me what it had seen. Come, now! Be useful, and do me a service,” said he, in jest. “Have the kindness to step in. Now! Art thou going?” and then he nodded to the shadow, and the shadow nodded again. “Well then, go! But don't stay away.”
The stranger rose, and his shadow on the opposite neighbor's balcony rose also; the stranger turned round and the shadow also turned round. Yes! if anyone had paid particular attention to it, they would have seen, quite distinctly, that the shadow went in through the half-open balcony-door of their opposite neighbor, just as the stranger went into his own room, and let the long curtain fall down after him.
Next morning, the learned man went out to drink coffee and read the newspapers.
“What is that?” said he, as he came out into the sunshine. “I have no shadow! So then, it has actually gone last night, and not come again. It is really tiresome!”
This annoyed him: not so much because the shadow was gone, but because he knew there was a story about a man without a shadow.* It was known to everybody at home, in the cold lands; and if the learned man now came there and told his story, they would say that he was imitating it, and that he had no need to do. He would, therefore, not talk about it at all; and that was wisely thought.
In the evening he went out again on the balcony. He had placed the light directly behind him, for he knew that the shadow would always have its master for a screen, but he could not entice it. He made himself little; he made himself great: but no shadow came again. He said, “Hem! hem!” but it was of no use.
It was vexatious; but in the warm lands everything grows so quickly; and after the lapse of eight days he observed, to his great joy, that a new shadow came in the sunshine. In the course of three weeks he had a very fair shadow, which, when he set out for his home in the northern lands, grew more and more in the journey, so that at last it was so long and so large, that it was more than sufficient.
The learned man then came home, and he wrote books about what was true in the world, and about what was good and what was beautiful; and there passed days and years—yes! many years passed away.
One evening, as he was sitting in his room, there was a gentle knocking at the door.
“Come in!” said he; but no one came in; so he opened the door, and there stood before him such an extremely lean man, that he felt quite strange. As to the rest, the man was very finely dressed—he must be a gentleman.
“Whom have I the honor of speaking?” asked the learned man.
“Yes! I thought as much,” said the fine man. “I thought you would not know me. I have got so much body. I have even got flesh and clothes. You certainly never thought of seeing me so well off. Do you not know your old shadow? You certainly thought I should never more return. Things have gone on well with me since I was last with you. I have, in all respects, become very well off. Shall I purchase my freedom from service? If so, I can do it”; and then he rattled a whole bunch of valuable seals that hung to his watch, and he stuck his hand in the thick gold chain he wore around his neck—nay! how all his fingers glittered with diamond rings; and then all were pure gems.
“Nay; I cannot recover from my surprise!” said the learned man. “What is the meaning of all this?”
“Something common, is it not,” said the shadow. “But you yourself do not belong to the common order; and I, as you know well, have from a child followed in your footsteps. As soon as you found I was capable to go out alone in the world, I went my own way. I am in the most brilliant circumstances, but there came a sort of desire over me to see you once more before you die; you will die, I suppose? I also wished to see this land again—for you know we always love our native land. I know you have got another shadow again; have I anything to pay to it or you? If so, you will oblige me by saying what it is.”
“Nay, is it really thou?” said the learned man. “It is most remarkable: I never imagined that one's old shadow could come again as a man.”
“Tell me what I have to pay,” said the shadow; “for I don't like to be in any sort of debt.”
“How canst thou talk so?” said the learned man. “What debt is there to talk about? Make thyself as free as anyone else. I am extremely glad to hear of thy good fortune: sit down, old friend, and tell me a little how it has gone with thee, and what thou hast seen at our opposite neighbor's there—in the warm lands.”
“Yes, I will tell you all about it,” said the shadow, and sat down: “but then you must also promise me, that, wherever you may meet me, you will never say to anyone here in the town that I have been your shadow. I intend to get betrothed, for I can provide for more than one family.”
“Be quite at thy ease about that,” said the learned man; “I shall not say to anyone who thou actually art: here is my hand—I promise it, and a man's bond is his word.”
“A word is a shadow,” said the shadow, “and as such it must speak.”
It was really quite astonishing how much of a man it was. It was dressed entirely in black, and of the very finest cloth; it had patent leather boots, and a hat that could be folded together, so that it was bare crown and brim; not to speak of what we already know it had—seals, gold neck-chain, and diamond rings; yes, the shadow was well-dressed, and it was just that which made it quite a man.
“Now I shall tell you my adventures,” said the shadow; and then he sat, with the polished boots, as heavily as he could, on the arm of the learned man's new shadow, which lay like a poodle-dog at his feet. Now this was perhaps from arrogance; and the shadow on the ground kept itself so still and quiet, that it might hear all that passed: it wished to know how it could get free, and work its way up, so as to become its own master.
“Do you know who lived in our opposite neighbor's house?” said the shadow. “It was the most charming of all beings, it was Poesy! I was there for three weeks, and that has as much effect as if one had lived three thousand years, and read all that was composed and written; that is what I say, and it is right. I have seen everything and I know everything!”
“Poesy!” cried the learned man. “Yes, yes, she often dwells a recluse in large cities! Poesy! Yes, I have seen her—a single short moment, but sleep came into my eyes! She stood on the balcony and shone as the Aurora Borealis shines. Go on, go on—thou wert on the balcony, and went through the doorway, and then—”
“Then I was in the antechamber,” said the shadow. “You always sat and looked over to the antechamber. There was no light; there was a sort of twilight, but the one door stood open directly opposite the other through a long row of rooms and saloons, and there it was lighted up. I should have been completely killed if I had gone over to the maiden; but I was circumspect, I took time to think, and that one must always do.”
“And what didst thou then see?” asked the learned man.
“I saw everything, and I shall tell all to you: but—it is no pride on my part—as a free man, and with the knowledge I have, not to speak of my position in life, my excellent circumstances—I certainly wish that you would say YOU* to me!”
“I beg your pardon,” said the learned man; “it is an old habit with me. YOU are perfectly right, and I shall remember it; but now you must tell me all YOU saw!”
“Everything!” said the shadow. “For I saw everything, and I know everything!”
“How did it look in the furthest saloon?” asked the learned man. “Was it there as in the fresh woods? Was it there as in a holy church? Were the saloons like the starlit firmament when we stand on the high mountains?”
“Everything was there!” said the shadow. “I did not go quite in, I remained in the foremost room, in the twilight, but I stood there quite well; I saw everything, and I know everything! I have been in the antechamber at the court of Poesy.”
“But WHAT DID you see? Did all the gods of the olden times pass through the large saloons? Did the old heroes combat there? Did sweet children play there, and relate their dreams?”
“I tell you I was there, and you can conceive that I saw everything there was to be seen. Had you come over there, you would not have been a man; but I became so! And besides, I learned to know my inward nature, my innate qualities, the relationship I had with Poesy. At the time I was with you, I thought not of that, but always—you know it well—when the sun rose, and when the sun went down, I became so strangely great; in the moonlight I was very near being more distinct than yourself; at that time I did not understand my nature; it was revealed to me in the antechamber! I became a man! I came out matured; but you were no longer in the warm lands; as a man I was ashamed to go as I did. I was in want of boots, of clothes, of the whole human varnish that makes a man perceptible. I took my way—I tell it to you, but you will not put it in any book—I took my way to the cake woman—I hid myself behind her; the woman didn't think how much she concealed. I went out first in the evening; I ran about the streets in the moonlight; I made myself long up the walls—it tickles the back so delightfully! I ran up, and ran down, peeped into the highest windows, into the saloons, and on the roofs, I peeped in where no one could peep, and I saw what no one else saw, what no one else should see! This is, in fact, a base world! I would not be a man if it were not now once accepted and regarded as something to be so! I saw the most unimaginable things with the women, with the men, with parents, and with the sweet, matchless children; I saw,” said the shadow, “what no human being must know, but what they would all so willingly know—what is bad in their neighbor. Had I written a newspaper, it would have been read! But I wrote direct to the persons themselves, and there was consternation in all the towns where I came. They were so afraid of me, and yet they were so excessively fond of me. The professors made a professor of me; the tailors gave me new clothes—I am well furnished; the master of the mint struck new coin for me, and the women said I was so handsome! And so I became the man I am. And I now bid you farewell. Here is my card—I live on the sunny side of the street, and am always at home in rainy weather!” And so away went the shadow. “That was most extraordinary!” said the learned man. Years and days passed away, then the shadow came again. “How goes it?” said the shadow.
“Alas!” said the learned man. “I write about the true, and the good, and the beautiful, but no one cares to hear such things; I am quite desperate, for I take it so much to heart!”
“But I don't!” said the shadow. “I become fat, and it is that one wants to become! You do not understand the world. You will become ill by it. You must travel! I shall make a tour this summer; will you go with me? I should like to have a travelling companion! Will you go with me, as shadow? It will be a great pleasure for me to have you with me; I shall pay the travelling expenses!”
“Nay, this is too much!” said the learned man.
“It is just as one takes it!” said the shadow. “It will do you much good to travel! Will you be my shadow? You shall have everything free on the journey!”
“Nay, that is too bad!” said the learned man.
“But it is just so with the world!” said the shadow, “and so it will be!” and away it went again.
The learned man was not at all in the most enviable state; grief and torment followed him, and what he said about the true, and the good, and the beautiful, was, to most persons, like roses for a cow! He was quite ill at last.
“You really look like a shadow!” said his friends to him; and the learned man trembled, for he thought of it.
“You must go to a watering-place!” said the shadow, who came and visited him. “There is nothing else for it! I will take you with me for old acquaintance' sake; I will pay the travelling expenses, and you write the descriptions—and if they are a little amusing for me on the way! I will go to a watering-place—my beard does not grow out as it ought—that is also a sickness—and one must have a beard! Now you be wise and accept the offer; we shall travel as comrades!”
And so they travelled; the shadow was master, and the master was the shadow; they drove with each other, they rode and walked together, side by side, before and behind, just as the sun was; the shadow always took care to keep itself in the master's place. Now the learned man didn't think much about that; he was a very kind-hearted man, and particularly mild and friendly, and so he said one day to the shadow: “As we have now become companions, and in this way have grown up together from childhood, shall we not drink 'thou' together, it is more familiar?”
“You are right,” said the shadow, who was now the proper master. “It is said in a very straight-forward and well-meant manner. You, as a learned man, certainly know how strange nature is. Some persons cannot bear to touch grey paper, or they become ill; others shiver in every limb if one rub a pane of glass with a nail: I have just such a feeling on hearing you say thou to me; I feel myself as if pressed to the earth in my first situation with you. You see that it is a feeling; that it is not pride: I cannot allow you to say THOU to me, but I will willingly say THOU to you, so it is half done!”
So the shadow said THOU to its former master.
“This is rather too bad,” thought he, “that I must say YOU and he say THOU,” but he was now obliged to put up with it.
So they came to a watering-place where there were many strangers, and amongst them was a princess, who was troubled with seeing too well; and that was so alarming!
She directly observed that the stranger who had just come was quite a different sort of person to all the others; “He has come here in order to get his beard to grow, they say, but I see the real cause, he cannot cast a shadow.”
She had become inquisitive; and so she entered into conversation directly with the strange gentleman, on their promenades. As the daughter of a king, she needed not to stand upon trifles, so she said, “Your complaint is, that you cannot cast a shadow?”
“Your Royal Highness must be improving considerably,” said the shadow, “I know your complaint is, that you see too clearly, but it has decreased, you are cured. I just happen to have a very unusual shadow! Do you not see that person who always goes with me? Other persons have a common shadow, but I do not like what is common to all. We give our servants finer cloth for their livery than we ourselves use, and so I had my shadow trimmed up into a man: yes, you see I have even given him a shadow. It is somewhat expensive, but I like to have something for myself!”
“What!” thought the princess. “Should I really be cured! These baths are the first in the world! In our time water has wonderful powers. But I shall not leave the place, for it now begins to be amusing here. I am extremely fond of that stranger: would that his beard should not grow, for in that case he will leave us!”
In the evening, the princess and the shadow danced together in the large ball-room. She was light, but he was still lighter; she had never had such a partner in the dance. She told him from what land she came, and he knew that land; he had been there, but then she was not at home; he had peeped in at the window, above and below—he had seen both the one and the other, and so he could answer the princess, and make insinuations, so that she was quite astonished; he must be the wisest man in the whole world! She felt such respect for what he knew! So that when they again danced together she fell in love with him; and that the shadow could remark, for she almost pierced him through with her eyes. So they danced once more together; and she was about to declare herself, but she was discreet; she thought of her country and kingdom, and of the many persons she would have to reign over.
“He is a wise man,” said she to herself—“It is well; and he dances delightfully—that is also good; but has he solid knowledge? That is just as important! He must be examined.”
So she began, by degrees, to question him about the most difficult things she could think of, and which she herself could not have answered; so that the shadow made a strange face.
“You cannot answer these questions?” said the princess.
“They belong to my childhood's learning,” said the shadow. “I really believe my shadow, by the door there, can answer them!”
“Your shadow!” said the princess. “That would indeed be marvellous!”
“I will not say for a certainty that he can,” said the shadow, “but I think so; he has now followed me for so many years, and listened to my conversation—I should think it possible. But your royal highness will permit me to observe, that he is so proud of passing himself off for a man, that when he is to be in a proper humor—and he must be so to answer well—he must be treated quite like a man.”
“Oh! I like that!” said the princess.
So she went to the learned man by the door, and she spoke to him about the sun and the moon, and about persons out of and in the world, and he answered with wisdom and prudence.
“What a man that must be who has so wise a shadow!” thought she. “It will be a real blessing to my people and kingdom if I choose him for my consort—I will do it!”
They were soon agreed, both the princess and the shadow; but no one was to know about it before she arrived in her own kingdom.
“No one—not even my shadow!” said the shadow, and he had his own thoughts about it!
Now they were in the country where the princess reigned when she was at home.
“Listen, my good friend,” said the shadow to the learned man. “I have now become as happy and mighty as anyone can be; I will, therefore, do something particular for thee! Thou shalt always live with me in the palace, drive with me in my royal carriage, and have ten thousand pounds a year; but then thou must submit to be called SHADOW by all and everyone; thou must not say that thou hast ever been a man; and once a year, when I sit on the balcony in the sunshine, thou must lie at my feet, as a shadow shall do! I must tell thee: I am going to marry the king's daughter, and the nuptials are to take place this evening!”
“Nay, this is going too far!” said the learned man. “I will not have it; I will not do it! It is to deceive the whole country and the princess too! I will tell everything! That I am a man, and that thou art a shadow—thou art only dressed up!”
“There is no one who will believe it!” said the shadow. “Be reasonable, or I will call the guard!”
“I will go directly to the princess!” said the learned man.
“But I will go first!” said the shadow. “And thou wilt go to prison!” and that he was obliged to do—for the sentinels obeyed him whom they knew the king's daughter was to marry.
“You tremble!” said the princess, as the shadow came into her chamber. “Has anything happened? You must not be unwell this evening, now that we are to have our nuptials celebrated.”
“I have lived to see the most cruel thing that anyone can live to see!” said the shadow. “Only imagine—yes, it is true, such a poor shadow-skull cannot bear much—only think, my shadow has become mad; he thinks that he is a man, and that I—now only think—that I am his shadow!”
“It is terrible!” said the princess; “but he is confined, is he not?”
“That he is. I am afraid that he will never recover.”
“Poor shadow!” said the princess. “He is very unfortunate; it would be a real work of charity to deliver him from the little life he has, and, when I think properly over the matter, I am of opinion that it will be necessary to do away with him in all stillness!”
“It is certainly hard,” said the shadow, “for he was a faithful servant!” and then he gave a sort of sigh.
“You are a noble character!” said the princess.
The whole city was illuminated in the evening, and the cannons went off with a bum! bum! and the soldiers presented arms. That was a marriage! The princess and the shadow went out on the balcony to show themselves, and get another hurrah!
The learned man heard nothing of all this—for they had deprived him of life.
==THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL==
Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening—the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.
One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.
She crept along trembling with cold and hunger—a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!
The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year's Eve; yes, of that she thought.
In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.
Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but—the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.
She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife and fork in its breast, till it came up to the poor little girl; when—the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind. She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant's house.
Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when—the match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.
“Someone is just dead!” said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God.
She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lustre there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression of love.
“Grandmother!” cried the little one. “Oh, take me with you! You go away when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!” And she rubbed the whole bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety—they were with God.
But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall—frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. “She wanted to warm herself,” people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year.
==THE DREAM OF LITTLE TUK==
Ah! yes, that was little Tuk: in reality his name was not Tuk, but that was what he called himself before he could speak plain: he meant it for Charles, and it is all well enough if one does but know it. He had now to take care of his little sister Augusta, who was much younger than himself, and he was, besides, to learn his lesson at the same time; but these two things would not do together at all. There sat the poor little fellow, with his sister on his lap, and he sang to her all the songs he knew; and he glanced the while from time to time into the geography-book that lay open before him. By the next morning he was to have learnt all the towns in Zealand by heart, and to know about them all that is possible to be known.
His mother now came home, for she had been out, and took little Augusta on her arm. Tuk ran quickly to the window, and read so eagerly that he pretty nearly read his eyes out; for it got darker and darker, but his mother had no money to buy a candle.
“There goes the old washerwoman over the way,” said his mother, as she looked out of the window. “The poor woman can hardly drag herself along, and she must now drag the pail home from the fountain. Be a good boy, Tukey, and run across and help the old woman, won't you?”
So Tuk ran over quickly and helped her; but when he came back again into the room it was quite dark, and as to a light, there was no thought of such a thing. He was now to go to bed; that was an old turn-up bedstead; in it he lay and thought about his geography lesson, and of Zealand, and of all that his master had told him. He ought, to be sure, to have read over his lesson again, but that, you know, he could not do. He therefore put his geography-book under his pillow, because he had heard that was a very good thing to do when one wants to learn one's lesson; but one cannot, however, rely upon it entirely. Well, there he lay, and thought and thought, and all at once it was just as if someone kissed his eyes and mouth: he slept, and yet he did not sleep; it was as though the old washerwoman gazed on him with her mild eyes and said, “It were a great sin if you were not to know your lesson tomorrow morning. You have aided me, I therefore will now help you; and the loving God will do so at all times.” And all of a sudden the book under Tuk's pillow began scraping and scratching.
“Kickery-ki! kluk! kluk! kluk!”—that was an old hen who came creeping along, and she was from Kjoge. “I am a Kjoger hen,” said she, and then she related how many inhabitants there were there, and about the battle that had taken place, and which, after all, was hardly worth talking about.
 
“Kribledy, krabledy—plump!” down fell somebody: it was a wooden bird, the popinjay used at the shooting-matches at Prastoe. Now he said that there were just as many inhabitants as he had nails in his body; and he was very proud. “Thorwaldsen lived almost next door to me. Plump! Here I lie capitally.”
But little Tuk was no longer lying down: all at once he was on horseback. On he went at full gallop, still galloping on and on. A knight with a gleaming plume, and most magnificently dressed, held him before him on the horse, and thus they rode through the wood to the old town of Bordingborg, and that was a large and very lively town. High towers rose from the castle of the king, and the brightness of many candles streamed from all the windows; within was dance and song, and King Waldemar and the young, richly-attired maids of honor danced together. The morn now came; and as soon as the sun appeared, the whole town and the king's palace crumbled together, and one tower after the other; and at last only a single one remained standing where the castle had been before,* and the town was so small and poor, and the school boys came along with their books under their arms, and said, “2000 inhabitants!” but that was not true, for there were not so many.
And little Tukey lay in his bed: it seemed to him as if he dreamed, and yet as if he were not dreaming; however, somebody was close beside him.
“Little Tukey! Little Tukey!” cried someone near. It was a seaman, quite a little personage, so little as if he were a midshipman; but a midshipman it was not.
“Many remembrances from Corsor. That is a town that is just rising into importance; a lively town that has steam-boats and stagecoaches: formerly people called it ugly, but that is no longer true. I lie on the sea,” said Corsor; “I have high roads and gardens, and I have given birth to a poet who was witty and amusing, which all poets are not. I once intended to equip a ship that was to sail all round the earth; but I did not do it, although I could have done so: and then, too, I smell so deliciously, for close before the gate bloom the most beautiful roses.”
Little Tuk looked, and all was red and green before his eyes; but as soon as the confusion of colors was somewhat over, all of a sudden there appeared a wooded slope close to the bay, and high up above stood a magnificent old church, with two high pointed towers. From out the hill-side spouted fountains in thick streams of water, so that there was a continual splashing; and close beside them sat an old king with a golden crown upon his white head: that was King Hroar, near the fountains, close to the town of Roeskilde, as it is now called. And up the slope into the old church went all the kings and queens of Denmark, hand in hand, all with their golden crowns; and the organ played and the fountains rustled. Little Tuk saw all, heard all. “Do not forget the diet,” said King Hroar.
Again all suddenly disappeared. Yes, and whither? It seemed to him just as if one turned over a leaf in a book. And now stood there an old peasant-woman, who came from Soroe,* where grass grows in the market-place. She had an old grey linen apron hanging over her head and back: it was so wet, it certainly must have been raining. “Yes, that it has,” said she; and she now related many pretty things out of Holberg's comedies, and about Waldemar and Absalon; but all at once she cowered together, and her head began shaking backwards and forwards, and she looked as she were going to make a spring. “Croak! croak!” said she. “It is wet, it is wet; there is such a pleasant deathlike stillness in Sorbe!” She was now suddenly a frog, “Croak”; and now she was an old woman. “One must dress according to the weather,” said she. “It is wet; it is wet. My town is just like a bottle; and one gets in by the neck, and by the neck one must get out again! In former times I had the finest fish, and now I have fresh rosy-cheeked boys at the bottom of the bottle, who learn wisdom, Hebrew, Greek—Croak!”
When she spoke it sounded just like the noise of frogs, or as if one walked with great boots over a moor; always the same tone, so uniform and so tiring that little Tuk fell into a good sound sleep, which, by the bye, could not do him any harm.
But even in this sleep there came a dream, or whatever else it was: his little sister Augusta, she with the blue eyes and the fair curling hair, was suddenly a tall, beautiful girl, and without having wings was yet able to fly; and she now flew over Zealand—over the green woods and the blue lakes.
“Do you hear the cock crow, Tukey? Cock-a-doodle-doo! The cocks are flying up from Kjoge! You will have a farm-yard, so large, oh! so very large! You will suffer neither hunger nor thirst! You will get on in the world! You will be a rich and happy man! Your house will exalt itself like King Waldemar's tower, and will be richly decorated with marble statues, like that at Prastoe. You understand what I mean. Your name shall circulate with renown all round the earth, like unto the ship that was to have sailed from Corsor; and in Roeskilde—”
“Do not forget the diet!” said King Hroar.
“Then you will speak well and wisely, little Tukey; and when at last you sink into your grave, you shall sleep as quietly—”
“As if I lay in Soroe,” said Tuk, awaking. It was bright day, and he was now quite unable to call to mind his dream; that, however, was not at all necessary, for one may not know what the future will bring.
And out of bed he jumped, and read in his book, and now all at once he knew his whole lesson. And the old washerwoman popped her head in at the door, nodded to him friendly, and said, “Thanks, many thanks, my good child, for your help! May the good ever-loving God fulfil your loveliest dream!”
Little Tukey did not at all know what he had dreamed, but the loving God knew it.
 
==THE NAUGHTY BOY==
Along time ago, there lived an old poet, a thoroughly kind old poet. As he was sitting one evening in his room, a dreadful storm arose without, and the rain streamed down from heaven; but the old poet sat warm and comfortable in his chimney-corner, where the fire blazed and the roasting apple hissed.
“Those who have not a roof over their heads will be wetted to the skin,” said the good old poet.
“Oh let me in! Let me in! I am cold, and I'm so wet!” exclaimed suddenly a child that stood crying at the door and knocking for admittance, while the rain poured down, and the wind made all the windows rattle.
“Poor thing!” said the old poet, as he went to open the door. There stood a little boy, quite naked, and the water ran down from his long golden hair; he trembled with cold, and had he not come into a warm room he would most certainly have perished in the frightful tempest.
“Poor child!” said the old poet, as he took the boy by the hand. “Come in, come in, and I will soon restore thee! Thou shalt have wine and roasted apples, for thou art verily a charming child!” And the boy was so really. His eyes were like two bright stars; and although the water trickled down his hair, it waved in beautiful curls. He looked exactly like a little angel, but he was so pale, and his whole body trembled with cold. He had a nice little bow in his hand, but it was quite spoiled by the rain, and the tints of his many-colored arrows ran one into the other.
The old poet seated himself beside his hearth, and took the little fellow on his lap; he squeezed the water out of his dripping hair, warmed his hands between his own, and boiled for him some sweet wine. Then the boy recovered, his cheeks again grew rosy, he jumped down from the lap where he was sitting, and danced round the kind old poet.
“You are a merry fellow,” said the old man. “What's your name?”
“My name is Cupid,” answered the boy. “Don't you know me? There lies my bow; it shoots well, I can assure you! Look, the weather is now clearing up, and the moon is shining clear again through the window.”
“Why, your bow is quite spoiled,” said the old poet.
“That were sad indeed,” said the boy, and he took the bow in his hand and examined it on every side. “Oh, it is dry again, and is not hurt at all; the string is quite tight. I will try it directly.” And he bent his bow, took aim, and shot an arrow at the old poet, right into his heart. “You see now that my bow was not spoiled,” said he laughing; and away he ran.
The naughty boy, to shoot the old poet in that way; he who had taken him into his warm room, who had treated him so kindly, and who had given him warm wine and the very best apples!
The poor poet lay on the earth and wept, for the arrow had really flown into his heart.
“Fie!” said he. “How naughty a boy Cupid is! I will tell all children about him, that they may take care and not play with him, for he will only cause them sorrow and many a heartache.”
And all good children to whom he related this story, took great heed of this naughty Cupid; but he made fools of them still, for he is astonishingly cunning. When the university students come from the lectures, he runs beside them in a black coat, and with a book under his arm. It is quite impossible for them to know him, and they walk along with him arm in arm, as if he, too, were a student like themselves; and then, unperceived, he thrusts an arrow to their bosom. When the young maidens come from being examined by the clergyman, or go to church to be confirmed, there he is again close behind them. Yes, he is forever following people. At the play, he sits in the great chandelier and burns in bright flames, so that people think it is really a flame, but they soon discover it is something else. He roves about in the garden of the palace and upon the ramparts: yes, once he even shot your father and mother right in the heart. Ask them only and you will hear what they'll tell you. Oh, he is a naughty boy, that Cupid; you must never have anything to do with him. He is forever running after everybody. Only think, he shot an arrow once at your old grandmother! But that is a long time ago, and it is all past now; however, a thing of that sort she never forgets. Fie, naughty Cupid! But now you know him, and you know, too, how ill-behaved he is!
 
==THE RED SHOES==
There was once a little girl who was very pretty and delicate, but in summer she was forced to run about with bare feet, she was so poor, and in winter wear very large wooden shoes, which made her little insteps quite red, and that looked so dangerous!
In the middle of the village lived old Dame Shoemaker; she sat and sewed together, as well as she could, a little pair of shoes out of old red strips of cloth; they were very clumsy, but it was a kind thought. They were meant for the little girl. The little girl was called Karen.
On the very day her mother was buried, Karen received the red shoes, and wore them for the first time. They were certainly not intended for mourning, but she had no others, and with stockingless feet she followed the poor straw coffin in them.
Suddenly a large old carriage drove up, and a large old lady sat in it: she looked at the little girl, felt compassion for her, and then said to the clergyman:
“Here, give me the little girl. I will adopt her!”
And Karen believed all this happened on account of the red shoes, but the old lady thought they were horrible, and they were burnt. But Karen herself was cleanly and nicely dressed; she must learn to read and sew; and people said she was a nice little thing, but the looking-glass said: “Thou art more than nice, thou art beautiful!”
Now the queen once travelled through the land, and she had her little daughter with her. And this little daughter was a princess, and people streamed to the castle, and Karen was there also, and the little princess stood in her fine white dress, in a window, and let herself be stared at; she had neither a train nor a golden crown, but splendid red morocco shoes. They were certainly far handsomer than those Dame Shoemaker had made for little Karen. Nothing in the world can be compared with red shoes.
Now Karen was old enough to be confirmed; she had new clothes and was to have new shoes also. The rich shoemaker in the city took the measure of her little foot. This took place at his house, in his room; where stood large glass-cases, filled with elegant shoes and brilliant boots. All this looked charming, but the old lady could not see well, and so had no pleasure in them. In the midst of the shoes stood a pair of red ones, just like those the princess had worn. How beautiful they were! The shoemaker said also they had been made for the child of a count, but had not fitted.
“That must be patent leather!” said the old lady. “They shine so!”
“Yes, they shine!” said Karen, and they fitted, and were bought, but the old lady knew nothing about their being red, else she would never have allowed Karen to have gone in red shoes to be confirmed. Yet such was the case.
Everybody looked at her feet; and when she stepped through the chancel door on the church pavement, it seemed to her as if the old figures on the tombs, those portraits of old preachers and preachers' wives, with stiff ruffs, and long black dresses, fixed their eyes on her red shoes. And she thought only of them as the clergyman laid his hand upon her head, and spoke of the holy baptism, of the covenant with God, and how she should be now a matured Christian; and the organ pealed so solemnly; the sweet children's voices sang, and the old music-directors sang, but Karen only thought of her red shoes.
In the afternoon, the old lady heard from everyone that the shoes had been red, and she said that it was very wrong of Karen, that it was not at all becoming, and that in future Karen should only go in black shoes to church, even when she should be older.
The next Sunday there was the sacrament, and Karen looked at the black shoes, looked at the red ones—looked at them again, and put on the red shoes.
The sun shone gloriously; Karen and the old lady walked along the path through the corn; it was rather dusty there.
At the church door stood an old soldier with a crutch, and with a wonderfully long beard, which was more red than white, and he bowed to the ground, and asked the old lady whether he might dust her shoes. And Karen stretched out her little foot.
“See, what beautiful dancing shoes!” said the soldier. “Sit firm when you dance”; and he put his hand out towards the soles.
And the old lady gave the old soldier alms, and went into the church with Karen.
And all the people in the church looked at Karen's red shoes, and all the pictures, and as Karen knelt before the altar, and raised the cup to her lips, she only thought of the red shoes, and they seemed to swim in it; and she forgot to sing her psalm, and she forgot to pray, “Our Father in Heaven!”
Now all the people went out of church, and the old lady got into her carriage. Karen raised her foot to get in after her, when the old soldier said,
“Look, what beautiful dancing shoes!”
And Karen could not help dancing a step or two, and when she began her feet continued to dance; it was just as though the shoes had power over them. She danced round the church corner, she could not leave off; the coachman was obliged to run after and catch hold of her, and he lifted her in the carriage, but her feet continued to dance so that she trod on the old lady dreadfully. At length she took the shoes off, and then her legs had peace.
The shoes were placed in a closet at home, but Karen could not avoid looking at them.
Now the old lady was sick, and it was said she could not recover. She must be nursed and waited upon, and there was no one whose duty it was so much as Karen's. But there was a great ball in the city, to which Karen was invited. She looked at the old lady, who could not recover, she looked at the red shoes, and she thought there could be no sin in it; she put on the red shoes, she might do that also, she thought. But then she went to the ball and began to dance.
When she wanted to dance to the right, the shoes would dance to the left, and when she wanted to dance up the room, the shoes danced back again, down the steps, into the street, and out of the city gate. She danced, and was forced to dance straight out into the gloomy wood.
Then it was suddenly light up among the trees, and she fancied it must be the moon, for there was a face; but it was the old soldier with the red beard; he sat there, nodded his head, and said, “Look, what beautiful dancing shoes!”
Then she was terrified, and wanted to fling off the red shoes, but they clung fast; and she pulled down her stockings, but the shoes seemed to have grown to her feet. And she danced, and must dance, over fields and meadows, in rain and sunshine, by night and day; but at night it was the most fearful.
She danced over the churchyard, but the dead did not dance—they had something better to do than to dance. She wished to seat herself on a poor man's grave, where the bitter tansy grew; but for her there was neither peace nor rest; and when she danced towards the open church door, she saw an angel standing there. He wore long, white garments; he had wings which reached from his shoulders to the earth; his countenance was severe and grave; and in his hand he held a sword, broad and glittering.
“Dance shalt thou!” said he. “Dance in thy red shoes till thou art pale and cold! Till thy skin shrivels up and thou art a skeleton! Dance shalt thou from door to door, and where proud, vain children dwell, thou shalt knock, that they may hear thee and tremble! Dance shalt thou—!”
“Mercy!” cried Karen. But she did not hear the angel's reply, for the shoes carried her through the gate into the fields, across roads and bridges, and she must keep ever dancing.
One morning she danced past a door which she well knew. Within sounded a psalm; a coffin, decked with flowers, was borne forth. Then she knew that the old lady was dead, and felt that she was abandoned by all, and condemned by the angel of God.
She danced, and she was forced to dance through the gloomy night. The shoes carried her over stack and stone; she was torn till she bled; she danced over the heath till she came to a little house. Here, she knew, dwelt the executioner; and she tapped with her fingers at the window, and said, “Come out! Come out! I cannot come in, for I am forced to dance!”
And the executioner said, “Thou dost not know who I am, I fancy? I strike bad people's heads off; and I hear that my axe rings!”
“Don't strike my head off!” said Karen. “Then I can't repent of my sins! But strike off my feet in the red shoes!”
And then she confessed her entire sin, and the executioner struck off her feet with the red shoes, but the shoes danced away with the little feet across the field into the deep wood.
And he carved out little wooden feet for her, and crutches, taught her the psalm criminals always sing; and she kissed the hand which had wielded the axe, and went over the heath.
“Now I have suffered enough for the red shoes!” said she. “Now I will go into the church that people may see me!” And she hastened towards the church door: but when she was near it, the red shoes danced before her, and she was terrified, and turned round. The whole week she was unhappy, and wept many bitter tears; but when Sunday returned, she said, “Well, now I have suffered and struggled enough! I really believe I am as good as many a one who sits in the church, and holds her head so high!”
And away she went boldly; but she had not got farther than the churchyard gate before she saw the red shoes dancing before her; and she was frightened, and turned back, and repented of her sin from her heart.
And she went to the parsonage, and begged that they would take her into service; she would be very industrious, she said, and would do everything she could; she did not care about the wages, only she wished to have a home, and be with good people. And the clergyman's wife was sorry for her and took her into service; and she was industrious and thoughtful. She sat still and listened when the clergyman read the Bible in the evenings. All the children thought a great deal of her; but when they spoke of dress, and grandeur, and beauty, she shook her head.
The following Sunday, when the family was going to church, they asked her whether she would not go with them; but she glanced sorrowfully, with tears in her eyes, at her crutches. The family went to hear the word of God; but she went alone into her little chamber; there was only room for a bed and chair to stand in it; and here she sat down with her Prayer-Book; and whilst she read with a pious mind, the wind bore the strains of the organ towards her, and she raised her tearful countenance, and said, “O God, help me!”
And the sun shone so clearly, and straight before her stood the angel of God in white garments, the same she had seen that night at the church door; but he no longer carried the sharp sword, but in its stead a splendid green spray, full of roses. And he touched the ceiling with the spray, and the ceiling rose so high, and where he had touched it there gleamed a golden star. And he touched the walls, and they widened out, and she saw the organ which was playing; she saw the old pictures of the preachers and the preachers' wives. The congregation sat in cushioned seats, and sang out of their Prayer-Books. For the church itself had come to the poor girl in her narrow chamber, or else she had come into the church. She sat in the pew with the clergyman's family, and when they had ended the psalm and looked up, they nodded and said, “It is right that thou art come!”
“It was through mercy!” she said.
And the organ pealed, and the children's voices in the choir sounded so sweet and soft! The clear sunshine streamed so warmly through the window into the pew where Karen sat! Her heart was so full of sunshine, peace, and joy, that it broke. Her soul flew on the sunshine to God, and there no one asked after the RED SHOES.
==THE GOLDEN BIRD==
A certain king had a beautiful garden, and in the garden stood a tree which bore golden apples. These apples were always counted, and about the time when they began to grow ripe it was found that every night one of them was gone. The king became very angry at this, and ordered the gardener to keep watch all night under the tree. The gardener set his eldest son to watch; but about twelve o’clock he fell asleep, and in the morning another of the apples was missing. Then the second son was ordered to watch; and at midnight he too fell asleep, and in the morning another apple was gone. Then the third son offered to keep watch; but the gardener at first would not let him, for fear some harm should come to him: however, at last he consented, and the young man laid himself under the tree to watch. As the clock struck twelve he heard a rustling noise in the air, and a bird came flying that was of pure gold; and as it was snapping at one of the apples with its beak, the gardener’s son jumped up and shot an arrow at it. But the arrow did the bird no harm; only it dropped a golden feather from its tail, and then flew away. The golden feather was brought to the king in the morning, and all the council was called together. Everyone agreed that it was worth more than all the wealth of the kingdom: but the king said, ‘One feather is of no use to me, I must have the whole bird.’
Then the gardener’s eldest son set out and thought to find the golden bird very easily; and when he had gone but a little way, he came to a wood, and by the side of the wood he saw a fox sitting; so he took his bow and made ready to shoot at it. Then the fox said, ‘Do not shoot me, for I will give you good counsel; I know what your business is, and that you want to find the golden bird. You will reach a village in the evening; and when you get there, you will see two inns opposite to each other, one of which is very pleasant and beautiful to look at: go not in there, but rest for the night in the other, though it may appear to you to be very poor and mean.’ But the son thought to himself, ‘What can such a beast as this know about the matter?’ So he shot his arrow at the fox; but he missed it, and it set up its tail above its back and ran into the wood. Then he went his way, and in the evening came to the village where the two inns were; and in one of these were people singing, and dancing, and feasting; but the other looked very dirty, and poor. ‘I should be very silly,’ said he, ‘if I went to that shabby house, and left this charming place’; so he went into the smart house, and ate and drank at his ease, and forgot the bird, and his country too.
Time passed on; and as the eldest son did not come back, and no tidings were heard of him, the second son set out, and the same thing happened to him. He met the fox, who gave him the good advice: but when he came to the two inns, his eldest brother was standing at the window where the merrymaking was, and called to him to come in; and he could not withstand the temptation, but went in, and forgot the golden bird and his country in the same manner.
Time passed on again, and the youngest son too wished to set out into the wide world to seek for the golden bird; but his father would not listen to it for a long while, for he was very fond of his son, and was afraid that some ill luck might happen to him also, and prevent his coming back. However, at last it was agreed he should go, for he would not rest at home; and as he came to the wood, he met the fox, and heard the same good counsel. But he was thankful to the fox, and did not attempt his life as his brothers had done; so the fox said, ‘Sit upon my tail, and you will travel faster.’ So he sat down, and the fox began to run, and away they went over stock and stone so quick that their hair whistled in the wind.
When they came to the village, the son followed the fox’s counsel, and without looking about him went to the shabby inn and rested there all night at his ease. In the morning came the fox again and met him as he was beginning his journey, and said, ‘Go straight forward, till you come to a castle, before which lie a whole troop of soldiers fast asleep and snoring: take no notice of them, but go into the castle and pass on and on till you come to a room, where the golden bird sits in a wooden cage; close by it stands a beautiful golden cage; but do not try to take the bird out of the shabby cage and put it into the handsome one, otherwise you will repent it.’ Then the fox stretched out his tail again, and the young man sat himself down, and away they went over stock and stone till their hair whistled in the wind.
Before the castle gate all was as the fox had said: so the son went in and found the chamber where the golden bird hung in a wooden cage, and below stood the golden cage, and the three golden apples that had been lost were lying close by it. Then thought he to himself, ‘It will be a very droll thing to bring away such a fine bird in this shabby cage’; so he opened the door and took hold of it and put it into the golden cage. But the bird set up such a loud scream that all the soldiers awoke, and they took him prisoner and carried him before the king. The next morning the court sat to judge him; and when all was heard, it sentenced him to die, unless he should bring the king the golden horse which could run as swiftly as the wind; and if he did this, he was to have the golden bird given him for his own.
So he set out once more on his journey, sighing, and in great despair, when on a sudden his friend the fox met him, and said, ‘You see now what has happened on account of your not listening to my counsel. I will still, however, tell you how to find the golden horse, if you will do as I bid you. You must go straight on till you come to the castle where the horse stands in his stall: by his side will lie the groom fast asleep and snoring: take away the horse quietly, but be sure to put the old leathern saddle upon him, and not the golden one that is close by it.’ Then the son sat down on the fox’s tail, and away they went over stock and stone till their hair whistled in the wind.
All went right, and the groom lay snoring with his hand upon the golden saddle. But when the son looked at the horse, he thought it a great pity to put the leathern saddle upon it. ‘I will give him the good one,’ said he; ‘I am sure he deserves it.’ As he took up the golden saddle the groom awoke and cried out so loud, that all the guards ran in and took him prisoner, and in the morning he was again brought before the court to be judged, and was sentenced to die. But it was agreed, that, if he could bring thither the beautiful princess, he should live, and have the bird and the horse given him for his own.
Then he went his way very sorrowful; but the old fox came and said, ‘Why did not you listen to me? If you had, you would have carried away both the bird and the horse; yet will I once more give you counsel. Go straight on, and in the evening you will arrive at a castle. At twelve o’clock at night the princess goes to the bathing-house: go up to her and give her a kiss, and she will let you lead her away; but take care you do not suffer her to go and take leave of her father and mother.’ Then the fox stretched out his tail, and so away they went over stock and stone till their hair whistled again.
As they came to the castle, all was as the fox had said, and at twelve o’clock the young man met the princess going to the bath and gave her the kiss, and she agreed to run away with him, but begged with many tears that he would let her take leave of her father. At first he refused, but she wept still more and more, and fell at his feet, till at last he consented; but the moment she came to her father’s house the guards awoke and he was taken prisoner again.
Then he was brought before the king, and the king said, ‘You shall never have my daughter unless in eight days you dig away the hill that stops the view from my window.’ Now this hill was so big that the whole world could not take it away: and when he had worked for seven days, and had done very little, the fox came and said. ‘Lie down and go to sleep; I will work for you.’ And in the morning he awoke and the hill was gone; so he went merrily to the king, and told him that now that it was removed he must give him the princess.
Then the king was obliged to keep his word, and away went the young man and the princess; and the fox came and said to him, ‘We will have all three, the princess, the horse, and the bird.’ ‘Ah!’ said the young man, ‘that would be a great thing, but how can you contrive it?’
‘If you will only listen,’ said the fox, ‘it can be done. When you come to the king, and he asks for the beautiful princess, you must say, “Here she is!” Then he will be very joyful; and you will mount the golden horse that they are to give you, and put out your hand to take leave of them; but shake hands with the princess last. Then lift her quickly on to the horse behind you; clap your spurs to his side, and gallop away as fast as you can.’
All went right: then the fox said, ‘When you come to the castle where the bird is, I will stay with the princess at the door, and you will ride in and speak to the king; and when he sees that it is the right horse, he will bring out the bird; but you must sit still, and say that you want to look at it, to see whether it is the true golden bird; and when you get it into your hand, ride away.’
This, too, happened as the fox said; they carried off the bird, the princess mounted again, and they rode on to a great wood. Then the fox came, and said, ‘Pray kill me, and cut off my head and my feet.’ But the young man refused to do it: so the fox said, ‘I will at any rate give you good counsel: beware of two things; ransom no one from the gallows, and sit down by the side of no river.’ Then away he went. ‘Well,’ thought the young man, ‘it is no hard matter to keep that advice.’
He rode on with the princess, till at last he came to the village where he had left his two brothers. And there he heard a great noise and uproar; and when he asked what was the matter, the people said, ‘Two men are going to be hanged.’ As he came nearer, he saw that the two men were his brothers, who had turned robbers; so he said, ‘Cannot they in any way be saved?’ But the people said ‘No,’ unless he would bestow all his money upon the rascals and buy their liberty. Then he did not stay to think about the matter, but paid what was asked, and his brothers were given up, and went on with him towards their home.
And as they came to the wood where the fox first met them, it was so cool and pleasant that the two brothers said, ‘Let us sit down by the side of the river, and rest a while, to eat and drink.’ So he said, ‘Yes,’ and forgot the fox’s counsel, and sat down on the side of the river; and while he suspected nothing, they came behind, and threw him down the bank, and took the princess, the horse, and the bird, and went home to the king their master, and said. ‘All this have we won by our labour.’ Then there was great rejoicing made; but the horse would not eat, the bird would not sing, and the princess wept.
The youngest son fell to the bottom of the river’s bed: luckily it was nearly dry, but his bones were almost broken, and the bank was so steep that he could find no way to get out. Then the old fox came once more, and scolded him for not following his advice; otherwise no evil would have befallen him: ‘Yet,’ said he, ‘I cannot leave you here, so lay hold of my tail and hold fast.’ Then he pulled him out of the river, and said to him, as he got upon the bank, ‘Your brothers have set watch to kill you, if they find you in the kingdom.’ So he dressed himself as a poor man, and came secretly to the king’s court, and was scarcely within the doors when the horse began to eat, and the bird to sing, and the princess left off weeping. Then he went to the king, and told him all his brothers’ roguery; and they were seized and punished, and he had the princess given to him again; and after the king’s death he was heir to his kingdom.
A long while after, he went to walk one day in the wood, and the old fox met him, and besought him with tears in his eyes to kill him, and cut off his head and feet. And at last he did so, and in a moment the fox was changed into a man, and turned out to be the brother of the princess, who had been lost a great many many years.
== HANS IN LUCK==
Some men are born to good luck: all they do or try to do comes right—all that falls to them is so much gain—all their geese are swans—all their cards are trumps—toss them which way you will, they will always, like poor puss, alight upon their legs, and only move on so much the faster. The world may very likely not always think of them as they think of themselves, but what care they for the world? what can it know about the matter?
One of these lucky beings was neighbour Hans. Seven long years he had worked hard for his master. At last he said, ‘Master, my time is up; I must go home and see my poor mother once more: so pray pay me my wages and let me go.’ And the master said, ‘You have been a faithful and good servant, Hans, so your pay shall be handsome.’ Then he gave him a lump of silver as big as his head.
Hans took out his pocket-handkerchief, put the piece of silver into it, threw it over his shoulder, and jogged off on his road homewards. As he went lazily on, dragging one foot after another, a man came in sight, trotting gaily along on a capital horse. ‘Ah!’ said Hans aloud, ‘what a fine thing it is to ride on horseback! There he sits as easy and happy as if he was at home, in the chair by his fireside; he trips against no stones, saves shoe-leather, and gets on he hardly knows how.’ Hans did not speak so softly but the horseman heard it all, and said, ‘Well, friend, why do you go on foot then?’ ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘I have this load to carry: to be sure it is silver, but it is so heavy that I can’t hold up my head, and you must know it hurts my shoulder sadly.’ ‘What do you say of making an exchange?’ said the horseman. ‘I will give you my horse, and you shall give me the silver; which will save you a great deal of trouble in carrying such a heavy load about with you.’ ‘With all my heart,’ said Hans: ‘but as you are so kind to me, I must tell you one thing—you will have a weary task to draw that silver about with you.’ However, the horseman got off, took the silver, helped Hans up, gave him the bridle into one hand and the whip into the other, and said, ‘When you want to go very fast, smack your lips loudly together, and cry “Jip!”’
Hans was delighted as he sat on the horse, drew himself up, squared his elbows, turned out his toes, cracked his whip, and rode merrily off, one minute whistling a merry tune, and another singing,
‘No care and no sorrow,
A fig for the morrow!
We’ll laugh and be merry,
Sing neigh down derry!’
After a time he thought he should like to go a little faster, so he smacked his lips and cried ‘Jip!’ Away went the horse full gallop; and before Hans knew what he was about, he was thrown off, and lay on his back by the road-side. His horse would have ran off, if a shepherd who was coming by, driving a cow, had not stopped it. Hans soon came to himself, and got upon his legs again, sadly vexed, and said to the shepherd, ‘This riding is no joke, when a man has the luck to get upon a beast like this that stumbles and flings him off as if it would break his neck. However, I’m off now once for all: I like your cow now a great deal better than this smart beast that played me this trick, and has spoiled my best coat, you see, in this puddle; which, by the by, smells not very like a nosegay. One can walk along at one’s leisure behind that cow—keep good company, and have milk, butter, and cheese, every day, into the bargain. What would I give to have such a prize!’ ‘Well,’ said the shepherd, ‘if you are so fond of her, I will change my cow for your horse; I like to do good to my neighbours, even though I lose by it myself.’ ‘Done!’ said Hans, merrily. ‘What a noble heart that good man has!’ thought he. Then the shepherd jumped upon the horse, wished Hans and the cow good morning, and away he rode.
Hans brushed his coat, wiped his face and hands, rested a while, and then drove off his cow quietly, and thought his bargain a very lucky one. ‘If I have only a piece of bread (and I certainly shall always be able to get that), I can, whenever I like, eat my butter and cheese with it; and when I am thirsty I can milk my cow and drink the milk: and what can I wish for more?’ When he came to an inn, he halted, ate up all his bread, and gave away his last penny for a glass of beer. When he had rested himself he set off again, driving his cow towards his mother’s village. But the heat grew greater as soon as noon came on, till at last, as he found himself on a wide heath that would take him more than an hour to cross, he began to be so hot and parched that his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. ‘I can find a cure for this,’ thought he; ‘now I will milk my cow and quench my thirst’: so he tied her to the stump of a tree, and held his leathern cap to milk into; but not a drop was to be had. Who would have thought that this cow, which was to bring him milk and butter and cheese, was all that time utterly dry? Hans had not thought of looking to that.
While he was trying his luck in milking, and managing the matter very clumsily, the uneasy beast began to think him very troublesome; and at last gave him such a kick on the head as knocked him down; and there he lay a long while senseless. Luckily a butcher soon came by, driving a pig in a wheelbarrow. ‘What is the matter with you, my man?’ said the butcher, as he helped him up. Hans told him what had happened, how he was dry, and wanted to milk his cow, but found the cow was dry too. Then the butcher gave him a flask of ale, saying, ‘There, drink and refresh yourself; your cow will give you no milk: don’t you see she is an old beast, good for nothing but the slaughter-house?’ ‘Alas, alas!’ said Hans, ‘who would have thought it? What a shame to take my horse, and give me only a dry cow! If I kill her, what will she be good for? I hate cow-beef; it is not tender enough for me. If it were a pig now—like that fat gentleman you are driving along at his ease—one could do something with it; it would at any rate make sausages.’ ‘Well,’ said the butcher, ‘I don’t like to say no, when one is asked to do a kind, neighbourly thing. To please you I will change, and give you my fine fat pig for the cow.’ ‘Heaven reward you for your kindness and self-denial!’ said Hans, as he gave the butcher the cow; and taking the pig off the wheel-barrow, drove it away, holding it by the string that was tied to its leg.
So on he jogged, and all seemed now to go right with him: he had met with some misfortunes, to be sure; but he was now well repaid for all. How could it be otherwise with such a travelling companion as he had at last got?
The next man he met was a countryman carrying a fine white goose. The countryman stopped to ask what was o’clock; this led to further chat; and Hans told him all his luck, how he had so many good bargains, and how all the world went gay and smiling with him. The countryman then began to tell his tale, and said he was going to take the goose to a christening. ‘Feel,’ said he, ‘how heavy it is, and yet it is only eight weeks old. Whoever roasts and eats it will find plenty of fat upon it, it has lived so well!’ ‘You’re right,’ said Hans, as he weighed it in his hand; ‘but if you talk of fat, my pig is no trifle.’ Meantime the countryman began to look grave, and shook his head. ‘Hark ye!’ said he, ‘my worthy friend, you seem a good sort of fellow, so I can’t help doing you a kind turn. Your pig may get you into a scrape. In the village I just came from, the squire has had a pig stolen out of his sty. I was dreadfully afraid when I saw you that you had got the squire’s pig. If you have, and they catch you, it will be a bad job for you. The least they will do will be to throw you into the horse-pond. Can you swim?’
Poor Hans was sadly frightened. ‘Good man,’ cried he, ‘pray get me out of this scrape. I know nothing of where the pig was either bred or born; but he may have been the squire’s for aught I can tell: you know this country better than I do, take my pig and give me the goose.’ ‘I ought to have something into the bargain,’ said the countryman; ‘give a fat goose for a pig, indeed! ‘Tis not everyone would do so much for you as that. However, I will not be hard upon you, as you are in trouble.’ Then he took the string in his hand, and drove off the pig by a side path; while Hans went on the way homewards free from care. ‘After all,’ thought he, ‘that chap is pretty well taken in. I don’t care whose pig it is, but wherever it came from it has been a very good friend to me. I have much the best of the bargain. First there will be a capital roast; then the fat will find me in goose-grease for six months; and then there are all the beautiful white feathers. I will put them into my pillow, and then I am sure I shall sleep soundly without rocking. How happy my mother will be! Talk of a pig, indeed! Give me a fine fat goose.’
As he came to the next village, he saw a scissor-grinder with his wheel, working and singing,
‘O’er hill and o’er dale
So happy I roam,
Work light and live well,
All the world is my home;
Then who so blythe, so merry as I?’
Hans stood looking on for a while, and at last said, ‘You must be well off, master grinder! you seem so happy at your work.’ ‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘mine is a golden trade; a good grinder never puts his hand into his pocket without finding money in it—but where did you get that beautiful goose?’ ‘I did not buy it, I gave a pig for it.’ ‘And where did you get the pig?’ ‘I gave a cow for it.’ ‘And the cow?’ ‘I gave a horse for it.’ ‘And the horse?’ ‘I gave a lump of silver as big as my head for it.’ ‘And the silver?’ ‘Oh! I worked hard for that seven long years.’ ‘You have thriven well in the world hitherto,’ said the grinder, ‘now if you could find money in your pocket whenever you put your hand in it, your fortune would be made.’ ‘Very true: but how is that to be managed?’ ‘How? Why, you must turn grinder like myself,’ said the other; ‘you only want a grindstone; the rest will come of itself. Here is one that is but little the worse for wear: I would not ask more than the value of your goose for it—will you buy?’ ‘How can you ask?’ said Hans; ‘I should be the happiest man in the world, if I could have money whenever I put my hand in my pocket: what could I want more? there’s the goose.’ ‘Now,’ said the grinder, as he gave him a common rough stone that lay by his side, ‘this is a most capital stone; do but work it well enough, and you can make an old nail cut with it.’
Hans took the stone, and went his way with a light heart: his eyes sparkled for joy, and he said to himself, ‘Surely I must have been born in a lucky hour; everything I could want or wish for comes of itself. People are so kind; they seem really to think I do them a favour in letting them make me rich, and giving me good bargains.’
Meantime he began to be tired, and hungry too, for he had given away his last penny in his joy at getting the cow.
At last he could go no farther, for the stone tired him sadly: and he dragged himself to the side of a river, that he might take a drink of water, and rest a while. So he laid the stone carefully by his side on the bank: but, as he stooped down to drink, he forgot it, pushed it a little, and down it rolled, plump into the stream.
For a while he watched it sinking in the deep clear water; then sprang up and danced for joy, and again fell upon his knees and thanked Heaven, with tears in his eyes, for its kindness in taking away his only plague, the ugly heavy stone.
‘How happy am I!’ cried he; ‘nobody was ever so lucky as I.’ Then up he got with a light heart, free from all his troubles, and walked on till he reached his mother’s house, and told her how very easy the road to good luck was.
== JORINDA AND JORINDEL==
There was once an old castle, that stood in the middle of a deep gloomy wood, and in the castle lived an old fairy. Now this fairy could take any shape she pleased. All the day long she flew about in the form of an owl, or crept about the country like a cat; but at night she always became an old woman again. When any young man came within a hundred paces of her castle, he became quite fixed, and could not move a step till she came and set him free; which she would not do till he had given her his word never to come there again: but when any pretty maiden came within that space she was changed into a bird, and the fairy put her into a cage, and hung her up in a chamber in the castle. There were seven hundred of these cages hanging in the castle, and all with beautiful birds in them.
Now there was once a maiden whose name was Jorinda. She was prettier than all the pretty girls that ever were seen before, and a shepherd lad, whose name was Jorindel, was very fond of her, and they were soon to be married. One day they went to walk in the wood, that they might be alone; and Jorindel said, ‘We must take care that we don’t go too near to the fairy’s castle.’ It was a beautiful evening; the last rays of the setting sun shone bright through the long stems of the trees upon the green underwood beneath, and the turtle-doves sang from the tall birches.
Jorinda sat down to gaze upon the sun; Jorindel sat by her side; and both felt sad, they knew not why; but it seemed as if they were to be parted from one another for ever. They had wandered a long way; and when they looked to see which way they should go home, they found themselves at a loss to know what path to take.
The sun was setting fast, and already half of its circle had sunk behind the hill: Jorindel on a sudden looked behind him, and saw through the bushes that they had, without knowing it, sat down close under the old walls of the castle. Then he shrank for fear, turned pale, and trembled. Jorinda was just singing,
 ‘The ring-dove sang from the willow spray,
 Well-a-day! Well-a-day!
 He mourn’d for the fate of his darling mate,
 Well-a-day!’
when her song stopped suddenly. Jorindel turned to see the reason, and beheld his Jorinda changed into a nightingale, so that her song ended with a mournful jug, jug. An owl with fiery eyes flew three times round them, and three times screamed:
 ‘Tu whu! Tu whu! Tu whu!’
Jorindel could not move; he stood fixed as a stone, and could neither weep, nor speak, nor stir hand or foot. And now the sun went quite down; the gloomy night came; the owl flew into a bush; and a moment after the old fairy came forth pale and meagre, with staring eyes, and a nose and chin that almost met one another.
She mumbled something to herself, seized the nightingale, and went away with it in her hand. Poor Jorindel saw the nightingale was gone—but what could he do? He could not speak, he could not move from the spot where he stood. At last the fairy came back and sang with a hoarse voice:
 ‘Till the prisoner is fast,
 And her doom is cast,
 There stay! Oh, stay!
 When the charm is around her,
 And the spell has bound her,
 Hie away! away!’
On a sudden Jorindel found himself free. Then he fell on his knees before the fairy, and prayed her to give him back his dear Jorinda: but she laughed at him, and said he should never see her again; then she went her way.
He prayed, he wept, he sorrowed, but all in vain. ‘Alas!’ he said, ‘what will become of me?’ He could not go back to his own home, so he went to a strange village, and employed himself in keeping sheep. Many a time did he walk round and round as near to the hated castle as he dared go, but all in vain; he heard or saw nothing of Jorinda.
At last he dreamt one night that he found a beautiful purple flower, and that in the middle of it lay a costly pearl; and he dreamt that he plucked the flower, and went with it in his hand into the castle, and that everything he touched with it was disenchanted, and that there he found his Jorinda again.
In the morning when he awoke, he began to search over hill and dale for this pretty flower; and eight long days he sought for it in vain: but on the ninth day, early in the morning, he found the beautiful purple flower; and in the middle of it was a large dewdrop, as big as a costly pearl. Then he plucked the flower, and set out and travelled day and night, till he came again to the castle.
He walked nearer than a hundred paces to it, and yet he did not become fixed as before, but found that he could go quite close up to the door. Jorindel was very glad indeed to see this. Then he touched the door with the flower, and it sprang open; so that he went in through the court, and listened when he heard so many birds singing. At last he came to the chamber where the fairy sat, with the seven hundred birds singing in the seven hundred cages. When she saw Jorindel she was very angry, and screamed with rage; but she could not come within two yards of him, for the flower he held in his hand was his safeguard. He looked around at the birds, but alas! there were many, many nightingales, and how then should he find out which was his Jorinda? While he was thinking what to do, he saw the fairy had taken down one of the cages, and was making the best of her way off through the door. He ran or flew after her, touched the cage with the flower, and Jorinda stood before him, and threw her arms round his neck looking as beautiful as ever, as beautiful as when they walked together in the wood.
Then he touched all the other birds with the flower, so that they all took their old forms again; and he took Jorinda home, where they were married, and lived happily together many years: and so did a good many other lads, whose maidens had been forced to sing in the old fairy’s cages by themselves, much longer than they liked.
== THE TRAVELLING MUSICIANS==
An honest farmer had once an ass that had been a faithful servant to him a great many years, but was now growing old and every day more and more unfit for work. His master therefore was tired of keeping him and began to think of putting an end to him; but the ass, who saw that some mischief was in the wind, took himself slyly off, and began his journey towards the great city, ‘For there,’ thought he, ‘I may turn musician.’
After he had travelled a little way, he spied a dog lying by the roadside and panting as if he were tired. ‘What makes you pant so, my friend?’ said the ass. ‘Alas!’ said the dog, ‘my master was going to knock me on the head, because I am old and weak, and can no longer make myself useful to him in hunting; so I ran away; but what can I do to earn my livelihood?’ ‘Hark ye!’ said the ass, ‘I am going to the great city to turn musician: suppose you go with me, and try what you can do in the same way?’ The dog said he was willing, and they jogged on together.
They had not gone far before they saw a cat sitting in the middle of the road and making a most rueful face. ‘Pray, my good lady,’ said the ass, ‘what’s the matter with you? You look quite out of spirits!’ ‘Ah, me!’ said the cat, ‘how can one be in good spirits when one’s life is in danger? Because I am beginning to grow old, and had rather lie at my ease by the fire than run about the house after the mice, my mistress laid hold of me, and was going to drown me; and though I have been lucky enough to get away from her, I do not know what I am to live upon.’ ‘Oh,’ said the ass, ‘by all means go with us to the great city; you are a good night singer, and may make your fortune as a musician.’ The cat was pleased with the thought, and joined the party.
Soon afterwards, as they were passing by a farmyard, they saw a cock perched upon a gate, and screaming out with all his might and main. ‘Bravo!’ said the ass; ‘upon my word, you make a famous noise; pray what is all this about?’ ‘Why,’ said the cock, ‘I was just now saying that we should have fine weather for our washing-day, and yet my mistress and the cook don’t thank me for my pains, but threaten to cut off my head tomorrow, and make broth of me for the guests that are coming on Sunday!’ ‘Heaven forbid!’ said the ass, ‘come with us Master Chanticleer; it will be better, at any rate, than staying here to have your head cut off! Besides, who knows? If we care to sing in tune, we may get up some kind of a concert; so come along with us.’ ‘With all my heart,’ said the cock: so they all four went on jollily together.
They could not, however, reach the great city the first day; so when night came on, they went into a wood to sleep. The ass and the dog laid themselves down under a great tree, and the cat climbed up into the branches; while the cock, thinking that the higher he sat the safer he should be, flew up to the very top of the tree, and then, according to his custom, before he went to sleep, looked out on all sides of him to see that everything was well. In doing this, he saw afar off something bright and shining and calling to his companions said, ‘There must be a house no great way off, for I see a light.’ ‘If that be the case,’ said the ass, ‘we had better change our quarters, for our lodging is not the best in the world!’ ‘Besides,’ added the dog, ‘I should not be the worse for a bone or two, or a bit of meat.’ So they walked off together towards the spot where Chanticleer had seen the light, and as they drew near it became larger and brighter, till they at last came close to a house in which a gang of robbers lived.
The ass, being the tallest of the company, marched up to the window and peeped in. ‘Well, Donkey,’ said Chanticleer, ‘what do you see?’ ‘What do I see?’ replied the ass. ‘Why, I see a table spread with all kinds of good things, and robbers sitting round it making merry.’ ‘That would be a noble lodging for us,’ said the cock. ‘Yes,’ said the ass, ‘if we could only get in’; so they consulted together how they should contrive to get the robbers out; and at last they hit upon a plan. The ass placed himself upright on his hind legs, with his forefeet resting against the window; the dog got upon his back; the cat scrambled up to the dog’s shoulders, and the cock flew up and sat upon the cat’s head. When all was ready a signal was given, and they began their music. The ass brayed, the dog barked, the cat mewed, and the cock screamed; and then they all broke through the window at once, and came tumbling into the room, amongst the broken glass, with a most hideous clatter! The robbers, who had been not a little frightened by the opening concert, had now no doubt that some frightful hobgoblin had broken in upon them, and scampered away as fast as they could.
The coast once clear, our travellers soon sat down and dispatched what the robbers had left, with as much eagerness as if they had not expected to eat again for a month. As soon as they had satisfied themselves, they put out the lights, and each once more sought out a resting-place to his own liking. The donkey laid himself down upon a heap of straw in the yard, the dog stretched himself upon a mat behind the door, the cat rolled herself up on the hearth before the warm ashes, and the cock perched upon a beam on the top of the house; and, as they were all rather tired with their journey, they soon fell asleep.
But about midnight, when the robbers saw from afar that the lights were out and that all seemed quiet, they began to think that they had been in too great a hurry to run away; and one of them, who was bolder than the rest, went to see what was going on. Finding everything still, he marched into the kitchen, and groped about till he found a match in order to light a candle; and then, espying the glittering fiery eyes of the cat, he mistook them for live coals, and held the match to them to light it. But the cat, not understanding this joke, sprang at his face, and spat, and scratched at him. This frightened him dreadfully, and away he ran to the back door; but there the dog jumped up and bit him in the leg; and as he was crossing over the yard the ass kicked him; and the cock, who had been awakened by the noise, crowed with all his might. At this the robber ran back as fast as he could to his comrades, and told the captain how a horrid witch had got into the house, and had spat at him and scratched his face with her long bony fingers; how a man with a knife in his hand had hidden himself behind the door, and stabbed him in the leg; how a black monster stood in the yard and struck him with a club, and how the devil had sat upon the top of the house and cried out, ‘Throw the rascal up here!’ After this the robbers never dared to go back to the house; but the musicians were so pleased with their quarters that they took up their abode there; and there they are, I dare say, at this very day.
== OLD SULTAN==
A shepherd had a faithful dog, called Sultan, who was grown very old, and had lost all his teeth. And one day when the shepherd and his wife were standing together before the house the shepherd said, ‘I will shoot old Sultan tomorrow morning, for he is of no use now.’ But his wife said, ‘Pray let the poor faithful creature live; he has served us well a great many years, and we ought to give him a livelihood for the rest of his days.’ ‘But what can we do with him?’ said the shepherd, ‘he has not a tooth in his head, and the thieves don’t care for him at all; to be sure he has served us, but then he did it to earn his livelihood; tomorrow shall be his last day, depend upon it.’
Poor Sultan, who was lying close by them, heard all that the shepherd and his wife said to one another, and was very much frightened to think tomorrow would be his last day; so in the evening he went to his good friend the wolf, who lived in the wood, and told him all his sorrows, and how his master meant to kill him in the morning. ‘Make yourself easy,’ said the wolf, ‘I will give you some good advice. Your master, you know, goes out every morning very early with his wife into the field; and they take their little child with them, and lay it down behind the hedge in the shade while they are at work. Now do you lie down close by the child, and pretend to be watching it, and I will come out of the wood and run away with it; you must run after me as fast as you can, and I will let it drop; then you may carry it back, and they will think you have saved their child, and will be so thankful to you that they will take care of you as long as you live.’ The dog liked this plan very well; and accordingly so it was managed. The wolf ran with the child a little way; the shepherd and his wife screamed out; but Sultan soon overtook him, and carried the poor little thing back to his master and mistress. Then the shepherd patted him on the head, and said, ‘Old Sultan has saved our child from the wolf, and therefore he shall live and be well taken care of, and have plenty to eat. Wife, go home, and give him a good dinner, and let him have my old cushion to sleep on as long as he lives.’ So from this time forward Sultan had all that he could wish for.
Soon afterwards the wolf came and wished him joy, and said, ‘Now, my good fellow, you must tell no tales, but turn your head the other way when I want to taste one of the old shepherd’s fine fat sheep.’ ‘No,’ said the Sultan; ‘I will be true to my master.’ However, the wolf thought he was in joke, and came one night to get a dainty morsel. But Sultan had told his master what the wolf meant to do; so he laid wait for him behind the barn door, and when the wolf was busy looking out for a good fat sheep, he had a stout cudgel laid about his back, that combed his locks for him finely.
Then the wolf was very angry, and called Sultan ‘an old rogue,’ and swore he would have his revenge. So the next morning the wolf sent the boar to challenge Sultan to come into the wood to fight the matter. Now Sultan had nobody he could ask to be his second but the shepherd’s old three-legged cat; so he took her with him, and as the poor thing limped along with some trouble, she stuck up her tail straight in the air.
The wolf and the wild boar were first on the ground; and when they espied their enemies coming, and saw the cat’s long tail standing straight in the air, they thought she was carrying a sword for Sultan to fight with; and every time she limped, they thought she was picking up a stone to throw at them; so they said they should not like this way of fighting, and the boar lay down behind a bush, and the wolf jumped up into a tree. Sultan and the cat soon came up, and looked about and wondered that no one was there. The boar, however, had not quite hidden himself, for his ears stuck out of the bush; and when he shook one of them a little, the cat, seeing something move, and thinking it was a mouse, sprang upon it, and bit and scratched it, so that the boar jumped up and grunted, and ran away, roaring out, ‘Look up in the tree, there sits the one who is to blame.’ So they looked up, and espied the wolf sitting amongst the branches; and they called him a cowardly rascal, and would not suffer him to come down till he was heartily ashamed of himself, and had promised to be good friends again with old Sultan.
== THE STRAW, THE COAL, AND THE BEAN==
In a village dwelt a poor old woman, who had gathered together a dish of beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and that it might burn the quicker, she lighted it with a handful of straw. When she was emptying the beans into the pan, one dropped without her observing it, and lay on the ground beside a straw, and soon afterwards a burning coal from the fire leapt down to the two. Then the straw began and said: ‘Dear friends, from whence do you come here?’ The coal replied: ‘I fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if I had not escaped by sheer force, my death would have been certain,—I should have been burnt to ashes.’ The bean said: ‘I too have escaped with a whole skin, but if the old woman had got me into the pan, I should have been made into broth without any mercy, like my comrades.’ ‘And would a better fate have fallen to my lot?’ said the straw. ‘The old woman has destroyed all my brethren in fire and smoke; she seized sixty of them at once, and took their lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers.’
‘But what are we to do now?’ said the coal.
‘I think,’ answered the bean, ‘that as we have so fortunately escaped death, we should keep together like good companions, and lest a new mischance should overtake us here, we should go away together, and repair to a foreign country.’
The proposition pleased the two others, and they set out on their way together. Soon, however, they came to a little brook, and as there was no bridge or foot-plank, they did not know how they were to get over it. The straw hit on a good idea, and said: ‘I will lay myself straight across, and then you can walk over on me as on a bridge.’ The straw therefore stretched itself from one bank to the other, and the coal, who was of an impetuous disposition, tripped quite boldly on to the newly-built bridge. But when she had reached the middle, and heard the water rushing beneath her, she was after all, afraid, and stood still, and ventured no farther. The straw, however, began to burn, broke in two pieces, and fell into the stream. The coal slipped after her, hissed when she got into the water, and breathed her last. The bean, who had prudently stayed behind on the shore, could not but laugh at the event, was unable to stop, and laughed so heartily that she burst. It would have been all over with her, likewise, if, by good fortune, a tailor who was travelling in search of work, had not sat down to rest by the brook. As he had a compassionate heart he pulled out his needle and thread, and sewed her together. The bean thanked him most prettily, but as the tailor used black thread, all beans since then have a black seam.
==BRIAR ROSE==
A king and queen once upon a time reigned in a country a great way off, where there were in those days fairies. Now this king and queen had plenty of money, and plenty of fine clothes to wear, and plenty of good things to eat and drink, and a coach to ride out in every day: but though they had been married many years they had no children, and this grieved them very much indeed. But one day as the queen was walking by the side of the river, at the bottom of the garden, she saw a poor little fish, that had thrown itself out of the water, and lay gasping and nearly dead on the bank. Then the queen took pity on the little fish, and threw it back again into the river; and before it swam away it lifted its head out of the water and said, ‘I know what your wish is, and it shall be fulfilled, in return for your kindness to me—you will soon have a daughter.’ What the little fish had foretold soon came to pass; and the queen had a little girl, so very beautiful that the king could not cease looking on it for joy, and said he would hold a great feast and make merry, and show the child to all the land. So he asked his kinsmen, and nobles, and friends, and neighbours. But the queen said, ‘I will have the fairies also, that they might be kind and good to our little daughter.’ Now there were thirteen fairies in the kingdom; but as the king and queen had only twelve golden dishes for them to eat out of, they were forced to leave one of the fairies without asking her. So twelve fairies came, each with a high red cap on her head, and red shoes with high heels on her feet, and a long white wand in her hand: and after the feast was over they gathered round in a ring and gave all their best gifts to the little princess. One gave her goodness, another beauty, another riches, and so on till she had all that was good in the world.
Just as eleven of them had done blessing her, a great noise was heard in the courtyard, and word was brought that the thirteenth fairy was come, with a black cap on her head, and black shoes on her feet, and a broomstick in her hand: and presently up she came into the dining-hall. Now, as she had not been asked to the feast she was very angry, and scolded the king and queen very much, and set to work to take her revenge. So she cried out, ‘The king’s daughter shall, in her fifteenth year, be wounded by a spindle, and fall down dead.’ Then the twelfth of the friendly fairies, who had not yet given her gift, came forward, and said that the evil wish must be fulfilled, but that she could soften its mischief; so her gift was, that the king’s daughter, when the spindle wounded her, should not really die, but should only fall asleep for a hundred years.
However, the king hoped still to save his dear child altogether from the threatened evil; so he ordered that all the spindles in the kingdom should be bought up and burnt. But all the gifts of the first eleven fairies were in the meantime fulfilled; for the princess was so beautiful, and well behaved, and good, and wise, that everyone who knew her loved her.
It happened that, on the very day she was fifteen years old, the king and queen were not at home, and she was left alone in the palace. So she roved about by herself, and looked at all the rooms and chambers, till at last she came to an old tower, to which there was a narrow staircase ending with a little door. In the door there was a golden key, and when she turned it the door sprang open, and there sat an old lady spinning away very busily. ‘Why, how now, good mother,’ said the princess; ‘what are you doing there?’ ‘Spinning,’ said the old lady, and nodded her head, humming a tune, while buzz! went the wheel. ‘How prettily that little thing turns round!’ said the princess, and took the spindle and began to try and spin. But scarcely had she touched it, before the fairy’s prophecy was fulfilled; the spindle wounded her, and she fell down lifeless on the ground.
However, she was not dead, but had only fallen into a deep sleep; and the king and the queen, who had just come home, and all their court, fell asleep too; and the horses slept in the stables, and the dogs in the court, the pigeons on the house-top, and the very flies slept upon the walls. Even the fire on the hearth left off blazing, and went to sleep; the jack stopped, and the spit that was turning about with a goose upon it for the king’s dinner stood still; and the cook, who was at that moment pulling the kitchen-boy by the hair to give him a box on the ear for something he had done amiss, let him go, and both fell asleep; the butler, who was slyly tasting the ale, fell asleep with the jug at his lips: and thus everything stood still, and slept soundly.
A large hedge of thorns soon grew round the palace, and every year it became higher and thicker; till at last the old palace was surrounded and hidden, so that not even the roof or the chimneys could be seen. But there went a report through all the land of the beautiful sleeping Briar Rose (for so the king’s daughter was called): so that, from time to time, several kings’ sons came, and tried to break through the thicket into the palace. This, however, none of them could ever do; for the thorns and bushes laid hold of them, as it were with hands; and there they stuck fast, and died wretchedly.
After many, many years there came a king’s son into that land: and an old man told him the story of the thicket of thorns; and how a beautiful palace stood behind it, and how a wonderful princess, called Briar Rose, lay in it asleep, with all her court. He told, too, how he had heard from his grandfather that many, many princes had come, and had tried to break through the thicket, but that they had all stuck fast in it, and died. Then the young prince said, ‘All this shall not frighten me; I will go and see this Briar Rose.’ The old man tried to hinder him, but he was bent upon going.
Now that very day the hundred years were ended; and as the prince came to the thicket he saw nothing but beautiful flowering shrubs, through which he went with ease, and they shut in after him as thick as ever. Then he came at last to the palace, and there in the court lay the dogs asleep; and the horses were standing in the stables; and on the roof sat the pigeons fast asleep, with their heads under their wings. And when he came into the palace, the flies were sleeping on the walls; the spit was standing still; the butler had the jug of ale at his lips, going to drink a draught; the maid sat with a fowl in her lap ready to be plucked; and the cook in the kitchen was still holding up her hand, as if she was going to beat the boy.
Then he went on still farther, and all was so still that he could hear every breath he drew; till at last he came to the old tower, and opened the door of the little room in which Briar Rose was; and there she lay, fast asleep on a couch by the window. She looked so beautiful that he could not take his eyes off her, so he stooped down and gave her a kiss. But the moment he kissed her she opened her eyes and awoke, and smiled upon him; and they went out together; and soon the king and queen also awoke, and all the court, and gazed on each other with great wonder. And the horses shook themselves, and the dogs jumped up and barked; the pigeons took their heads from under their wings, and looked about and flew into the fields; the flies on the walls buzzed again; the fire in the kitchen blazed up; round went the jack, and round went the spit, with the goose for the king’s dinner upon it; the butler finished his draught of ale; the maid went on plucking the fowl; and the cook gave the boy the box on his ear.
And then the prince and Briar Rose were married, and the wedding feast was given; and they lived happily together all their lives long.
==THE DOG AND THE SPARROW==
A shepherd’s dog had a master who took no care of him, but often let him suffer the greatest hunger. At last he could bear it no longer; so he took to his heels, and off he ran in a very sad and sorrowful mood. On the road he met a sparrow that said to him, ‘Why are you so sad, my friend?’ ‘Because,’ said the dog, ‘I am very very hungry, and have nothing to eat.’ ‘If that be all,’ answered the sparrow, ‘come with me into the next town, and I will soon find you plenty of food.’ So on they went together into the town: and as they passed by a butcher’s shop, the sparrow said to the dog, ‘Stand there a little while till I peck you down a piece of meat.’ So the sparrow perched upon the shelf: and having first looked carefully about her to see if anyone was watching her, she pecked and scratched at a steak that lay upon the edge of the shelf, till at last down it fell. Then the dog snapped it up, and scrambled away with it into a corner, where he soon ate it all up. ‘Well,’ said the sparrow, ‘you shall have some more if you will; so come with me to the next shop, and I will peck you down another steak.’ When the dog had eaten this too, the sparrow said to him, ‘Well, my good friend, have you had enough now?’ ‘I have had plenty of meat,’ answered he, ‘but I should like to have a piece of bread to eat after it.’ ‘Come with me then,’ said the sparrow, ‘and you shall soon have that too.’ So she took him to a baker’s shop, and pecked at two rolls that lay in the window, till they fell down: and as the dog still wished for more, she took him to another shop and pecked down some more for him. When that was eaten, the sparrow asked him whether he had had enough now. ‘Yes,’ said he; ‘and now let us take a walk a little way out of the town.’ So they both went out upon the high road; but as the weather was warm, they had not gone far before the dog said, ‘I am very much tired—I should like to take a nap.’ ‘Very well,’ answered the sparrow, ‘do so, and in the meantime I will perch upon that bush.’ So the dog stretched himself out on the road, and fell fast asleep. Whilst he slept, there came by a carter with a cart drawn by three horses, and loaded with two casks of wine. The sparrow, seeing that the carter did not turn out of the way, but would go on in the track in which the dog lay, so as to drive over him, called out, ‘Stop! stop! Mr Carter, or it shall be the worse for you.’ But the carter, grumbling to himself, ‘You make it the worse for me, indeed! what can you do?’ cracked his whip, and drove his cart over the poor dog, so that the wheels crushed him to death. ‘There,’ cried the sparrow, ‘thou cruel villain, thou hast killed my friend the dog. Now mind what I say. This deed of thine shall cost thee all thou art worth.’ ‘Do your worst, and welcome,’ said the brute, ‘what harm can you do me?’ and passed on. But the sparrow crept under the tilt of the cart, and pecked at the bung of one of the casks till she loosened it; and then all the wine ran out, without the carter seeing it. At last he looked round, and saw that the cart was dripping, and the cask quite empty. ‘What an unlucky wretch I am!’ cried he. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ said the sparrow, as she alighted upon the head of one of the horses, and pecked at him till he reared up and kicked. When the carter saw this, he drew out his hatchet and aimed a blow at the sparrow, meaning to kill her; but she flew away, and the blow fell upon the poor horse’s head with such force, that he fell down dead. ‘Unlucky wretch that I am!’ cried he. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ said the sparrow. And as the carter went on with the other two horses, she again crept under the tilt of the cart, and pecked out the bung of the second cask, so that all the wine ran out. When the carter saw this, he again cried out, ‘Miserable wretch that I am!’ But the sparrow answered, ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ and perched on the head of the second horse, and pecked at him too. The carter ran up and struck at her again with his hatchet; but away she flew, and the blow fell upon the second horse and killed him on the spot. ‘Unlucky wretch that I am!’ said he. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ said the sparrow; and perching upon the third horse, she began to peck him too. The carter was mad with fury; and without looking about him, or caring what he was about, struck again at the sparrow; but killed his third horse as he done the other two. ‘Alas! miserable wretch that I am!’ cried he. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ answered the sparrow as she flew away; ‘now will I plague and punish thee at thy own house.’ The carter was forced at last to leave his cart behind him, and to go home overflowing with rage and vexation. ‘Alas!’ said he to his wife, ‘what ill luck has befallen me!—my wine is all spilt, and my horses all three dead.’ ‘Alas! husband,’ replied she, ‘and a wicked bird has come into the house, and has brought with her all the birds in the world, I am sure, and they have fallen upon our corn in the loft, and are eating it up at such a rate!’ Away ran the husband upstairs, and saw thousands of birds sitting upon the floor eating up his corn, with the sparrow in the midst of them. ‘Unlucky wretch that I am!’ cried the carter; for he saw that the corn was almost all gone. ‘Not wretch enough yet!’ said the sparrow; ‘thy cruelty shall cost thee thy life yet!’ and away she flew.
The carter seeing that he had thus lost all that he had, went down into his kitchen; and was still not sorry for what he had done, but sat himself angrily and sulkily in the chimney corner. But the sparrow sat on the outside of the window, and cried ‘Carter! thy cruelty shall cost thee thy life!’ With that he jumped up in a rage, seized his hatchet, and threw it at the sparrow; but it missed her, and only broke the window. The sparrow now hopped in, perched upon the window-seat, and cried, ‘Carter! it shall cost thee thy life!’ Then he became mad and blind with rage, and struck the window-seat with such force that he cleft it in two: and as the sparrow flew from place to place, the carter and his wife were so furious, that they broke all their furniture, glasses, chairs, benches, the table, and at last the walls, without touching the bird at all. In the end, however, they caught her: and the wife said, ‘Shall I kill her at once?’ ‘No,’ cried he, ‘that is letting her off too easily: she shall die a much more cruel death; I will eat her.’ But the sparrow began to flutter about, and stretch out her neck and cried, ‘Carter! it shall cost thee thy life yet!’ With that he could wait no longer: so he gave his wife the hatchet, and cried, ‘Wife, strike at the bird and kill her in my hand.’ And the wife struck; but she missed her aim, and hit her husband on the head so that he fell down dead, and the sparrow flew quietly home to her nest.
==THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES==
There was a king who had twelve beautiful daughters. They slept in twelve beds all in one room; and when they went to bed, the doors were shut and locked up; but every morning their shoes were found to be quite worn through as if they had been danced in all night; and yet nobody could find out how it happened, or where they had been.
Then the king made it known to all the land, that if any person could discover the secret, and find out where it was that the princesses danced in the night, he should have the one he liked best for his wife, and should be king after his death; but whoever tried and did not succeed, after three days and nights, should be put to death.
A king’s son soon came. He was well entertained, and in the evening was taken to the chamber next to the one where the princesses lay in their twelve beds. There he was to sit and watch where they went to dance; and, in order that nothing might pass without his hearing it, the door of his chamber was left open. But the king’s son soon fell asleep; and when he awoke in the morning he found that the princesses had all been dancing, for the soles of their shoes were full of holes. The same thing happened the second and third night: so the king ordered his head to be cut off. After him came several others; but they had all the same luck, and all lost their lives in the same manner.
Now it chanced that an old soldier, who had been wounded in battle and could fight no longer, passed through the country where this king reigned: and as he was travelling through a wood, he met an old woman, who asked him where he was going. ‘I hardly know where I am going, or what I had better do,’ said the soldier; ‘but I think I should like very well to find out where it is that the princesses dance, and then in time I might be a king.’ ‘Well,’ said the old dame, ‘that is no very hard task: only take care not to drink any of the wine which one of the princesses will bring to you in the evening; and as soon as she leaves you pretend to be fast asleep.’
Then she gave him a cloak, and said, ‘As soon as you put that on you will become invisible, and you will then be able to follow the princesses wherever they go.’ When the soldier heard all this good counsel, he determined to try his luck: so he went to the king, and said he was willing to undertake the task.
He was as well received as the others had been, and the king ordered fine royal robes to be given him; and when the evening came he was led to the outer chamber. Just as he was going to lie down, the eldest of the princesses brought him a cup of wine; but the soldier threw it all away secretly, taking care not to drink a drop. Then he laid himself down on his bed, and in a little while began to snore very loud as if he was fast asleep. When the twelve princesses heard this they laughed heartily; and the eldest said, ‘This fellow too might have done a wiser thing than lose his life in this way!’ Then they rose up and opened their drawers and boxes, and took out all their fine clothes, and dressed themselves at the glass, and skipped about as if they were eager to begin dancing. But the youngest said, ‘I don’t know how it is, while you are so happy I feel very uneasy; I am sure some mischance will befall us.’ ‘You simpleton,’ said the eldest, ‘you are always afraid; have you forgotten how many kings’ sons have already watched in vain? And as for this soldier, even if I had not given him his sleeping draught, he would have slept soundly enough.’
When they were all ready, they went and looked at the soldier; but he snored on, and did not stir hand or foot: so they thought they were quite safe; and the eldest went up to her own bed and clapped her hands, and the bed sank into the floor and a trap-door flew open. The soldier saw them going down through the trap-door one after another, the eldest leading the way; and thinking he had no time to lose, he jumped up, put on the cloak which the old woman had given him, and followed them; but in the middle of the stairs he trod on the gown of the youngest princess, and she cried out to her sisters, ‘All is not right; someone took hold of my gown.’ ‘You silly creature!’ said the eldest, ‘it is nothing but a nail in the wall.’ Then down they all went, and at the bottom they found themselves in a most delightful grove of trees; and the leaves were all of silver, and glittered and sparkled beautifully. The soldier wished to take away some token of the place; so he broke off a little branch, and there came a loud noise from the tree. Then the youngest daughter said again, ‘I am sure all is not right—did not you hear that noise? That never happened before.’ But the eldest said, ‘It is only our princes, who are shouting for joy at our approach.’
Then they came to another grove of trees, where all the leaves were of gold; and afterwards to a third, where the leaves were all glittering diamonds. And the soldier broke a branch from each; and every time there was a loud noise, which made the youngest sister tremble with fear; but the eldest still said, it was only the princes, who were crying for joy. So they went on till they came to a great lake; and at the side of the lake there lay twelve little boats with twelve handsome princes in them, who seemed to be waiting there for the princesses.
One of the princesses went into each boat, and the soldier stepped into the same boat with the youngest. As they were rowing over the lake, the prince who was in the boat with the youngest princess and the soldier said, ‘I do not know why it is, but though I am rowing with all my might we do not get on so fast as usual, and I am quite tired: the boat seems very heavy today.’ ‘It is only the heat of the weather,’ said the princess: ‘I feel it very warm too.’
On the other side of the lake stood a fine illuminated castle, from which came the merry music of horns and trumpets. There they all landed, and went into the castle, and each prince danced with his princess; and the soldier, who was all the time invisible, danced with them too; and when any of the princesses had a cup of wine set by her, he drank it all up, so that when she put the cup to her mouth it was empty. At this, too, the youngest sister was terribly frightened, but the eldest always silenced her. They danced on till three o’clock in the morning, and then all their shoes were worn out, so that they were obliged to leave off. The princes rowed them back again over the lake (but this time the soldier placed himself in the boat with the eldest princess); and on the opposite shore they took leave of each other, the princesses promising to come again the next night.
When they came to the stairs, the soldier ran on before the princesses, and laid himself down; and as the twelve sisters slowly came up very much tired, they heard him snoring in his bed; so they said, ‘Now all is quite safe’; then they undressed themselves, put away their fine clothes, pulled off their shoes, and went to bed. In the morning the soldier said nothing about what had happened, but determined to see more of this strange adventure, and went again the second and third night; and every thing happened just as before; the princesses danced each time till their shoes were worn to pieces, and then returned home. However, on the third night the soldier carried away one of the golden cups as a token of where he had been.
As soon as the time came when he was to declare the secret, he was taken before the king with the three branches and the golden cup; and the twelve princesses stood listening behind the door to hear what he would say. And when the king asked him. ‘Where do my twelve daughters dance at night?’ he answered, ‘With twelve princes in a castle under ground.’ And then he told the king all that had happened, and showed him the three branches and the golden cup which he had brought with him. Then the king called for the princesses, and asked them whether what the soldier said was true: and when they saw that they were discovered, and that it was of no use to deny what had happened, they confessed it all. And the king asked the soldier which of them he would choose for his wife; and he answered, ‘I am not very young, so I will have the eldest.’—And they were married that very day, and the soldier was chosen to be the king’s heir.
==THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE==
There was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a pigsty, close by the seaside. The fisherman used to go out all day long a-fishing; and one day, as he sat on the shore with his rod, looking at the sparkling waves and watching his line, all on a sudden his float was dragged away deep into the water: and in drawing it up he pulled out a great fish. But the fish said, ‘Pray let me live! I am not a real fish; I am an enchanted prince: put me in the water again, and let me go!’ ‘Oh, ho!’ said the man, ‘you need not make so many words about the matter; I will have nothing to do with a fish that can talk: so swim away, sir, as soon as you please!’ Then he put him back into the water, and the fish darted straight down to the bottom, and left a long streak of blood behind him on the wave.
When the fisherman went home to his wife in the pigsty, he told her how he had caught a great fish, and how it had told him it was an enchanted prince, and how, on hearing it speak, he had let it go again. ‘Did not you ask it for anything?’ said the wife, ‘we live very wretchedly here, in this nasty dirty pigsty; do go back and tell the fish we want a snug little cottage.’
The fisherman did not much like the business: however, he went to the seashore; and when he came back there the water looked all yellow and green. And he stood at the water’s edge, and said:
 ‘O man of the sea!
 Hearken to me!
 My wife Ilsabill
 Will have her own will,
 And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
Then the fish came swimming to him, and said, ‘Well, what is her will? What does your wife want?’ ‘Ah!’ said the fisherman, ‘she says that when I had caught you, I ought to have asked you for something before I let you go; she does not like living any longer in the pigsty, and wants a snug little cottage.’ ‘Go home, then,’ said the fish; ‘she is in the cottage already!’ So the man went home, and saw his wife standing at the door of a nice trim little cottage. ‘Come in, come in!’ said she; ‘is not this much better than the filthy pigsty we had?’ And there was a parlour, and a bedchamber, and a kitchen; and behind the cottage there was a little garden, planted with all sorts of flowers and fruits; and there was a courtyard behind, full of ducks and chickens. ‘Ah!’ said the fisherman, ‘how happily we shall live now!’ ‘We will try to do so, at least,’ said his wife.
Everything went right for a week or two, and then Dame Ilsabill said, ‘Husband, there is not near room enough for us in this cottage; the courtyard and the garden are a great deal too small; I should like to have a large stone castle to live in: go to the fish again and tell him to give us a castle.’ ‘Wife,’ said the fisherman, ‘I don’t like to go to him again, for perhaps he will be angry; we ought to be easy with this pretty cottage to live in.’ ‘Nonsense!’ said the wife; ‘he will do it very willingly, I know; go along and try!’
The fisherman went, but his heart was very heavy: and when he came to the sea, it looked blue and gloomy, though it was very calm; and he went close to the edge of the waves, and said:
 ‘O man of the sea!
 Hearken to me!
 My wife Ilsabill
 Will have her own will,
 And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘Well, what does she want now?’ said the fish. ‘Ah!’ said the man, dolefully, ‘my wife wants to live in a stone castle.’ ‘Go home, then,’ said the fish; ‘she is standing at the gate of it already.’ So away went the fisherman, and found his wife standing before the gate of a great castle. ‘See,’ said she, ‘is not this grand?’ With that they went into the castle together, and found a great many servants there, and the rooms all richly furnished, and full of golden chairs and tables; and behind the castle was a garden, and around it was a park half a mile long, full of sheep, and goats, and hares, and deer; and in the courtyard were stables and cow-houses. ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘now we will live cheerful and happy in this beautiful castle for the rest of our lives.’ ‘Perhaps we may,’ said the wife; ‘but let us sleep upon it, before we make up our minds to that.’ So they went to bed.
The next morning when Dame Ilsabill awoke it was broad daylight, and she jogged the fisherman with her elbow, and said, ‘Get up, husband, and bestir yourself, for we must be king of all the land.’ ‘Wife, wife,’ said the man, ‘why should we wish to be the king? I will not be king.’ ‘Then I will,’ said she. ‘But, wife,’ said the fisherman, ‘how can you be king—the fish cannot make you a king?’ ‘Husband,’ said she, ‘say no more about it, but go and try! I will be king.’ So the man went away quite sorrowful to think that his wife should want to be king. This time the sea looked a dark grey colour, and was overspread with curling waves and the ridges of foam as he cried out:
 ‘O man of the sea!
 Hearken to me!
 My wife Ilsabill
 Will have her own will,
 And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘Well, what would she have now?’ said the fish. ‘Alas!’ said the poor man, ‘my wife wants to be king.’ ‘Go home,’ said the fish; ‘she is king already.’
Then the fisherman went home; and as he came close to the palace he saw a troop of soldiers, and heard the sound of drums and trumpets. And when he went in he saw his wife sitting on a throne of gold and diamonds, with a golden crown upon her head; and on each side of her stood six fair maidens, each a head taller than the other. ‘Well, wife,’ said the fisherman, ‘are you king?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I am king.’ And when he had looked at her for a long time, he said, ‘Ah, wife! what a fine thing it is to be king! Now we shall never have anything more to wish for as long as we live.’ ‘I don’t know how that may be,’ said she; ‘never is a long time. I am king, it is true; but I begin to be tired of that, and I think I should like to be emperor.’ ‘Alas, wife! why should you wish to be emperor?’ said the fisherman. ‘Husband,’ said she, ‘go to the fish! I say I will be emperor.’ ‘Ah, wife!’ replied the fisherman, ‘the fish cannot make an emperor, I am sure, and I should not like to ask him for such a thing.’ ‘I am king,’ said Ilsabill, ‘and you are my slave; so go at once!’
So the fisherman was forced to go; and he muttered as he went along, ‘This will come to no good, it is too much to ask; the fish will be tired at last, and then we shall be sorry for what we have done.’ He soon came to the seashore; and the water was quite black and muddy, and a mighty whirlwind blew over the waves and rolled them about, but he went as near as he could to the water’s brink, and said:
 ‘O man of the sea!
 Hearken to me!
 My wife Ilsabill
 Will have her own will,
 And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘What would she have now?’ said the fish. ‘Ah!’ said the fisherman, ‘she wants to be emperor.’ ‘Go home,’ said the fish; ‘she is emperor already.’
So he went home again; and as he came near he saw his wife Ilsabill sitting on a very lofty throne made of solid gold, with a great crown on her head full two yards high; and on each side of her stood her guards and attendants in a row, each one smaller than the other, from the tallest giant down to a little dwarf no bigger than my finger. And before her stood princes, and dukes, and earls: and the fisherman went up to her and said, ‘Wife, are you emperor?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I am emperor.’ ‘Ah!’ said the man, as he gazed upon her, ‘what a fine thing it is to be emperor!’ ‘Husband,’ said she, ‘why should we stop at being emperor? I will be pope next.’ ‘O wife, wife!’ said he, ‘how can you be pope? there is but one pope at a time in Christendom.’ ‘Husband,’ said she, ‘I will be pope this very day.’ ‘But,’ replied the husband, ‘the fish cannot make you pope.’ ‘What nonsense!’ said she; ‘if he can make an emperor, he can make a pope: go and try him.’
So the fisherman went. But when he came to the shore the wind was raging and the sea was tossed up and down in boiling waves, and the ships were in trouble, and rolled fearfully upon the tops of the billows. In the middle of the heavens there was a little piece of blue sky, but towards the south all was red, as if a dreadful storm was rising. At this sight the fisherman was dreadfully frightened, and he trembled so that his knees knocked together: but still he went down near to the shore, and said:
 ‘O man of the sea!
 Hearken to me!
 My wife Ilsabill
 Will have her own will,
 And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘What does she want now?’ said the fish. ‘Ah!’ said the fisherman, ‘my wife wants to be pope.’ ‘Go home,’ said the fish; ‘she is pope already.’
Then the fisherman went home, and found Ilsabill sitting on a throne that was two miles high. And she had three great crowns on her head, and around her stood all the pomp and power of the Church. And on each side of her were two rows of burning lights, of all sizes, the greatest as large as the highest and biggest tower in the world, and the least no larger than a small rushlight. ‘Wife,’ said the fisherman, as he looked at all this greatness, ‘are you pope?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I am pope.’ ‘Well, wife,’ replied he, ‘it is a grand thing to be pope; and now you must be easy, for you can be nothing greater.’ ‘I will think about that,’ said the wife. Then they went to bed: but Dame Ilsabill could not sleep all night for thinking what she should be next. At last, as she was dropping asleep, morning broke, and the sun rose. ‘Ha!’ thought she, as she woke up and looked at it through the window, ‘after all I cannot prevent the sun rising.’ At this thought she was very angry, and wakened her husband, and said, ‘Husband, go to the fish and tell him I must be lord of the sun and moon.’ The fisherman was half asleep, but the thought frightened him so much that he started and fell out of bed. ‘Alas, wife!’ said he, ‘cannot you be easy with being pope?’ ‘No,’ said she, ‘I am very uneasy as long as the sun and moon rise without my leave. Go to the fish at once!’
Then the man went shivering with fear; and as he was going down to the shore a dreadful storm arose, so that the trees and the very rocks shook. And all the heavens became black with stormy clouds, and the lightnings played, and the thunders rolled; and you might have seen in the sea great black waves, swelling up like mountains with crowns of white foam upon their heads. And the fisherman crept towards the sea, and cried out, as well as he could:
 ‘O man of the sea!
 Hearken to me!
 My wife Ilsabill
 Will have her own will,
 And hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!’
‘What does she want now?’ said the fish. ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘she wants to be lord of the sun and moon.’ ‘Go home,’ said the fish, ‘to your pigsty again.’
And there they live to this very day.
==THE WILLOW-WREN AND THE BEAR==
Once in summer-time the bear and the wolf were walking in the forest, and the bear heard a bird singing so beautifully that he said: ‘Brother wolf, what bird is it that sings so well?’ ‘That is the King of birds,’ said the wolf, ‘before whom we must bow down.’ In reality the bird was the willow-wren. ‘IF that’s the case,’ said the bear, ‘I should very much like to see his royal palace; come, take me thither.’ ‘That is not done quite as you seem to think,’ said the wolf; ‘you must wait until the Queen comes,’ Soon afterwards, the Queen arrived with some food in her beak, and the lord King came too, and they began to feed their young ones. The bear would have liked to go at once, but the wolf held him back by the sleeve, and said: ‘No, you must wait until the lord and lady Queen have gone away again.’ So they took stock of the hole where the nest lay, and trotted away. The bear, however, could not rest until he had seen the royal palace, and when a short time had passed, went to it again. The King and Queen had just flown out, so he peeped in and saw five or six young ones lying there. ‘Is that the royal palace?’ cried the bear; ‘it is a wretched palace, and you are not King’s children, you are disreputable children!’ When the young wrens heard that, they were frightfully angry, and screamed: ‘No, that we are not! Our parents are honest people! Bear, you will have to pay for that!’
The bear and the wolf grew uneasy, and turned back and went into their holes. The young willow-wrens, however, continued to cry and scream, and when their parents again brought food they said: ‘We will not so much as touch one fly’s leg, no, not if we were dying of hunger, until you have settled whether we are respectable children or not; the bear has been here and has insulted us!’ Then the old King said: ‘Be easy, he shall be punished,’ and he at once flew with the Queen to the bear’s cave, and called in: ‘Old Growler, why have you insulted my children? You shall suffer for it—we will punish you by a bloody war.’ Thus war was announced to the Bear, and all four-footed animals were summoned to take part in it, oxen, asses, cows, deer, and every other animal the earth contained. And the willow-wren summoned everything which flew in the air, not only birds, large and small, but midges, and hornets, bees and flies had to come.
When the time came for the war to begin, the willow-wren sent out spies to discover who was the enemy’s commander-in-chief. The gnat, who was the most crafty, flew into the forest where the enemy was assembled, and hid herself beneath a leaf of the tree where the password was to be announced. There stood the bear, and he called the fox before him and said: ‘Fox, you are the most cunning of all animals, you shall be general and lead us.’ ‘Good,’ said the fox, ‘but what signal shall we agree upon?’ No one knew that, so the fox said: ‘I have a fine long bushy tail, which almost looks like a plume of red feathers. When I lift my tail up quite high, all is going well, and you must charge; but if I let it hang down, run away as fast as you can.’ When the gnat had heard that, she flew away again, and revealed everything, down to the minutest detail, to the willow-wren. When day broke, and the battle was to begin, all the four-footed animals came running up with such a noise that the earth trembled. The willow-wren with his army also came flying through the air with such a humming, and whirring, and swarming that every one was uneasy and afraid, and on both sides they advanced against each other. But the willow-wren sent down the hornet, with orders to settle beneath the fox’s tail, and sting with all his might. When the fox felt the first string, he started so that he lifted one leg, from pain, but he bore it, and still kept his tail high in the air; at the second sting, he was forced to put it down for a moment; at the third, he could hold out no longer, screamed, and put his tail between his legs. When the animals saw that, they thought all was lost, and began to flee, each into his hole, and the birds had won the battle.
Then the King and Queen flew home to their children and cried: ‘Children, rejoice, eat and drink to your heart’s content, we have won the battle!’ But the young wrens said: ‘We will not eat yet, the bear must come to the nest, and beg for pardon and say that we are honourable children, before we will do that.’ Then the willow-wren flew to the bear’s hole and cried: ‘Growler, you are to come to the nest to my children, and beg their pardon, or else every rib of your body shall be broken.’ So the bear crept thither in the greatest fear, and begged their pardon. And now at last the young wrens were satisfied, and sat down together and ate and drank, and made merry till quite late into the night.
==THE FROG-PRINCE==
One fine evening a young princess put on her bonnet and clogs, and went out to take a walk by herself in a wood; and when she came to a cool spring of water, that rose in the midst of it, she sat herself down to rest a while. Now she had a golden ball in her hand, which was her favourite plaything; and she was always tossing it up into the air, and catching it again as it fell. After a time she threw it up so high that she missed catching it as it fell; and the ball bounded away, and rolled along upon the ground, till at last it fell down into the spring. The princess looked into the spring after her ball, but it was very deep, so deep that she could not see the bottom of it. Then she began to bewail her loss, and said, ‘Alas! if I could only get my ball again, I would give all my fine clothes and jewels, and everything that I have in the world.’
Whilst she was speaking, a frog put its head out of the water, and said, ‘Princess, why do you weep so bitterly?’ ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘what can you do for me, you nasty frog? My golden ball has fallen into the spring.’ The frog said, ‘I want not your pearls, and jewels, and fine clothes; but if you will love me, and let me live with you and eat from off your golden plate, and sleep upon your bed, I will bring you your ball again.’ ‘What nonsense,’ thought the princess, ‘this silly frog is talking! He can never even get out of the spring to visit me, though he may be able to get my ball for me, and therefore I will tell him he shall have what he asks.’ So she said to the frog, ‘Well, if you will bring me my ball, I will do all you ask.’ Then the frog put his head down, and dived deep under the water; and after a little while he came up again, with the ball in his mouth, and threw it on the edge of the spring. As soon as the young princess saw her ball, she ran to pick it up; and she was so overjoyed to have it in her hand again, that she never thought of the frog, but ran home with it as fast as she could. The frog called after her, ‘Stay, princess, and take me with you as you said,’ But she did not stop to hear a word.
The next day, just as the princess had sat down to dinner, she heard a strange noise—tap, tap—plash, plash—as if something was coming up the marble staircase: and soon afterwards there was a gentle knock at the door, and a little voice cried out and said:
 ‘Open the door, my princess dear,
 Open the door to thy true love here!
 And mind the words that thou and I said
 By the fountain cool, in the greenwood shade.’
Then the princess ran to the door and opened it, and there she saw the frog, whom she had quite forgotten. At this sight she was sadly frightened, and shutting the door as fast as she could came back to her seat. The king, her father, seeing that something had frightened her, asked her what was the matter. ‘There is a nasty frog,’ said she, ‘at the door, that lifted my ball for me out of the spring this morning: I told him that he should live with me here, thinking that he could never get out of the spring; but there he is at the door, and he wants to come in.’
While she was speaking the frog knocked again at the door, and said:
 ‘Open the door, my princess dear,
 Open the door to thy true love here!
 And mind the words that thou and I said
 By the fountain cool, in the greenwood shade.’
Then the king said to the young princess, ‘As you have given your word you must keep it; so go and let him in.’ She did so, and the frog hopped into the room, and then straight on—tap, tap—plash, plash—from the bottom of the room to the top, till he came up close to the table where the princess sat. ‘Pray lift me upon chair,’ said he to the princess, ‘and let me sit next to you.’ As soon as she had done this, the frog said, ‘Put your plate nearer to me, that I may eat out of it.’ This she did, and when he had eaten as much as he could, he said, ‘Now I am tired; carry me upstairs, and put me into your bed.’ And the princess, though very unwilling, took him up in her hand, and put him upon the pillow of her own bed, where he slept all night long. As soon as it was light he jumped up, hopped downstairs, and went out of the house. ‘Now, then,’ thought the princess, ‘at last he is gone, and I shall be troubled with him no more.’
But she was mistaken; for when night came again she heard the same tapping at the door; and the frog came once more, and said:
 ‘Open the door, my princess dear,
 Open the door to thy true love here!
 And mind the words that thou and I said
 By the fountain cool, in the greenwood shade.’
And when the princess opened the door the frog came in, and slept upon her pillow as before, till the morning broke. And the third night he did the same. But when the princess awoke on the following morning she was astonished to see, instead of the frog, a handsome prince, gazing on her with the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen, and standing at the head of her bed.
He told her that he had been enchanted by a spiteful fairy, who had changed him into a frog; and that he had been fated so to abide till some princess should take him out of the spring, and let him eat from her plate, and sleep upon her bed for three nights. ‘You,’ said the prince, ‘have broken his cruel charm, and now I have nothing to wish for but that you should go with me into my father’s kingdom, where I will marry you, and love you as long as you live.’
The young princess, you may be sure, was not long in saying ‘Yes’ to all this; and as they spoke a gay coach drove up, with eight beautiful horses, decked with plumes of feathers and a golden harness; and behind the coach rode the prince’s servant, faithful Heinrich, who had bewailed the misfortunes of his dear master during his enchantment so long and so bitterly, that his heart had well-nigh burst.
They then took leave of the king, and got into the coach with eight horses, and all set out, full of joy and merriment, for the prince’s kingdom, which they reached safely; and there they lived happily a great many years.
==CAT AND MOUSE IN PARTNERSHIP==
A certain cat had made the acquaintance of a mouse, and had said so much to her about the great love and friendship she felt for her, that at length the mouse agreed that they should live and keep house together. ‘But we must make a provision for winter, or else we shall suffer from hunger,’ said the cat; ‘and you, little mouse, cannot venture everywhere, or you will be caught in a trap some day.’ The good advice was followed, and a pot of fat was bought, but they did not know where to put it. At length, after much consideration, the cat said: ‘I know no place where it will be better stored up than in the church, for no one dares take anything away from there. We will set it beneath the altar, and not touch it until we are really in need of it.’ So the pot was placed in safety, but it was not long before the cat had a great yearning for it, and said to the mouse: ‘I want to tell you something, little mouse; my cousin has brought a little son into the world, and has asked me to be godmother; he is white with brown spots, and I am to hold him over the font at the christening. Let me go out today, and you look after the house by yourself.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ answered the mouse, ‘by all means go, and if you get anything very good to eat, think of me. I should like a drop of sweet red christening wine myself.’ All this, however, was untrue; the cat had no cousin, and had not been asked to be godmother. She went straight to the church, stole to the pot of fat, began to lick at it, and licked the top of the fat off. Then she took a walk upon the roofs of the town, looked out for opportunities, and then stretched herself in the sun, and licked her lips whenever she thought of the pot of fat, and not until it was evening did she return home. ‘Well, here you are again,’ said the mouse, ‘no doubt you have had a merry day.’ ‘All went off well,’ answered the cat. ‘What name did they give the child?’ ‘Top off!’ said the cat quite coolly. ‘Top off!’ cried the mouse, ‘that is a very odd and uncommon name, is it a usual one in your family?’ ‘What does that matter,’ said the cat, ‘it is no worse than Crumb-stealer, as your godchildren are called.’
Before long the cat was seized by another fit of yearning. She said to the mouse: ‘You must do me a favour, and once more manage the house for a day alone. I am again asked to be godmother, and, as the child has a white ring round its neck, I cannot refuse.’ The good mouse consented, but the cat crept behind the town walls to the church, and devoured half the pot of fat. ‘Nothing ever seems so good as what one keeps to oneself,’ said she, and was quite satisfied with her day’s work. When she went home the mouse inquired: ‘And what was the child christened?’ ‘Half-done,’ answered the cat. ‘Half-done! What are you saying? I never heard the name in my life, I’ll wager anything it is not in the calendar!’
The cat’s mouth soon began to water for some more licking. ‘All good things go in threes,’ said she, ‘I am asked to stand godmother again. The child is quite black, only it has white paws, but with that exception, it has not a single white hair on its whole body; this only happens once every few years, you will let me go, won’t you?’ ‘Top-off! Half-done!’ answered the mouse, ‘they are such odd names, they make me very thoughtful.’ ‘You sit at home,’ said the cat, ‘in your dark-grey fur coat and long tail, and are filled with fancies, that’s because you do not go out in the daytime.’ During the cat’s absence the mouse cleaned the house, and put it in order, but the greedy cat entirely emptied the pot of fat. ‘When everything is eaten up one has some peace,’ said she to herself, and well filled and fat she did not return home till night. The mouse at once asked what name had been given to the third child. ‘It will not please you more than the others,’ said the cat. ‘He is called All-gone.’ ‘All-gone,’ cried the mouse ‘that is the most suspicious name of all! I have never seen it in print. All-gone; what can that mean?’ and she shook her head, curled herself up, and lay down to sleep.
From this time forth no one invited the cat to be godmother, but when the winter had come and there was no longer anything to be found outside, the mouse thought of their provision, and said: ‘Come, cat, we will go to our pot of fat which we have stored up for ourselves—we shall enjoy that.’ ‘Yes,’ answered the cat, ‘you will enjoy it as much as you would enjoy sticking that dainty tongue of yours out of the window.’ They set out on their way, but when they arrived, the pot of fat certainly was still in its place, but it was empty. ‘Alas!’ said the mouse, ‘now I see what has happened, now it comes to light! You are a true friend! You have devoured all when you were standing godmother. First top off, then half-done, then—’ ‘Will you hold your tongue,’ cried the cat, ‘one word more, and I will eat you too.’ ‘All-gone’ was already on the poor mouse’s lips; scarcely had she spoken it before the cat sprang on her, seized her, and swallowed her down. Verily, that is the way of the world.
== THE GOOSE-GIRL ==
The king of a great land died, and left his queen to take care of their only child. This child was a daughter, who was very beautiful; and her mother loved her dearly, and was very kind to her. And there was a good fairy too, who was fond of the princess, and helped her mother to watch over her. When she grew up, she was betrothed to a prince who lived a great way off; and as the time drew near for her to be married, she got ready to set off on her journey to his country. Then the queen her mother, packed up a great many costly things; jewels, and gold, and silver; trinkets, fine dresses, and in short everything that became a royal bride. And she gave her a waiting-maid to ride with her, and give her into the bridegroom’s hands; and each had a horse for the journey. Now the princess’s horse was the fairy’s gift, and it was called Falada, and could speak.
When the time came for them to set out, the fairy went into her bed-chamber, and took a little knife, and cut off a lock of her hair, and gave it to the princess, and said, ‘Take care of it, dear child; for it is a charm that may be of use to you on the road.’ Then they all took a sorrowful leave of the princess; and she put the lock of hair into her bosom, got upon her horse, and set off on her journey to her bridegroom’s kingdom.
One day, as they were riding along by a brook, the princess began to feel very thirsty: and she said to her maid, ‘Pray get down, and fetch me some water in my golden cup out of yonder brook, for I want to drink.’ ‘Nay,’ said the maid, ‘if you are thirsty, get off yourself, and stoop down by the water and drink; I shall not be your waiting-maid any longer.’ Then she was so thirsty that she got down, and knelt over the little brook, and drank; for she was frightened, and dared not bring out her golden cup; and she wept and said, ‘Alas! what will become of me?’ And the lock answered her, and said:
 ‘Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
 Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
But the princess was very gentle and meek, so she said nothing to her maid’s ill behaviour, but got upon her horse again.
Then all rode farther on their journey, till the day grew so warm, and the sun so scorching, that the bride began to feel very thirsty again; and at last, when they came to a river, she forgot her maid’s rude speech, and said, ‘Pray get down, and fetch me some water to drink in my golden cup.’ But the maid answered her, and even spoke more haughtily than before: ‘Drink if you will, but I shall not be your waiting-maid.’ Then the princess was so thirsty that she got off her horse, and lay down, and held her head over the running stream, and cried and said, ‘What will become of me?’ And the lock of hair answered her again:
 ‘Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
 Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
And as she leaned down to drink, the lock of hair fell from her bosom, and floated away with the water. Now she was so frightened that she did not see it; but her maid saw it, and was very glad, for she knew the charm; and she saw that the poor bride would be in her power, now that she had lost the hair. So when the bride had done drinking, and would have got upon Falada again, the maid said, ‘I shall ride upon Falada, and you may have my horse instead’; so she was forced to give up her horse, and soon afterwards to take off her royal clothes and put on her maid’s shabby ones.
At last, as they drew near the end of their journey, this treacherous servant threatened to kill her mistress if she ever told anyone what had happened. But Falada saw it all, and marked it well.
Then the waiting-maid got upon Falada, and the real bride rode upon the other horse, and they went on in this way till at last they came to the royal court. There was great joy at their coming, and the prince flew to meet them, and lifted the maid from her horse, thinking she was the one who was to be his wife; and she was led upstairs to the royal chamber; but the true princess was told to stay in the court below.
Now the old king happened just then to have nothing else to do; so he amused himself by sitting at his kitchen window, looking at what was going on; and he saw her in the courtyard. As she looked very pretty, and too delicate for a waiting-maid, he went up into the royal chamber to ask the bride who it was she had brought with her, that was thus left standing in the court below. ‘I brought her with me for the sake of her company on the road,’ said she; ‘pray give the girl some work to do, that she may not be idle.’ The old king could not for some time think of any work for her to do; but at last he said, ‘I have a lad who takes care of my geese; she may go and help him.’ Now the name of this lad, that the real bride was to help in watching the king’s geese, was Curdken.
But the false bride said to the prince, ‘Dear husband, pray do me one piece of kindness.’ ‘That I will,’ said the prince. ‘Then tell one of your slaughterers to cut off the head of the horse I rode upon, for it was very unruly, and plagued me sadly on the road’; but the truth was, she was very much afraid lest Falada should some day or other speak, and tell all she had done to the princess. She carried her point, and the faithful Falada was killed; but when the true princess heard of it, she wept, and begged the man to nail up Falada’s head against a large dark gate of the city, through which she had to pass every morning and evening, that there she might still see him sometimes. Then the slaughterer said he would do as she wished; and cut off the head, and nailed it up under the dark gate.
Early the next morning, as she and Curdken went out through the gate, she said sorrowfully:
 ‘Falada, Falada, there thou hangest!’
and the head answered:
 ‘Bride, bride, there thou gangest!
 Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
 Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
Then they went out of the city, and drove the geese on. And when she came to the meadow, she sat down upon a bank there, and let down her waving locks of hair, which were all of pure silver; and when Curdken saw it glitter in the sun, he ran up, and would have pulled some of the locks out, but she cried:
 ‘Blow, breezes, blow!
 Let Curdken’s hat go!
 Blow, breezes, blow!
 Let him after it go!
 O’er hills, dales, and rocks,
 Away be it whirl’d
 Till the silvery locks
 Are all comb’d and curl’d!
Then there came a wind, so strong that it blew off Curdken’s hat; and away it flew over the hills: and he was forced to turn and run after it; till, by the time he came back, she had done combing and curling her hair, and had put it up again safe. Then he was very angry and sulky, and would not speak to her at all; but they watched the geese until it grew dark in the evening, and then drove them homewards.
The next morning, as they were going through the dark gate, the poor girl looked up at Falada’s head, and cried:
 ‘Falada, Falada, there thou hangest!’
and the head answered:
 ‘Bride, bride, there thou gangest!
 Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
 Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
Then she drove on the geese, and sat down again in the meadow, and began to comb out her hair as before; and Curdken ran up to her, and wanted to take hold of it; but she cried out quickly:
 ‘Blow, breezes, blow!
 Let Curdken’s hat go!
 Blow, breezes, blow!
 Let him after it go!
 O’er hills, dales, and rocks,
 Away be it whirl’d
 Till the silvery locks
 Are all comb’d and curl’d!
Then the wind came and blew away his hat; and off it flew a great way, over the hills and far away, so that he had to run after it; and when he came back she had bound up her hair again, and all was safe. So they watched the geese till it grew dark.
In the evening, after they came home, Curdken went to the old king, and said, ‘I cannot have that strange girl to help me to keep the geese any longer.’ ‘Why?’ said the king. ‘Because, instead of doing any good, she does nothing but tease me all day long.’ Then the king made him tell him what had happened. And Curdken said, ‘When we go in the morning through the dark gate with our flock of geese, she cries and talks with the head of a horse that hangs upon the wall, and says:
 ‘Falada, Falada, there thou hangest!’
and the head answers:
 ‘Bride, bride, there thou gangest!
 Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it,
 Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’
And Curdken went on telling the king what had happened upon the meadow where the geese fed; how his hat was blown away; and how he was forced to run after it, and to leave his flock of geese to themselves. But the old king told the boy to go out again the next day: and when morning came, he placed himself behind the dark gate, and heard how she spoke to Falada, and how Falada answered. Then he went into the field, and hid himself in a bush by the meadow’s side; and he soon saw with his own eyes how they drove the flock of geese; and how, after a little time, she let down her hair that glittered in the sun. And then he heard her say:
 ‘Blow, breezes, blow!
 Let Curdken’s hat go!
 Blow, breezes, blow!
 Let him after it go!
 O’er hills, dales, and rocks,
 Away be it whirl’d
 Till the silvery locks
 Are all comb’d and curl’d!
And soon came a gale of wind, and carried away Curdken’s hat, and away went Curdken after it, while the girl went on combing and curling her hair. All this the old king saw: so he went home without being seen; and when the little goose-girl came back in the evening he called her aside, and asked her why she did so: but she burst into tears, and said, ‘That I must not tell you or any man, or I shall lose my life.’
But the old king begged so hard, that she had no peace till she had told him all the tale, from beginning to end, word for word. And it was very lucky for her that she did so, for when she had done the king ordered royal clothes to be put upon her, and gazed on her with wonder, she was so beautiful. Then he called his son and told him that he had only a false bride; for that she was merely a waiting-maid, while the true bride stood by. And the young king rejoiced when he saw her beauty, and heard how meek and patient she had been; and without saying anything to the false bride, the king ordered a great feast to be got ready for all his court. The bridegroom sat at the top, with the false princess on one side, and the true one on the other; but nobody knew her again, for her beauty was quite dazzling to their eyes; and she did not seem at all like the little goose-girl, now that she had her brilliant dress on.
When they had eaten and drank, and were very merry, the old king said he would tell them a tale. So he began, and told all the story of the princess, as if it was one that he had once heard; and he asked the true waiting-maid what she thought ought to be done to anyone who would behave thus. ‘Nothing better,’ said this false bride, ‘than that she should be thrown into a cask stuck round with sharp nails, and that two white horses should be put to it, and should drag it from street to street till she was dead.’ ‘Thou art she!’ said the old king; ‘and as thou has judged thyself, so shall it be done to thee.’ And the young king was then married to his true wife, and they reigned over the kingdom in peace and happiness all their lives; and the good fairy came to see them, and restored the faithful Falada to life again.
==THE ADVENTURES OF CHANTICLEER AND PARTLET==
1. HOW THEY WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS TO EAT NUTS
‘The nuts are quite ripe now,’ said Chanticleer to his wife Partlet, ‘suppose we go together to the mountains, and eat as many as we can, before the squirrel takes them all away.’ ‘With all my heart,’ said Partlet, ‘let us go and make a holiday of it together.’
So they went to the mountains; and as it was a lovely day, they stayed there till the evening. Now, whether it was that they had eaten so many nuts that they could not walk, or whether they were lazy and would not, I do not know: however, they took it into their heads that it did not become them to go home on foot. So Chanticleer began to build a little carriage of nutshells: and when it was finished, Partlet jumped into it and sat down, and bid Chanticleer harness himself to it and draw her home. ‘That’s a good joke!’ said Chanticleer; ‘no, that will never do; I had rather by half walk home; I’ll sit on the box and be coachman, if you like, but I’ll not draw.’ While this was passing, a duck came quacking up and cried out, ‘You thieving vagabonds, what business have you in my grounds? I’ll give it you well for your insolence!’ and upon that she fell upon Chanticleer most lustily. But Chanticleer was no coward, and returned the duck’s blows with his sharp spurs so fiercely that she soon began to cry out for mercy; which was only granted her upon condition that she would draw the carriage home for them. This she agreed to do; and Chanticleer got upon the box, and drove, crying, ‘Now, duck, get on as fast as you can.’ And away they went at a pretty good pace.
After they had travelled along a little way, they met a needle and a pin walking together along the road: and the needle cried out, ‘Stop, stop!’ and said it was so dark that they could hardly find their way, and such dirty walking they could not get on at all: he told them that he and his friend, the pin, had been at a public-house a few miles off, and had sat drinking till they had forgotten how late it was; he begged therefore that the travellers would be so kind as to give them a lift in their carriage. Chanticleer observing that they were but thin fellows, and not likely to take up much room, told them they might ride, but made them promise not to dirty the wheels of the carriage in getting in, nor to tread on Partlet’s toes.
Late at night they arrived at an inn; and as it was bad travelling in the dark, and the duck seemed much tired, and waddled about a good deal from one side to the other, they made up their minds to fix their quarters there: but the landlord at first was unwilling, and said his house was full, thinking they might not be very respectable company: however, they spoke civilly to him, and gave him the egg which Partlet had laid by the way, and said they would give him the duck, who was in the habit of laying one every day: so at last he let them come in, and they bespoke a handsome supper, and spent the evening very jollily.
Early in the morning, before it was quite light, and when nobody was stirring in the inn, Chanticleer awakened his wife, and, fetching the egg, they pecked a hole in it, ate it up, and threw the shells into the fireplace: they then went to the pin and needle, who were fast asleep, and seizing them by the heads, stuck one into the landlord’s easy chair and the other into his handkerchief; and, having done this, they crept away as softly as possible. However, the duck, who slept in the open air in the yard, heard them coming, and jumping into the brook which ran close by the inn, soon swam out of their reach.
An hour or two afterwards the landlord got up, and took his handkerchief to wipe his face, but the pin ran into him and pricked him: then he walked into the kitchen to light his pipe at the fire, but when he stirred it up the eggshells flew into his eyes, and almost blinded him. ‘Bless me!’ said he, ‘all the world seems to have a design against my head this morning’: and so saying, he threw himself sulkily into his easy chair; but, oh dear! the needle ran into him; and this time the pain was not in his head. He now flew into a very great passion, and, suspecting the company who had come in the night before, he went to look after them, but they were all off; so he swore that he never again would take in such a troop of vagabonds, who ate a great deal, paid no reckoning, and gave him nothing for his trouble but their apish tricks.
2. HOW CHANTICLEER AND PARTLET WENT TO VISIT MR KORBES
Another day, Chanticleer and Partlet wished to ride out together; so Chanticleer built a handsome carriage with four red wheels, and harnessed six mice to it; and then he and Partlet got into the carriage, and away they drove. Soon afterwards a cat met them, and said, ‘Where are you going?’ And Chanticleer replied,
 ‘All on our way
 A visit to pay
 To Mr Korbes, the fox, today.’
Then the cat said, ‘Take me with you,’ Chanticleer said, ‘With all my heart: get up behind, and be sure you do not fall off.’
 ‘Take care of this handsome coach of mine,
 Nor dirty my pretty red wheels so fine!
 Now, mice, be ready,
 And, wheels, run steady!
 For we are going a visit to pay
 To Mr Korbes, the fox, today.’
Soon after came up a millstone, an egg, a duck, and a pin; and Chanticleer gave them all leave to get into the carriage and go with them.
When they arrived at Mr Korbes’s house, he was not at home; so the mice drew the carriage into the coach-house, Chanticleer and Partlet flew upon a beam, the cat sat down in the fireplace, the duck got into the washing cistern, the pin stuck himself into the bed pillow, the millstone laid himself over the house door, and the egg rolled himself up in the towel.
When Mr Korbes came home, he went to the fireplace to make a fire; but the cat threw all the ashes in his eyes: so he ran to the kitchen to wash himself; but there the duck splashed all the water in his face; and when he tried to wipe himself, the egg broke to pieces in the towel all over his face and eyes. Then he was very angry, and went without his supper to bed; but when he laid his head on the pillow, the pin ran into his cheek: at this he became quite furious, and, jumping up, would have run out of the house; but when he came to the door, the millstone fell down on his head, and killed him on the spot.
3. HOW PARTLET DIED AND WAS BURIED, AND HOW CHANTICLEER DIED OF GRIEF
Another day Chanticleer and Partlet agreed to go again to the mountains to eat nuts; and it was settled that all the nuts which they found should be shared equally between them. Now Partlet found a very large nut; but she said nothing about it to Chanticleer, and kept it all to herself: however, it was so big that she could not swallow it, and it stuck in her throat. Then she was in a great fright, and cried out to Chanticleer, ‘Pray run as fast as you can, and fetch me some water, or I shall be choked.’ Chanticleer ran as fast as he could to the river, and said, ‘River, give me some water, for Partlet lies in the mountain, and will be choked by a great nut.’ The river said, ‘Run first to the bride, and ask her for a silken cord to draw up the water.’ Chanticleer ran to the bride, and said, ‘Bride, you must give me a silken cord, for then the river will give me water, and the water I will carry to Partlet, who lies on the mountain, and will be choked by a great nut.’ But the bride said, ‘Run first, and bring me my garland that is hanging on a willow in the garden.’ Then Chanticleer ran to the garden, and took the garland from the bough where it hung, and brought it to the bride; and then the bride gave him the silken cord, and he took the silken cord to the river, and the river gave him water, and he carried the water to Partlet; but in the meantime she was choked by the great nut, and lay quite dead, and never moved any more.
Then Chanticleer was very sorry, and cried bitterly; and all the beasts came and wept with him over poor Partlet. And six mice built a little hearse to carry her to her grave; and when it was ready they harnessed themselves before it, and Chanticleer drove them. On the way they met the fox. ‘Where are you going, Chanticleer?’ said he. ‘To bury my Partlet,’ said the other. ‘May I go with you?’ said the fox. ‘Yes; but you must get up behind, or my horses will not be able to draw you.’ Then the fox got up behind; and presently the wolf, the bear, the goat, and all the beasts of the wood, came and climbed upon the hearse.
So on they went till they came to a rapid stream. ‘How shall we get over?’ said Chanticleer. Then said a straw, ‘I will lay myself across, and you may pass over upon me.’ But as the mice were going over, the straw slipped away and fell into the water, and the six mice all fell in and were drowned. What was to be done? Then a large log of wood came and said, ‘I am big enough; I will lay myself across the stream, and you shall pass over upon me.’ So he laid himself down; but they managed so clumsily, that the log of wood fell in and was carried away by the stream. Then a stone, who saw what had happened, came up and kindly offered to help poor Chanticleer by laying himself across the stream; and this time he got safely to the other side with the hearse, and managed to get Partlet out of it; but the fox and the other mourners, who were sitting behind, were too heavy, and fell back into the water and were all carried away by the stream and drowned.
Thus Chanticleer was left alone with his dead Partlet; and having dug a grave for her, he laid her in it, and made a little hillock over her. Then he sat down by the grave, and wept and mourned, till at last he died too; and so all were dead.
==RAPUNZEL==
There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child. At length the woman hoped that God was about to grant her desire. These people had a little window at the back of their house from which a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful flowers and herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had great power and was dreaded by all the world. One day the woman was standing by this window and looking down into the garden, when she saw a bed which was planted with the most beautiful rampion (rapunzel), and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, she quite pined away, and began to look pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed, and asked: ‘What ails you, dear wife?’ ‘Ah,’ she replied, ‘if I can’t eat some of the rampion, which is in the garden behind our house, I shall die.’ The man, who loved her, thought: ‘Sooner than let your wife die, bring her some of the rampion yourself, let it cost what it will.’ At twilight, he clambered down over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his wife. She at once made herself a salad of it, and ate it greedily. It tasted so good to her—so very good, that the next day she longed for it three times as much as before. If he was to have any rest, her husband must once more descend into the garden. In the gloom of evening therefore, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before him. ‘How can you dare,’ said she with angry look, ‘descend into my garden and steal my rampion like a thief? You shall suffer for it!’ ‘Ah,’ answered he, ‘let mercy take the place of justice, I only made up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the window, and felt such a longing for it that she would have died if she had not got some to eat.’ Then the enchantress allowed her anger to be softened, and said to him: ‘If the case be as you say, I will allow you to take away with you as much rampion as you will, only I make one condition, you must give me the child which your wife will bring into the world; it shall be well treated, and I will care for it like a mother.’ The man in his terror consented to everything, and when the woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with her.
Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower, which lay in a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at the top was a little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed herself beneath it and cried:
 ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
 Let down your hair to me.’
Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she heard the voice of the enchantress she unfastened her braided tresses, wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.
After a year or two, it came to pass that the king’s son rode through the forest and passed by the tower. Then he heard a song, which was so charming that he stood still and listened. This was Rapunzel, who in her solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The king’s son wanted to climb up to her, and looked for the door of the tower, but none was to be found. He rode home, but the singing had so deeply touched his heart, that every day he went out into the forest and listened to it. Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried:
 ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
 Let down your hair to me.’
Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her. ‘If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I too will try my fortune,’ said he, and the next day when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and cried:
 ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
 Let down your hair to me.’
Immediately the hair fell down and the king’s son climbed up.
At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes had never yet beheld, came to her; but the king’s son began to talk to her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought: ‘He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does’; and she said yes, and laid her hand in his. She said: ‘I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and you will take me on your horse.’ They agreed that until that time he should come to her every evening, for the old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this, until once Rapunzel said to her: ‘Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young king’s son—he is with me in a moment.’ ‘Ah! you wicked child,’ cried the enchantress. ‘What do I hear you say! I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me!’ In her anger she clutched Rapunzel’s beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand, seized a pair of scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.
On the same day that she cast out Rapunzel, however, the enchantress fastened the braids of hair, which she had cut off, to the hook of the window, and when the king’s son came and cried:
 ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
 Let down your hair to me.’
she let the hair down. The king’s son ascended, but instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. ‘Aha!’ she cried mockingly, ‘you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.’ The king’s son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it, and when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept. Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again, and he could see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented.
==FUNDEVOGEL==
There was once a forester who went into the forest to hunt, and as he entered it he heard a sound of screaming as if a little child were there. He followed the sound, and at last came to a high tree, and at the top of this a little child was sitting, for the mother had fallen asleep under the tree with the child, and a bird of prey had seen it in her arms, had flown down, snatched it away, and set it on the high tree.
The forester climbed up, brought the child down, and thought to himself: ‘You will take him home with you, and bring him up with your Lina.’ He took it home, therefore, and the two children grew up together. And the one, which he had found on a tree was called Fundevogel, because a bird had carried it away. Fundevogel and Lina loved each other so dearly that when they did not see each other they were sad.
Now the forester had an old cook, who one evening took two pails and began to fetch water, and did not go once only, but many times, out to the spring. Lina saw this and said, ‘Listen, old Sanna, why are you fetching so much water?’ ‘If you will never repeat it to anyone, I will tell you why.’ So Lina said, no, she would never repeat it to anyone, and then the cook said: ‘Early tomorrow morning, when the forester is out hunting, I will heat the water, and when it is boiling in the kettle, I will throw in Fundevogel, and will boil him in it.’
Early next morning the forester got up and went out hunting, and when he was gone the children were still in bed. Then Lina said to Fundevogel: ‘If you will never leave me, I too will never leave you.’ Fundevogel said: ‘Neither now, nor ever will I leave you.’ Then said Lina: ‘Then will I tell you. Last night, old Sanna carried so many buckets of water into the house that I asked her why she was doing that, and she said that if I would promise not to tell anyone, and she said that early tomorrow morning when father was out hunting, she would set the kettle full of water, throw you into it and boil you; but we will get up quickly, dress ourselves, and go away together.’
The two children therefore got up, dressed themselves quickly, and went away. When the water in the kettle was boiling, the cook went into the bedroom to fetch Fundevogel and throw him into it. But when she came in, and went to the beds, both the children were gone. Then she was terribly alarmed, and she said to herself: ‘What shall I say now when the forester comes home and sees that the children are gone? They must be followed instantly to get them back again.’
Then the cook sent three servants after them, who were to run and overtake the children. The children, however, were sitting outside the forest, and when they saw from afar the three servants running, Lina said to Fundevogel: ‘Never leave me, and I will never leave you.’ Fundevogel said: ‘Neither now, nor ever.’ Then said Lina: ‘Do you become a rose-tree, and I the rose upon it.’ When the three servants came to the forest, nothing was there but a rose-tree and one rose on it, but the children were nowhere. Then said they: ‘There is nothing to be done here,’ and they went home and told the cook that they had seen nothing in the forest but a little rose-bush with one rose on it. Then the old cook scolded and said: ‘You simpletons, you should have cut the rose-bush in two, and have broken off the rose and brought it home with you; go, and do it at once.’ They had therefore to go out and look for the second time. The children, however, saw them coming from a distance. Then Lina said: ‘Fundevogel, never leave me, and I will never leave you.’ Fundevogel said: ‘Neither now; nor ever.’ Said Lina: ‘Then do you become a church, and I’ll be the chandelier in it.’ So when the three servants came, nothing was there but a church, with a chandelier in it. They said therefore to each other: ‘What can we do here, let us go home.’ When they got home, the cook asked if they had not found them; so they said no, they had found nothing but a church, and there was a chandelier in it. And the cook scolded them and said: ‘You fools! why did you not pull the church to pieces, and bring the chandelier home with you?’ And now the old cook herself got on her legs, and went with the three servants in pursuit of the children. The children, however, saw from afar that the three servants were coming, and the cook waddling after them. Then said Lina: ‘Fundevogel, never leave me, and I will never leave you.’ Then said Fundevogel: ‘Neither now, nor ever.’ Said Lina: ‘Be a fishpond, and I will be the duck upon it.’ The cook, however, came up to them, and when she saw the pond she lay down by it, and was about to drink it up. But the duck swam quickly to her, seized her head in its beak and drew her into the water, and there the old witch had to drown. Then the children went home together, and were heartily delighted, and if they have not died, they are living still.
==THE VALIANT LITTLE TAILOR==
One summer’s morning a little tailor was sitting on his table by the window; he was in good spirits, and sewed with all his might. Then came a peasant woman down the street crying: ‘Good jams, cheap! Good jams, cheap!’ This rang pleasantly in the tailor’s ears; he stretched his delicate head out of the window, and called: ‘Come up here, dear woman; here you will get rid of your goods.’ The woman came up the three steps to the tailor with her heavy basket, and he made her unpack all the pots for him. He inspected each one, lifted it up, put his nose to it, and at length said: ‘The jam seems to me to be good, so weigh me out four ounces, dear woman, and if it is a quarter of a pound that is of no consequence.’ The woman who had hoped to find a good sale, gave him what he desired, but went away quite angry and grumbling. ‘Now, this jam shall be blessed by God,’ cried the little tailor, ‘and give me health and strength’; so he brought the bread out of the cupboard, cut himself a piece right across the loaf and spread the jam over it. ‘This won’t taste bitter,’ said he, ‘but I will just finish the jacket before I take a bite.’ He laid the bread near him, sewed on, and in his joy, made bigger and bigger stitches. In the meantime the smell of the sweet jam rose to where the flies were sitting in great numbers, and they were attracted and descended on it in hosts. ‘Hi! who invited you?’ said the little tailor, and drove the unbidden guests away. The flies, however, who understood no German, would not be turned away, but came back again in ever-increasing companies. The little tailor at last lost all patience, and drew a piece of cloth from the hole under his work-table, and saying: ‘Wait, and I will give it to you,’ struck it mercilessly on them. When he drew it away and counted, there lay before him no fewer than seven, dead and with legs stretched out. ‘Are you a fellow of that sort?’ said he, and could not help admiring his own bravery. ‘The whole town shall know of this!’ And the little tailor hastened to cut himself a girdle, stitched it, and embroidered on it in large letters: ‘Seven at one stroke!’ ‘What, the town!’ he continued, ‘the whole world shall hear of it!’ and his heart wagged with joy like a lamb’s tail. The tailor put on the girdle, and resolved to go forth into the world, because he thought his workshop was too small for his valour. Before he went away, he sought about in the house to see if there was anything which he could take with him; however, he found nothing but an old cheese, and that he put in his pocket. In front of the door he observed a bird which had caught itself in the thicket. It had to go into his pocket with the cheese. Now he took to the road boldly, and as he was light and nimble, he felt no fatigue. The road led him up a mountain, and when he had reached the highest point of it, there sat a powerful giant looking peacefully about him. The little tailor went bravely up, spoke to him, and said: ‘Good day, comrade, so you are sitting there overlooking the wide-spread world! I am just on my way thither, and want to try my luck. Have you any inclination to go with me?’ The giant looked contemptuously at the tailor, and said: ‘You ragamuffin! You miserable creature!’
‘Oh, indeed?’ answered the little tailor, and unbuttoned his coat, and showed the giant the girdle, ‘there may you read what kind of a man I am!’ The giant read: ‘Seven at one stroke,’ and thought that they had been men whom the tailor had killed, and began to feel a little respect for the tiny fellow. Nevertheless, he wished to try him first, and took a stone in his hand and squeezed it together so that water dropped out of it. ‘Do that likewise,’ said the giant, ‘if you have strength.’ ‘Is that all?’ said the tailor, ‘that is child’s play with us!’ and put his hand into his pocket, brought out the soft cheese, and pressed it until the liquid ran out of it. ‘Faith,’ said he, ‘that was a little better, wasn’t it?’ The giant did not know what to say, and could not believe it of the little man. Then the giant picked up a stone and threw it so high that the eye could scarcely follow it. ‘Now, little mite of a man, do that likewise,’ ‘Well thrown,’ said the tailor, ‘but after all the stone came down to earth again; I will throw you one which shall never come back at all,’ and he put his hand into his pocket, took out the bird, and threw it into the air. The bird, delighted with its liberty, rose, flew away and did not come back. ‘How does that shot please you, comrade?’ asked the tailor. ‘You can certainly throw,’ said the giant, ‘but now we will see if you are able to carry anything properly.’ He took the little tailor to a mighty oak tree which lay there felled on the ground, and said: ‘If you are strong enough, help me to carry the tree out of the forest.’ ‘Readily,’ answered the little man; ‘take you the trunk on your shoulders, and I will raise up the branches and twigs; after all, they are the heaviest.’ The giant took the trunk on his shoulder, but the tailor seated himself on a branch, and the giant, who could not look round, had to carry away the whole tree, and the little tailor into the bargain: he behind, was quite merry and happy, and whistled the song: ‘Three tailors rode forth from the gate,’ as if carrying the tree were child’s play. The giant, after he had dragged the heavy burden part of the way, could go no further, and cried: ‘Hark you, I shall have to let the tree fall!’ The tailor sprang nimbly down, seized the tree with both arms as if he had been carrying it, and said to the giant: ‘You are such a great fellow, and yet cannot even carry the tree!’
They went on together, and as they passed a cherry-tree, the giant laid hold of the top of the tree where the ripest fruit was hanging, bent it down, gave it into the tailor’s hand, and bade him eat. But the little tailor was much too weak to hold the tree, and when the giant let it go, it sprang back again, and the tailor was tossed into the air with it. When he had fallen down again without injury, the giant said: ‘What is this? Have you not strength enough to hold the weak twig?’ ‘There is no lack of strength,’ answered the little tailor. ‘Do you think that could be anything to a man who has struck down seven at one blow? I leapt over the tree because the huntsmen are shooting down there in the thicket. Jump as I did, if you can do it.’ The giant made the attempt but he could not get over the tree, and remained hanging in the branches, so that in this also the tailor kept the upper hand.
The giant said: ‘If you are such a valiant fellow, come with me into our cavern and spend the night with us.’ The little tailor was willing, and followed him. When they went into the cave, other giants were sitting there by the fire, and each of them had a roasted sheep in his hand and was eating it. The little tailor looked round and thought: ‘It is much more spacious here than in my workshop.’ The giant showed him a bed, and said he was to lie down in it and sleep. The bed, however, was too big for the little tailor; he did not lie down in it, but crept into a corner. When it was midnight, and the giant thought that the little tailor was lying in a sound sleep, he got up, took a great iron bar, cut through the bed with one blow, and thought he had finished off the grasshopper for good. With the earliest dawn the giants went into the forest, and had quite forgotten the little tailor, when all at once he walked up to them quite merrily and boldly. The giants were terrified, they were afraid that he would strike them all dead, and ran away in a great hurry.
The little tailor went onwards, always following his own pointed nose. After he had walked for a long time, he came to the courtyard of a royal palace, and as he felt weary, he lay down on the grass and fell asleep. Whilst he lay there, the people came and inspected him on all sides, and read on his girdle: ‘Seven at one stroke.’ ‘Ah!’ said they, ‘what does the great warrior want here in the midst of peace? He must be a mighty lord.’ They went and announced him to the king, and gave it as their opinion that if war should break out, this would be a weighty and useful man who ought on no account to be allowed to depart. The counsel pleased the king, and he sent one of his courtiers to the little tailor to offer him military service when he awoke. The ambassador remained standing by the sleeper, waited until he stretched his limbs and opened his eyes, and then conveyed to him this proposal. ‘For this very reason have I come here,’ the tailor replied, ‘I am ready to enter the king’s service.’ He was therefore honourably received, and a special dwelling was assigned him.
The soldiers, however, were set against the little tailor, and wished him a thousand miles away. ‘What is to be the end of this?’ they said among themselves. ‘If we quarrel with him, and he strikes about him, seven of us will fall at every blow; not one of us can stand against him.’ They came therefore to a decision, betook themselves in a body to the king, and begged for their dismissal. ‘We are not prepared,’ said they, ‘to stay with a man who kills seven at one stroke.’ The king was sorry that for the sake of one he should lose all his faithful servants, wished that he had never set eyes on the tailor, and would willingly have been rid of him again. But he did not venture to give him his dismissal, for he dreaded lest he should strike him and all his people dead, and place himself on the royal throne. He thought about it for a long time, and at last found good counsel. He sent to the little tailor and caused him to be informed that as he was a great warrior, he had one request to make to him. In a forest of his country lived two giants, who caused great mischief with their robbing, murdering, ravaging, and burning, and no one could approach them without putting himself in danger of death. If the tailor conquered and killed these two giants, he would give him his only daughter to wife, and half of his kingdom as a dowry, likewise one hundred horsemen should go with him to assist him. ‘That would indeed be a fine thing for a man like me!’ thought the little tailor. ‘One is not offered a beautiful princess and half a kingdom every day of one’s life!’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, ‘I will soon subdue the giants, and do not require the help of the hundred horsemen to do it; he who can hit seven with one blow has no need to be afraid of two.’
The little tailor went forth, and the hundred horsemen followed him. When he came to the outskirts of the forest, he said to his followers: ‘Just stay waiting here, I alone will soon finish off the giants.’ Then he bounded into the forest and looked about right and left. After a while he perceived both giants. They lay sleeping under a tree, and snored so that the branches waved up and down. The little tailor, not idle, gathered two pocketsful of stones, and with these climbed up the tree. When he was halfway up, he slipped down by a branch, until he sat just above the sleepers, and then let one stone after another fall on the breast of one of the giants. For a long time the giant felt nothing, but at last he awoke, pushed his comrade, and said: ‘Why are you knocking me?’ ‘You must be dreaming,’ said the other, ‘I am not knocking you.’ They laid themselves down to sleep again, and then the tailor threw a stone down on the second. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ cried the other ‘Why are you pelting me?’ ‘I am not pelting you,’ answered the first, growling. They disputed about it for a time, but as they were weary they let the matter rest, and their eyes closed once more. The little tailor began his game again, picked out the biggest stone, and threw it with all his might on the breast of the first giant. ‘That is too bad!’ cried he, and sprang up like a madman, and pushed his companion against the tree until it shook. The other paid him back in the same coin, and they got into such a rage that they tore up trees and belaboured each other so long, that at last they both fell down dead on the ground at the same time. Then the little tailor leapt down. ‘It is a lucky thing,’ said he, ‘that they did not tear up the tree on which I was sitting, or I should have had to sprint on to another like a squirrel; but we tailors are nimble.’ He drew out his sword and gave each of them a couple of thrusts in the breast, and then went out to the horsemen and said: ‘The work is done; I have finished both of them off, but it was hard work! They tore up trees in their sore need, and defended themselves with them, but all that is to no purpose when a man like myself comes, who can kill seven at one blow.’ ‘But are you not wounded?’ asked the horsemen. ‘You need not concern yourself about that,’ answered the tailor, ‘they have not bent one hair of mine.’ The horsemen would not believe him, and rode into the forest; there they found the giants swimming in their blood, and all round about lay the torn-up trees.
The little tailor demanded of the king the promised reward; he, however, repented of his promise, and again bethought himself how he could get rid of the hero. ‘Before you receive my daughter, and the half of my kingdom,’ said he to him, ‘you must perform one more heroic deed. In the forest roams a unicorn which does great harm, and you must catch it first.’ ‘I fear one unicorn still less than two giants. Seven at one blow, is my kind of affair.’ He took a rope and an axe with him, went forth into the forest, and again bade those who were sent with him to wait outside. He had not long to seek. The unicorn soon came towards him, and rushed directly on the tailor, as if it would gore him with its horn without more ado. ‘Softly, softly; it can’t be done as quickly as that,’ said he, and stood still and waited until the animal was quite close, and then sprang nimbly behind the tree. The unicorn ran against the tree with all its strength, and stuck its horn so fast in the trunk that it had not the strength enough to draw it out again, and thus it was caught. ‘Now, I have got the bird,’ said the tailor, and came out from behind the tree and put the rope round its neck, and then with his axe he hewed the horn out of the tree, and when all was ready he led the beast away and took it to the king.
The king still would not give him the promised reward, and made a third demand. Before the wedding the tailor was to catch him a wild boar that made great havoc in the forest, and the huntsmen should give him their help. ‘Willingly,’ said the tailor, ‘that is child’s play!’ He did not take the huntsmen with him into the forest, and they were well pleased that he did not, for the wild boar had several times received them in such a manner that they had no inclination to lie in wait for him. When the boar perceived the tailor, it ran on him with foaming mouth and whetted tusks, and was about to throw him to the ground, but the hero fled and sprang into a chapel which was near and up to the window at once, and in one bound out again. The boar ran after him, but the tailor ran round outside and shut the door behind it, and then the raging beast, which was much too heavy and awkward to leap out of the window, was caught. The little tailor called the huntsmen thither that they might see the prisoner with their own eyes. The hero, however, went to the king, who was now, whether he liked it or not, obliged to keep his promise, and gave his daughter and the half of his kingdom. Had he known that it was no warlike hero, but a little tailor who was standing before him, it would have gone to his heart still more than it did. The wedding was held with great magnificence and small joy, and out of a tailor a king was made.
After some time the young queen heard her husband say in his dreams at night: ‘Boy, make me the doublet, and patch the pantaloons, or else I will rap the yard-measure over your ears.’ Then she discovered in what state of life the young lord had been born, and next morning complained of her wrongs to her father, and begged him to help her to get rid of her husband, who was nothing else but a tailor. The king comforted her and said: ‘Leave your bedroom door open this night, and my servants shall stand outside, and when he has fallen asleep shall go in, bind him, and take him on board a ship which shall carry him into the wide world.’ The woman was satisfied with this; but the king’s armour-bearer, who had heard all, was friendly with the young lord, and informed him of the whole plot. ‘I’ll put a screw into that business,’ said the little tailor. At night he went to bed with his wife at the usual time, and when she thought that he had fallen asleep, she got up, opened the door, and then lay down again. The little tailor, who was only pretending to be asleep, began to cry out in a clear voice: ‘Boy, make me the doublet and patch me the pantaloons, or I will rap the yard-measure over your ears. I smote seven at one blow. I killed two giants, I brought away one unicorn, and caught a wild boar, and am I to fear those who are standing outside the room.’ When these men heard the tailor speaking thus, they were overcome by a great dread, and ran as if the wild huntsman were behind them, and none of them would venture anything further against him. So the little tailor was and remained a king to the end of his life.
==HANSEL AND GRETEL==
Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread. Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife: ‘What is to become of us? How are we to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?’ ‘I’ll tell you what, husband,’ answered the woman, ‘early tomorrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest; there we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them.’ ‘No, wife,’ said the man, ‘I will not do that; how can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest?—the wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces.’ ‘O, you fool!’ said she, ‘then we must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the planks for our coffins,’ and she left him no peace until he consented. ‘But I feel very sorry for the poor children, all the same,’ said the man.
The two children had also not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard what their stepmother had said to their father. Gretel wept bitter tears, and said to Hansel: ‘Now all is over with us.’ ‘Be quiet, Gretel,’ said Hansel, ‘do not distress yourself, I will soon find a way to help us.’ And when the old folks had fallen asleep, he got up, put on his little coat, opened the door below, and crept outside. The moon shone brightly, and the white pebbles which lay in front of the house glittered like real silver pennies. Hansel stooped and stuffed the little pocket of his coat with as many as he could get in. Then he went back and said to Gretel: ‘Be comforted, dear little sister, and sleep in peace, God will not forsake us,’ and he lay down again in his bed. When day dawned, but before the sun had risen, the woman came and awoke the two children, saying: ‘Get up, you sluggards! we are going into the forest to fetch wood.’ She gave each a little piece of bread, and said: ‘There is something for your dinner, but do not eat it up before then, for you will get nothing else.’ Gretel took the bread under her apron, as Hansel had the pebbles in his pocket. Then they all set out together on the way to the forest. When they had walked a short time, Hansel stood still and peeped back at the house, and did so again and again. His father said: ‘Hansel, what are you looking at there and staying behind for? Pay attention, and do not forget how to use your legs.’ ‘Ah, father,’ said Hansel, ‘I am looking at my little white cat, which is sitting up on the roof, and wants to say goodbye to me.’ The wife said: ‘Fool, that is not your little cat, that is the morning sun which is shining on the chimneys.’ Hansel, however, had not been looking back at the cat, but had been constantly throwing one of the white pebble-stones out of his pocket on the road.
When they had reached the middle of the forest, the father said: ‘Now, children, pile up some wood, and I will light a fire that you may not be cold.’ Hansel and Gretel gathered brushwood together, as high as a little hill. The brushwood was lighted, and when the flames were burning very high, the woman said: ‘Now, children, lay yourselves down by the fire and rest, we will go into the forest and cut some wood. When we have done, we will come back and fetch you away.’
Hansel and Gretel sat by the fire, and when noon came, each ate a little piece of bread, and as they heard the strokes of the wood-axe they believed that their father was near. It was not the axe, however, but a branch which he had fastened to a withered tree which the wind was blowing backwards and forwards. And as they had been sitting such a long time, their eyes closed with fatigue, and they fell fast asleep. When at last they awoke, it was already dark night. Gretel began to cry and said: ‘How are we to get out of the forest now?’ But Hansel comforted her and said: ‘Just wait a little, until the moon has risen, and then we will soon find the way.’ And when the full moon had risen, Hansel took his little sister by the hand, and followed the pebbles which shone like newly-coined silver pieces, and showed them the way.
They walked the whole night long, and by break of day came once more to their father’s house. They knocked at the door, and when the woman opened it and saw that it was Hansel and Gretel, she said: ‘You naughty children, why have you slept so long in the forest?—we thought you were never coming back at all!’ The father, however, rejoiced, for it had cut him to the heart to leave them behind alone.
Not long afterwards, there was once more great dearth throughout the land, and the children heard their mother saying at night to their father: ‘Everything is eaten again, we have one half loaf left, and that is the end. The children must go, we will take them farther into the wood, so that they will not find their way out again; there is no other means of saving ourselves!’ The man’s heart was heavy, and he thought: ‘It would be better for you to share the last mouthful with your children.’ The woman, however, would listen to nothing that he had to say, but scolded and reproached him. He who says A must say B, likewise, and as he had yielded the first time, he had to do so a second time also.
The children, however, were still awake and had heard the conversation. When the old folks were asleep, Hansel again got up, and wanted to go out and pick up pebbles as he had done before, but the woman had locked the door, and Hansel could not get out. Nevertheless he comforted his little sister, and said: ‘Do not cry, Gretel, go to sleep quietly, the good God will help us.’
Early in the morning came the woman, and took the children out of their beds. Their piece of bread was given to them, but it was still smaller than the time before. On the way into the forest Hansel crumbled his in his pocket, and often stood still and threw a morsel on the ground. ‘Hansel, why do you stop and look round?’ said the father, ‘go on.’ ‘I am looking back at my little pigeon which is sitting on the roof, and wants to say goodbye to me,’ answered Hansel. ‘Fool!’ said the woman, ‘that is not your little pigeon, that is the morning sun that is shining on the chimney.’ Hansel, however little by little, threw all the crumbs on the path.
The woman led the children still deeper into the forest, where they had never in their lives been before. Then a great fire was again made, and the mother said: ‘Just sit there, you children, and when you are tired you may sleep a little; we are going into the forest to cut wood, and in the evening when we are done, we will come and fetch you away.’ When it was noon, Gretel shared her piece of bread with Hansel, who had scattered his by the way. Then they fell asleep and evening passed, but no one came to the poor children. They did not awake until it was dark night, and Hansel comforted his little sister and said: ‘Just wait, Gretel, until the moon rises, and then we shall see the crumbs of bread which I have strewn about, they will show us our way home again.’ When the moon came they set out, but they found no crumbs, for the many thousands of birds which fly about in the woods and fields had picked them all up. Hansel said to Gretel: ‘We shall soon find the way,’ but they did not find it. They walked the whole night and all the next day too from morning till evening, but they did not get out of the forest, and were very hungry, for they had nothing to eat but two or three berries, which grew on the ground. And as they were so weary that their legs would carry them no longer, they lay down beneath a tree and fell asleep.
It was now three mornings since they had left their father’s house. They began to walk again, but they always came deeper into the forest, and if help did not come soon, they must die of hunger and weariness. When it was mid-day, they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting on a bough, which sang so delightfully that they stood still and listened to it. And when its song was over, it spread its wings and flew away before them, and they followed it until they reached a little house, on the roof of which it alighted; and when they approached the little house they saw that it was built of bread and covered with cakes, but that the windows were of clear sugar. ‘We will set to work on that,’ said Hansel, ‘and have a good meal. I will eat a bit of the roof, and you Gretel, can eat some of the window, it will taste sweet.’ Hansel reached up above, and broke off a little of the roof to try how it tasted, and Gretel leant against the window and nibbled at the panes. Then a soft voice cried from the parlour:
 ‘Nibble, nibble, gnaw,
 Who is nibbling at my little house?’
The children answered:
 ‘The wind, the wind,
 The heaven-born wind,’
and went on eating without disturbing themselves. Hansel, who liked the taste of the roof, tore down a great piece of it, and Gretel pushed out the whole of one round window-pane, sat down, and enjoyed herself with it. Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who supported herself on crutches, came creeping out. Hansel and Gretel were so terribly frightened that they let fall what they had in their hands. The old woman, however, nodded her head, and said: ‘Oh, you dear children, who has brought you here? do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen to you.’ She took them both by the hand, and led them into her little house. Then good food was set before them, milk and pancakes, with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterwards two pretty little beds were covered with clean white linen, and Hansel and Gretel lay down in them, and thought they were in heaven.
The old woman had only pretended to be so kind; she was in reality a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that was a feast day with her. Witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but they have a keen scent like the beasts, and are aware when human beings draw near. When Hansel and Gretel came into her neighbourhood, she laughed with malice, and said mockingly: ‘I have them, they shall not escape me again!’ Early in the morning before the children were awake, she was already up, and when she saw both of them sleeping and looking so pretty, with their plump and rosy cheeks she muttered to herself: ‘That will be a dainty mouthful!’ Then she seized Hansel with her shrivelled hand, carried him into a little stable, and locked him in behind a grated door. Scream as he might, it would not help him. Then she went to Gretel, shook her till she awoke, and cried: ‘Get up, lazy thing, fetch some water, and cook something good for your brother, he is in the stable outside, and is to be made fat. When he is fat, I will eat him.’ Gretel began to weep bitterly, but it was all in vain, for she was forced to do what the wicked witch commanded.
And now the best food was cooked for poor Hansel, but Gretel got nothing but crab-shells. Every morning the woman crept to the little stable, and cried: ‘Hansel, stretch out your finger that I may feel if you will soon be fat.’ Hansel, however, stretched out a little bone to her, and the old woman, who had dim eyes, could not see it, and thought it was Hansel’s finger, and was astonished that there was no way of fattening him. When four weeks had gone by, and Hansel still remained thin, she was seized with impatience and would not wait any longer. ‘Now, then, Gretel,’ she cried to the girl, ‘stir yourself, and bring some water. Let Hansel be fat or lean, tomorrow I will kill him, and cook him.’ Ah, how the poor little sister did lament when she had to fetch the water, and how her tears did flow down her cheeks! ‘Dear God, do help us,’ she cried. ‘If the wild beasts in the forest had but devoured us, we should at any rate have died together.’ ‘Just keep your noise to yourself,’ said the old woman, ‘it won’t help you at all.’
Early in the morning, Gretel had to go out and hang up the cauldron with the water, and light the fire. ‘We will bake first,’ said the old woman, ‘I have already heated the oven, and kneaded the dough.’ She pushed poor Gretel out to the oven, from which flames of fire were already darting. ‘Creep in,’ said the witch, ‘and see if it is properly heated, so that we can put the bread in.’ And once Gretel was inside, she intended to shut the oven and let her bake in it, and then she would eat her, too. But Gretel saw what she had in mind, and said: ‘I do not know how I am to do it; how do I get in?’ ‘Silly goose,’ said the old woman. ‘The door is big enough; just look, I can get in myself!’ and she crept up and thrust her head into the oven. Then Gretel gave her a push that drove her far into it, and shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt. Oh! then she began to howl quite horribly, but Gretel ran away and the godless witch was miserably burnt to death.
Gretel, however, ran like lightning to Hansel, opened his little stable, and cried: ‘Hansel, we are saved! The old witch is dead!’ Then Hansel sprang like a bird from its cage when the door is opened. How they did rejoice and embrace each other, and dance about and kiss each other! And as they had no longer any need to fear her, they went into the witch’s house, and in every corner there stood chests full of pearls and jewels. ‘These are far better than pebbles!’ said Hansel, and thrust into his pockets whatever could be got in, and Gretel said: ‘I, too, will take something home with me,’ and filled her pinafore full. ‘But now we must be off,’ said Hansel, ‘that we may get out of the witch’s forest.’
When they had walked for two hours, they came to a great stretch of water. ‘We cannot cross,’ said Hansel, ‘I see no foot-plank, and no bridge.’ ‘And there is also no ferry,’ answered Gretel, ‘but a white duck is swimming there: if I ask her, she will help us over.’ Then she cried:
 ‘Little duck, little duck, dost thou see,
 Hansel and Gretel are waiting for thee?
 There’s never a plank, or bridge in sight,
 Take us across on thy back so white.’
The duck came to them, and Hansel seated himself on its back, and told his sister to sit by him. ‘No,’ replied Gretel, ‘that will be too heavy for the little duck; she shall take us across, one after the other.’ The good little duck did so, and when they were once safely across and had walked for a short time, the forest seemed to be more and more familiar to them, and at length they saw from afar their father’s house. Then they began to run, rushed into the parlour, and threw themselves round their father’s neck. The man had not known one happy hour since he had left the children in the forest; the woman, however, was dead. Gretel emptied her pinafore until pearls and precious stones ran about the room, and Hansel threw one handful after another out of his pocket to add to them. Then all anxiety was at an end, and they lived together in perfect happiness. My tale is done, there runs a mouse; whosoever catches it, may make himself a big fur cap out of it.
== THE MOUSE, THE BIRD, AND THE SAUSAGE ==
Once upon a time, a mouse, a bird, and a sausage, entered into partnership and set up house together. For a long time all went well; they lived in great comfort, and prospered so far as to be able to add considerably to their stores. The bird’s duty was to fly daily into the wood and bring in fuel; the mouse fetched the water, and the sausage saw to the cooking.
When people are too well off they always begin to long for something new. And so it came to pass, that the bird, while out one day, met a fellow bird, to whom he boastfully expatiated on the excellence of his household arrangements. But the other bird sneered at him for being a poor simpleton, who did all the hard work, while the other two stayed at home and had a good time of it. For, when the mouse had made the fire and fetched in the water, she could retire into her little room and rest until it was time to set the table. The sausage had only to watch the pot to see that the food was properly cooked, and when it was near dinner-time, he just threw himself into the broth, or rolled in and out among the vegetables three or four times, and there they were, buttered, and salted, and ready to be served. Then, when the bird came home and had laid aside his burden, they sat down to table, and when they had finished their meal, they could sleep their fill till the following morning: and that was really a very delightful life.
Influenced by those remarks, the bird next morning refused to bring in the wood, telling the others that he had been their servant long enough, and had been a fool into the bargain, and that it was now time to make a change, and to try some other way of arranging the work. Beg and pray as the mouse and the sausage might, it was of no use; the bird remained master of the situation, and the venture had to be made. They therefore drew lots, and it fell to the sausage to bring in the wood, to the mouse to cook, and to the bird to fetch the water.
And now what happened? The sausage started in search of wood, the bird made the fire, and the mouse put on the pot, and then these two waited till the sausage returned with the fuel for the following day. But the sausage remained so long away, that they became uneasy, and the bird flew out to meet him. He had not flown far, however, when he came across a dog who, having met the sausage, had regarded him as his legitimate booty, and so seized and swallowed him. The bird complained to the dog of this bare-faced robbery, but nothing he said was of any avail, for the dog answered that he found false credentials on the sausage, and that was the reason his life had been forfeited.
He picked up the wood, and flew sadly home, and told the mouse all he had seen and heard. They were both very unhappy, but agreed to make the best of things and to remain with one another.
So now the bird set the table, and the mouse looked after the food and, wishing to prepare it in the same way as the sausage, by rolling in and out among the vegetables to salt and butter them, she jumped into the pot; but she stopped short long before she reached the bottom, having already parted not only with her skin and hair, but also with life.
Presently the bird came in and wanted to serve up the dinner, but he could nowhere see the cook. In his alarm and flurry, he threw the wood here and there about the floor, called and searched, but no cook was to be found. Then some of the wood that had been carelessly thrown down, caught fire and began to blaze. The bird hastened to fetch some water, but his pail fell into the well, and he after it, and as he was unable to recover himself, he was drowned.
== MOTHER HOLLE ==
Once upon a time there was a widow who had two daughters; one of them was beautiful and industrious, the other ugly and lazy. The mother, however, loved the ugly and lazy one best, because she was her own daughter, and so the other, who was only her stepdaughter, was made to do all the work of the house, and was quite the Cinderella of the family. Her stepmother sent her out every day to sit by the well in the high road, there to spin until she made her fingers bleed. Now it chanced one day that some blood fell on to the spindle, and as the girl stopped over the well to wash it off, the spindle suddenly sprang out of her hand and fell into the well. She ran home crying to tell of her misfortune, but her stepmother spoke harshly to her, and after giving her a violent scolding, said unkindly, ‘As you have let the spindle fall into the well you may go yourself and fetch it out.’
The girl went back to the well not knowing what to do, and at last in her distress she jumped into the water after the spindle.
She remembered nothing more until she awoke and found herself in a beautiful meadow, full of sunshine, and with countless flowers blooming in every direction.
She walked over the meadow, and presently she came upon a baker’s oven full of bread, and the loaves cried out to her, ‘Take us out, take us out, or alas! we shall be burnt to a cinder; we were baked through long ago.’ So she took the bread-shovel and drew them all out.
She went on a little farther, till she came to a tree full of apples. ‘Shake me, shake me, I pray,’ cried the tree; ‘my apples, one and all, are ripe.’ So she shook the tree, and the apples came falling down upon her like rain; but she continued shaking until there was not a single apple left upon it. Then she carefully gathered the apples together in a heap and walked on again.
The next thing she came to was a little house, and there she saw an old woman looking out, with such large teeth, that she was terrified, and turned to run away. But the old woman called after her, ‘What are you afraid of, dear child? Stay with me; if you will do the work of my house properly for me, I will make you very happy. You must be very careful, however, to make my bed in the right way, for I wish you always to shake it thoroughly, so that the feathers fly about; then they say, down there in the world, that it is snowing; for I am Mother Holle.’ The old woman spoke so kindly, that the girl summoned up courage and agreed to enter into her service.
She took care to do everything according to the old woman’s bidding and every time she made the bed she shook it with all her might, so that the feathers flew about like so many snowflakes. The old woman was as good as her word: she never spoke angrily to her, and gave her roast and boiled meats every day.
So she stayed on with Mother Holle for some time, and then she began to grow unhappy. She could not at first tell why she felt sad, but she became conscious at last of great longing to go home; then she knew she was homesick, although she was a thousand times better off with Mother Holle than with her mother and sister. After waiting awhile, she went to Mother Holle and said, ‘I am so homesick, that I cannot stay with you any longer, for although I am so happy here, I must return to my own people.’
Then Mother Holle said, ‘I am pleased that you should want to go back to your own people, and as you have served me so well and faithfully, I will take you home myself.’
Thereupon she led the girl by the hand up to a broad gateway. The gate was opened, and as the girl passed through, a shower of gold fell upon her, and the gold clung to her, so that she was covered with it from head to foot.
‘That is a reward for your industry,’ said Mother Holle, and as she spoke she handed her the spindle which she had dropped into the well.
The gate was then closed, and the girl found herself back in the old world close to her mother’s house. As she entered the courtyard, the cock who was perched on the well, called out:
 ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!
 Your golden daughter’s come back to you.’
Then she went in to her mother and sister, and as she was so richly covered with gold, they gave her a warm welcome. She related to them all that had happened, and when the mother heard how she had come by her great riches, she thought she should like her ugly, lazy daughter to go and try her fortune. So she made the sister go and sit by the well and spin, and the girl pricked her finger and thrust her hand into a thorn-bush, so that she might drop some blood on to the spindle; then she threw it into the well, and jumped in herself.
Like her sister she awoke in the beautiful meadow, and walked over it till she came to the oven. ‘Take us out, take us out, or alas! we shall be burnt to a cinder; we were baked through long ago,’ cried the loaves as before. But the lazy girl answered, ‘Do you think I am going to dirty my hands for you?’ and walked on.
Presently she came to the apple-tree. ‘Shake me, shake me, I pray; my apples, one and all, are ripe,’ it cried. But she only answered, ‘A nice thing to ask me to do, one of the apples might fall on my head,’ and passed on.
At last she came to Mother Holle’s house, and as she had heard all about the large teeth from her sister, she was not afraid of them, and engaged herself without delay to the old woman.
The first day she was very obedient and industrious, and exerted herself to please Mother Holle, for she thought of the gold she should get in return. The next day, however, she began to dawdle over her work, and the third day she was more idle still; then she began to lie in bed in the mornings and refused to get up. Worse still, she neglected to make the old woman’s bed properly, and forgot to shake it so that the feathers might fly about. So Mother Holle very soon got tired of her, and told her she might go. The lazy girl was delighted at this, and thought to herself, ‘The gold will soon be mine.’ Mother Holle led her, as she had led her sister, to the broad gateway; but as she was passing through, instead of the shower of gold, a great bucketful of pitch came pouring over her.
‘That is in return for your services,’ said the old woman, and she shut the gate.
So the lazy girl had to go home covered with pitch, and the cock on the well called out as she saw her:
 ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!
 Your dirty daughter’s come back to you.’
But, try what she would, she could not get the pitch off and it stuck to her as long as she lived.
==LITTLE RED-CAP [LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD] ==
Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else; so she was always called ‘Little Red-Cap.’
One day her mother said to her: ‘Come, Little Red-Cap, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine; take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing; and when you go into her room, don’t forget to say, “Good morning”, and don’t peep into every corner before you do it.’
‘I will take great care,’ said Little Red-Cap to her mother, and gave her hand on it.
The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village, and just as Little Red-Cap entered the wood, a wolf met her. Red-Cap did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.
‘Good day, Little Red-Cap,’ said he.
‘Thank you kindly, wolf.’
‘Whither away so early, Little Red-Cap?’
‘To my grandmother’s.’
‘What have you got in your apron?’
‘Cake and wine; yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger.’
‘Where does your grandmother live, Little Red-Cap?’
‘A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood; her house stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below; you surely must know it,’ replied Little Red-Cap.
The wolf thought to himself: ‘What a tender young creature! what a nice plump mouthful—she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both.’ So he walked for a short time by the side of Little Red-Cap, and then he said: ‘See, Little Red-Cap, how pretty the flowers are about here—why do you not look round? I believe, too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing; you walk gravely along as if you were going to school, while everything else out here in the wood is merry.’
Little Red-Cap raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere, she thought: ‘Suppose I take grandmother a fresh nosegay; that would please her too. It is so early in the day that I shall still get there in good time’; and so she ran from the path into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper into the wood.
Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother’s house and knocked at the door.
‘Who is there?’
‘Little Red-Cap,’ replied the wolf. ‘She is bringing cake and wine; open the door.’
‘Lift the latch,’ called out the grandmother, ‘I am too weak, and cannot get up.’
The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the grandmother’s bed, and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.
Little Red-Cap, however, had been running about picking flowers, and when she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on the way to her.
She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself: ‘Oh dear! how uneasy I feel today, and at other times I like being with grandmother so much.’ She called out: ‘Good morning,’ but received no answer; so she went to the bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face, and looking very strange.
‘Oh! grandmother,’ she said, ‘what big ears you have!’
‘The better to hear you with, my child,’ was the reply.
‘But, grandmother, what big eyes you have!’ she said.
‘The better to see you with, my dear.’
‘But, grandmother, what large hands you have!’
‘The better to hug you with.’
‘Oh! but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have!’
‘The better to eat you with!’
And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up Red-Cap.
When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he lay down again in the bed, fell asleep and began to snore very loud. The huntsman was just passing the house, and thought to himself: ‘How the old woman is snoring! I must just see if she wants anything.’ So he went into the room, and when he came to the bed, he saw that the wolf was lying in it. ‘Do I find you here, you old sinner!’ said he. ‘I have long sought you!’ Then just as he was going to fire at him, it occurred to him that the wolf might have devoured the grandmother, and that she might still be saved, so he did not fire, but took a pair of scissors, and began to cut open the stomach of the sleeping wolf. When he had made two snips, he saw the little Red-Cap shining, and then he made two snips more, and the little girl sprang out, crying: ‘Ah, how frightened I have been! How dark it was inside the wolf’; and after that the aged grandmother came out alive also, but scarcely able to breathe. Red-Cap, however, quickly fetched great stones with which they filled the wolf’s belly, and when he awoke, he wanted to run away, but the stones were so heavy that he collapsed at once, and fell dead.
Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf’s skin and went home with it; the grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine which Red-Cap had brought, and revived, but Red-Cap thought to herself: ‘As long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.’
It also related that once when Red-Cap was again taking cakes to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and tried to entice her from the path. Red-Cap, however, was on her guard, and went straight forward on her way, and told her grandmother that she had met the wolf, and that he had said ‘good morning’ to her, but with such a wicked look in his eyes, that if they had not been on the public road she was certain he would have eaten her up. ‘Well,’ said the grandmother, ‘we will shut the door, that he may not come in.’ Soon afterwards the wolf knocked, and cried: ‘Open the door, grandmother, I am Little Red-Cap, and am bringing you some cakes.’ But they did not speak, or open the door, so the grey-beard stole twice or thrice round the house, and at last jumped on the roof, intending to wait until Red-Cap went home in the evening, and then to steal after her and devour her in the darkness. But the grandmother saw what was in his thoughts. In front of the house was a great stone trough, so she said to the child: ‘Take the pail, Red-Cap; I made some sausages yesterday, so carry the water in which I boiled them to the trough.’ Red-Cap carried until the great trough was quite full. Then the smell of the sausages reached the wolf, and he sniffed and peeped down, and at last stretched out his neck so far that he could no longer keep his footing and began to slip, and slipped down from the roof straight into the great trough, and was drowned. But Red-Cap went joyously home, and no one ever did anything to harm her again.
== THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM ==
There was once a miller who had one beautiful daughter, and as she was grown up, he was anxious that she should be well married and provided for. He said to himself, ‘I will give her to the first suitable man who comes and asks for her hand.’ Not long after a suitor appeared, and as he appeared to be very rich and the miller could see nothing in him with which to find fault, he betrothed his daughter to him. But the girl did not care for the man as a girl ought to care for her betrothed husband. She did not feel that she could trust him, and she could not look at him nor think of him without an inward shudder. One day he said to her, ‘You have not yet paid me a visit, although we have been betrothed for some time.’ ‘I do not know where your house is,’ she answered. ‘My house is out there in the dark forest,’ he said. She tried to excuse herself by saying that she would not be able to find the way thither. Her betrothed only replied, ‘You must come and see me next Sunday; I have already invited guests for that day, and that you may not mistake the way, I will strew ashes along the path.’
When Sunday came, and it was time for the girl to start, a feeling of dread came over her which she could not explain, and that she might be able to find her path again, she filled her pockets with peas and lentils to sprinkle on the ground as she went along. On reaching the entrance to the forest she found the path strewed with ashes, and these she followed, throwing down some peas on either side of her at every step she took. She walked the whole day until she came to the deepest, darkest part of the forest. There she saw a lonely house, looking so grim and mysterious, that it did not please her at all. She stepped inside, but not a soul was to be seen, and a great silence reigned throughout. Suddenly a voice cried:
 ‘Turn back, turn back, young maiden fair,
 Linger not in this murderers’ lair.’
The girl looked up and saw that the voice came from a bird hanging in a cage on the wall. Again it cried:
 ‘Turn back, turn back, young maiden fair,
 Linger not in this murderers’ lair.’
The girl passed on, going from room to room of the house, but they were all empty, and still she saw no one. At last she came to the cellar, and there sat a very, very old woman, who could not keep her head from shaking. ‘Can you tell me,’ asked the girl, ‘if my betrothed husband lives here?’
‘Ah, you poor child,’ answered the old woman, ‘what a place for you to come to! This is a murderers’ den. You think yourself a promised bride, and that your marriage will soon take place, but it is with death that you will keep your marriage feast. Look, do you see that large cauldron of water which I am obliged to keep on the fire! As soon as they have you in their power they will kill you without mercy, and cook and eat you, for they are eaters of men. If I did not take pity on you and save you, you would be lost.’
Thereupon the old woman led her behind a large cask, which quite hid her from view. ‘Keep as still as a mouse,’ she said; ‘do not move or speak, or it will be all over with you. Tonight, when the robbers are all asleep, we will flee together. I have long been waiting for an opportunity to escape.’
The words were hardly out of her mouth when the godless crew returned, dragging another young girl along with them. They were all drunk, and paid no heed to her cries and lamentations. They gave her wine to drink, three glasses full, one of white wine, one of red, and one of yellow, and with that her heart gave way and she died. Then they tore off her dainty clothing, laid her on a table, and cut her beautiful body into pieces, and sprinkled salt upon it.
The poor betrothed girl crouched trembling and shuddering behind the cask, for she saw what a terrible fate had been intended for her by the robbers. One of them now noticed a gold ring still remaining on the little finger of the murdered girl, and as he could not draw it off easily, he took a hatchet and cut off the finger; but the finger sprang into the air, and fell behind the cask into the lap of the girl who was hiding there. The robber took a light and began looking for it, but he could not find it. ‘Have you looked behind the large cask?’ said one of the others. But the old woman called out, ‘Come and eat your suppers, and let the thing be till tomorrow; the finger won’t run away.’
‘The old woman is right,’ said the robbers, and they ceased looking for the finger and sat down.
The old woman then mixed a sleeping draught with their wine, and before long they were all lying on the floor of the cellar, fast asleep and snoring. As soon as the girl was assured of this, she came from behind the cask. She was obliged to step over the bodies of the sleepers, who were lying close together, and every moment she was filled with renewed dread lest she should awaken them. But God helped her, so that she passed safely over them, and then she and the old woman went upstairs, opened the door, and hastened as fast as they could from the murderers’ den. They found the ashes scattered by the wind, but the peas and lentils had sprouted, and grown sufficiently above the ground, to guide them in the moonlight along the path. All night long they walked, and it was morning before they reached the mill. Then the girl told her father all that had happened.
The day came that had been fixed for the marriage. The bridegroom arrived and also a large company of guests, for the miller had taken care to invite all his friends and relations. As they sat at the feast, each guest in turn was asked to tell a tale; the bride sat still and did not say a word.
‘And you, my love,’ said the bridegroom, turning to her, ‘is there no tale you know? Tell us something.’
‘I will tell you a dream, then,’ said the bride. ‘I went alone through a forest and came at last to a house; not a soul could I find within, but a bird that was hanging in a cage on the wall cried:
 ‘Turn back, turn back, young maiden fair,
 Linger not in this murderers’ lair.’
And again a second time it said these words.’
‘My darling, this is only a dream.’
‘I went on through the house from room to room, but they were all empty, and everything was so grim and mysterious. At last I went down to the cellar, and there sat a very, very old woman, who could not keep her head still. I asked her if my betrothed lived here, and she answered, “Ah, you poor child, you are come to a murderers’ den; your betrothed does indeed live here, but he will kill you without mercy and afterwards cook and eat you.”’
‘My darling, this is only a dream.’
‘The old woman hid me behind a large cask, and scarcely had she done this when the robbers returned home, dragging a young girl along with them. They gave her three kinds of wine to drink, white, red, and yellow, and with that she died.’
‘My darling, this is only a dream.’
‘Then they tore off her dainty clothing, and cut her beautiful body into pieces and sprinkled salt upon it.’
‘My darling, this is only a dream.’
‘And one of the robbers saw that there was a gold ring still left on her finger, and as it was difficult to draw off, he took a hatchet and cut off her finger; but the finger sprang into the air and fell behind the great cask into my lap. And here is the finger with the ring.’ And with these words the bride drew forth the finger and shewed it to the assembled guests.
The bridegroom, who during this recital had grown deadly pale, up and tried to escape, but the guests seized him and held him fast. They delivered him up to justice, and he and all his murderous band were condemned to death for their wicked deeds.
== TOM THUMB ==
A poor woodman sat in his cottage one night, smoking his pipe by the fireside, while his wife sat by his side spinning. ‘How lonely it is, wife,’ said he, as he puffed out a long curl of smoke, ‘for you and me to sit here by ourselves, without any children to play about and amuse us while other people seem so happy and merry with their children!’ ‘What you say is very true,’ said the wife, sighing, and turning round her wheel; ‘how happy should I be if I had but one child! If it were ever so small—nay, if it were no bigger than my thumb—I should be very happy, and love it dearly.’ Now—odd as you may think it—it came to pass that this good woman’s wish was fulfilled, just in the very way she had wished it; for, not long afterwards, she had a little boy, who was quite healthy and strong, but was not much bigger than my thumb. So they said, ‘Well, we cannot say we have not got what we wished for, and, little as he is, we will love him dearly.’ And they called him Thomas Thumb.
They gave him plenty of food, yet for all they could do he never grew bigger, but kept just the same size as he had been when he was born. Still, his eyes were sharp and sparkling, and he soon showed himself to be a clever little fellow, who always knew well what he was about.
One day, as the woodman was getting ready to go into the wood to cut fuel, he said, ‘I wish I had someone to bring the cart after me, for I want to make haste.’ ‘Oh, father,’ cried Tom, ‘I will take care of that; the cart shall be in the wood by the time you want it.’ Then the woodman laughed, and said, ‘How can that be? you cannot reach up to the horse’s bridle.’ ‘Never mind that, father,’ said Tom; ‘if my mother will only harness the horse, I will get into his ear and tell him which way to go.’ ‘Well,’ said the father, ‘we will try for once.’
When the time came the mother harnessed the horse to the cart, and put Tom into his ear; and as he sat there the little man told the beast how to go, crying out, ‘Go on!’ and ‘Stop!’ as he wanted: and thus the horse went on just as well as if the woodman had driven it himself into the wood. It happened that as the horse was going a little too fast, and Tom was calling out, ‘Gently! gently!’ two strangers came up. ‘What an odd thing that is!’ said one: ‘there is a cart going along, and I hear a carter talking to the horse, but yet I can see no one.’ ‘That is queer, indeed,’ said the other; ‘let us follow the cart, and see where it goes.’ So they went on into the wood, till at last they came to the place where the woodman was. Then Tom Thumb, seeing his father, cried out, ‘See, father, here I am with the cart, all right and safe! now take me down!’ So his father took hold of the horse with one hand, and with the other took his son out of the horse’s ear, and put him down upon a straw, where he sat as merry as you please.
The two strangers were all this time looking on, and did not know what to say for wonder. At last one took the other aside, and said, ‘That little urchin will make our fortune, if we can get him, and carry him about from town to town as a show; we must buy him.’ So they went up to the woodman, and asked him what he would take for the little man. ‘He will be better off,’ said they, ‘with us than with you.’ ‘I won’t sell him at all,’ said the father; ‘my own flesh and blood is dearer to me than all the silver and gold in the world.’ But Tom, hearing of the bargain they wanted to make, crept up his father’s coat to his shoulder and whispered in his ear, ‘Take the money, father, and let them have me; I’ll soon come back to you.’
So the woodman at last said he would sell Tom to the strangers for a large piece of gold, and they paid the price. ‘Where would you like to sit?’ said one of them. ‘Oh, put me on the rim of your hat; that will be a nice gallery for me; I can walk about there and see the country as we go along.’ So they did as he wished; and when Tom had taken leave of his father they took him away with them.
They journeyed on till it began to be dusky, and then the little man said, ‘Let me get down, I’m tired.’ So the man took off his hat, and put him down on a clod of earth, in a ploughed field by the side of the road. But Tom ran about amongst the furrows, and at last slipped into an old mouse-hole. ‘Good night, my masters!’ said he, ‘I’m off! mind and look sharp after me the next time.’ Then they ran at once to the place, and poked the ends of their sticks into the mouse-hole, but all in vain; Tom only crawled farther and farther in; and at last it became quite dark, so that they were forced to go their way without their prize, as sulky as could be.
When Tom found they were gone, he came out of his hiding-place. ‘What dangerous walking it is,’ said he, ‘in this ploughed field! If I were to fall from one of these great clods, I should undoubtedly break my neck.’ At last, by good luck, he found a large empty snail-shell. ‘This is lucky,’ said he, ‘I can sleep here very well’; and in he crept.
Just as he was falling asleep, he heard two men passing by, chatting together; and one said to the other, ‘How can we rob that rich parson’s house of his silver and gold?’ ‘I’ll tell you!’ cried Tom. ‘What noise was that?’ said the thief, frightened; ‘I’m sure I heard someone speak.’ They stood still listening, and Tom said, ‘Take me with you, and I’ll soon show you how to get the parson’s money.’ ‘But where are you?’ said they. ‘Look about on the ground,’ answered he, ‘and listen where the sound comes from.’ At last the thieves found him out, and lifted him up in their hands. ‘You little urchin!’ they said, ‘what can you do for us?’ ‘Why, I can get between the iron window-bars of the parson’s house, and throw you out whatever you want.’ ‘That’s a good thought,’ said the thieves; ‘come along, we shall see what you can do.’
When they came to the parson’s house, Tom slipped through the window-bars into the room, and then called out as loud as he could bawl, ‘Will you have all that is here?’ At this the thieves were frightened, and said, ‘Softly, softly! Speak low, that you may not awaken anybody.’ But Tom seemed as if he did not understand them, and bawled out again, ‘How much will you have? Shall I throw it all out?’ Now the cook lay in the next room; and hearing a noise she raised herself up in her bed and listened. Meantime the thieves were frightened, and ran off a little way; but at last they plucked up their hearts, and said, ‘The little urchin is only trying to make fools of us.’ So they came back and whispered softly to him, saying, ‘Now let us have no more of your roguish jokes; but throw us out some of the money.’ Then Tom called out as loud as he could, ‘Very well! hold your hands! here it comes.’
The cook heard this quite plain, so she sprang out of bed, and ran to open the door. The thieves ran off as if a wolf was at their tails: and the maid, having groped about and found nothing, went away for a light. By the time she came back, Tom had slipped off into the barn; and when she had looked about and searched every hole and corner, and found nobody, she went to bed, thinking she must have been dreaming with her eyes open.
The little man crawled about in the hay-loft, and at last found a snug place to finish his night’s rest in; so he laid himself down, meaning to sleep till daylight, and then find his way home to his father and mother. But alas! how woefully he was undone! what crosses and sorrows happen to us all in this world! The cook got up early, before daybreak, to feed the cows; and going straight to the hay-loft, carried away a large bundle of hay, with the little man in the middle of it, fast asleep. He still, however, slept on, and did not awake till he found himself in the mouth of the cow; for the cook had put the hay into the cow’s rick, and the cow had taken Tom up in a mouthful of it. ‘Good lack-a-day!’ said he, ‘how came I to tumble into the mill?’ But he soon found out where he really was; and was forced to have all his wits about him, that he might not get between the cow’s teeth, and so be crushed to death. At last down he went into her stomach. ‘It is rather dark,’ said he; ‘they forgot to build windows in this room to let the sun in; a candle would be no bad thing.’
Though he made the best of his bad luck, he did not like his quarters at all; and the worst of it was, that more and more hay was always coming down, and the space left for him became smaller and smaller. At last he cried out as loud as he could, ‘Don’t bring me any more hay! Don’t bring me any more hay!’
The maid happened to be just then milking the cow; and hearing someone speak, but seeing nobody, and yet being quite sure it was the same voice that she had heard in the night, she was so frightened that she fell off her stool, and overset the milk-pail. As soon as she could pick herself up out of the dirt, she ran off as fast as she could to her master the parson, and said, ‘Sir, sir, the cow is talking!’ But the parson said, ‘Woman, thou art surely mad!’ However, he went with her into the cow-house, to try and see what was the matter.
Scarcely had they set foot on the threshold, when Tom called out, ‘Don’t bring me any more hay!’ Then the parson himself was frightened; and thinking the cow was surely bewitched, told his man to kill her on the spot. So the cow was killed, and cut up; and the stomach, in which Tom lay, was thrown out upon a dunghill.
Tom soon set himself to work to get out, which was not a very easy task; but at last, just as he had made room to get his head out, fresh ill-luck befell him. A hungry wolf sprang out, and swallowed up the whole stomach, with Tom in it, at one gulp, and ran away.
Tom, however, was still not disheartened; and thinking the wolf would not dislike having some chat with him as he was going along, he called out, ‘My good friend, I can show you a famous treat.’ ‘Where’s that?’ said the wolf. ‘In such and such a house,’ said Tom, describing his own father’s house. ‘You can crawl through the drain into the kitchen and then into the pantry, and there you will find cakes, ham, beef, cold chicken, roast pig, apple-dumplings, and everything that your heart can wish.’
The wolf did not want to be asked twice; so that very night he went to the house and crawled through the drain into the kitchen, and then into the pantry, and ate and drank there to his heart’s content. As soon as he had had enough he wanted to get away; but he had eaten so much that he could not go out by the same way he came in.
This was just what Tom had reckoned upon; and now he began to set up a great shout, making all the noise he could. ‘Will you be easy?’ said the wolf; ‘you’ll awaken everybody in the house if you make such a clatter.’ ‘What’s that to me?’ said the little man; ‘you have had your frolic, now I’ve a mind to be merry myself’; and he began, singing and shouting as loud as he could.
The woodman and his wife, being awakened by the noise, peeped through a crack in the door; but when they saw a wolf was there, you may well suppose that they were sadly frightened; and the woodman ran for his axe, and gave his wife a scythe. ‘Do you stay behind,’ said the woodman, ‘and when I have knocked him on the head you must rip him up with the scythe.’ Tom heard all this, and cried out, ‘Father, father! I am here, the wolf has swallowed me.’ And his father said, ‘Heaven be praised! we have found our dear child again’; and he told his wife not to use the scythe for fear she should hurt him. Then he aimed a great blow, and struck the wolf on the head, and killed him on the spot! and when he was dead they cut open his body, and set Tommy free. ‘Ah!’ said the father, ‘what fears we have had for you!’ ‘Yes, father,’ answered he; ‘I have travelled all over the world, I think, in one way or other, since we parted; and now I am very glad to come home and get fresh air again.’ ‘Why, where have you been?’ said his father. ‘I have been in a mouse-hole—and in a snail-shell—and down a cow’s throat—and in the wolf’s belly; and yet here I am again, safe and sound.’
‘Well,’ said they, ‘you are come back, and we will not sell you again for all the riches in the world.’
Then they hugged and kissed their dear little son, and gave him plenty to eat and drink, for he was very hungry; and then they fetched new clothes for him, for his old ones had been quite spoiled on his journey. So Master Thumb stayed at home with his father and mother, in peace; for though he had been so great a traveller, and had done and seen so many fine things, and was fond enough of telling the whole story, he always agreed that, after all, there’s no place like HOME!
== RUMPELSTILTSKIN ==
By the side of a wood, in a country a long way off, ran a fine stream of water; and upon the stream there stood a mill. The miller’s house was close by, and the miller, you must know, had a very beautiful daughter. She was, moreover, very shrewd and clever; and the miller was so proud of her, that he one day told the king of the land, who used to come and hunt in the wood, that his daughter could spin gold out of straw. Now this king was very fond of money; and when he heard the miller’s boast his greediness was raised, and he sent for the girl to be brought before him. Then he led her to a chamber in his palace where there was a great heap of straw, and gave her a spinning-wheel, and said, ‘All this must be spun into gold before morning, as you love your life.’ It was in vain that the poor maiden said that it was only a silly boast of her father, for that she could do no such thing as spin straw into gold: the chamber door was locked, and she was left alone.
She sat down in one corner of the room, and began to bewail her hard fate; when on a sudden the door opened, and a droll-looking little man hobbled in, and said, ‘Good morrow to you, my good lass; what are you weeping for?’ ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘I must spin this straw into gold, and I know not how.’ ‘What will you give me,’ said the hobgoblin, ‘to do it for you?’ ‘My necklace,’ replied the maiden. He took her at her word, and sat himself down to the wheel, and whistled and sang:
 ‘Round about, round about,
 Lo and behold!
 Reel away, reel away,
 Straw into gold!’
And round about the wheel went merrily; the work was quickly done, and the straw was all spun into gold.
When the king came and saw this, he was greatly astonished and pleased; but his heart grew still more greedy of gain, and he shut up the poor miller’s daughter again with a fresh task. Then she knew not what to do, and sat down once more to weep; but the dwarf soon opened the door, and said, ‘What will you give me to do your task?’ ‘The ring on my finger,’ said she. So her little friend took the ring, and began to work at the wheel again, and whistled and sang:
 ‘Round about, round about,
 Lo and behold!
 Reel away, reel away,
 Straw into gold!’
till, long before morning, all was done again.
The king was greatly delighted to see all this glittering treasure; but still he had not enough: so he took the miller’s daughter to a yet larger heap, and said, ‘All this must be spun tonight; and if it is, you shall be my queen.’ As soon as she was alone that dwarf came in, and said, ‘What will you give me to spin gold for you this third time?’ ‘I have nothing left,’ said she. ‘Then say you will give me,’ said the little man, ‘the first little child that you may have when you are queen.’ ‘That may never be,’ thought the miller’s daughter: and as she knew no other way to get her task done, she said she would do what he asked. Round went the wheel again to the old song, and the manikin once more spun the heap into gold. The king came in the morning, and, finding all he wanted, was forced to keep his word; so he married the miller’s daughter, and she really became queen.
At the birth of her first little child she was very glad, and forgot the dwarf, and what she had said. But one day he came into her room, where she was sitting playing with her baby, and put her in mind of it. Then she grieved sorely at her misfortune, and said she would give him all the wealth of the kingdom if he would let her off, but in vain; till at last her tears softened him, and he said, ‘I will give you three days’ grace, and if during that time you tell me my name, you shall keep your child.’
Now the queen lay awake all night, thinking of all the odd names that she had ever heard; and she sent messengers all over the land to find out new ones. The next day the little man came, and she began with TIMOTHY, ICHABOD, BENJAMIN, JEREMIAH, and all the names she could remember; but to all and each of them he said, ‘Madam, that is not my name.’
The second day she began with all the comical names she could hear of, BANDY-LEGS, HUNCHBACK, CROOK-SHANKS, and so on; but the little gentleman still said to every one of them, ‘Madam, that is not my name.’
The third day one of the messengers came back, and said, ‘I have travelled two days without hearing of any other names; but yesterday, as I was climbing a high hill, among the trees of the forest where the fox and the hare bid each other good night, I saw a little hut; and before the hut burnt a fire; and round about the fire a funny little dwarf was dancing upon one leg, and singing:
 “Merrily the feast I’ll make.
 Today I’ll brew, tomorrow bake;
 Merrily I’ll dance and sing,
 For next day will a stranger bring.
 Little does my lady dream
 Rumpelstiltskin is my name!”
 
When the queen heard this she jumped for joy, and as soon as her little friend came she sat down upon her throne, and called all her court round to enjoy the fun; and the nurse stood by her side with the baby in her arms, as if it was quite ready to be given up. Then the little man began to chuckle at the thought of having the poor child, to take home with him to his hut in the woods; and he cried out, ‘Now, lady, what is my name?’ ‘Is it JOHN?’ asked she. ‘No, madam!’ ‘Is it TOM?’ ‘No, madam!’ ‘Is it JEMMY?’ ‘It is not.’ ‘Can your name be RUMPELSTILTSKIN?’ said the lady slyly. ‘Some witch told you that!—some witch told you that!’ cried the little man, and dashed his right foot in a rage so deep into the floor, that he was forced to lay hold of it with both hands to pull it out.
Then he made the best of his way off, while the nurse laughed and the baby crowed; and all the court jeered at him for having had so much trouble for nothing, and said, ‘We wish you a very good morning, and a merry feast, Mr RUMPLESTILTSKIN!’
== CLEVER GRETEL ==
There was once a cook named Gretel, who wore shoes with red heels, and when she walked out with them on, she turned herself this way and that, was quite happy and thought: ‘You certainly are a pretty girl!’ And when she came home she drank, in her gladness of heart, a draught of wine, and as wine excites a desire to eat, she tasted the best of whatever she was cooking until she was satisfied, and said: ‘The cook must know what the food is like.’
It came to pass that the master one day said to her: ‘Gretel, there is a guest coming this evening; prepare me two fowls very daintily.’ ‘I will see to it, master,’ answered Gretel. She killed two fowls, scalded them, plucked them, put them on the spit, and towards evening set them before the fire, that they might roast. The fowls began to turn brown, and were nearly ready, but the guest had not yet arrived. Then Gretel called out to her master: ‘If the guest does not come, I must take the fowls away from the fire, but it will be a sin and a shame if they are not eaten the moment they are at their juiciest.’ The master said: ‘I will run myself, and fetch the guest.’ When the master had turned his back, Gretel laid the spit with the fowls on one side, and thought: ‘Standing so long by the fire there, makes one sweat and thirsty; who knows when they will come? Meanwhile, I will run into the cellar, and take a drink.’ She ran down, set a jug, said: ‘God bless it for you, Gretel,’ and took a good drink, and thought that wine should flow on, and should not be interrupted, and took yet another hearty draught.
Then she went and put the fowls down again to the fire, basted them, and drove the spit merrily round. But as the roast meat smelt so good, Gretel thought: ‘Something might be wrong, it ought to be tasted!’ She touched it with her finger, and said: ‘Ah! how good fowls are! It certainly is a sin and a shame that they are not eaten at the right time!’ She ran to the window, to see if the master was not coming with his guest, but she saw no one, and went back to the fowls and thought: ‘One of the wings is burning! I had better take it off and eat it.’ So she cut it off, ate it, and enjoyed it, and when she had done, she thought: ‘The other must go down too, or else master will observe that something is missing.’ When the two wings were eaten, she went and looked for her master, and did not see him. It suddenly occurred to her: ‘Who knows? They are perhaps not coming at all, and have turned in somewhere.’ Then she said: ‘Well, Gretel, enjoy yourself, one fowl has been cut into, take another drink, and eat it up entirely; when it is eaten you will have some peace, why should God’s good gifts be spoilt?’ So she ran into the cellar again, took an enormous drink and ate up the one chicken in great glee. When one of the chickens was swallowed down, and still her master did not come, Gretel looked at the other and said: ‘What one is, the other should be likewise, the two go together; what’s right for the one is right for the other; I think if I were to take another draught it would do me no harm.’ So she took another hearty drink, and let the second chicken follow the first.
While she was making the most of it, her master came and cried: ‘Hurry up, Gretel, the guest is coming directly after me!’ ‘Yes, sir, I will soon serve up,’ answered Gretel. Meantime the master looked to see that the table was properly laid, and took the great knife, wherewith he was going to carve the chickens, and sharpened it on the steps. Presently the guest came, and knocked politely and courteously at the house-door. Gretel ran, and looked to see who was there, and when she saw the guest, she put her finger to her lips and said: ‘Hush! hush! go away as quickly as you can, if my master catches you it will be the worse for you; he certainly did ask you to supper, but his intention is to cut off your two ears. Just listen how he is sharpening the knife for it!’ The guest heard the sharpening, and hurried down the steps again as fast as he could. Gretel was not idle; she ran screaming to her master, and cried: ‘You have invited a fine guest!’ ‘Why, Gretel? What do you mean by that?’ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘he has taken the chickens which I was just going to serve up, off the dish, and has run away with them!’ ‘That’s a nice trick!’ said her master, and lamented the fine chickens. ‘If he had but left me one, so that something remained for me to eat.’ He called to him to stop, but the guest pretended not to hear. Then he ran after him with the knife still in his hand, crying: ‘Just one, just one,’ meaning that the guest should leave him just one chicken, and not take both. The guest, however, thought no otherwise than that he was to give up one of his ears, and ran as if fire were burning under him, in order to take them both with him.
== THE OLD MAN AND HIS GRANDSON ==
There was once a very old man, whose eyes had become dim, his ears dull of hearing, his knees trembled, and when he sat at table he could hardly hold the spoon, and spilt the broth upon the table-cloth or let it run out of his mouth. His son and his son’s wife were disgusted at this, so the old grandfather at last had to sit in the corner behind the stove, and they gave him his food in an earthenware bowl, and not even enough of it. And he used to look towards the table with his eyes full of tears. Once, too, his trembling hands could not hold the bowl, and it fell to the ground and broke. The young wife scolded him, but he said nothing and only sighed. Then they brought him a wooden bowl for a few half-pence, out of which he had to eat.
They were once sitting thus when the little grandson of four years old began to gather together some bits of wood upon the ground. ‘What are you doing there?’ asked the father. ‘I am making a little trough,’ answered the child, ‘for father and mother to eat out of when I am big.’
The man and his wife looked at each other for a while, and presently began to cry. Then they took the old grandfather to the table, and henceforth always let him eat with them, and likewise said nothing if he did spill a little of anything.
== THE LITTLE PEASANT ==
There was a certain village wherein no one lived but really rich peasants, and just one poor one, whom they called the little peasant. He had not even so much as a cow, and still less money to buy one, and yet he and his wife did so wish to have one. One day he said to her: ‘Listen, I have a good idea, there is our gossip the carpenter, he shall make us a wooden calf, and paint it brown, so that it looks like any other, and in time it will certainly get big and be a cow.’ the woman also liked the idea, and their gossip the carpenter cut and planed the calf, and painted it as it ought to be, and made it with its head hanging down as if it were eating.
Next morning when the cows were being driven out, the little peasant called the cow-herd in and said: ‘Look, I have a little calf there, but it is still small and has to be carried.’ The cow-herd said: ‘All right,’ and took it in his arms and carried it to the pasture, and set it among the grass. The little calf always remained standing like one which was eating, and the cow-herd said: ‘It will soon run by itself, just look how it eats already!’ At night when he was going to drive the herd home again, he said to the calf: ‘If you can stand there and eat your fill, you can also go on your four legs; I don’t care to drag you home again in my arms.’ But the little peasant stood at his door, and waited for his little calf, and when the cow-herd drove the cows through the village, and the calf was missing, he inquired where it was. The cow-herd answered: ‘It is still standing out there eating. It would not stop and come with us.’ But the little peasant said: ‘Oh, but I must have my beast back again.’ Then they went back to the meadow together, but someone had stolen the calf, and it was gone. The cow-herd said: ‘It must have run away.’ The peasant, however, said: ‘Don’t tell me that,’ and led the cow-herd before the mayor, who for his carelessness condemned him to give the peasant a cow for the calf which had run away.
And now the little peasant and his wife had the cow for which they had so long wished, and they were heartily glad, but they had no food for it, and could give it nothing to eat, so it soon had to be killed. They salted the flesh, and the peasant went into the town and wanted to sell the skin there, so that he might buy a new calf with the proceeds. On the way he passed by a mill, and there sat a raven with broken wings, and out of pity he took him and wrapped him in the skin. But as the weather grew so bad and there was a storm of rain and wind, he could go no farther, and turned back to the mill and begged for shelter. The miller’s wife was alone in the house, and said to the peasant: ‘Lay yourself on the straw there,’ and gave him a slice of bread and cheese. The peasant ate it, and lay down with his skin beside him, and the woman thought: ‘He is tired and has gone to sleep.’ In the meantime came the parson; the miller’s wife received him well, and said: ‘My husband is out, so we will have a feast.’ The peasant listened, and when he heard them talk about feasting he was vexed that he had been forced to make shift with a slice of bread and cheese. Then the woman served up four different things, roast meat, salad, cakes, and wine.
Just as they were about to sit down and eat, there was a knocking outside. The woman said: ‘Oh, heavens! It is my husband!’ she quickly hid the roast meat inside the tiled stove, the wine under the pillow, the salad on the bed, the cakes under it, and the parson in the closet on the porch. Then she opened the door for her husband, and said: ‘Thank heaven, you are back again! There is such a storm, it looks as if the world were coming to an end.’ The miller saw the peasant lying on the straw, and asked, ‘What is that fellow doing there?’ ‘Ah,’ said the wife, ‘the poor knave came in the storm and rain, and begged for shelter, so I gave him a bit of bread and cheese, and showed him where the straw was.’ The man said: ‘I have no objection, but be quick and get me something to eat.’ The woman said: ‘But I have nothing but bread and cheese.’ ‘I am contented with anything,’ replied the husband, ‘so far as I am concerned, bread and cheese will do,’ and looked at the peasant and said: ‘Come and eat some more with me.’ The peasant did not require to be invited twice, but got up and ate. After this the miller saw the skin in which the raven was, lying on the ground, and asked: ‘What have you there?’ The peasant answered: ‘I have a soothsayer inside it.’ ‘Can he foretell anything to me?’ said the miller. ‘Why not?’ answered the peasant: ‘but he only says four things, and the fifth he keeps to himself.’ The miller was curious, and said: ‘Let him foretell something for once.’ Then the peasant pinched the raven’s head, so that he croaked and made a noise like krr, krr. The miller said: ‘What did he say?’ The peasant answered: ‘In the first place, he says that there is some wine hidden under the pillow.’ ‘Bless me!’ cried the miller, and went there and found the wine. ‘Now go on,’ said he. The peasant made the raven croak again, and said: ‘In the second place, he says that there is some roast meat in the tiled stove.’ ‘Upon my word!’ cried the miller, and went thither, and found the roast meat. The peasant made the raven prophesy still more, and said: ‘Thirdly, he says that there is some salad on the bed.’ ‘That would be a fine thing!’ cried the miller, and went there and found the salad. At last the peasant pinched the raven once more till he croaked, and said: ‘Fourthly, he says that there are some cakes under the bed.’ ‘That would be a fine thing!’ cried the miller, and looked there, and found the cakes.
And now the two sat down to the table together, but the miller’s wife was frightened to death, and went to bed and took all the keys with her. The miller would have liked much to know the fifth, but the little peasant said: ‘First, we will quickly eat the four things, for the fifth is something bad.’ So they ate, and after that they bargained how much the miller was to give for the fifth prophecy, until they agreed on three hundred talers. Then the peasant once more pinched the raven’s head till he croaked loudly. The miller asked: ‘What did he say?’ The peasant replied: ‘He says that the Devil is hiding outside there in the closet on the porch.’ The miller said: ‘The Devil must go out,’ and opened the house-door; then the woman was forced to give up the keys, and the peasant unlocked the closet. The parson ran out as fast as he could, and the miller said: ‘It was true; I saw the black rascal with my own eyes.’ The peasant, however, made off next morning by daybreak with the three hundred talers.
At home the small peasant gradually launched out; he built a beautiful house, and the peasants said: ‘The small peasant has certainly been to the place where golden snow falls, and people carry the gold home in shovels.’ Then the small peasant was brought before the mayor, and bidden to say from whence his wealth came. He answered: ‘I sold my cow’s skin in the town, for three hundred talers.’ When the peasants heard that, they too wished to enjoy this great profit, and ran home, killed all their cows, and stripped off their skins in order to sell them in the town to the greatest advantage. The mayor, however, said: ‘But my servant must go first.’ When she came to the merchant in the town, he did not give her more than two talers for a skin, and when the others came, he did not give them so much, and said: ‘What can I do with all these skins?’
Then the peasants were vexed that the small peasant should have thus outwitted them, wanted to take vengeance on him, and accused him of this treachery before the mayor. The innocent little peasant was unanimously sentenced to death, and was to be rolled into the water, in a barrel pierced full of holes. He was led forth, and a priest was brought who was to say a mass for his soul. The others were all obliged to retire to a distance, and when the peasant looked at the priest, he recognized the man who had been with the miller’s wife. He said to him: ‘I set you free from the closet, set me free from the barrel.’ At this same moment up came, with a flock of sheep, the very shepherd whom the peasant knew had long been wishing to be mayor, so he cried with all his might: ‘No, I will not do it; if the whole world insists on it, I will not do it!’ The shepherd hearing that, came up to him, and asked: ‘What are you about? What is it that you will not do?’ The peasant said: ‘They want to make me mayor, if I will but put myself in the barrel, but I will not do it.’ The shepherd said: ‘If nothing more than that is needful in order to be mayor, I would get into the barrel at once.’ The peasant said: ‘If you will get in, you will be mayor.’ The shepherd was willing, and got in, and the peasant shut the top down on him; then he took the shepherd’s flock for himself, and drove it away. The parson went to the crowd, and declared that the mass had been said. Then they came and rolled the barrel towards the water. When the barrel began to roll, the shepherd cried: ‘I am quite willing to be mayor.’ They believed no otherwise than that it was the peasant who was saying this, and answered: ‘That is what we intend, but first you shall look about you a little down below there,’ and they rolled the barrel down into the water.
After that the peasants went home, and as they were entering the village, the small peasant also came quietly in, driving a flock of sheep and looking quite contented. Then the peasants were astonished, and said: ‘Peasant, from whence do you come? Have you come out of the water?’ ‘Yes, truly,’ replied the peasant, ‘I sank deep, deep down, until at last I got to the bottom; I pushed the bottom out of the barrel, and crept out, and there were pretty meadows on which a number of lambs were feeding, and from thence I brought this flock away with me.’ Said the peasants: ‘Are there any more there?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said he, ‘more than I could want.’ Then the peasants made up their minds that they too would fetch some sheep for themselves, a flock apiece, but the mayor said: ‘I come first.’ So they went to the water together, and just then there were some of the small fleecy clouds in the blue sky, which are called little lambs, and they were reflected in the water, whereupon the peasants cried: ‘We already see the sheep down below!’ The mayor pressed forward and said: ‘I will go down first, and look about me, and if things promise well I’ll call you.’ So he jumped in; splash! went the water; it sounded as if he were calling them, and the whole crowd plunged in after him as one man. Then the entire village was dead, and the small peasant, as sole heir, became a rich man.
== FREDERICK AND CATHERINE ==
There was once a man called Frederick: he had a wife whose name was Catherine, and they had not long been married. One day Frederick said. ‘Kate! I am going to work in the fields; when I come back I shall be hungry so let me have something nice cooked, and a good draught of ale.’ ‘Very well,’ said she, ‘it shall all be ready.’ When dinner-time drew nigh, Catherine took a nice steak, which was all the meat she had, and put it on the fire to fry. The steak soon began to look brown, and to crackle in the pan; and Catherine stood by with a fork and turned it: then she said to herself, ‘The steak is almost ready, I may as well go to the cellar for the ale.’ So she left the pan on the fire and took a large jug and went into the cellar and tapped the ale cask. The beer ran into the jug and Catherine stood looking on. At last it popped into her head, ‘The dog is not shut up—he may be running away with the steak; that’s well thought of.’ So up she ran from the cellar; and sure enough the rascally cur had got the steak in his mouth, and was making off with it.
Away ran Catherine, and away ran the dog across the field: but he ran faster than she, and stuck close to the steak. ‘It’s all gone, and “what can’t be cured must be endured”,’ said Catherine. So she turned round; and as she had run a good way and was tired, she walked home leisurely to cool herself.
Now all this time the ale was running too, for Catherine had not turned the cock; and when the jug was full the liquor ran upon the floor till the cask was empty. When she got to the cellar stairs she saw what had happened. ‘My stars!’ said she, ‘what shall I do to keep Frederick from seeing all this slopping about?’ So she thought a while; and at last remembered that there was a sack of fine meal bought at the last fair, and that if she sprinkled this over the floor it would suck up the ale nicely. ‘What a lucky thing,’ said she, ‘that we kept that meal! we have now a good use for it.’ So away she went for it: but she managed to set it down just upon the great jug full of beer, and upset it; and thus all the ale that had been saved was set swimming on the floor also. ‘Ah! well,’ said she, ‘when one goes another may as well follow.’ Then she strewed the meal all about the cellar, and was quite pleased with her cleverness, and said, ‘How very neat and clean it looks!’
At noon Frederick came home. ‘Now, wife,’ cried he, ‘what have you for dinner?’ ‘O Frederick!’ answered she, ‘I was cooking you a steak; but while I went down to draw the ale, the dog ran away with it; and while I ran after him, the ale ran out; and when I went to dry up the ale with the sack of meal that we got at the fair, I upset the jug: but the cellar is now quite dry, and looks so clean!’ ‘Kate, Kate,’ said he, ‘how could you do all this?’ Why did you leave the steak to fry, and the ale to run, and then spoil all the meal?’ ‘Why, Frederick,’ said she, ‘I did not know I was doing wrong; you should have told me before.’
The husband thought to himself, ‘If my wife manages matters thus, I must look sharp myself.’ Now he had a good deal of gold in the house: so he said to Catherine, ‘What pretty yellow buttons these are! I shall put them into a box and bury them in the garden; but take care that you never go near or meddle with them.’ ‘No, Frederick,’ said she, ‘that I never will.’ As soon as he was gone, there came by some pedlars with earthenware plates and dishes, and they asked her whether she would buy. ‘Oh dear me, I should like to buy very much, but I have no money: if you had any use for yellow buttons, I might deal with you.’ ‘Yellow buttons!’ said they: ‘let us have a look at them.’ ‘Go into the garden and dig where I tell you, and you will find the yellow buttons: I dare not go myself.’ So the rogues went: and when they found what these yellow buttons were, they took them all away, and left her plenty of plates and dishes. Then she set them all about the house for a show: and when Frederick came back, he cried out, ‘Kate, what have you been doing?’ ‘See,’ said she, ‘I have bought all these with your yellow buttons: but I did not touch them myself; the pedlars went themselves and dug them up.’ ‘Wife, wife,’ said Frederick, ‘what a pretty piece of work you have made! those yellow buttons were all my money: how came you to do such a thing?’ ‘Why,’ answered she, ‘I did not know there was any harm in it; you should have told me.’
Catherine stood musing for a while, and at last said to her husband, ‘Hark ye, Frederick, we will soon get the gold back: let us run after the thieves.’ ‘Well, we will try,’ answered he; ‘but take some butter and cheese with you, that we may have something to eat by the way.’ ‘Very well,’ said she; and they set out: and as Frederick walked the fastest, he left his wife some way behind. ‘It does not matter,’ thought she: ‘when we turn back, I shall be so much nearer home than he.’
Presently she came to the top of a hill, down the side of which there was a road so narrow that the cart wheels always chafed the trees on each side as they passed. ‘Ah, see now,’ said she, ‘how they have bruised and wounded those poor trees; they will never get well.’ So she took pity on them, and made use of the butter to grease them all, so that the wheels might not hurt them so much. While she was doing this kind office one of her cheeses fell out of the basket, and rolled down the hill. Catherine looked, but could not see where it had gone; so she said, ‘Well, I suppose the other will go the same way and find you; he has younger legs than I have.’ Then she rolled the other cheese after it; and away it went, nobody knows where, down the hill. But she said she supposed that they knew the road, and would follow her, and she could not stay there all day waiting for them.
At last she overtook Frederick, who desired her to give him something to eat. Then she gave him the dry bread. ‘Where are the butter and cheese?’ said he. ‘Oh!’ answered she, ‘I used the butter to grease those poor trees that the wheels chafed so: and one of the cheeses ran away so I sent the other after it to find it, and I suppose they are both on the road together somewhere.’ ‘What a goose you are to do such silly things!’ said the husband. ‘How can you say so?’ said she; ‘I am sure you never told me not.’
They ate the dry bread together; and Frederick said, ‘Kate, I hope you locked the door safe when you came away.’ ‘No,’ answered she, ‘you did not tell me.’ ‘Then go home, and do it now before we go any farther,’ said Frederick, ‘and bring with you something to eat.’
Catherine did as he told her, and thought to herself by the way, ‘Frederick wants something to eat; but I don’t think he is very fond of butter and cheese: I’ll bring him a bag of fine nuts, and the vinegar, for I have often seen him take some.’
When she reached home, she bolted the back door, but the front door she took off the hinges, and said, ‘Frederick told me to lock the door, but surely it can nowhere be so safe if I take it with me.’ So she took her time by the way; and when she overtook her husband she cried out, ‘There, Frederick, there is the door itself, you may watch it as carefully as you please.’ ‘Alas! alas!’ said he, ‘what a clever wife I have! I sent you to make the house fast, and you take the door away, so that everybody may go in and out as they please—however, as you have brought the door, you shall carry it about with you for your pains.’ ‘Very well,’ answered she, ‘I’ll carry the door; but I’ll not carry the nuts and vinegar bottle also—that would be too much of a load; so if you please, I’ll fasten them to the door.’
Frederick of course made no objection to that plan, and they set off into the wood to look for the thieves; but they could not find them: and when it grew dark, they climbed up into a tree to spend the night there. Scarcely were they up, than who should come by but the very rogues they were looking for. They were in truth great rascals, and belonged to that class of people who find things before they are lost; they were tired; so they sat down and made a fire under the very tree where Frederick and Catherine were. Frederick slipped down on the other side, and picked up some stones. Then he climbed up again, and tried to hit the thieves on the head with them: but they only said, ‘It must be near morning, for the wind shakes the fir-apples down.’
Catherine, who had the door on her shoulder, began to be very tired; but she thought it was the nuts upon it that were so heavy: so she said softly, ‘Frederick, I must let the nuts go.’ ‘No,’ answered he, ‘not now, they will discover us.’ ‘I can’t help that: they must go.’ ‘Well, then, make haste and throw them down, if you will.’ Then away rattled the nuts down among the boughs and one of the thieves cried, ‘Bless me, it is hailing.’
A little while after, Catherine thought the door was still very heavy: so she whispered to Frederick, ‘I must throw the vinegar down.’ ‘Pray don’t,’ answered he, ‘it will discover us.’ ‘I can’t help that,’ said she, ‘go it must.’ So she poured all the vinegar down; and the thieves said, ‘What a heavy dew there is!’
At last it popped into Catherine’s head that it was the door itself that was so heavy all the time: so she whispered, ‘Frederick, I must throw the door down soon.’ But he begged and prayed her not to do so, for he was sure it would betray them. ‘Here goes, however,’ said she: and down went the door with such a clatter upon the thieves, that they cried out ‘Murder!’ and not knowing what was coming, ran away as fast as they could, and left all the gold. So when Frederick and Catherine came down, there they found all their money safe and sound.
== SWEETHEART ROLAND ==
There was once upon a time a woman who was a real witch and had two daughters, one ugly and wicked, and this one she loved because she was her own daughter, and one beautiful and good, and this one she hated, because she was her stepdaughter. The stepdaughter once had a pretty apron, which the other fancied so much that she became envious, and told her mother that she must and would have that apron. ‘Be quiet, my child,’ said the old woman, ‘and you shall have it. Your stepsister has long deserved death; tonight when she is asleep I will come and cut her head off. Only be careful that you are at the far side of the bed, and push her well to the front.’ It would have been all over with the poor girl if she had not just then been standing in a corner, and heard everything. All day long she dared not go out of doors, and when bedtime had come, the witch’s daughter got into bed first, so as to lie at the far side, but when she was asleep, the other pushed her gently to the front, and took for herself the place at the back, close by the wall. In the night, the old woman came creeping in, she held an axe in her right hand, and felt with her left to see if anyone were lying at the outside, and then she grasped the axe with both hands, and cut her own child’s head off.
When she had gone away, the girl got up and went to her sweetheart, who was called Roland, and knocked at his door. When he came out, she said to him: ‘Listen, dearest Roland, we must fly in all haste; my stepmother wanted to kill me, but has struck her own child. When daylight comes, and she sees what she has done, we shall be lost.’ ‘But,’ said Roland, ‘I counsel you first to take away her magic wand, or we cannot escape if she pursues us.’ The maiden fetched the magic wand, and she took the dead girl’s head and dropped three drops of blood on the ground, one in front of the bed, one in the kitchen, and one on the stairs. Then she hurried away with her lover.
When the old witch got up next morning, she called her daughter, and wanted to give her the apron, but she did not come. Then the witch cried: ‘Where are you?’ ‘Here, on the stairs, I am sweeping,’ answered the first drop of blood. The old woman went out, but saw no one on the stairs, and cried again: ‘Where are you?’ ‘Here in the kitchen, I am warming myself,’ cried the second drop of blood. She went into the kitchen, but found no one. Then she cried again: ‘Where are you?’ ‘Ah, here in the bed, I am sleeping,’ cried the third drop of blood. She went into the room to the bed. What did she see there? Her own child, whose head she had cut off, bathed in her blood. The witch fell into a passion, sprang to the window, and as she could look forth quite far into the world, she perceived her stepdaughter hurrying away with her sweetheart Roland. ‘That shall not help you,’ cried she, ‘even if you have got a long way off, you shall still not escape me.’ She put on her many-league boots, in which she covered an hour’s walk at every step, and it was not long before she overtook them. The girl, however, when she saw the old woman striding towards her, changed, with her magic wand, her sweetheart Roland into a lake, and herself into a duck swimming in the middle of it. The witch placed herself on the shore, threw breadcrumbs in, and went to endless trouble to entice the duck; but the duck did not let herself be enticed, and the old woman had to go home at night as she had come. At this the girl and her sweetheart Roland resumed their natural shapes again, and they walked on the whole night until daybreak. Then the maiden changed herself into a beautiful flower which stood in the midst of a briar hedge, and her sweetheart Roland into a fiddler. It was not long before the witch came striding up towards them, and said to the musician: ‘Dear musician, may I pluck that beautiful flower for myself?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, ‘I will play to you while you do it.’ As she was hastily creeping into the hedge and was just going to pluck the flower, knowing perfectly well who the flower was, he began to play, and whether she would or not, she was forced to dance, for it was a magical dance. The faster he played, the more violent springs was she forced to make, and the thorns tore her clothes from her body, and pricked her and wounded her till she bled, and as he did not stop, she had to dance till she lay dead on the ground.
As they were now set free, Roland said: ‘Now I will go to my father and arrange for the wedding.’ ‘Then in the meantime I will stay here and wait for you,’ said the girl, ‘and that no one may recognize me, I will change myself into a red stone landmark.’ Then Roland went away, and the girl stood like a red landmark in the field and waited for her beloved. But when Roland got home, he fell into the snares of another, who so fascinated him that he forgot the maiden. The poor girl remained there a long time, but at length, as he did not return at all, she was sad, and changed herself into a flower, and thought: ‘Someone will surely come this way, and trample me down.’
It befell, however, that a shepherd kept his sheep in the field and saw the flower, and as it was so pretty, plucked it, took it with him, and laid it away in his chest. From that time forth, strange things happened in the shepherd’s house. When he arose in the morning, all the work was already done, the room was swept, the table and benches cleaned, the fire in the hearth was lighted, and the water was fetched, and at noon, when he came home, the table was laid, and a good dinner served. He could not conceive how this came to pass, for he never saw a human being in his house, and no one could have concealed himself in it. He was certainly pleased with this good attendance, but still at last he was so afraid that he went to a wise woman and asked for her advice. The wise woman said: ‘There is some enchantment behind it, listen very early some morning if anything is moving in the room, and if you see anything, no matter what it is, throw a white cloth over it, and then the magic will be stopped.’
The shepherd did as she bade him, and next morning just as day dawned, he saw the chest open, and the flower come out. Swiftly he sprang towards it, and threw a white cloth over it. Instantly the transformation came to an end, and a beautiful girl stood before him, who admitted to him that she had been the flower, and that up to this time she had attended to his house-keeping. She told him her story, and as she pleased him he asked her if she would marry him, but she answered: ‘No,’ for she wanted to remain faithful to her sweetheart Roland, although he had deserted her. Nevertheless, she promised not to go away, but to continue keeping house for the shepherd.
And now the time drew near when Roland’s wedding was to be celebrated, and then, according to an old custom in the country, it was announced that all the girls were to be present at it, and sing in honour of the bridal pair. When the faithful maiden heard of this, she grew so sad that she thought her heart would break, and she would not go thither, but the other girls came and took her. When it came to her turn to sing, she stepped back, until at last she was the only one left, and then she could not refuse. But when she began her song, and it reached Roland’s ears, he sprang up and cried: ‘I know the voice, that is the true bride, I will have no other!’ Everything he had forgotten, and which had vanished from his mind, had suddenly come home again to his heart. Then the faithful maiden held her wedding with her sweetheart Roland, and grief came to an end and joy began.
== SNOWDROP ==
It was the middle of winter, when the broad flakes of snow were falling around, that the queen of a country many thousand miles off sat working at her window. The frame of the window was made of fine black ebony, and as she sat looking out upon the snow, she pricked her finger, and three drops of blood fell upon it. Then she gazed thoughtfully upon the red drops that sprinkled the white snow, and said, ‘Would that my little daughter may be as white as that snow, as red as that blood, and as black as this ebony windowframe!’ And so the little girl really did grow up; her skin was as white as snow, her cheeks as rosy as the blood, and her hair as black as ebony; and she was called Snowdrop.
But this queen died; and the king soon married another wife, who became queen, and was very beautiful, but so vain that she could not bear to think that anyone could be handsomer than she was. She had a fairy looking-glass, to which she used to go, and then she would gaze upon herself in it, and say:
 ‘Tell me, glass, tell me true!
 Of all the ladies in the land,
 Who is fairest, tell me, who?’
And the glass had always answered:
 ‘Thou, queen, art the fairest in all the land.’
But Snowdrop grew more and more beautiful; and when she was seven years old she was as bright as the day, and fairer than the queen herself. Then the glass one day answered the queen, when she went to look in it as usual:
 ‘Thou, queen, art fair, and beauteous to see,
 But Snowdrop is lovelier far than thee!’
When she heard this she turned pale with rage and envy, and called to one of her servants, and said, ‘Take Snowdrop away into the wide wood, that I may never see her any more.’ Then the servant led her away; but his heart melted when Snowdrop begged him to spare her life, and he said, ‘I will not hurt you, thou pretty child.’ So he left her by herself; and though he thought it most likely that the wild beasts would tear her in pieces, he felt as if a great weight were taken off his heart when he had made up his mind not to kill her but to leave her to her fate, with the chance of someone finding and saving her.
Then poor Snowdrop wandered along through the wood in great fear; and the wild beasts roared about her, but none did her any harm. In the evening she came to a cottage among the hills, and went in to rest, for her little feet would carry her no further. Everything was spruce and neat in the cottage: on the table was spread a white cloth, and there were seven little plates, seven little loaves, and seven little glasses with wine in them; and seven knives and forks laid in order; and by the wall stood seven little beds. As she was very hungry, she picked a little piece of each loaf and drank a very little wine out of each glass; and after that she thought she would lie down and rest. So she tried all the little beds; but one was too long, and another was too short, till at last the seventh suited her: and there she laid herself down and went to sleep.
By and by in came the masters of the cottage. Now they were seven little dwarfs, that lived among the mountains, and dug and searched for gold. They lighted up their seven lamps, and saw at once that all was not right. The first said, ‘Who has been sitting on my stool?’ The second, ‘Who has been eating off my plate?’ The third, ‘Who has been picking my bread?’ The fourth, ‘Who has been meddling with my spoon?’ The fifth, ‘Who has been handling my fork?’ The sixth, ‘Who has been cutting with my knife?’ The seventh, ‘Who has been drinking my wine?’ Then the first looked round and said, ‘Who has been lying on my bed?’ And the rest came running to him, and everyone cried out that somebody had been upon his bed. But the seventh saw Snowdrop, and called all his brethren to come and see her; and they cried out with wonder and astonishment and brought their lamps to look at her, and said, ‘Good heavens! what a lovely child she is!’ And they were very glad to see her, and took care not to wake her; and the seventh dwarf slept an hour with each of the other dwarfs in turn, till the night was gone.
In the morning Snowdrop told them all her story; and they pitied her, and said if she would keep all things in order, and cook and wash and knit and spin for them, she might stay where she was, and they would take good care of her. Then they went out all day long to their work, seeking for gold and silver in the mountains: but Snowdrop was left at home; and they warned her, and said, ‘The queen will soon find out where you are, so take care and let no one in.’
But the queen, now that she thought Snowdrop was dead, believed that she must be the handsomest lady in the land; and she went to her glass and said:
 ‘Tell me, glass, tell me true!
 Of all the ladies in the land,
 Who is fairest, tell me, who?’
And the glass answered:
 ‘Thou, queen, art the fairest in all this land:
 But over the hills, in the greenwood shade,
 Where the seven dwarfs their dwelling have made,
 There Snowdrop is hiding her head; and she
 Is lovelier far, O queen! than thee.’
Then the queen was very much frightened; for she knew that the glass always spoke the truth, and was sure that the servant had betrayed her. And she could not bear to think that anyone lived who was more beautiful than she was; so she dressed herself up as an old pedlar, and went her way over the hills, to the place where the dwarfs dwelt. Then she knocked at the door, and cried, ‘Fine wares to sell!’ Snowdrop looked out at the window, and said, ‘Good day, good woman! what have you to sell?’ ‘Good wares, fine wares,’ said she; ‘laces and bobbins of all colours.’ ‘I will let the old lady in; she seems to be a very good sort of body,’ thought Snowdrop, as she ran down and unbolted the door. ‘Bless me!’ said the old woman, ‘how badly your stays are laced! Let me lace them up with one of my nice new laces.’ Snowdrop did not dream of any mischief; so she stood before the old woman; but she set to work so nimbly, and pulled the lace so tight, that Snowdrop’s breath was stopped, and she fell down as if she were dead. ‘There’s an end to all thy beauty,’ said the spiteful queen, and went away home.
In the evening the seven dwarfs came home; and I need not say how grieved they were to see their faithful Snowdrop stretched out upon the ground, as if she was quite dead. However, they lifted her up, and when they found what ailed her, they cut the lace; and in a little time she began to breathe, and very soon came to life again. Then they said, ‘The old woman was the queen herself; take care another time, and let no one in when we are away.’
When the queen got home, she went straight to her glass, and spoke to it as before; but to her great grief it still said:
 ‘Thou, queen, art the fairest in all this land:
 But over the hills, in the greenwood shade,
 Where the seven dwarfs their dwelling have made,
 There Snowdrop is hiding her head; and she
 Is lovelier far, O queen! than thee.’
Then the blood ran cold in her heart with spite and malice, to see that Snowdrop still lived; and she dressed herself up again, but in quite another dress from the one she wore before, and took with her a poisoned comb. When she reached the dwarfs’ cottage, she knocked at the door, and cried, ‘Fine wares to sell!’ But Snowdrop said, ‘I dare not let anyone in.’ Then the queen said, ‘Only look at my beautiful combs!’ and gave her the poisoned one. And it looked so pretty, that she took it up and put it into her hair to try it; but the moment it touched her head, the poison was so powerful that she fell down senseless. ‘There you may lie,’ said the queen, and went her way. But by good luck the dwarfs came in very early that evening; and when they saw Snowdrop lying on the ground, they thought what had happened, and soon found the poisoned comb. And when they took it away she got well, and told them all that had passed; and they warned her once more not to open the door to anyone.
Meantime the queen went home to her glass, and shook with rage when she read the very same answer as before; and she said, ‘Snowdrop shall die, if it cost me my life.’ So she went by herself into her chamber, and got ready a poisoned apple: the outside looked very rosy and tempting, but whoever tasted it was sure to die. Then she dressed herself up as a peasant’s wife, and travelled over the hills to the dwarfs’ cottage, and knocked at the door; but Snowdrop put her head out of the window and said, ‘I dare not let anyone in, for the dwarfs have told me not.’ ‘Do as you please,’ said the old woman, ‘but at any rate take this pretty apple; I will give it you.’ ‘No,’ said Snowdrop, ‘I dare not take it.’ ‘You silly girl!’ answered the other, ‘what are you afraid of? Do you think it is poisoned? Come! do you eat one part, and I will eat the other.’ Now the apple was so made up that one side was good, though the other side was poisoned. Then Snowdrop was much tempted to taste, for the apple looked so very nice; and when she saw the old woman eat, she could wait no longer. But she had scarcely put the piece into her mouth, when she fell down dead upon the ground. ‘This time nothing will save thee,’ said the queen; and she went home to her glass, and at last it said:
 ‘Thou, queen, art the fairest of all the fair.’
And then her wicked heart was glad, and as happy as such a heart could be.
When evening came, and the dwarfs had gone home, they found Snowdrop lying on the ground: no breath came from her lips, and they were afraid that she was quite dead. They lifted her up, and combed her hair, and washed her face with wine and water; but all was in vain, for the little girl seemed quite dead. So they laid her down upon a bier, and all seven watched and bewailed her three whole days; and then they thought they would bury her: but her cheeks were still rosy; and her face looked just as it did while she was alive; so they said, ‘We will never bury her in the cold ground.’ And they made a coffin of glass, so that they might still look at her, and wrote upon it in golden letters what her name was, and that she was a king’s daughter. And the coffin was set among the hills, and one of the dwarfs always sat by it and watched. And the birds of the air came too, and bemoaned Snowdrop; and first of all came an owl, and then a raven, and at last a dove, and sat by her side.
And thus Snowdrop lay for a long, long time, and still only looked as though she was asleep; for she was even now as white as snow, and as red as blood, and as black as ebony. At last a prince came and called at the dwarfs’ house; and he saw Snowdrop, and read what was written in golden letters. Then he offered the dwarfs money, and prayed and besought them to let him take her away; but they said, ‘We will not part with her for all the gold in the world.’ At last, however, they had pity on him, and gave him the coffin; but the moment he lifted it up to carry it home with him, the piece of apple fell from between her lips, and Snowdrop awoke, and said, ‘Where am I?’ And the prince said, ‘Thou art quite safe with me.’
Then he told her all that had happened, and said, ‘I love you far better than all the world; so come with me to my father’s palace, and you shall be my wife.’ And Snowdrop consented, and went home with the prince; and everything was got ready with great pomp and splendour for their wedding.
To the feast was asked, among the rest, Snowdrop’s old enemy the queen; and as she was dressing herself in fine rich clothes, she looked in the glass and said:
 ‘Tell me, glass, tell me true!
 Of all the ladies in the land,
 Who is fairest, tell me, who?’
And the glass answered:
 ‘Thou, lady, art loveliest here, I ween;
 But lovelier far is the new-made queen.’
When she heard this she started with rage; but her envy and curiosity were so great, that she could not help setting out to see the bride. And when she got there, and saw that it was no other than Snowdrop, who, as she thought, had been dead a long while, she choked with rage, and fell down and died: but Snowdrop and the prince lived and reigned happily over that land many, many years; and sometimes they went up into the mountains, and paid a visit to the little dwarfs, who had been so kind to Snowdrop in her time of need.
== THE PINK ==
There was once upon a time a queen to whom God had given no children. Every morning she went into the garden and prayed to God in heaven to bestow on her a son or a daughter. Then an angel from heaven came to her and said: ‘Be at rest, you shall have a son with the power of wishing, so that whatsoever in the world he wishes for, that shall he have.’ Then she went to the king, and told him the joyful tidings, and when the time was come she gave birth to a son, and the king was filled with gladness.
Every morning she went with the child to the garden where the wild beasts were kept, and washed herself there in a clear stream. It happened once when the child was a little older, that it was lying in her arms and she fell asleep. Then came the old cook, who knew that the child had the power of wishing, and stole it away, and he took a hen, and cut it in pieces, and dropped some of its blood on the queen’s apron and on her dress. Then he carried the child away to a secret place, where a nurse was obliged to suckle it, and he ran to the king and accused the queen of having allowed her child to be taken from her by the wild beasts. When the king saw the blood on her apron, he believed this, fell into such a passion that he ordered a high tower to be built, in which neither sun nor moon could be seen and had his wife put into it, and walled up. Here she was to stay for seven years without meat or drink, and die of hunger. But God sent two angels from heaven in the shape of white doves, which flew to her twice a day, and carried her food until the seven years were over.
The cook, however, thought to himself: ‘If the child has the power of wishing, and I am here, he might very easily get me into trouble.’ So he left the palace and went to the boy, who was already big enough to speak, and said to him: ‘Wish for a beautiful palace for yourself with a garden, and all else that pertains to it.’ Scarcely were the words out of the boy’s mouth, when everything was there that he had wished for. After a while the cook said to him: ‘It is not well for you to be so alone, wish for a pretty girl as a companion.’ Then the king’s son wished for one, and she immediately stood before him, and was more beautiful than any painter could have painted her. The two played together, and loved each other with all their hearts, and the old cook went out hunting like a nobleman. The thought occurred to him, however, that the king’s son might some day wish to be with his father, and thus bring him into great peril. So he went out and took the maiden aside, and said: ‘Tonight when the boy is asleep, go to his bed and plunge this knife into his heart, and bring me his heart and tongue, and if you do not do it, you shall lose your life.’ Thereupon he went away, and when he returned next day she had not done it, and said: ‘Why should I shed the blood of an innocent boy who has never harmed anyone?’ The cook once more said: ‘If you do not do it, it shall cost you your own life.’ When he had gone away, she had a little hind brought to her, and ordered her to be killed, and took her heart and tongue, and laid them on a plate, and when she saw the old man coming, she said to the boy: ‘Lie down in your bed, and draw the clothes over you.’ Then the wicked wretch came in and said: ‘Where are the boy’s heart and tongue?’ The girl reached the plate to him, but the king’s son threw off the quilt, and said: ‘You old sinner, why did you want to kill me? Now will I pronounce thy sentence. You shall become a black poodle and have a gold collar round your neck, and shall eat burning coals, till the flames burst forth from your throat.’ And when he had spoken these words, the old man was changed into a poodle dog, and had a gold collar round his neck, and the cooks were ordered to bring up some live coals, and these he ate, until the flames broke forth from his throat. The king’s son remained there a short while longer, and he thought of his mother, and wondered if she were still alive. At length he said to the maiden: ‘I will go home to my own country; if you will go with me, I will provide for you.’ ‘Ah,’ she replied, ‘the way is so long, and what shall I do in a strange land where I am unknown?’ As she did not seem quite willing, and as they could not be parted from each other, he wished that she might be changed into a beautiful pink, and took her with him. Then he went away to his own country, and the poodle had to run after him. He went to the tower in which his mother was confined, and as it was so high, he wished for a ladder which would reach up to the very top. Then he mounted up and looked inside, and cried: ‘Beloved mother, Lady Queen, are you still alive, or are you dead?’ She answered: ‘I have just eaten, and am still satisfied,’ for she thought the angels were there. Said he: ‘I am your dear son, whom the wild beasts were said to have torn from your arms; but I am alive still, and will soon set you free.’ Then he descended again, and went to his father, and caused himself to be announced as a strange huntsman, and asked if he could offer him service. The king said yes, if he was skilful and could get game for him, he should come to him, but that deer had never taken up their quarters in any part of the district or country. Then the huntsman promised to procure as much game for him as he could possibly use at the royal table. So he summoned all the huntsmen together, and bade them go out into the forest with him. And he went with them and made them form a great circle, open at one end where he stationed himself, and began to wish. Two hundred deer and more came running inside the circle at once, and the huntsmen shot them. Then they were all placed on sixty country carts, and driven home to the king, and for once he was able to deck his table with game, after having had none at all for years.
Now the king felt great joy at this, and commanded that his entire household should eat with him next day, and made a great feast. When they were all assembled together, he said to the huntsman: ‘As you are so clever, you shall sit by me.’ He replied: ‘Lord King, your majesty must excuse me, I am a poor huntsman.’ But the king insisted on it, and said: ‘You shall sit by me,’ until he did it. Whilst he was sitting there, he thought of his dearest mother, and wished that one of the king’s principal servants would begin to speak of her, and would ask how it was faring with the queen in the tower, and if she were alive still, or had perished. Hardly had he formed the wish than the marshal began, and said: ‘Your majesty, we live joyously here, but how is the queen living in the tower? Is she still alive, or has she died?’ But the king replied: ‘She let my dear son be torn to pieces by wild beasts; I will not have her named.’ Then the huntsman arose and said: ‘Gracious lord father she is alive still, and I am her son, and I was not carried away by wild beasts, but by that wretch the old cook, who tore me from her arms when she was asleep, and sprinkled her apron with the blood of a chicken.’ Thereupon he took the dog with the golden collar, and said: ‘That is the wretch!’ and caused live coals to be brought, and these the dog was compelled to devour before the sight of all, until flames burst forth from its throat. On this the huntsman asked the king if he would like to see the dog in his true shape, and wished him back into the form of the cook, in which he stood immediately, with his white apron, and his knife by his side. When the king saw him he fell into a passion, and ordered him to be cast into the deepest dungeon. Then the huntsman spoke further and said: ‘Father, will you see the maiden who brought me up so tenderly and who was afterwards to murder me, but did not do it, though her own life depended on it?’ The king replied: ‘Yes, I would like to see her.’ The son said: ‘Most gracious father, I will show her to you in the form of a beautiful flower,’ and he thrust his hand into his pocket and brought forth the pink, and placed it on the royal table, and it was so beautiful that the king had never seen one to equal it. Then the son said: ‘Now will I show her to you in her own form,’ and wished that she might become a maiden, and she stood there looking so beautiful that no painter could have made her look more so.
And the king sent two waiting-maids and two attendants into the tower, to fetch the queen and bring her to the royal table. But when she was led in she ate nothing, and said: ‘The gracious and merciful God who has supported me in the tower, will soon set me free.’ She lived three days more, and then died happily, and when she was buried, the two white doves which had brought her food to the tower, and were angels of heaven, followed her body and seated themselves on her grave. The aged king ordered the cook to be torn in four pieces, but grief consumed the king’s own heart, and he soon died. His son married the beautiful maiden whom he had brought with him as a flower in his pocket, and whether they are still alive or not, is known to God.
== CLEVER ELSIE ==
There was once a man who had a daughter who was called Clever Elsie. And when she had grown up her father said: ‘We will get her married.’ ‘Yes,’ said the mother, ‘if only someone would come who would have her.’ At length a man came from a distance and wooed her, who was called Hans; but he stipulated that Clever Elsie should be really smart. ‘Oh,’ said the father, ‘she has plenty of good sense’; and the mother said: ‘Oh, she can see the wind coming up the street, and hear the flies coughing.’ ‘Well,’ said Hans, ‘if she is not really smart, I won’t have her.’ When they were sitting at dinner and had eaten, the mother said: ‘Elsie, go into the cellar and fetch some beer.’ Then Clever Elsie took the pitcher from the wall, went into the cellar, and tapped the lid briskly as she went, so that the time might not appear long. When she was below she fetched herself a chair, and set it before the barrel so that she had no need to stoop, and did not hurt her back or do herself any unexpected injury. Then she placed the can before her, and turned the tap, and while the beer was running she would not let her eyes be idle, but looked up at the wall, and after much peering here and there, saw a pick-axe exactly above her, which the masons had accidentally left there.
Then Clever Elsie began to weep and said: ‘If I get Hans, and we have a child, and he grows big, and we send him into the cellar here to draw beer, then the pick-axe will fall on his head and kill him.’ Then she sat and wept and screamed with all the strength of her body, over the misfortune which lay before her. Those upstairs waited for the drink, but Clever Elsie still did not come. Then the woman said to the servant: ‘Just go down into the cellar and see where Elsie is.’ The maid went and found her sitting in front of the barrel, screaming loudly. ‘Elsie why do you weep?’ asked the maid. ‘Ah,’ she answered, ‘have I not reason to weep? If I get Hans, and we have a child, and he grows big, and has to draw beer here, the pick-axe will perhaps fall on his head, and kill him.’ Then said the maid: ‘What a clever Elsie we have!’ and sat down beside her and began loudly to weep over the misfortune. After a while, as the maid did not come back, and those upstairs were thirsty for the beer, the man said to the boy: ‘Just go down into the cellar and see where Elsie and the girl are.’ The boy went down, and there sat Clever Elsie and the girl both weeping together. Then he asked: ‘Why are you weeping?’ ‘Ah,’ said Elsie, ‘have I not reason to weep? If I get Hans, and we have a child, and he grows big, and has to draw beer here, the pick-axe will fall on his head and kill him.’ Then said the boy: ‘What a clever Elsie we have!’ and sat down by her, and likewise began to howl loudly. Upstairs they waited for the boy, but as he still did not return, the man said to the woman: ‘Just go down into the cellar and see where Elsie is!’ The woman went down, and found all three in the midst of their lamentations, and inquired what was the cause; then Elsie told her also that her future child was to be killed by the pick-axe, when it grew big and had to draw beer, and the pick-axe fell down. Then said the mother likewise: ‘What a clever Elsie we have!’ and sat down and wept with them. The man upstairs waited a short time, but as his wife did not come back and his thirst grew ever greater, he said: ‘I must go into the cellar myself and see where Elsie is.’ But when he got into the cellar, and they were all sitting together crying, and he heard the reason, and that Elsie’s child was the cause, and the Elsie might perhaps bring one into the world some day, and that he might be killed by the pick-axe, if he should happen to be sitting beneath it, drawing beer just at the very time when it fell down, he cried: ‘Oh, what a clever Elsie!’ and sat down, and likewise wept with them. The bridegroom stayed upstairs alone for a long time; then as no one would come back he thought: ‘They must be waiting for me below: I too must go there and see what they are about.’ When he got down, the five of them were sitting screaming and lamenting quite piteously, each out-doing the other. ‘What misfortune has happened then?’ asked he. ‘Ah, dear Hans,’ said Elsie, ‘if we marry each other and have a child, and he is big, and we perhaps send him here to draw something to drink, then the pick-axe which has been left up there might dash his brains out if it were to fall down, so have we not reason to weep?’ ‘Come,’ said Hans, ‘more understanding than that is not needed for my household, as you are such a clever Elsie, I will have you,’ and seized her hand, took her upstairs with him, and married her.
After Hans had had her some time, he said: ‘Wife, I am going out to work and earn some money for us; go into the field and cut the corn that we may have some bread.’ ‘Yes, dear Hans, I will do that.’ After Hans had gone away, she cooked herself some good broth and took it into the field with her. When she came to the field she said to herself: ‘What shall I do; shall I cut first, or shall I eat first? Oh, I will eat first.’ Then she drank her cup of broth and when she was fully satisfied, she once more said: ‘What shall I do? Shall I cut first, or shall I sleep first? I will sleep first.’ Then she lay down among the corn and fell asleep. Hans had been at home for a long time, but Elsie did not come; then said he: ‘What a clever Elsie I have; she is so industrious that she does not even come home to eat.’ But when evening came and she still stayed away, Hans went out to see what she had cut, but nothing was cut, and she was lying among the corn asleep. Then Hans hastened home and brought a fowler’s net with little bells and hung it round about her, and she still went on sleeping. Then he ran home, shut the house-door, and sat down in his chair and worked. At length, when it was quite dark, Clever Elsie awoke and when she got up there was a jingling all round about her, and the bells rang at each step which she took. Then she was alarmed, and became uncertain whether she really was Clever Elsie or not, and said: ‘Is it I, or is it not I?’ But she knew not what answer to make to this, and stood for a time in doubt; at length she thought: ‘I will go home and ask if it be I, or if it be not I, they will be sure to know.’ She ran to the door of her own house, but it was shut; then she knocked at the window and cried: ‘Hans, is Elsie within?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Hans, ‘she is within.’ Hereupon she was terrified, and said: ‘Ah, heavens! Then it is not I,’ and went to another door; but when the people heard the jingling of the bells they would not open it, and she could get in nowhere. Then she ran out of the village, and no one has seen her since.
== THE MISER IN THE BUSH ==
A farmer had a faithful and diligent servant, who had worked hard for him three years, without having been paid any wages. At last it came into the man’s head that he would not go on thus without pay any longer; so he went to his master, and said, ‘I have worked hard for you a long time, I will trust to you to give me what I deserve to have for my trouble.’ The farmer was a sad miser, and knew that his man was very simple-hearted; so he took out threepence, and gave him for every year’s service a penny. The poor fellow thought it was a great deal of money to have, and said to himself, ‘Why should I work hard, and live here on bad fare any longer? I can now travel into the wide world, and make myself merry.’ With that he put his money into his purse, and set out, roaming over hill and valley.
As he jogged along over the fields, singing and dancing, a little dwarf met him, and asked him what made him so merry. ‘Why, what should make me down-hearted?’ said he; ‘I am sound in health and rich in purse, what should I care for? I have saved up my three years’ earnings and have it all safe in my pocket.’ ‘How much may it come to?’ said the little man. ‘Full threepence,’ replied the countryman. ‘I wish you would give them to me,’ said the other; ‘I am very poor.’ Then the man pitied him, and gave him all he had; and the little dwarf said in return, ‘As you have such a kind honest heart, I will grant you three wishes—one for every penny; so choose whatever you like.’ Then the countryman rejoiced at his good luck, and said, ‘I like many things better than money: first, I will have a bow that will bring down everything I shoot at; secondly, a fiddle that will set everyone dancing that hears me play upon it; and thirdly, I should like that everyone should grant what I ask.’ The dwarf said he should have his three wishes; so he gave him the bow and fiddle, and went his way.
Our honest friend journeyed on his way too; and if he was merry before, he was now ten times more so. He had not gone far before he met an old miser: close by them stood a tree, and on the topmost twig sat a thrush singing away most joyfully. ‘Oh, what a pretty bird!’ said the miser; ‘I would give a great deal of money to have such a one.’ ‘If that’s all,’ said the countryman, ‘I will soon bring it down.’ Then he took up his bow, and down fell the thrush into the bushes at the foot of the tree. The miser crept into the bush to find it; but directly he had got into the middle, his companion took up his fiddle and played away, and the miser began to dance and spring about, capering higher and higher in the air. The thorns soon began to tear his clothes till they all hung in rags about him, and he himself was all scratched and wounded, so that the blood ran down. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ cried the miser, ‘Master! master! pray let the fiddle alone. What have I done to deserve this?’ ‘Thou hast shaved many a poor soul close enough,’ said the other; ‘thou art only meeting thy reward’: so he played up another tune. Then the miser began to beg and promise, and offered money for his liberty; but he did not come up to the musician’s price for some time, and he danced him along brisker and brisker, and the miser bid higher and higher, till at last he offered a round hundred of florins that he had in his purse, and had just gained by cheating some poor fellow. When the countryman saw so much money, he said, ‘I will agree to your proposal.’ So he took the purse, put up his fiddle, and travelled on very pleased with his bargain.
Meanwhile the miser crept out of the bush half-naked and in a piteous plight, and began to ponder how he should take his revenge, and serve his late companion some trick. At last he went to the judge, and complained that a rascal had robbed him of his money, and beaten him into the bargain; and that the fellow who did it carried a bow at his back and a fiddle hung round his neck. Then the judge sent out his officers to bring up the accused wherever they should find him; and he was soon caught and brought up to be tried.
The miser began to tell his tale, and said he had been robbed of his money. ‘No, you gave it me for playing a tune to you.’ said the countryman; but the judge told him that was not likely, and cut the matter short by ordering him off to the gallows.
So away he was taken; but as he stood on the steps he said, ‘My Lord Judge, grant me one last request.’ ‘Anything but thy life,’ replied the other. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I do not ask my life; only to let me play upon my fiddle for the last time.’ The miser cried out, ‘Oh, no! no! for heaven’s sake don’t listen to him! don’t listen to him!’ But the judge said, ‘It is only this once, he will soon have done.’ The fact was, he could not refuse the request, on account of the dwarf’s third gift.
Then the miser said, ‘Bind me fast, bind me fast, for pity’s sake.’ But the countryman seized his fiddle, and struck up a tune, and at the first note judge, clerks, and jailer were in motion; all began capering, and no one could hold the miser. At the second note the hangman let his prisoner go, and danced also, and by the time he had played the first bar of the tune, all were dancing together—judge, court, and miser, and all the people who had followed to look on. At first the thing was merry and pleasant enough; but when it had gone on a while, and there seemed to be no end of playing or dancing, they began to cry out, and beg him to leave off; but he stopped not a whit the more for their entreaties, till the judge not only gave him his life, but promised to return him the hundred florins.
Then he called to the miser, and said, ‘Tell us now, you vagabond, where you got that gold, or I shall play on for your amusement only,’ ‘I stole it,’ said the miser in the presence of all the people; ‘I acknowledge that I stole it, and that you earned it fairly.’ Then the countryman stopped his fiddle, and left the miser to take his place at the gallows.
== ASHPUTTEL ==
The wife of a rich man fell sick; and when she felt that her end drew nigh, she called her only daughter to her bed-side, and said, ‘Always be a good girl, and I will look down from heaven and watch over you.’ Soon afterwards she shut her eyes and died, and was buried in the garden; and the little girl went every day to her grave and wept, and was always good and kind to all about her. And the snow fell and spread a beautiful white covering over the grave; but by the time the spring came, and the sun had melted it away again, her father had married another wife. This new wife had two daughters of her own, that she brought home with her; they were fair in face but foul at heart, and it was now a sorry time for the poor little girl. ‘What does the good-for-nothing want in the parlour?’ said they; ‘they who would eat bread should first earn it; away with the kitchen-maid!’ Then they took away her fine clothes, and gave her an old grey frock to put on, and laughed at her, and turned her into the kitchen.
There she was forced to do hard work; to rise early before daylight, to bring the water, to make the fire, to cook and to wash. Besides that, the sisters plagued her in all sorts of ways, and laughed at her. In the evening when she was tired, she had no bed to lie down on, but was made to lie by the hearth among the ashes; and as this, of course, made her always dusty and dirty, they called her Ashputtel.
It happened once that the father was going to the fair, and asked his wife’s daughters what he should bring them. ‘Fine clothes,’ said the first; ‘Pearls and diamonds,’ cried the second. ‘Now, child,’ said he to his own daughter, ‘what will you have?’ ‘The first twig, dear father, that brushes against your hat when you turn your face to come homewards,’ said she. Then he bought for the first two the fine clothes and pearls and diamonds they had asked for: and on his way home, as he rode through a green copse, a hazel twig brushed against him, and almost pushed off his hat: so he broke it off and brought it away; and when he got home he gave it to his daughter. Then she took it, and went to her mother’s grave and planted it there; and cried so much that it was watered with her tears; and there it grew and became a fine tree. Three times every day she went to it and cried; and soon a little bird came and built its nest upon the tree, and talked with her, and watched over her, and brought her whatever she wished for.
Now it happened that the king of that land held a feast, which was to last three days; and out of those who came to it his son was to choose a bride for himself. Ashputtel’s two sisters were asked to come; so they called her up, and said, ‘Now, comb our hair, brush our shoes, and tie our sashes for us, for we are going to dance at the king’s feast.’ Then she did as she was told; but when all was done she could not help crying, for she thought to herself, she should so have liked to have gone with them to the ball; and at last she begged her mother very hard to let her go. ‘You, Ashputtel!’ said she; ‘you who have nothing to wear, no clothes at all, and who cannot even dance—you want to go to the ball? And when she kept on begging, she said at last, to get rid of her, ‘I will throw this dishful of peas into the ash-heap, and if in two hours’ time you have picked them all out, you shall go to the feast too.’
Then she threw the peas down among the ashes, but the little maiden ran out at the back door into the garden, and cried out:
 ‘Hither, hither, through the sky,
 Turtle-doves and linnets, fly!
 Blackbird, thrush, and chaffinch gay,
 Hither, hither, haste away!
 One and all come help me, quick!
 Haste ye, haste ye!—pick, pick, pick!’
Then first came two white doves, flying in at the kitchen window; next came two turtle-doves; and after them came all the little birds under heaven, chirping and fluttering in: and they flew down into the ashes. And the little doves stooped their heads down and set to work, pick, pick, pick; and then the others began to pick, pick, pick: and among them all they soon picked out all the good grain, and put it into a dish but left the ashes. Long before the end of the hour the work was quite done, and all flew out again at the windows.
Then Ashputtel brought the dish to her mother, overjoyed at the thought that now she should go to the ball. But the mother said, ‘No, no! you slut, you have no clothes, and cannot dance; you shall not go.’ And when Ashputtel begged very hard to go, she said, ‘If you can in one hour’s time pick two of those dishes of peas out of the ashes, you shall go too.’ And thus she thought she should at least get rid of her. So she shook two dishes of peas into the ashes.
But the little maiden went out into the garden at the back of the house, and cried out as before:
 ‘Hither, hither, through the sky,
 Turtle-doves and linnets, fly!
 Blackbird, thrush, and chaffinch gay,
 Hither, hither, haste away!
 One and all come help me, quick!
 Haste ye, haste ye!—pick, pick, pick!’
Then first came two white doves in at the kitchen window; next came two turtle-doves; and after them came all the little birds under heaven, chirping and hopping about. And they flew down into the ashes; and the little doves put their heads down and set to work, pick, pick, pick; and then the others began pick, pick, pick; and they put all the good grain into the dishes, and left all the ashes. Before half an hour’s time all was done, and out they flew again. And then Ashputtel took the dishes to her mother, rejoicing to think that she should now go to the ball. But her mother said, ‘It is all of no use, you cannot go; you have no clothes, and cannot dance, and you would only put us to shame’: and off she went with her two daughters to the ball.
Now when all were gone, and nobody left at home, Ashputtel went sorrowfully and sat down under the hazel-tree, and cried out:
 ‘Shake, shake, hazel-tree,
 Gold and silver over me!’
Then her friend the bird flew out of the tree, and brought a gold and silver dress for her, and slippers of spangled silk; and she put them on, and followed her sisters to the feast. But they did not know her, and thought it must be some strange princess, she looked so fine and beautiful in her rich clothes; and they never once thought of Ashputtel, taking it for granted that she was safe at home in the dirt.
The king’s son soon came up to her, and took her by the hand and danced with her, and no one else: and he never left her hand; but when anyone else came to ask her to dance, he said, ‘This lady is dancing with me.’
Thus they danced till a late hour of the night; and then she wanted to go home: and the king’s son said, ‘I shall go and take care of you to your home’; for he wanted to see where the beautiful maiden lived. But she slipped away from him, unawares, and ran off towards home; and as the prince followed her, she jumped up into the pigeon-house and shut the door. Then he waited till her father came home, and told him that the unknown maiden, who had been at the feast, had hid herself in the pigeon-house. But when they had broken open the door they found no one within; and as they came back into the house, Ashputtel was lying, as she always did, in her dirty frock by the ashes, and her dim little lamp was burning in the chimney. For she had run as quickly as she could through the pigeon-house and on to the hazel-tree, and had there taken off her beautiful clothes, and put them beneath the tree, that the bird might carry them away, and had lain down again amid the ashes in her little grey frock.
The next day when the feast was again held, and her father, mother, and sisters were gone, Ashputtel went to the hazel-tree, and said:
 ‘Shake, shake, hazel-tree,
 Gold and silver over me!’
And the bird came and brought a still finer dress than the one she had worn the day before. And when she came in it to the ball, everyone wondered at her beauty: but the king’s son, who was waiting for her, took her by the hand, and danced with her; and when anyone asked her to dance, he said as before, ‘This lady is dancing with me.’
When night came she wanted to go home; and the king’s son followed here as before, that he might see into what house she went: but she sprang away from him all at once into the garden behind her father’s house. In this garden stood a fine large pear-tree full of ripe fruit; and Ashputtel, not knowing where to hide herself, jumped up into it without being seen. Then the king’s son lost sight of her, and could not find out where she was gone, but waited till her father came home, and said to him, ‘The unknown lady who danced with me has slipped away, and I think she must have sprung into the pear-tree.’ The father thought to himself, ‘Can it be Ashputtel?’ So he had an axe brought; and they cut down the tree, but found no one upon it. And when they came back into the kitchen, there lay Ashputtel among the ashes; for she had slipped down on the other side of the tree, and carried her beautiful clothes back to the bird at the hazel-tree, and then put on her little grey frock.
The third day, when her father and mother and sisters were gone, she went again into the garden, and said:
 ‘Shake, shake, hazel-tree,
 Gold and silver over me!’
Then her kind friend the bird brought a dress still finer than the former one, and slippers which were all of gold: so that when she came to the feast no one knew what to say, for wonder at her beauty: and the king’s son danced with nobody but her; and when anyone else asked her to dance, he said, ‘This lady is my partner, sir.’
When night came she wanted to go home; and the king’s son would go with her, and said to himself, ‘I will not lose her this time’; but, however, she again slipped away from him, though in such a hurry that she dropped her left golden slipper upon the stairs.
The prince took the shoe, and went the next day to the king his father, and said, ‘I will take for my wife the lady that this golden slipper fits.’ Then both the sisters were overjoyed to hear it; for they had beautiful feet, and had no doubt that they could wear the golden slipper. The eldest went first into the room where the slipper was, and wanted to try it on, and the mother stood by. But her great toe could not go into it, and the shoe was altogether much too small for her. Then the mother gave her a knife, and said, ‘Never mind, cut it off; when you are queen you will not care about toes; you will not want to walk.’ So the silly girl cut off her great toe, and thus squeezed on the shoe, and went to the king’s son. Then he took her for his bride, and set her beside him on his horse, and rode away with her homewards.
But on their way home they had to pass by the hazel-tree that Ashputtel had planted; and on the branch sat a little dove singing:
 ‘Back again! back again! look to the shoe!
 The shoe is too small, and not made for you!
 Prince! prince! look again for thy bride,
 For she’s not the true one that sits by thy side.’
Then the prince got down and looked at her foot; and he saw, by the blood that streamed from it, what a trick she had played him. So he turned his horse round, and brought the false bride back to her home, and said, ‘This is not the right bride; let the other sister try and put on the slipper.’ Then she went into the room and got her foot into the shoe, all but the heel, which was too large. But her mother squeezed it in till the blood came, and took her to the king’s son: and he set her as his bride by his side on his horse, and rode away with her.
But when they came to the hazel-tree the little dove sat there still, and sang:
 ‘Back again! back again! look to the shoe!
 The shoe is too small, and not made for you!
 Prince! prince! look again for thy bride,
 For she’s not the true one that sits by thy side.’
Then he looked down, and saw that the blood streamed so much from the shoe, that her white stockings were quite red. So he turned his horse and brought her also back again. ‘This is not the true bride,’ said he to the father; ‘have you no other daughters?’ ‘No,’ said he; ‘there is only a little dirty Ashputtel here, the child of my first wife; I am sure she cannot be the bride.’ The prince told him to send her. But the mother said, ‘No, no, she is much too dirty; she will not dare to show herself.’ However, the prince would have her come; and she first washed her face and hands, and then went in and curtsied to him, and he reached her the golden slipper. Then she took her clumsy shoe off her left foot, and put on the golden slipper; and it fitted her as if it had been made for her. And when he drew near and looked at her face he knew her, and said, ‘This is the right bride.’ But the mother and both the sisters were frightened, and turned pale with anger as he took Ashputtel on his horse, and rode away with her. And when they came to the hazel-tree, the white dove sang:
 ‘Home! home! look at the shoe!
 Princess! the shoe was made for you!
 Prince! prince! take home thy bride,
 For she is the true one that sits by thy side!’
And when the dove had done its song, it came flying, and perched upon her right shoulder, and so went home with her.
== THE WHITE SNAKE ==
A long time ago there lived a king who was famed for his wisdom through all the land. Nothing was hidden from him, and it seemed as if news of the most secret things was brought to him through the air. But he had a strange custom; every day after dinner, when the table was cleared, and no one else was present, a trusty servant had to bring him one more dish. It was covered, however, and even the servant did not know what was in it, neither did anyone know, for the king never took off the cover to eat of it until he was quite alone.
This had gone on for a long time, when one day the servant, who took away the dish, was overcome with such curiosity that he could not help carrying the dish into his room. When he had carefully locked the door, he lifted up the cover, and saw a white snake lying on the dish. But when he saw it he could not deny himself the pleasure of tasting it, so he cut of a little bit and put it into his mouth. No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices outside his window. He went and listened, and then noticed that it was the sparrows who were chattering together, and telling one another of all kinds of things which they had seen in the fields and woods. Eating the snake had given him power of understanding the language of animals.
Now it so happened that on this very day the queen lost her most beautiful ring, and suspicion of having stolen it fell upon this trusty servant, who was allowed to go everywhere. The king ordered the man to be brought before him, and threatened with angry words that unless he could before the morrow point out the thief, he himself should be looked upon as guilty and executed. In vain he declared his innocence; he was dismissed with no better answer.
In his trouble and fear he went down into the courtyard and took thought how to help himself out of his trouble. Now some ducks were sitting together quietly by a brook and taking their rest; and, whilst they were making their feathers smooth with their bills, they were having a confidential conversation together. The servant stood by and listened. They were telling one another of all the places where they had been waddling about all the morning, and what good food they had found; and one said in a pitiful tone: ‘Something lies heavy on my stomach; as I was eating in haste I swallowed a ring which lay under the queen’s window.’ The servant at once seized her by the neck, carried her to the kitchen, and said to the cook: ‘Here is a fine duck; pray, kill her.’ ‘Yes,’ said the cook, and weighed her in his hand; ‘she has spared no trouble to fatten herself, and has been waiting to be roasted long enough.’ So he cut off her head, and as she was being dressed for the spit, the queen’s ring was found inside her.
The servant could now easily prove his innocence; and the king, to make amends for the wrong, allowed him to ask a favour, and promised him the best place in the court that he could wish for. The servant refused everything, and only asked for a horse and some money for travelling, as he had a mind to see the world and go about a little. When his request was granted he set out on his way, and one day came to a pond, where he saw three fishes caught in the reeds and gasping for water. Now, though it is said that fishes are dumb, he heard them lamenting that they must perish so miserably, and, as he had a kind heart, he got off his horse and put the three prisoners back into the water. They leapt with delight, put out their heads, and cried to him: ‘We will remember you and repay you for saving us!’
He rode on, and after a while it seemed to him that he heard a voice in the sand at his feet. He listened, and heard an ant-king complain: ‘Why cannot folks, with their clumsy beasts, keep off our bodies? That stupid horse, with his heavy hoofs, has been treading down my people without mercy!’ So he turned on to a side path and the ant-king cried out to him: ‘We will remember you—one good turn deserves another!’
The path led him into a wood, and there he saw two old ravens standing by their nest, and throwing out their young ones. ‘Out with you, you idle, good-for-nothing creatures!’ cried they; ‘we cannot find food for you any longer; you are big enough, and can provide for yourselves.’ But the poor young ravens lay upon the ground, flapping their wings, and crying: ‘Oh, what helpless chicks we are! We must shift for ourselves, and yet we cannot fly! What can we do, but lie here and starve?’ So the good young fellow alighted and killed his horse with his sword, and gave it to them for food. Then they came hopping up to it, satisfied their hunger, and cried: ‘We will remember you—one good turn deserves another!’
And now he had to use his own legs, and when he had walked a long way, he came to a large city. There was a great noise and crowd in the streets, and a man rode up on horseback, crying aloud: ‘The king’s daughter wants a husband; but whoever seeks her hand must perform a hard task, and if he does not succeed he will forfeit his life.’ Many had already made the attempt, but in vain; nevertheless when the youth saw the king’s daughter he was so overcome by her great beauty that he forgot all danger, went before the king, and declared himself a suitor.
So he was led out to the sea, and a gold ring was thrown into it, before his eyes; then the king ordered him to fetch this ring up from the bottom of the sea, and added: ‘If you come up again without it you will be thrown in again and again until you perish amid the waves.’ All the people grieved for the handsome youth; then they went away, leaving him alone by the sea.
He stood on the shore and considered what he should do, when suddenly he saw three fishes come swimming towards him, and they were the very fishes whose lives he had saved. The one in the middle held a mussel in its mouth, which it laid on the shore at the youth’s feet, and when he had taken it up and opened it, there lay the gold ring in the shell. Full of joy he took it to the king and expected that he would grant him the promised reward.
But when the proud princess perceived that he was not her equal in birth, she scorned him, and required him first to perform another task. She went down into the garden and strewed with her own hands ten sacksful of millet-seed on the grass; then she said: ‘Tomorrow morning before sunrise these must be picked up, and not a single grain be wanting.’
The youth sat down in the garden and considered how it might be possible to perform this task, but he could think of nothing, and there he sat sorrowfully awaiting the break of day, when he should be led to death. But as soon as the first rays of the sun shone into the garden he saw all the ten sacks standing side by side, quite full, and not a single grain was missing. The ant-king had come in the night with thousands and thousands of ants, and the grateful creatures had by great industry picked up all the millet-seed and gathered them into the sacks.
Presently the king’s daughter herself came down into the garden, and was amazed to see that the young man had done the task she had given him. But she could not yet conquer her proud heart, and said: ‘Although he has performed both the tasks, he shall not be my husband until he had brought me an apple from the Tree of Life.’ The youth did not know where the Tree of Life stood, but he set out, and would have gone on for ever, as long as his legs would carry him, though he had no hope of finding it. After he had wandered through three kingdoms, he came one evening to a wood, and lay down under a tree to sleep. But he heard a rustling in the branches, and a golden apple fell into his hand. At the same time three ravens flew down to him, perched themselves upon his knee, and said: ‘We are the three young ravens whom you saved from starving; when we had grown big, and heard that you were seeking the Golden Apple, we flew over the sea to the end of the world, where the Tree of Life stands, and have brought you the apple.’ The youth, full of joy, set out homewards, and took the Golden Apple to the king’s beautiful daughter, who had now no more excuses left to make. They cut the Apple of Life in two and ate it together; and then her heart became full of love for him, and they lived in undisturbed happiness to a great age.
== THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN LITTLE KIDS ==
There was once upon a time an old goat who had seven little kids, and loved them with all the love of a mother for her children. One day she wanted to go into the forest and fetch some food. So she called all seven to her and said: ‘Dear children, I have to go into the forest, be on your guard against the wolf; if he comes in, he will devour you all—skin, hair, and everything. The wretch often disguises himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice and his black feet.’ The kids said: ‘Dear mother, we will take good care of ourselves; you may go away without any anxiety.’ Then the old one bleated, and went on her way with an easy mind.
It was not long before someone knocked at the house-door and called: ‘Open the door, dear children; your mother is here, and has brought something back with her for each of you.’ But the little kids knew that it was the wolf, by the rough voice. ‘We will not open the door,’ cried they, ‘you are not our mother. She has a soft, pleasant voice, but your voice is rough; you are the wolf!’ Then the wolf went away to a shopkeeper and bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this and made his voice soft with it. Then he came back, knocked at the door of the house, and called: ‘Open the door, dear children, your mother is here and has brought something back with her for each of you.’ But the wolf had laid his black paws against the window, and the children saw them and cried: ‘We will not open the door, our mother has not black feet like you: you are the wolf!’ Then the wolf ran to a baker and said: ‘I have hurt my feet, rub some dough over them for me.’ And when the baker had rubbed his feet over, he ran to the miller and said: ‘Strew some white meal over my feet for me.’ The miller thought to himself: ‘The wolf wants to deceive someone,’ and refused; but the wolf said: ‘If you will not do it, I will devour you.’ Then the miller was afraid, and made his paws white for him. Truly, this is the way of mankind.
So now the wretch went for the third time to the house-door, knocked at it and said: ‘Open the door for me, children, your dear little mother has come home, and has brought every one of you something back from the forest with her.’ The little kids cried: ‘First show us your paws that we may know if you are our dear little mother.’ Then he put his paws in through the window and when the kids saw that they were white, they believed that all he said was true, and opened the door. But who should come in but the wolf! They were terrified and wanted to hide themselves. One sprang under the table, the second into the bed, the third into the stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth into the cupboard, the sixth under the washing-bowl, and the seventh into the clock-case. But the wolf found them all, and used no great ceremony; one after the other he swallowed them down his throat. The youngest, who was in the clock-case, was the only one he did not find. When the wolf had satisfied his appetite he took himself off, laid himself down under a tree in the green meadow outside, and began to sleep. Soon afterwards the old goat came home again from the forest. Ah! what a sight she saw there! The house-door stood wide open. The table, chairs, and benches were thrown down, the washing-bowl lay broken to pieces, and the quilts and pillows were pulled off the bed. She sought her children, but they were nowhere to be found. She called them one after another by name, but no one answered. At last, when she came to the youngest, a soft voice cried: ‘Dear mother, I am in the clock-case.’ She took the kid out, and it told her that the wolf had come and had eaten all the others. Then you may imagine how she wept over her poor children.
At length in her grief she went out, and the youngest kid ran with her. When they came to the meadow, there lay the wolf by the tree and snored so loud that the branches shook. She looked at him on every side and saw that something was moving and struggling in his gorged belly. ‘Ah, heavens,’ she said, ‘is it possible that my poor children whom he has swallowed down for his supper, can be still alive?’ Then the kid had to run home and fetch scissors, and a needle and thread, and the goat cut open the monster’s stomach, and hardly had she made one cut, than one little kid thrust its head out, and when she had cut farther, all six sprang out one after another, and were all still alive, and had suffered no injury whatever, for in his greediness the monster had swallowed them down whole. What rejoicing there was! They embraced their dear mother, and jumped like a tailor at his wedding. The mother, however, said: ‘Now go and look for some big stones, and we will fill the wicked beast’s stomach with them while he is still asleep.’ Then the seven kids dragged the stones thither with all speed, and put as many of them into this stomach as they could get in; and the mother sewed him up again in the greatest haste, so that he was not aware of anything and never once stirred.
When the wolf at length had had his fill of sleep, he got on his legs, and as the stones in his stomach made him very thirsty, he wanted to go to a well to drink. But when he began to walk and to move about, the stones in his stomach knocked against each other and rattled. Then cried he:
 ‘What rumbles and tumbles
 Against my poor bones?
 I thought ‘twas six kids,
 But it feels like big stones.’
And when he got to the well and stooped over the water to drink, the heavy stones made him fall in, and he drowned miserably. When the seven kids saw that, they came running to the spot and cried aloud: ‘The wolf is dead! The wolf is dead!’ and danced for joy round about the well with their mother.
== THE QUEEN BEE ==
Two kings’ sons once upon a time went into the world to seek their fortunes; but they soon fell into a wasteful foolish way of living, so that they could not return home again. Then their brother, who was a little insignificant dwarf, went out to seek for his brothers: but when he had found them they only laughed at him, to think that he, who was so young and simple, should try to travel through the world, when they, who were so much wiser, had been unable to get on. However, they all set out on their journey together, and came at last to an ant-hill. The two elder brothers would have pulled it down, in order to see how the poor ants in their fright would run about and carry off their eggs. But the little dwarf said, ‘Let the poor things enjoy themselves, I will not suffer you to trouble them.’
So on they went, and came to a lake where many many ducks were swimming about. The two brothers wanted to catch two, and roast them. But the dwarf said, ‘Let the poor things enjoy themselves, you shall not kill them.’ Next they came to a bees’-nest in a hollow tree, and there was so much honey that it ran down the trunk; and the two brothers wanted to light a fire under the tree and kill the bees, so as to get their honey. But the dwarf held them back, and said, ‘Let the pretty insects enjoy themselves, I cannot let you burn them.’
At length the three brothers came to a castle: and as they passed by the stables they saw fine horses standing there, but all were of marble, and no man was to be seen. Then they went through all the rooms, till they came to a door on which were three locks: but in the middle of the door was a wicket, so that they could look into the next room. There they saw a little grey old man sitting at a table; and they called to him once or twice, but he did not hear: however, they called a third time, and then he rose and came out to them.
He said nothing, but took hold of them and led them to a beautiful table covered with all sorts of good things: and when they had eaten and drunk, he showed each of them to a bed-chamber.
The next morning he came to the eldest and took him to a marble table, where there were three tablets, containing an account of the means by which the castle might be disenchanted. The first tablet said: ‘In the wood, under the moss, lie the thousand pearls belonging to the king’s daughter; they must all be found: and if one be missing by set of sun, he who seeks them will be turned into marble.’
The eldest brother set out, and sought for the pearls the whole day: but the evening came, and he had not found the first hundred: so he was turned into stone as the tablet had foretold.
The next day the second brother undertook the task; but he succeeded no better than the first; for he could only find the second hundred of the pearls; and therefore he too was turned into stone.
At last came the little dwarf’s turn; and he looked in the moss; but it was so hard to find the pearls, and the job was so tiresome!—so he sat down upon a stone and cried. And as he sat there, the king of the ants (whose life he had saved) came to help him, with five thousand ants; and it was not long before they had found all the pearls and laid them in a heap.
The second tablet said: ‘The key of the princess’s bed-chamber must be fished up out of the lake.’ And as the dwarf came to the brink of it, he saw the two ducks whose lives he had saved swimming about; and they dived down and soon brought in the key from the bottom.
The third task was the hardest. It was to choose out the youngest and the best of the king’s three daughters. Now they were all beautiful, and all exactly alike: but he was told that the eldest had eaten a piece of sugar, the next some sweet syrup, and the youngest a spoonful of honey; so he was to guess which it was that had eaten the honey.
Then came the queen of the bees, who had been saved by the little dwarf from the fire, and she tried the lips of all three; but at last she sat upon the lips of the one that had eaten the honey: and so the dwarf knew which was the youngest. Thus the spell was broken, and all who had been turned into stones awoke, and took their proper forms. And the dwarf married the youngest and the best of the princesses, and was king after her father’s death; but his two brothers married the other two sisters.
== THE ELVES AND THE SHOEMAKER ==
There was once a shoemaker, who worked very hard and was very honest: but still he could not earn enough to live upon; and at last all he had in the world was gone, save just leather enough to make one pair of shoes.
Then he cut his leather out, all ready to make up the next day, meaning to rise early in the morning to his work. His conscience was clear and his heart light amidst all his troubles; so he went peaceably to bed, left all his cares to Heaven, and soon fell asleep. In the morning after he had said his prayers, he sat himself down to his work; when, to his great wonder, there stood the shoes all ready made, upon the table. The good man knew not what to say or think at such an odd thing happening. He looked at the workmanship; there was not one false stitch in the whole job; all was so neat and true, that it was quite a masterpiece.
The same day a customer came in, and the shoes suited him so well that he willingly paid a price higher than usual for them; and the poor shoemaker, with the money, bought leather enough to make two pairs more. In the evening he cut out the work, and went to bed early, that he might get up and begin betimes next day; but he was saved all the trouble, for when he got up in the morning the work was done ready to his hand. Soon in came buyers, who paid him handsomely for his goods, so that he bought leather enough for four pair more. He cut out the work again overnight and found it done in the morning, as before; and so it went on for some time: what was got ready in the evening was always done by daybreak, and the good man soon became thriving and well off again.
One evening, about Christmas-time, as he and his wife were sitting over the fire chatting together, he said to her, ‘I should like to sit up and watch tonight, that we may see who it is that comes and does my work for me.’ The wife liked the thought; so they left a light burning, and hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind a curtain that was hung up there, and watched what would happen.
As soon as it was midnight, there came in two little naked dwarfs; and they sat themselves upon the shoemaker’s bench, took up all the work that was cut out, and began to ply with their little fingers, stitching and rapping and tapping away at such a rate, that the shoemaker was all wonder, and could not take his eyes off them. And on they went, till the job was quite done, and the shoes stood ready for use upon the table. This was long before daybreak; and then they bustled away as quick as lightning.
The next day the wife said to the shoemaker. ‘These little wights have made us rich, and we ought to be thankful to them, and do them a good turn if we can. I am quite sorry to see them run about as they do; and indeed it is not very decent, for they have nothing upon their backs to keep off the cold. I’ll tell you what, I will make each of them a shirt, and a coat and waistcoat, and a pair of pantaloons into the bargain; and do you make each of them a little pair of shoes.’
The thought pleased the good cobbler very much; and one evening, when all the things were ready, they laid them on the table, instead of the work that they used to cut out, and then went and hid themselves, to watch what the little elves would do.
About midnight in they came, dancing and skipping, hopped round the room, and then went to sit down to their work as usual; but when they saw the clothes lying for them, they laughed and chuckled, and seemed mightily delighted.
Then they dressed themselves in the twinkling of an eye, and danced and capered and sprang about, as merry as could be; till at last they danced out at the door, and away over the green.
The good couple saw them no more; but everything went well with them from that time forward, as long as they lived.
== THE JUNIPER-TREE ==
Long, long ago, some two thousand years or so, there lived a rich man with a good and beautiful wife. They loved each other dearly, but sorrowed much that they had no children. So greatly did they desire to have one, that the wife prayed for it day and night, but still they remained childless.
In front of the house there was a court, in which grew a juniper-tree. One winter’s day the wife stood under the tree to peel some apples, and as she was peeling them, she cut her finger, and the blood fell on the snow. ‘Ah,’ sighed the woman heavily, ‘if I had but a child, as red as blood and as white as snow,’ and as she spoke the words, her heart grew light within her, and it seemed to her that her wish was granted, and she returned to the house feeling glad and comforted. A month passed, and the snow had all disappeared; then another month went by, and all the earth was green. So the months followed one another, and first the trees budded in the woods, and soon the green branches grew thickly intertwined, and then the blossoms began to fall. Once again the wife stood under the juniper-tree, and it was so full of sweet scent that her heart leaped for joy, and she was so overcome with her happiness, that she fell on her knees. Presently the fruit became round and firm, and she was glad and at peace; but when they were fully ripe she picked the berries and ate eagerly of them, and then she grew sad and ill. A little while later she called her husband, and said to him, weeping. ‘If I die, bury me under the juniper-tree.’ Then she felt comforted and happy again, and before another month had passed she had a little child, and when she saw that it was as white as snow and as red as blood, her joy was so great that she died.
Her husband buried her under the juniper-tree, and wept bitterly for her. By degrees, however, his sorrow grew less, and although at times he still grieved over his loss, he was able to go about as usual, and later on he married again.
He now had a little daughter born to him; the child of his first wife was a boy, who was as red as blood and as white as snow. The mother loved her daughter very much, and when she looked at her and then looked at the boy, it pierced her heart to think that he would always stand in the way of her own child, and she was continually thinking how she could get the whole of the property for her. This evil thought took possession of her more and more, and made her behave very unkindly to the boy. She drove him from place to place with cuffings and buffetings, so that the poor child went about in fear, and had no peace from the time he left school to the time he went back.
One day the little daughter came running to her mother in the store-room, and said, ‘Mother, give me an apple.’ ‘Yes, my child,’ said the wife, and she gave her a beautiful apple out of the chest; the chest had a very heavy lid and a large iron lock.
‘Mother,’ said the little daughter again, ‘may not brother have one too?’ The mother was angry at this, but she answered, ‘Yes, when he comes out of school.’
Just then she looked out of the window and saw him coming, and it seemed as if an evil spirit entered into her, for she snatched the apple out of her little daughter’s hand, and said, ‘You shall not have one before your brother.’ She threw the apple into the chest and shut it to. The little boy now came in, and the evil spirit in the wife made her say kindly to him, ‘My son, will you have an apple?’ but she gave him a wicked look. ‘Mother,’ said the boy, ‘how dreadful you look! Yes, give me an apple.’ The thought came to her that she would kill him. ‘Come with me,’ she said, and she lifted up the lid of the chest; ‘take one out for yourself.’ And as he bent over to do so, the evil spirit urged her, and crash! down went the lid, and off went the little boy’s head. Then she was overwhelmed with fear at the thought of what she had done. ‘If only I can prevent anyone knowing that I did it,’ she thought. So she went upstairs to her room, and took a white handkerchief out of her top drawer; then she set the boy’s head again on his shoulders, and bound it with the handkerchief so that nothing could be seen, and placed him on a chair by the door with an apple in his hand.
Soon after this, little Marleen came up to her mother who was stirring a pot of boiling water over the fire, and said, ‘Mother, brother is sitting by the door with an apple in his hand, and he looks so pale; and when I asked him to give me the apple, he did not answer, and that frightened me.’
‘Go to him again,’ said her mother, ‘and if he does not answer, give him a box on the ear.’ So little Marleen went, and said, ‘Brother, give me that apple,’ but he did not say a word; then she gave him a box on the ear, and his head rolled off. She was so terrified at this, that she ran crying and screaming to her mother. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘I have knocked off brother’s head,’ and then she wept and wept, and nothing would stop her.
‘What have you done!’ said her mother, ‘but no one must know about it, so you must keep silence; what is done can’t be undone; we will make him into puddings.’ And she took the little boy and cut him up, made him into puddings, and put him in the pot. But Marleen stood looking on, and wept and wept, and her tears fell into the pot, so that there was no need of salt.
Presently the father came home and sat down to his dinner; he asked, ‘Where is my son?’ The mother said nothing, but gave him a large dish of black pudding, and Marleen still wept without ceasing.
The father again asked, ‘Where is my son?’
‘Oh,’ answered the wife, ‘he is gone into the country to his mother’s great uncle; he is going to stay there some time.’
‘What has he gone there for, and he never even said goodbye to me!’
‘Well, he likes being there, and he told me he should be away quite six weeks; he is well looked after there.’
‘I feel very unhappy about it,’ said the husband, ‘in case it should not be all right, and he ought to have said goodbye to me.’
With this he went on with his dinner, and said, ‘Little Marleen, why do you weep? Brother will soon be back.’ Then he asked his wife for more pudding, and as he ate, he threw the bones under the table.
Little Marleen went upstairs and took her best silk handkerchief out of her bottom drawer, and in it she wrapped all the bones from under the table and carried them outside, and all the time she did nothing but weep. Then she laid them in the green grass under the juniper-tree, and she had no sooner done so, then all her sadness seemed to leave her, and she wept no more. And now the juniper-tree began to move, and the branches waved backwards and forwards, first away from one another, and then together again, as it might be someone clapping their hands for joy. After this a mist came round the tree, and in the midst of it there was a burning as of fire, and out of the fire there flew a beautiful bird, that rose high into the air, singing magnificently, and when it could no more be seen, the juniper-tree stood there as before, and the silk handkerchief and the bones were gone.
Little Marleen now felt as lighthearted and happy as if her brother were still alive, and she went back to the house and sat down cheerfully to the table and ate.
The bird flew away and alighted on the house of a goldsmith and began to sing:
 ‘My mother killed her little son;
 My father grieved when I was gone;
 My sister loved me best of all;
 She laid her kerchief over me,
 And took my bones that they might lie
 Underneath the juniper-tree
 Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
The goldsmith was in his workshop making a gold chain, when he heard the song of the bird on his roof. He thought it so beautiful that he got up and ran out, and as he crossed the threshold he lost one of his slippers. But he ran on into the middle of the street, with a slipper on one foot and a sock on the other; he still had on his apron, and still held the gold chain and the pincers in his hands, and so he stood gazing up at the bird, while the sun came shining brightly down on the street.
‘Bird,’ he said, ‘how beautifully you sing! Sing me that song again.’
‘Nay,’ said the bird, ‘I do not sing twice for nothing. Give that gold chain, and I will sing it you again.’
‘Here is the chain, take it,’ said the goldsmith. ‘Only sing me that again.’
The bird flew down and took the gold chain in his right claw, and then he alighted again in front of the goldsmith and sang:
 ‘My mother killed her little son;
 My father grieved when I was gone;
 My sister loved me best of all;
 She laid her kerchief over me,
 And took my bones that they might lie
 Underneath the juniper-tree
 Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
Then he flew away, and settled on the roof of a shoemaker’s house and sang:
 ‘My mother killed her little son;
 My father grieved when I was gone;
 My sister loved me best of all;
 She laid her kerchief over me,
 And took my bones that they might lie
 Underneath the juniper-tree
 Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
The shoemaker heard him, and he jumped up and ran out in his shirt-sleeves, and stood looking up at the bird on the roof with his hand over his eyes to keep himself from being blinded by the sun.
‘Bird,’ he said, ‘how beautifully you sing!’ Then he called through the door to his wife: ‘Wife, come out; here is a bird, come and look at it and hear how beautifully it sings.’ Then he called his daughter and the children, then the apprentices, girls and boys, and they all ran up the street to look at the bird, and saw how splendid it was with its red and green feathers, and its neck like burnished gold, and eyes like two bright stars in its head.
‘Bird,’ said the shoemaker, ‘sing me that song again.’
‘Nay,’ answered the bird, ‘I do not sing twice for nothing; you must give me something.’
‘Wife,’ said the man, ‘go into the garret; on the upper shelf you will see a pair of red shoes; bring them to me.’ The wife went in and fetched the shoes.
‘There, bird,’ said the shoemaker, ‘now sing me that song again.’
The bird flew down and took the red shoes in his left claw, and then he went back to the roof and sang:
 ‘My mother killed her little son;
 My father grieved when I was gone;
 My sister loved me best of all;
 She laid her kerchief over me,
 And took my bones that they might lie
 Underneath the juniper-tree
 Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
When he had finished, he flew away. He had the chain in his right claw and the shoes in his left, and he flew right away to a mill, and the mill went ‘Click clack, click clack, click clack.’ Inside the mill were twenty of the miller’s men hewing a stone, and as they went ‘Hick hack, hick hack, hick hack,’ the mill went ‘Click clack, click clack, click clack.’
The bird settled on a lime-tree in front of the mill and sang:
 ‘My mother killed her little son;
then one of the men left off,
 My father grieved when I was gone;
two more men left off and listened,
 My sister loved me best of all;
then four more left off,
 She laid her kerchief over me,
 And took my bones that they might lie
Now there were only eight at work,
 Underneath,
and now only five,
 the juniper-tree.
and now only one,
 Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
then he looked up and the last one had left off work.
‘Bird,’ he said, ‘what a beautiful song that is you sing! Let me hear it too; sing it again.’
‘Nay,’ answered the bird, ‘I do not sing twice for nothing; give me that millstone, and I will sing it again.’
‘If it belonged to me alone,’ said the man, ‘you should have it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the others: ‘if he will sing again, he can have it.’
The bird came down, and all the twenty millers set to and lifted up the stone with a beam; then the bird put his head through the hole and took the stone round his neck like a collar, and flew back with it to the tree and sang—
 ‘My mother killed her little son;
 My father grieved when I was gone;
 My sister loved me best of all;
 She laid her kerchief over me,
 And took my bones that they might lie
 Underneath the juniper-tree
 Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
And when he had finished his song, he spread his wings, and with the chain in his right claw, the shoes in his left, and the millstone round his neck, he flew right away to his father’s house.
The father, the mother, and little Marleen were having their dinner.
‘How lighthearted I feel,’ said the father, ‘so pleased and cheerful.’
‘And I,’ said the mother, ‘I feel so uneasy, as if a heavy thunderstorm were coming.’
But little Marleen sat and wept and wept.
Then the bird came flying towards the house and settled on the roof.
‘I do feel so happy,’ said the father, ‘and how beautifully the sun shines; I feel just as if I were going to see an old friend again.’
‘Ah!’ said the wife, ‘and I am so full of distress and uneasiness that my teeth chatter, and I feel as if there were a fire in my veins,’ and she tore open her dress; and all the while little Marleen sat in the corner and wept, and the plate on her knees was wet with her tears.
The bird now flew to the juniper-tree and began singing:
 ‘My mother killed her little son;
the mother shut her eyes and her ears, that she might see and hear nothing, but there was a roaring sound in her ears like that of a violent storm, and in her eyes a burning and flashing like lightning:
 My father grieved when I was gone;
‘Look, mother,’ said the man, ‘at the beautiful bird that is singing so magnificently; and how warm and bright the sun is, and what a delicious scent of spice in the air!’
 My sister loved me best of all;
then little Marleen laid her head down on her knees and sobbed.
‘I must go outside and see the bird nearer,’ said the man.
‘Ah, do not go!’ cried the wife. ‘I feel as if the whole house were in flames!’
But the man went out and looked at the bird.
 She laid her kerchief over me,
 And took my bones that they might lie
 Underneath the juniper-tree
 Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
With that the bird let fall the gold chain, and it fell just round the man’s neck, so that it fitted him exactly.
He went inside, and said, ‘See, what a splendid bird that is; he has given me this beautiful gold chain, and looks so beautiful himself.’
But the wife was in such fear and trouble, that she fell on the floor, and her cap fell from her head.
Then the bird began again:
 ‘My mother killed her little son;
‘Ah me!’ cried the wife, ‘if I were but a thousand feet beneath the earth, that I might not hear that song.’
 My father grieved when I was gone;
then the woman fell down again as if dead.
 My sister loved me best of all;
‘Well,’ said little Marleen, ‘I will go out too and see if the bird will give me anything.’
So she went out.
 She laid her kerchief over me,
 And took my bones that they might lie
and he threw down the shoes to her,
 Underneath the juniper-tree
 Kywitt, Kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!’
And she now felt quite happy and lighthearted; she put on the shoes and danced and jumped about in them. ‘I was so miserable,’ she said, ‘when I came out, but that has all passed away; that is indeed a splendid bird, and he has given me a pair of red shoes.’
The wife sprang up, with her hair standing out from her head like flames of fire. ‘Then I will go out too,’ she said, ‘and see if it will lighten my misery, for I feel as if the world were coming to an end.’
But as she crossed the threshold, crash! the bird threw the millstone down on her head, and she was crushed to death.
The father and little Marleen heard the sound and ran out, but they only saw mist and flame and fire rising from the spot, and when these had passed, there stood the little brother, and he took the father and little Marleen by the hand; then they all three rejoiced, and went inside together and sat down to their dinners and ate.
== THE TURNIP ==
There were two brothers who were both soldiers; the one was rich and the other poor. The poor man thought he would try to better himself; so, pulling off his red coat, he became a gardener, and dug his ground well, and sowed turnips.
When the seed came up, there was one plant bigger than all the rest; and it kept getting larger and larger, and seemed as if it would never cease growing; so that it might have been called the prince of turnips for there never was such a one seen before, and never will again. At last it was so big that it filled a cart, and two oxen could hardly draw it; and the gardener knew not what in the world to do with it, nor whether it would be a blessing or a curse to him. One day he said to himself, ‘What shall I do with it? if I sell it, it will bring no more than another; and for eating, the little turnips are better than this; the best thing perhaps is to carry it and give it to the king as a mark of respect.’
Then he yoked his oxen, and drew the turnip to the court, and gave it to the king. ‘What a wonderful thing!’ said the king; ‘I have seen many strange things, but such a monster as this I never saw. Where did you get the seed? or is it only your good luck? If so, you are a true child of fortune.’ ‘Ah, no!’ answered the gardener, ‘I am no child of fortune; I am a poor soldier, who never could get enough to live upon; so I laid aside my red coat, and set to work, tilling the ground. I have a brother, who is rich, and your majesty knows him well, and all the world knows him; but because I am poor, everybody forgets me.’
The king then took pity on him, and said, ‘You shall be poor no longer. I will give you so much that you shall be even richer than your brother.’ Then he gave him gold and lands and flocks, and made him so rich that his brother’s fortune could not at all be compared with his.
When the brother heard of all this, and how a turnip had made the gardener so rich, he envied him sorely, and bethought himself how he could contrive to get the same good fortune for himself. However, he determined to manage more cleverly than his brother, and got together a rich present of gold and fine horses for the king; and thought he must have a much larger gift in return; for if his brother had received so much for only a turnip, what must his present be worth?
The king took the gift very graciously, and said he knew not what to give in return more valuable and wonderful than the great turnip; so the soldier was forced to put it into a cart, and drag it home with him. When he reached home, he knew not upon whom to vent his rage and spite; and at length wicked thoughts came into his head, and he resolved to kill his brother.
So he hired some villains to murder him; and having shown them where to lie in ambush, he went to his brother, and said, ‘Dear brother, I have found a hidden treasure; let us go and dig it up, and share it between us.’ The other had no suspicions of his roguery: so they went out together, and as they were travelling along, the murderers rushed out upon him, bound him, and were going to hang him on a tree.
But whilst they were getting all ready, they heard the trampling of a horse at a distance, which so frightened them that they pushed their prisoner neck and shoulders together into a sack, and swung him up by a cord to the tree, where they left him dangling, and ran away. Meantime he worked and worked away, till he made a hole large enough to put out his head.
When the horseman came up, he proved to be a student, a merry fellow, who was journeying along on his nag, and singing as he went. As soon as the man in the sack saw him passing under the tree, he cried out, ‘Good morning! good morning to thee, my friend!’ The student looked about everywhere; and seeing no one, and not knowing where the voice came from, cried out, ‘Who calls me?’
Then the man in the tree answered, ‘Lift up thine eyes, for behold here I sit in the sack of wisdom; here have I, in a short time, learned great and wondrous things. Compared to this seat, all the learning of the schools is as empty air. A little longer, and I shall know all that man can know, and shall come forth wiser than the wisest of mankind. Here I discern the signs and motions of the heavens and the stars; the laws that control the winds; the number of the sands on the seashore; the healing of the sick; the virtues of all simples, of birds, and of precious stones. Wert thou but once here, my friend, though wouldst feel and own the power of knowledge.
The student listened to all this and wondered much; at last he said, ‘Blessed be the day and hour when I found you; cannot you contrive to let me into the sack for a little while?’ Then the other answered, as if very unwillingly, ‘A little space I may allow thee to sit here, if thou wilt reward me well and entreat me kindly; but thou must tarry yet an hour below, till I have learnt some little matters that are yet unknown to me.’
So the student sat himself down and waited a while; but the time hung heavy upon him, and he begged earnestly that he might ascend forthwith, for his thirst for knowledge was great. Then the other pretended to give way, and said, ‘Thou must let the sack of wisdom descend, by untying yonder cord, and then thou shalt enter.’ So the student let him down, opened the sack, and set him free. ‘Now then,’ cried he, ‘let me ascend quickly.’ As he began to put himself into the sack heels first, ‘Wait a while,’ said the gardener, ‘that is not the way.’ Then he pushed him in head first, tied up the sack, and soon swung up the searcher after wisdom dangling in the air. ‘How is it with thee, friend?’ said he, ‘dost thou not feel that wisdom comes unto thee? Rest there in peace, till thou art a wiser man than thou wert.’
So saying, he trotted off on the student’s nag, and left the poor fellow to gather wisdom till somebody should come and let him down.
== CLEVER HANS ==
The mother of Hans said: ‘Whither away, Hans?’ Hans answered: ‘To Gretel.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘Oh, I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What do you bring that is good?’ ‘I bring nothing, I want to have something given me.’ Gretel presents Hans with a needle, Hans says: ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’
Hans takes the needle, sticks it into a hay-cart, and follows the cart home. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘Took nothing; had something given me.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘Gave me a needle.’ ‘Where is the needle, Hans?’ ‘Stuck in the hay-cart.’ ‘That was ill done, Hans. You should have stuck the needle in your sleeve.’ ‘Never mind, I’ll do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘Oh, I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What do you bring that is good?’ ‘I bring nothing. I want to have something given to me.’ Gretel presents Hans with a knife. ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans takes the knife, sticks it in his sleeve, and goes home. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ What did you take her?’ ‘Took her nothing, she gave me something.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘Gave me a knife.’ ‘Where is the knife, Hans?’ ‘Stuck in my sleeve.’ ‘That’s ill done, Hans, you should have put the knife in your pocket.’ ‘Never mind, will do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘Oh, I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What good thing do you bring?’ ‘I bring nothing, I want something given me.’ Gretel presents Hans with a young goat. ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans takes the goat, ties its legs, and puts it in his pocket. When he gets home it is suffocated. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘Took nothing, she gave me something.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘She gave me a goat.’ ‘Where is the goat, Hans?’ ‘Put it in my pocket.’ ‘That was ill done, Hans, you should have put a rope round the goat’s neck.’ ‘Never mind, will do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘Oh, I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What good thing do you bring?’ ‘I bring nothing, I want something given me.’ Gretel presents Hans with a piece of bacon. ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’
Hans takes the bacon, ties it to a rope, and drags it away behind him. The dogs come and devour the bacon. When he gets home, he has the rope in his hand, and there is no longer anything hanging on to it. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘I took her nothing, she gave me something.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘Gave me a bit of bacon.’ ‘Where is the bacon, Hans?’ ‘I tied it to a rope, brought it home, dogs took it.’ ‘That was ill done, Hans, you should have carried the bacon on your head.’ ‘Never mind, will do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’ Hans comes to Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans, What good thing do you bring?’ ‘I bring nothing, but would have something given.’ Gretel presents Hans with a calf. ‘Goodbye, Gretel.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’
Hans takes the calf, puts it on his head, and the calf kicks his face. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘I took nothing, but had something given me.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘A calf.’ ‘Where have you the calf, Hans?’ ‘I set it on my head and it kicked my face.’ ‘That was ill done, Hans, you should have led the calf, and put it in the stall.’ ‘Never mind, will do better next time.’
‘Whither away, Hans?’ ‘To Gretel, mother.’ ‘Behave well, Hans.’ ‘I’ll behave well. Goodbye, mother.’ ‘Goodbye, Hans.’
Hans comes to Gretel. ‘Good day, Gretel.’ ‘Good day, Hans. What good thing do you bring?’ ‘I bring nothing, but would have something given.’ Gretel says to Hans: ‘I will go with you.’
Hans takes Gretel, ties her to a rope, leads her to the rack, and binds her fast. Then Hans goes to his mother. ‘Good evening, mother.’ ‘Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?’ ‘With Gretel.’ ‘What did you take her?’ ‘I took her nothing.’ ‘What did Gretel give you?’ ‘She gave me nothing, she came with me.’ ‘Where have you left Gretel?’ ‘I led her by the rope, tied her to the rack, and scattered some grass for her.’ ‘That was ill done, Hans, you should have cast friendly eyes on her.’ ‘Never mind, will do better.’
Hans went into the stable, cut out all the calves’ and sheep’s eyes, and threw them in Gretel’s face. Then Gretel became angry, tore herself loose and ran away, and was no longer the bride of Hans.
== THE THREE LANGUAGES ==
An aged count once lived in Switzerland, who had an only son, but he was stupid, and could learn nothing. Then said the father: ‘Hark you, my son, try as I will I can get nothing into your head. You must go from hence, I will give you into the care of a celebrated master, who shall see what he can do with you.’ The youth was sent into a strange town, and remained a whole year with the master. At the end of this time, he came home again, and his father asked: ‘Now, my son, what have you learnt?’ ‘Father, I have learnt what the dogs say when they bark.’ ‘Lord have mercy on us!’ cried the father; ‘is that all you have learnt? I will send you into another town, to another master.’ The youth was taken thither, and stayed a year with this master likewise. When he came back the father again asked: ‘My son, what have you learnt?’ He answered: ‘Father, I have learnt what the birds say.’ Then the father fell into a rage and said: ‘Oh, you lost man, you have spent the precious time and learnt nothing; are you not ashamed to appear before my eyes? I will send you to a third master, but if you learn nothing this time also, I will no longer be your father.’ The youth remained a whole year with the third master also, and when he came home again, and his father inquired: ‘My son, what have you learnt?’ he answered: ‘Dear father, I have this year learnt what the frogs croak.’ Then the father fell into the most furious anger, sprang up, called his people thither, and said: ‘This man is no longer my son, I drive him forth, and command you to take him out into the forest, and kill him.’ They took him forth, but when they should have killed him, they could not do it for pity, and let him go, and they cut the eyes and tongue out of a deer that they might carry them to the old man as a token.
The youth wandered on, and after some time came to a fortress where he begged for a night’s lodging. ‘Yes,’ said the lord of the castle, ‘if you will pass the night down there in the old tower, go thither; but I warn you, it is at the peril of your life, for it is full of wild dogs, which bark and howl without stopping, and at certain hours a man has to be given to them, whom they at once devour.’ The whole district was in sorrow and dismay because of them, and yet no one could do anything to stop this. The youth, however, was without fear, and said: ‘Just let me go down to the barking dogs, and give me something that I can throw to them; they will do nothing to harm me.’ As he himself would have it so, they gave him some food for the wild animals, and led him down to the tower. When he went inside, the dogs did not bark at him, but wagged their tails quite amicably around him, ate what he set before them, and did not hurt one hair of his head. Next morning, to the astonishment of everyone, he came out again safe and unharmed, and said to the lord of the castle: ‘The dogs have revealed to me, in their own language, why they dwell there, and bring evil on the land. They are bewitched, and are obliged to watch over a great treasure which is below in the tower, and they can have no rest until it is taken away, and I have likewise learnt, from their discourse, how that is to be done.’ Then all who heard this rejoiced, and the lord of the castle said he would adopt him as a son if he accomplished it successfully. He went down again, and as he knew what he had to do, he did it thoroughly, and brought a chest full of gold out with him. The howling of the wild dogs was henceforth heard no more; they had disappeared, and the country was freed from the trouble.
After some time he took it in his head that he would travel to Rome. On the way he passed by a marsh, in which a number of frogs were sitting croaking. He listened to them, and when he became aware of what they were saying, he grew very thoughtful and sad. At last he arrived in Rome, where the Pope had just died, and there was great doubt among the cardinals as to whom they should appoint as his successor. They at length agreed that the person should be chosen as pope who should be distinguished by some divine and miraculous token. And just as that was decided on, the young count entered into the church, and suddenly two snow-white doves flew on his shoulders and remained sitting there. The ecclesiastics recognized therein the token from above, and asked him on the spot if he would be pope. He was undecided, and knew not if he were worthy of this, but the doves counselled him to do it, and at length he said yes. Then was he anointed and consecrated, and thus was fulfilled what he had heard from the frogs on his way, which had so affected him, that he was to be his Holiness the Pope. Then he had to sing a mass, and did not know one word of it, but the two doves sat continually on his shoulders, and said it all in his ear.
== THE FOX AND THE CAT ==
It happened that the cat met the fox in a forest, and as she thought to herself: ‘He is clever and full of experience, and much esteemed in the world,’ she spoke to him in a friendly way. ‘Good day, dear Mr Fox, how are you? How is all with you? How are you getting on in these hard times?’ The fox, full of all kinds of arrogance, looked at the cat from head to foot, and for a long time did not know whether he would give any answer or not. At last he said: ‘Oh, you wretched beard-cleaner, you piebald fool, you hungry mouse-hunter, what can you be thinking of? Have you the cheek to ask how I am getting on? What have you learnt? How many arts do you understand?’ ‘I understand but one,’ replied the cat, modestly. ‘What art is that?’ asked the fox. ‘When the hounds are following me, I can spring into a tree and save myself.’ ‘Is that all?’ said the fox. ‘I am master of a hundred arts, and have into the bargain a sackful of cunning. You make me sorry for you; come with me, I will teach you how people get away from the hounds.’ Just then came a hunter with four dogs. The cat sprang nimbly up a tree, and sat down at the top of it, where the branches and foliage quite concealed her. ‘Open your sack, Mr Fox, open your sack,’ cried the cat to him, but the dogs had already seized him, and were holding him fast. ‘Ah, Mr Fox,’ cried the cat. ‘You with your hundred arts are left in the lurch! Had you been able to climb like me, you would not have lost your life.’
== THE FOUR CLEVER BROTHERS ==
‘Dear children,’ said a poor man to his four sons, ‘I have nothing to give you; you must go out into the wide world and try your luck. Begin by learning some craft or another, and see how you can get on.’ So the four brothers took their walking-sticks in their hands, and their little bundles on their shoulders, and after bidding their father goodbye, went all out at the gate together. When they had got on some way they came to four crossways, each leading to a different country. Then the eldest said, ‘Here we must part; but this day four years we will come back to this spot, and in the meantime each must try what he can do for himself.’
So each brother went his way; and as the eldest was hastening on a man met him, and asked him where he was going, and what he wanted. ‘I am going to try my luck in the world, and should like to begin by learning some art or trade,’ answered he. ‘Then,’ said the man, ‘go with me, and I will teach you to become the cunningest thief that ever was.’ ‘No,’ said the other, ‘that is not an honest calling, and what can one look to earn by it in the end but the gallows?’ ‘Oh!’ said the man, ‘you need not fear the gallows; for I will only teach you to steal what will be fair game: I meddle with nothing but what no one else can get or care anything about, and where no one can find you out.’ So the young man agreed to follow his trade, and he soon showed himself so clever, that nothing could escape him that he had once set his mind upon.
The second brother also met a man, who, when he found out what he was setting out upon, asked him what craft he meant to follow. ‘I do not know yet,’ said he. ‘Then come with me, and be a star-gazer. It is a noble art, for nothing can be hidden from you, when once you understand the stars.’ The plan pleased him much, and he soon became such a skilful star-gazer, that when he had served out his time, and wanted to leave his master, he gave him a glass, and said, ‘With this you can see all that is passing in the sky and on earth, and nothing can be hidden from you.’
The third brother met a huntsman, who took him with him, and taught him so well all that belonged to hunting, that he became very clever in the craft of the woods; and when he left his master he gave him a bow, and said, ‘Whatever you shoot at with this bow you will be sure to hit.’
The youngest brother likewise met a man who asked him what he wished to do. ‘Would not you like,’ said he, ‘to be a tailor?’ ‘Oh, no!’ said the young man; ‘sitting cross-legged from morning to night, working backwards and forwards with a needle and goose, will never suit me.’ ‘Oh!’ answered the man, ‘that is not my sort of tailoring; come with me, and you will learn quite another kind of craft from that.’ Not knowing what better to do, he came into the plan, and learnt tailoring from the beginning; and when he left his master, he gave him a needle, and said, ‘You can sew anything with this, be it as soft as an egg or as hard as steel; and the joint will be so fine that no seam will be seen.’
After the space of four years, at the time agreed upon, the four brothers met at the four cross-roads; and having welcomed each other, set off towards their father’s home, where they told him all that had happened to them, and how each had learned some craft.
Then, one day, as they were sitting before the house under a very high tree, the father said, ‘I should like to try what each of you can do in this way.’ So he looked up, and said to the second son, ‘At the top of this tree there is a chaffinch’s nest; tell me how many eggs there are in it.’ The star-gazer took his glass, looked up, and said, ‘Five.’ ‘Now,’ said the father to the eldest son, ‘take away the eggs without letting the bird that is sitting upon them and hatching them know anything of what you are doing.’ So the cunning thief climbed up the tree, and brought away to his father the five eggs from under the bird; and it never saw or felt what he was doing, but kept sitting on at its ease. Then the father took the eggs, and put one on each corner of the table, and the fifth in the middle, and said to the huntsman, ‘Cut all the eggs in two pieces at one shot.’ The huntsman took up his bow, and at one shot struck all the five eggs as his father wished.
‘Now comes your turn,’ said he to the young tailor; ‘sew the eggs and the young birds in them together again, so neatly that the shot shall have done them no harm.’ Then the tailor took his needle, and sewed the eggs as he was told; and when he had done, the thief was sent to take them back to the nest, and put them under the bird without its knowing it. Then she went on sitting, and hatched them: and in a few days they crawled out, and had only a little red streak across their necks, where the tailor had sewn them together.
‘Well done, sons!’ said the old man; ‘you have made good use of your time, and learnt something worth the knowing; but I am sure I do not know which ought to have the prize. Oh, that a time might soon come for you to turn your skill to some account!’
Not long after this there was a great bustle in the country; for the king’s daughter had been carried off by a mighty dragon, and the king mourned over his loss day and night, and made it known that whoever brought her back to him should have her for a wife. Then the four brothers said to each other, ‘Here is a chance for us; let us try what we can do.’ And they agreed to see whether they could not set the princess free. ‘I will soon find out where she is, however,’ said the star-gazer, as he looked through his glass; and he soon cried out, ‘I see her afar off, sitting upon a rock in the sea, and I can spy the dragon close by, guarding her.’ Then he went to the king, and asked for a ship for himself and his brothers; and they sailed together over the sea, till they came to the right place. There they found the princess sitting, as the star-gazer had said, on the rock; and the dragon was lying asleep, with his head upon her lap. ‘I dare not shoot at him,’ said the huntsman, ‘for I should kill the beautiful young lady also.’ ‘Then I will try my skill,’ said the thief, and went and stole her away from under the dragon, so quietly and gently that the beast did not know it, but went on snoring.
Then away they hastened with her full of joy in their boat towards the ship; but soon came the dragon roaring behind them through the air; for he awoke and missed the princess. But when he got over the boat, and wanted to pounce upon them and carry off the princess, the huntsman took up his bow and shot him straight through the heart so that he fell down dead. They were still not safe; for he was such a great beast that in his fall he overset the boat, and they had to swim in the open sea upon a few planks. So the tailor took his needle, and with a few large stitches put some of the planks together; and he sat down upon these, and sailed about and gathered up all pieces of the boat; and then tacked them together so quickly that the boat was soon ready, and they then reached the ship and got home safe.
When they had brought home the princess to her father, there was great rejoicing; and he said to the four brothers, ‘One of you shall marry her, but you must settle amongst yourselves which it is to be.’ Then there arose a quarrel between them; and the star-gazer said, ‘If I had not found the princess out, all your skill would have been of no use; therefore she ought to be mine.’ ‘Your seeing her would have been of no use,’ said the thief, ‘if I had not taken her away from the dragon; therefore she ought to be mine.’ ‘No, she is mine,’ said the huntsman; ‘for if I had not killed the dragon, he would, after all, have torn you and the princess into pieces.’ ‘And if I had not sewn the boat together again,’ said the tailor, ‘you would all have been drowned, therefore she is mine.’ Then the king put in a word, and said, ‘Each of you is right; and as all cannot have the young lady, the best way is for neither of you to have her: for the truth is, there is somebody she likes a great deal better. But to make up for your loss, I will give each of you, as a reward for his skill, half a kingdom.’ So the brothers agreed that this plan would be much better than either quarrelling or marrying a lady who had no mind to have them. And the king then gave to each half a kingdom, as he had said; and they lived very happily the rest of their days, and took good care of their father; and somebody took better care of the young lady, than to let either the dragon or one of the craftsmen have her again.
== LILY AND THE LION ==
A merchant, who had three daughters, was once setting out upon a journey; but before he went he asked each daughter what gift he should bring back for her. The eldest wished for pearls; the second for jewels; but the third, who was called Lily, said, ‘Dear father, bring me a rose.’ Now it was no easy task to find a rose, for it was the middle of winter; yet as she was his prettiest daughter, and was very fond of flowers, her father said he would try what he could do. So he kissed all three, and bid them goodbye.
And when the time came for him to go home, he had bought pearls and jewels for the two eldest, but he had sought everywhere in vain for the rose; and when he went into any garden and asked for such a thing, the people laughed at him, and asked him whether he thought roses grew in snow. This grieved him very much, for Lily was his dearest child; and as he was journeying home, thinking what he should bring her, he came to a fine castle; and around the castle was a garden, in one half of which it seemed to be summer-time and in the other half winter. On one side the finest flowers were in full bloom, and on the other everything looked dreary and buried in the snow. ‘A lucky hit!’ said he, as he called to his servant, and told him to go to a beautiful bed of roses that was there, and bring him away one of the finest flowers.
This done, they were riding away well pleased, when up sprang a fierce lion, and roared out, ‘Whoever has stolen my roses shall be eaten up alive!’ Then the man said, ‘I knew not that the garden belonged to you; can nothing save my life?’ ‘No!’ said the lion, ‘nothing, unless you undertake to give me whatever meets you on your return home; if you agree to this, I will give you your life, and the rose too for your daughter.’ But the man was unwilling to do so and said, ‘It may be my youngest daughter, who loves me most, and always runs to meet me when I go home.’ Then the servant was greatly frightened, and said, ‘It may perhaps be only a cat or a dog.’ And at last the man yielded with a heavy heart, and took the rose; and said he would give the lion whatever should meet him first on his return.
And as he came near home, it was Lily, his youngest and dearest daughter, that met him; she came running, and kissed him, and welcomed him home; and when she saw that he had brought her the rose, she was still more glad. But her father began to be very sorrowful, and to weep, saying, ‘Alas, my dearest child! I have bought this flower at a high price, for I have said I would give you to a wild lion; and when he has you, he will tear you in pieces, and eat you.’ Then he told her all that had happened, and said she should not go, let what would happen.
But she comforted him, and said, ‘Dear father, the word you have given must be kept; I will go to the lion, and soothe him: perhaps he will let me come safe home again.’
The next morning she asked the way she was to go, and took leave of her father, and went forth with a bold heart into the wood. But the lion was an enchanted prince. By day he and all his court were lions, but in the evening they took their right forms again. And when Lily came to the castle, he welcomed her so courteously that she agreed to marry him. The wedding-feast was held, and they lived happily together a long time. The prince was only to be seen as soon as evening came, and then he held his court; but every morning he left his bride, and went away by himself, she knew not whither, till the night came again.
After some time he said to her, ‘Tomorrow there will be a great feast in your father’s house, for your eldest sister is to be married; and if you wish to go and visit her my lions shall lead you thither.’ Then she rejoiced much at the thoughts of seeing her father once more, and set out with the lions; and everyone was overjoyed to see her, for they had thought her dead long since. But she told them how happy she was, and stayed till the feast was over, and then went back to the wood.
Her second sister was soon after married, and when Lily was asked to go to the wedding, she said to the prince, ‘I will not go alone this time—you must go with me.’ But he would not, and said that it would be a very hazardous thing; for if the least ray of the torch-light should fall upon him his enchantment would become still worse, for he should be changed into a dove, and be forced to wander about the world for seven long years. However, she gave him no rest, and said she would take care no light should fall upon him. So at last they set out together, and took with them their little child; and she chose a large hall with thick walls for him to sit in while the wedding-torches were lighted; but, unluckily, no one saw that there was a crack in the door. Then the wedding was held with great pomp, but as the train came from the church, and passed with the torches before the hall, a very small ray of light fell upon the prince. In a moment he disappeared, and when his wife came in and looked for him, she found only a white dove; and it said to her, ‘Seven years must I fly up and down over the face of the earth, but every now and then I will let fall a white feather, that will show you the way I am going; follow it, and at last you may overtake and set me free.’
This said, he flew out at the door, and poor Lily followed; and every now and then a white feather fell, and showed her the way she was to journey. Thus she went roving on through the wide world, and looked neither to the right hand nor to the left, nor took any rest, for seven years. Then she began to be glad, and thought to herself that the time was fast coming when all her troubles should end; yet repose was still far off, for one day as she was travelling on she missed the white feather, and when she lifted up her eyes she could nowhere see the dove. ‘Now,’ thought she to herself, ‘no aid of man can be of use to me.’ So she went to the sun and said, ‘Thou shinest everywhere, on the hill’s top and the valley’s depth—hast thou anywhere seen my white dove?’ ‘No,’ said the sun, ‘I have not seen it; but I will give thee a casket—open it when thy hour of need comes.’
So she thanked the sun, and went on her way till eventide; and when the moon arose, she cried unto it, and said, ‘Thou shinest through the night, over field and grove—hast thou nowhere seen my white dove?’ ‘No,’ said the moon, ‘I cannot help thee but I will give thee an egg—break it when need comes.’
Then she thanked the moon, and went on till the night-wind blew; and she raised up her voice to it, and said, ‘Thou blowest through every tree and under every leaf—hast thou not seen my white dove?’ ‘No,’ said the night-wind, ‘but I will ask three other winds; perhaps they have seen it.’ Then the east wind and the west wind came, and said they too had not seen it, but the south wind said, ‘I have seen the white dove—he has fled to the Red Sea, and is changed once more into a lion, for the seven years are passed away, and there he is fighting with a dragon; and the dragon is an enchanted princess, who seeks to separate him from you.’ Then the night-wind said, ‘I will give thee counsel. Go to the Red Sea; on the right shore stand many rods—count them, and when thou comest to the eleventh, break it off, and smite the dragon with it; and so the lion will have the victory, and both of them will appear to you in their own forms. Then look round and thou wilt see a griffin, winged like bird, sitting by the Red Sea; jump on to his back with thy beloved one as quickly as possible, and he will carry you over the waters to your home. I will also give thee this nut,’ continued the night-wind. ‘When you are half-way over, throw it down, and out of the waters will immediately spring up a high nut-tree on which the griffin will be able to rest, otherwise he would not have the strength to bear you the whole way; if, therefore, thou dost forget to throw down the nut, he will let you both fall into the sea.’
So our poor wanderer went forth, and found all as the night-wind had said; and she plucked the eleventh rod, and smote the dragon, and the lion forthwith became a prince, and the dragon a princess again. But no sooner was the princess released from the spell, than she seized the prince by the arm and sprang on to the griffin’s back, and went off carrying the prince away with her.
Thus the unhappy traveller was again forsaken and forlorn; but she took heart and said, ‘As far as the wind blows, and so long as the cock crows, I will journey on, till I find him once again.’ She went on for a long, long way, till at length she came to the castle whither the princess had carried the prince; and there was a feast got ready, and she heard that the wedding was about to be held. ‘Heaven aid me now!’ said she; and she took the casket that the sun had given her, and found that within it lay a dress as dazzling as the sun itself. So she put it on, and went into the palace, and all the people gazed upon her; and the dress pleased the bride so much that she asked whether it was to be sold. ‘Not for gold and silver.’ said she, ‘but for flesh and blood.’ The princess asked what she meant, and she said, ‘Let me speak with the bridegroom this night in his chamber, and I will give thee the dress.’ At last the princess agreed, but she told her chamberlain to give the prince a sleeping draught, that he might not hear or see her. When evening came, and the prince had fallen asleep, she was led into his chamber, and she sat herself down at his feet, and said: ‘I have followed thee seven years. I have been to the sun, the moon, and the night-wind, to seek thee, and at last I have helped thee to overcome the dragon. Wilt thou then forget me quite?’ But the prince all the time slept so soundly, that her voice only passed over him, and seemed like the whistling of the wind among the fir-trees.
Then poor Lily was led away, and forced to give up the golden dress; and when she saw that there was no help for her, she went out into a meadow, and sat herself down and wept. But as she sat she bethought herself of the egg that the moon had given her; and when she broke it, there ran out a hen and twelve chickens of pure gold, that played about, and then nestled under the old one’s wings, so as to form the most beautiful sight in the world. And she rose up and drove them before her, till the bride saw them from her window, and was so pleased that she came forth and asked her if she would sell the brood. ‘Not for gold or silver, but for flesh and blood: let me again this evening speak with the bridegroom in his chamber, and I will give thee the whole brood.’
Then the princess thought to betray her as before, and agreed to what she asked: but when the prince went to his chamber he asked the chamberlain why the wind had whistled so in the night. And the chamberlain told him all—how he had given him a sleeping draught, and how a poor maiden had come and spoken to him in his chamber, and was to come again that night. Then the prince took care to throw away the sleeping draught; and when Lily came and began again to tell him what woes had befallen her, and how faithful and true to him she had been, he knew his beloved wife’s voice, and sprang up, and said, ‘You have awakened me as from a dream, for the strange princess had thrown a spell around me, so that I had altogether forgotten you; but Heaven hath sent you to me in a lucky hour.’
And they stole away out of the palace by night unawares, and seated themselves on the griffin, who flew back with them over the Red Sea. When they were half-way across Lily let the nut fall into the water, and immediately a large nut-tree arose from the sea, whereon the griffin rested for a while, and then carried them safely home. There they found their child, now grown up to be comely and fair; and after all their troubles they lived happily together to the end of their days.
== THE FOX AND THE HORSE ==
A farmer had a horse that had been an excellent faithful servant to him: but he was now grown too old to work; so the farmer would give him nothing more to eat, and said, ‘I want you no longer, so take yourself off out of my stable; I shall not take you back again until you are stronger than a lion.’ Then he opened the door and turned him adrift.
The poor horse was very melancholy, and wandered up and down in the wood, seeking some little shelter from the cold wind and rain. Presently a fox met him: ‘What’s the matter, my friend?’ said he, ‘why do you hang down your head and look so lonely and woe-begone?’ ‘Ah!’ replied the horse, ‘justice and avarice never dwell in one house; my master has forgotten all that I have done for him so many years, and because I can no longer work he has turned me adrift, and says unless I become stronger than a lion he will not take me back again; what chance can I have of that? he knows I have none, or he would not talk so.’
However, the fox bid him be of good cheer, and said, ‘I will help you; lie down there, stretch yourself out quite stiff, and pretend to be dead.’ The horse did as he was told, and the fox went straight to the lion who lived in a cave close by, and said to him, ‘A little way off lies a dead horse; come with me and you may make an excellent meal of his carcase.’ The lion was greatly pleased, and set off immediately; and when they came to the horse, the fox said, ‘You will not be able to eat him comfortably here; I’ll tell you what—I will tie you fast to his tail, and then you can draw him to your den, and eat him at your leisure.’
This advice pleased the lion, so he laid himself down quietly for the fox to make him fast to the horse. But the fox managed to tie his legs together and bound all so hard and fast that with all his strength he could not set himself free. When the work was done, the fox clapped the horse on the shoulder, and said, ‘Jip! Dobbin! Jip!’ Then up he sprang, and moved off, dragging the lion behind him. The beast began to roar and bellow, till all the birds of the wood flew away for fright; but the horse let him sing on, and made his way quietly over the fields to his master’s house.
‘Here he is, master,’ said he, ‘I have got the better of him’: and when the farmer saw his old servant, his heart relented, and he said. ‘Thou shalt stay in thy stable and be well taken care of.’ And so the poor old horse had plenty to eat, and lived—till he died.
== THE BLUE LIGHT ==
There was once upon a time a soldier who for many years had served the king faithfully, but when the war came to an end could serve no longer because of the many wounds which he had received. The king said to him: ‘You may return to your home, I need you no longer, and you will not receive any more money, for he only receives wages who renders me service for them.’ Then the soldier did not know how to earn a living, went away greatly troubled, and walked the whole day, until in the evening he entered a forest. When darkness came on, he saw a light, which he went up to, and came to a house wherein lived a witch. ‘Do give me one night’s lodging, and a little to eat and drink,’ said he to her, ‘or I shall starve.’ ‘Oho!’ she answered, ‘who gives anything to a run-away soldier? Yet will I be compassionate, and take you in, if you will do what I wish.’ ‘What do you wish?’ said the soldier. ‘That you should dig all round my garden for me, tomorrow.’ The soldier consented, and next day laboured with all his strength, but could not finish it by the evening. ‘I see well enough,’ said the witch, ‘that you can do no more today, but I will keep you yet another night, in payment for which you must tomorrow chop me a load of wood, and chop it small.’ The soldier spent the whole day in doing it, and in the evening the witch proposed that he should stay one night more. ‘Tomorrow, you shall only do me a very trifling piece of work. Behind my house, there is an old dry well, into which my light has fallen, it burns blue, and never goes out, and you shall bring it up again.’ Next day the old woman took him to the well, and let him down in a basket. He found the blue light, and made her a signal to draw him up again. She did draw him up, but when he came near the edge, she stretched down her hand and wanted to take the blue light away from him. ‘No,’ said he, perceiving her evil intention, ‘I will not give you the light until I am standing with both feet upon the ground.’ The witch fell into a passion, let him fall again into the well, and went away.
The poor soldier fell without injury on the moist ground, and the blue light went on burning, but of what use was that to him? He saw very well that he could not escape death. He sat for a while very sorrowfully, then suddenly he felt in his pocket and found his tobacco pipe, which was still half full. ‘This shall be my last pleasure,’ thought he, pulled it out, lit it at the blue light and began to smoke. When the smoke had circled about the cavern, suddenly a little black dwarf stood before him, and said: ‘Lord, what are your commands?’ ‘What my commands are?’ replied the soldier, quite astonished. ‘I must do everything you bid me,’ said the little man. ‘Good,’ said the soldier; ‘then in the first place help me out of this well.’ The little man took him by the hand, and led him through an underground passage, but he did not forget to take the blue light with him. On the way the dwarf showed him the treasures which the witch had collected and hidden there, and the soldier took as much gold as he could carry. When he was above, he said to the little man: ‘Now go and bind the old witch, and carry her before the judge.’ In a short time she came by like the wind, riding on a wild tom-cat and screaming frightfully. Nor was it long before the little man reappeared. ‘It is all done,’ said he, ‘and the witch is already hanging on the gallows. What further commands has my lord?’ inquired the dwarf. ‘At this moment, none,’ answered the soldier; ‘you can return home, only be at hand immediately, if I summon you.’ ‘Nothing more is needed than that you should light your pipe at the blue light, and I will appear before you at once.’ Thereupon he vanished from his sight.
The soldier returned to the town from which he came. He went to the best inn, ordered himself handsome clothes, and then bade the landlord furnish him a room as handsome as possible. When it was ready and the soldier had taken possession of it, he summoned the little black manikin and said: ‘I have served the king faithfully, but he has dismissed me, and left me to hunger, and now I want to take my revenge.’ ‘What am I to do?’ asked the little man. ‘Late at night, when the king’s daughter is in bed, bring her here in her sleep, she shall do servant’s work for me.’ The manikin said: ‘That is an easy thing for me to do, but a very dangerous thing for you, for if it is discovered, you will fare ill.’ When twelve o’clock had struck, the door sprang open, and the manikin carried in the princess. ‘Aha! are you there?’ cried the soldier, ‘get to your work at once! Fetch the broom and sweep the chamber.’ When she had done this, he ordered her to come to his chair, and then he stretched out his feet and said: ‘Pull off my boots,’ and then he threw them in her face, and made her pick them up again, and clean and brighten them. She, however, did everything he bade her, without opposition, silently and with half-shut eyes. When the first cock crowed, the manikin carried her back to the royal palace, and laid her in her bed.
Next morning when the princess arose she went to her father, and told him that she had had a very strange dream. ‘I was carried through the streets with the rapidity of lightning,’ said she, ‘and taken into a soldier’s room, and I had to wait upon him like a servant, sweep his room, clean his boots, and do all kinds of menial work. It was only a dream, and yet I am just as tired as if I really had done everything.’ ‘The dream may have been true,’ said the king. ‘I will give you a piece of advice. Fill your pocket full of peas, and make a small hole in the pocket, and then if you are carried away again, they will fall out and leave a track in the streets.’ But unseen by the king, the manikin was standing beside him when he said that, and heard all. At night when the sleeping princess was again carried through the streets, some peas certainly did fall out of her pocket, but they made no track, for the crafty manikin had just before scattered peas in every street there was. And again the princess was compelled to do servant’s work until cock-crow.
Next morning the king sent his people out to seek the track, but it was all in vain, for in every street poor children were sitting, picking up peas, and saying: ‘It must have rained peas, last night.’ ‘We must think of something else,’ said the king; ‘keep your shoes on when you go to bed, and before you come back from the place where you are taken, hide one of them there, I will soon contrive to find it.’ The black manikin heard this plot, and at night when the soldier again ordered him to bring the princess, revealed it to him, and told him that he knew of no expedient to counteract this stratagem, and that if the shoe were found in the soldier’s house it would go badly with him. ‘Do what I bid you,’ replied the soldier, and again this third night the princess was obliged to work like a servant, but before she went away, she hid her shoe under the bed.
Next morning the king had the entire town searched for his daughter’s shoe. It was found at the soldier’s, and the soldier himself, who at the entreaty of the dwarf had gone outside the gate, was soon brought back, and thrown into prison. In his flight he had forgotten the most valuable things he had, the blue light and the gold, and had only one ducat in his pocket. And now loaded with chains, he was standing at the window of his dungeon, when he chanced to see one of his comrades passing by. The soldier tapped at the pane of glass, and when this man came up, said to him: ‘Be so kind as to fetch me the small bundle I have left lying in the inn, and I will give you a ducat for doing it.’ His comrade ran thither and brought him what he wanted. As soon as the soldier was alone again, he lighted his pipe and summoned the black manikin. ‘Have no fear,’ said the latter to his master. ‘Go wheresoever they take you, and let them do what they will, only take the blue light with you.’ Next day the soldier was tried, and though he had done nothing wicked, the judge condemned him to death. When he was led forth to die, he begged a last favour of the king. ‘What is it?’ asked the king. ‘That I may smoke one more pipe on my way.’ ‘You may smoke three,’ answered the king, ‘but do not imagine that I will spare your life.’ Then the soldier pulled out his pipe and lighted it at the blue light, and as soon as a few wreaths of smoke had ascended, the manikin was there with a small cudgel in his hand, and said: ‘What does my lord command?’ ‘Strike down to earth that false judge there, and his constable, and spare not the king who has treated me so ill.’ Then the manikin fell on them like lightning, darting this way and that way, and whosoever was so much as touched by his cudgel fell to earth, and did not venture to stir again. The king was terrified; he threw himself on the soldier’s mercy, and merely to be allowed to live at all, gave him his kingdom for his own, and his daughter to wife.
== THE RAVEN ==
There was once a queen who had a little daughter, still too young to run alone. One day the child was very troublesome, and the mother could not quiet it, do what she would. She grew impatient, and seeing the ravens flying round the castle, she opened the window, and said: ‘I wish you were a raven and would fly away, then I should have a little peace.’ Scarcely were the words out of her mouth, when the child in her arms was turned into a raven, and flew away from her through the open window. The bird took its flight to a dark wood and remained there for a long time, and meanwhile the parents could hear nothing of their child.
Long after this, a man was making his way through the wood when he heard a raven calling, and he followed the sound of the voice. As he drew near, the raven said, ‘I am by birth a king’s daughter, but am now under the spell of some enchantment; you can, however, set me free.’ ‘What am I to do?’ he asked. She replied, ‘Go farther into the wood until you come to a house, wherein lives an old woman; she will offer you food and drink, but you must not take of either; if you do, you will fall into a deep sleep, and will not be able to help me. In the garden behind the house is a large tan-heap, and on that you must stand and watch for me. I shall drive there in my carriage at two o’clock in the afternoon for three successive days; the first day it will be drawn by four white, the second by four chestnut, and the last by four black horses; but if you fail to keep awake and I find you sleeping, I shall not be set free.’
The man promised to do all that she wished, but the raven said, ‘Alas! I know even now that you will take something from the woman and be unable to save me.’ The man assured her again that he would on no account touch a thing to eat or drink.
When he came to the house and went inside, the old woman met him, and said, ‘Poor man! how tired you are! Come in and rest and let me give you something to eat and drink.’
‘No,’ answered the man, ‘I will neither eat not drink.’
But she would not leave him alone, and urged him saying, ‘If you will not eat anything, at least you might take a draught of wine; one drink counts for nothing,’ and at last he allowed himself to be persuaded, and drank.
As it drew towards the appointed hour, he went outside into the garden and mounted the tan-heap to await the raven. Suddenly a feeling of fatigue came over him, and unable to resist it, he lay down for a little while, fully determined, however, to keep awake; but in another minute his eyes closed of their own accord, and he fell into such a deep sleep, that all the noises in the world would not have awakened him. At two o’clock the raven came driving along, drawn by her four white horses; but even before she reached the spot, she said to herself, sighing, ‘I know he has fallen asleep.’ When she entered the garden, there she found him as she had feared, lying on the tan-heap, fast asleep. She got out of her carriage and went to him; she called him and shook him, but it was all in vain, he still continued sleeping.
The next day at noon, the old woman came to him again with food and drink which he at first refused. At last, overcome by her persistent entreaties that he would take something, he lifted the glass and drank again.
Towards two o’clock he went into the garden and on to the tan-heap to watch for the raven. He had not been there long before he began to feel so tired that his limbs seemed hardly able to support him, and he could not stand upright any longer; so again he lay down and fell fast asleep. As the raven drove along her four chestnut horses, she said sorrowfully to herself, ‘I know he has fallen asleep.’ She went as before to look for him, but he slept, and it was impossible to awaken him.
The following day the old woman said to him, ‘What is this? You are not eating or drinking anything, do you want to kill yourself?’
He answered, ‘I may not and will not either eat or drink.’
But she put down the dish of food and the glass of wine in front of him, and when he smelt the wine, he was unable to resist the temptation, and took a deep draught.
When the hour came round again he went as usual on to the tan-heap in the garden to await the king’s daughter, but he felt even more overcome with weariness than on the two previous days, and throwing himself down, he slept like a log. At two o’clock the raven could be seen approaching, and this time her coachman and everything about her, as well as her horses, were black.
She was sadder than ever as she drove along, and said mournfully, ‘I know he has fallen asleep, and will not be able to set me free.’ She found him sleeping heavily, and all her efforts to awaken him were of no avail. Then she placed beside him a loaf, and some meat, and a flask of wine, of such a kind, that however much he took of them, they would never grow less. After that she drew a gold ring, on which her name was engraved, off her finger, and put it upon one of his. Finally, she laid a letter near him, in which, after giving him particulars of the food and drink she had left for him, she finished with the following words: ‘I see that as long as you remain here you will never be able to set me free; if, however, you still wish to do so, come to the golden castle of Stromberg; this is well within your power to accomplish.’ She then returned to her carriage and drove to the golden castle of Stromberg.
When the man awoke and found that he had been sleeping, he was grieved at heart, and said, ‘She has no doubt been here and driven away again, and it is now too late for me to save her.’ Then his eyes fell on the things which were lying beside him; he read the letter, and knew from it all that had happened. He rose up without delay, eager to start on his way and to reach the castle of Stromberg, but he had no idea in which direction he ought to go. He travelled about a long time in search of it and came at last to a dark forest, through which he went on walking for fourteen days and still could not find a way out. Once more the night came on, and worn out he lay down under a bush and fell asleep. Again the next day he pursued his way through the forest, and that evening, thinking to rest again, he lay down as before, but he heard such a howling and wailing that he found it impossible to sleep. He waited till it was darker and people had begun to light up their houses, and then seeing a little glimmer ahead of him, he went towards it.
He found that the light came from a house which looked smaller than it really was, from the contrast of its height with that of an immense giant who stood in front of it. He thought to himself, ‘If the giant sees me going in, my life will not be worth much.’ However, after a while he summoned up courage and went forward. When the giant saw him, he called out, ‘It is lucky for that you have come, for I have not had anything to eat for a long time. I can have you now for my supper.’ ‘I would rather you let that alone,’ said the man, ‘for I do not willingly give myself up to be eaten; if you are wanting food I have enough to satisfy your hunger.’ ‘If that is so,’ replied the giant, ‘I will leave you in peace; I only thought of eating you because I had nothing else.’
So they went indoors together and sat down, and the man brought out the bread, meat, and wine, which although he had eaten and drunk of them, were still unconsumed. The giant was pleased with the good cheer, and ate and drank to his heart’s content. When he had finished his supper the man asked him if he could direct him to the castle of Stromberg. The giant said, ‘I will look on my map; on it are marked all the towns, villages, and houses.’ So he fetched his map, and looked for the castle, but could not find it. ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I have larger maps upstairs in the cupboard, we will look on those,’ but they searched in vain, for the castle was not marked even on these. The man now thought he should like to continue his journey, but the giant begged him to remain for a day or two longer until the return of his brother, who was away in search of provisions. When the brother came home, they asked him about the castle of Stromberg, and he told them he would look on his own maps as soon as he had eaten and appeased his hunger. Accordingly, when he had finished his supper, they all went up together to his room and looked through his maps, but the castle was not to be found. Then he fetched other older maps, and they went on looking for the castle until at last they found it, but it was many thousand miles away. ‘How shall I be able to get there?’ asked the man. ‘I have two hours to spare,’ said the giant, ‘and I will carry you into the neighbourhood of the castle; I must then return to look after the child who is in our care.’
The giant, thereupon, carried the man to within about a hundred leagues of the castle, where he left him, saying, ‘You will be able to walk the remainder of the way yourself.’ The man journeyed on day and night till he reached the golden castle of Stromberg. He found it situated, however, on a glass mountain, and looking up from the foot he saw the enchanted maiden drive round her castle and then go inside. He was overjoyed to see her, and longed to get to the top of the mountain, but the sides were so slippery that every time he attempted to climb he fell back again. When he saw that it was impossible to reach her, he was greatly grieved, and said to himself, ‘I will remain here and wait for her,’ so he built himself a little hut, and there he sat and watched for a whole year, and every day he saw the king’s daughter driving round her castle, but still was unable to get nearer to her.
Looking out from his hut one day he saw three robbers fighting and he called out to them, ‘God be with you.’ They stopped when they heard the call, but looking round and seeing nobody, they went on again with their fighting, which now became more furious. ‘God be with you,’ he cried again, and again they paused and looked about, but seeing no one went back to their fighting. A third time he called out, ‘God be with you,’ and then thinking he should like to know the cause of dispute between the three men, he went out and asked them why they were fighting so angrily with one another. One of them said that he had found a stick, and that he had but to strike it against any door through which he wished to pass, and it immediately flew open. Another told him that he had found a cloak which rendered its wearer invisible; and the third had caught a horse which would carry its rider over any obstacle, and even up the glass mountain. They had been unable to decide whether they would keep together and have the things in common, or whether they would separate. On hearing this, the man said, ‘I will give you something in exchange for those three things; not money, for that I have not got, but something that is of far more value. I must first, however, prove whether all you have told me about your three things is true.’ The robbers, therefore, made him get on the horse, and handed him the stick and the cloak, and when he had put this round him he was no longer visible. Then he fell upon them with the stick and beat them one after another, crying, ‘There, you idle vagabonds, you have got what you deserve; are you satisfied now!’
After this he rode up the glass mountain. When he reached the gate of the castle, he found it closed, but he gave it a blow with his stick, and it flew wide open at once and he passed through. He mounted the steps and entered the room where the maiden was sitting, with a golden goblet full of wine in front of her. She could not see him for he still wore his cloak. He took the ring which she had given him off his finger, and threw it into the goblet, so that it rang as it touched the bottom. ‘That is my own ring,’ she exclaimed, ‘and if that is so the man must also be here who is coming to set me free.’
She sought for him about the castle, but could find him nowhere. Meanwhile he had gone outside again and mounted his horse and thrown off the cloak. When therefore she came to the castle gate she saw him, and cried aloud for joy. Then he dismounted and took her in his arms; and she kissed him, and said, ‘Now you have indeed set me free, and tomorrow we will celebrate our marriage.’
== THE GOLDEN GOOSE ==
There was a man who had three sons, the youngest of whom was called Dummling, and was despised, mocked, and sneered at on every occasion.
It happened that the eldest wanted to go into the forest to hew wood, and before he went his mother gave him a beautiful sweet cake and a bottle of wine in order that he might not suffer from hunger or thirst.
When he entered the forest he met a little grey-haired old man who bade him good day, and said: ‘Do give me a piece of cake out of your pocket, and let me have a draught of your wine; I am so hungry and thirsty.’ But the clever son answered: ‘If I give you my cake and wine, I shall have none for myself; be off with you,’ and he left the little man standing and went on.
But when he began to hew down a tree, it was not long before he made a false stroke, and the axe cut him in the arm, so that he had to go home and have it bound up. And this was the little grey man’s doing.
After this the second son went into the forest, and his mother gave him, like the eldest, a cake and a bottle of wine. The little old grey man met him likewise, and asked him for a piece of cake and a drink of wine. But the second son, too, said sensibly enough: ‘What I give you will be taken away from myself; be off!’ and he left the little man standing and went on. His punishment, however, was not delayed; when he had made a few blows at the tree he struck himself in the leg, so that he had to be carried home.
Then Dummling said: ‘Father, do let me go and cut wood.’ The father answered: ‘Your brothers have hurt themselves with it, leave it alone, you do not understand anything about it.’ But Dummling begged so long that at last he said: ‘Just go then, you will get wiser by hurting yourself.’ His mother gave him a cake made with water and baked in the cinders, and with it a bottle of sour beer.
When he came to the forest the little old grey man met him likewise, and greeting him, said: ‘Give me a piece of your cake and a drink out of your bottle; I am so hungry and thirsty.’ Dummling answered: ‘I have only cinder-cake and sour beer; if that pleases you, we will sit down and eat.’ So they sat down, and when Dummling pulled out his cinder-cake, it was a fine sweet cake, and the sour beer had become good wine. So they ate and drank, and after that the little man said: ‘Since you have a good heart, and are willing to divide what you have, I will give you good luck. There stands an old tree, cut it down, and you will find something at the roots.’ Then the little man took leave of him.
Dummling went and cut down the tree, and when it fell there was a goose sitting in the roots with feathers of pure gold. He lifted her up, and taking her with him, went to an inn where he thought he would stay the night. Now the host had three daughters, who saw the goose and were curious to know what such a wonderful bird might be, and would have liked to have one of its golden feathers.
The eldest thought: ‘I shall soon find an opportunity of pulling out a feather,’ and as soon as Dummling had gone out she seized the goose by the wing, but her finger and hand remained sticking fast to it.
The second came soon afterwards, thinking only of how she might get a feather for herself, but she had scarcely touched her sister than she was held fast.
At last the third also came with the like intent, and the others screamed out: ‘Keep away; for goodness’ sake keep away!’ But she did not understand why she was to keep away. ‘The others are there,’ she thought, ‘I may as well be there too,’ and ran to them; but as soon as she had touched her sister, she remained sticking fast to her. So they had to spend the night with the goose.
The next morning Dummling took the goose under his arm and set out, without troubling himself about the three girls who were hanging on to it. They were obliged to run after him continually, now left, now right, wherever his legs took him.
In the middle of the fields the parson met them, and when he saw the procession he said: ‘For shame, you good-for-nothing girls, why are you running across the fields after this young man? Is that seemly?’ At the same time he seized the youngest by the hand in order to pull her away, but as soon as he touched her he likewise stuck fast, and was himself obliged to run behind.
Before long the sexton came by and saw his master, the parson, running behind three girls. He was astonished at this and called out: ‘Hi! your reverence, whither away so quickly? Do not forget that we have a christening today!’ and running after him he took him by the sleeve, but was also held fast to it.
Whilst the five were trotting thus one behind the other, two labourers came with their hoes from the fields; the parson called out to them and begged that they would set him and the sexton free. But they had scarcely touched the sexton when they were held fast, and now there were seven of them running behind Dummling and the goose.
Soon afterwards he came to a city, where a king ruled who had a daughter who was so serious that no one could make her laugh. So he had put forth a decree that whosoever should be able to make her laugh should marry her. When Dummling heard this, he went with his goose and all her train before the king’s daughter, and as soon as she saw the seven people running on and on, one behind the other, she began to laugh quite loudly, and as if she would never stop. Thereupon Dummling asked to have her for his wife; but the king did not like the son-in-law, and made all manner of excuses and said he must first produce a man who could drink a cellarful of wine. Dummling thought of the little grey man, who could certainly help him; so he went into the forest, and in the same place where he had felled the tree, he saw a man sitting, who had a very sorrowful face. Dummling asked him what he was taking to heart so sorely, and he answered: ‘I have such a great thirst and cannot quench it; cold water I cannot stand, a barrel of wine I have just emptied, but that to me is like a drop on a hot stone!’
‘There, I can help you,’ said Dummling, ‘just come with me and you shall be satisfied.’
He led him into the king’s cellar, and the man bent over the huge barrels, and drank and drank till his loins hurt, and before the day was out he had emptied all the barrels. Then Dummling asked once more for his bride, but the king was vexed that such an ugly fellow, whom everyone called Dummling, should take away his daughter, and he made a new condition; he must first find a man who could eat a whole mountain of bread. Dummling did not think long, but went straight into the forest, where in the same place there sat a man who was tying up his body with a strap, and making an awful face, and saying: ‘I have eaten a whole ovenful of rolls, but what good is that when one has such a hunger as I? My stomach remains empty, and I must tie myself up if I am not to die of hunger.’
At this Dummling was glad, and said: ‘Get up and come with me; you shall eat yourself full.’ He led him to the king’s palace where all the flour in the whole Kingdom was collected, and from it he caused a huge mountain of bread to be baked. The man from the forest stood before it, began to eat, and by the end of one day the whole mountain had vanished. Then Dummling for the third time asked for his bride; but the king again sought a way out, and ordered a ship which could sail on land and on water. ‘As soon as you come sailing back in it,’ said he, ‘you shall have my daughter for wife.’
Dummling went straight into the forest, and there sat the little grey man to whom he had given his cake. When he heard what Dummling wanted, he said: ‘Since you have given me to eat and to drink, I will give you the ship; and I do all this because you once were kind to me.’ Then he gave him the ship which could sail on land and water, and when the king saw that, he could no longer prevent him from having his daughter. The wedding was celebrated, and after the king’s death, Dummling inherited his kingdom and lived for a long time contentedly with his wife.
== THE WATER OF LIFE ==
Long before you or I were born, there reigned, in a country a great way off, a king who had three sons. This king once fell very ill—so ill that nobody thought he could live. His sons were very much grieved at their father’s sickness; and as they were walking together very mournfully in the garden of the palace, a little old man met them and asked what was the matter. They told him that their father was very ill, and that they were afraid nothing could save him. ‘I know what would,’ said the little old man; ‘it is the Water of Life. If he could have a draught of it he would be well again; but it is very hard to get.’ Then the eldest son said, ‘I will soon find it’: and he went to the sick king, and begged that he might go in search of the Water of Life, as it was the only thing that could save him. ‘No,’ said the king. ‘I had rather die than place you in such great danger as you must meet with in your journey.’ But he begged so hard that the king let him go; and the prince thought to himself, ‘If I bring my father this water, he will make me sole heir to his kingdom.’
Then he set out: and when he had gone on his way some time he came to a deep valley, overhung with rocks and woods; and as he looked around, he saw standing above him on one of the rocks a little ugly dwarf, with a sugarloaf cap and a scarlet cloak; and the dwarf called to him and said, ‘Prince, whither so fast?’ ‘What is that to thee, you ugly imp?’ said the prince haughtily, and rode on.
But the dwarf was enraged at his behaviour, and laid a fairy spell of ill-luck upon him; so that as he rode on the mountain pass became narrower and narrower, and at last the way was so straitened that he could not go to step forward: and when he thought to have turned his horse round and go back the way he came, he heard a loud laugh ringing round him, and found that the path was closed behind him, so that he was shut in all round. He next tried to get off his horse and make his way on foot, but again the laugh rang in his ears, and he found himself unable to move a step, and thus he was forced to abide spellbound.
Meantime the old king was lingering on in daily hope of his son’s return, till at last the second son said, ‘Father, I will go in search of the Water of Life.’ For he thought to himself, ‘My brother is surely dead, and the kingdom will fall to me if I find the water.’ The king was at first very unwilling to let him go, but at last yielded to his wish. So he set out and followed the same road which his brother had done, and met with the same elf, who stopped him at the same spot in the mountains, saying, as before, ‘Prince, prince, whither so fast?’ ‘Mind your own affairs, busybody!’ said the prince scornfully, and rode on.
But the dwarf put the same spell upon him as he put on his elder brother, and he, too, was at last obliged to take up his abode in the heart of the mountains. Thus it is with proud silly people, who think themselves above everyone else, and are too proud to ask or take advice.
When the second prince had thus been gone a long time, the youngest son said he would go and search for the Water of Life, and trusted he should soon be able to make his father well again. So he set out, and the dwarf met him too at the same spot in the valley, among the mountains, and said, ‘Prince, whither so fast?’ And the prince said, ‘I am going in search of the Water of Life, because my father is ill, and like to die: can you help me? Pray be kind, and aid me if you can!’ ‘Do you know where it is to be found?’ asked the dwarf. ‘No,’ said the prince, ‘I do not. Pray tell me if you know.’ ‘Then as you have spoken to me kindly, and are wise enough to seek for advice, I will tell you how and where to go. The water you seek springs from a well in an enchanted castle; and, that you may be able to reach it in safety, I will give you an iron wand and two little loaves of bread; strike the iron door of the castle three times with the wand, and it will open: two hungry lions will be lying down inside gaping for their prey, but if you throw them the bread they will let you pass; then hasten on to the well, and take some of the Water of Life before the clock strikes twelve; for if you tarry longer the door will shut upon you for ever.’
Then the prince thanked his little friend with the scarlet cloak for his friendly aid, and took the wand and the bread, and went travelling on and on, over sea and over land, till he came to his journey’s end, and found everything to be as the dwarf had told him. The door flew open at the third stroke of the wand, and when the lions were quieted he went on through the castle and came at length to a beautiful hall. Around it he saw several knights sitting in a trance; then he pulled off their rings and put them on his own fingers. In another room he saw on a table a sword and a loaf of bread, which he also took. Further on he came to a room where a beautiful young lady sat upon a couch; and she welcomed him joyfully, and said, if he would set her free from the spell that bound her, the kingdom should be his, if he would come back in a year and marry her. Then she told him that the well that held the Water of Life was in the palace gardens; and bade him make haste, and draw what he wanted before the clock struck twelve.
He walked on; and as he walked through beautiful gardens he came to a delightful shady spot in which stood a couch; and he thought to himself, as he felt tired, that he would rest himself for a while, and gaze on the lovely scenes around him. So he laid himself down, and sleep fell upon him unawares, so that he did not wake up till the clock was striking a quarter to twelve. Then he sprang from the couch dreadfully frightened, ran to the well, filled a cup that was standing by him full of water, and hastened to get away in time. Just as he was going out of the iron door it struck twelve, and the door fell so quickly upon him that it snapped off a piece of his heel.
When he found himself safe, he was overjoyed to think that he had got the Water of Life; and as he was going on his way homewards, he passed by the little dwarf, who, when he saw the sword and the loaf, said, ‘You have made a noble prize; with the sword you can at a blow slay whole armies, and the bread will never fail you.’ Then the prince thought to himself, ‘I cannot go home to my father without my brothers’; so he said, ‘My dear friend, cannot you tell me where my two brothers are, who set out in search of the Water of Life before me, and never came back?’ ‘I have shut them up by a charm between two mountains,’ said the dwarf, ‘because they were proud and ill-behaved, and scorned to ask advice.’ The prince begged so hard for his brothers, that the dwarf at last set them free, though unwillingly, saying, ‘Beware of them, for they have bad hearts.’ Their brother, however, was greatly rejoiced to see them, and told them all that had happened to him; how he had found the Water of Life, and had taken a cup full of it; and how he had set a beautiful princess free from a spell that bound her; and how she had engaged to wait a whole year, and then to marry him, and to give him the kingdom.
Then they all three rode on together, and on their way home came to a country that was laid waste by war and a dreadful famine, so that it was feared all must die for want. But the prince gave the king of the land the bread, and all his kingdom ate of it. And he lent the king the wonderful sword, and he slew the enemy’s army with it; and thus the kingdom was once more in peace and plenty. In the same manner he befriended two other countries through which they passed on their way.
When they came to the sea, they got into a ship and during their voyage the two eldest said to themselves, ‘Our brother has got the water which we could not find, therefore our father will forsake us and give him the kingdom, which is our right’; so they were full of envy and revenge, and agreed together how they could ruin him. Then they waited till he was fast asleep, and poured the Water of Life out of the cup, and took it for themselves, giving him bitter sea-water instead.
When they came to their journey’s end, the youngest son brought his cup to the sick king, that he might drink and be healed. Scarcely, however, had he tasted the bitter sea-water when he became worse even than he was before; and then both the elder sons came in, and blamed the youngest for what they had done; and said that he wanted to poison their father, but that they had found the Water of Life, and had brought it with them. He no sooner began to drink of what they brought him, than he felt his sickness leave him, and was as strong and well as in his younger days. Then they went to their brother, and laughed at him, and said, ‘Well, brother, you found the Water of Life, did you? You have had the trouble and we shall have the reward. Pray, with all your cleverness, why did not you manage to keep your eyes open? Next year one of us will take away your beautiful princess, if you do not take care. You had better say nothing about this to our father, for he does not believe a word you say; and if you tell tales, you shall lose your life into the bargain: but be quiet, and we will let you off.’
The old king was still very angry with his youngest son, and thought that he really meant to have taken away his life; so he called his court together, and asked what should be done, and all agreed that he ought to be put to death. The prince knew nothing of what was going on, till one day, when the king’s chief huntsmen went a-hunting with him, and they were alone in the wood together, the huntsman looked so sorrowful that the prince said, ‘My friend, what is the matter with you?’ ‘I cannot and dare not tell you,’ said he. But the prince begged very hard, and said, ‘Only tell me what it is, and do not think I shall be angry, for I will forgive you.’ ‘Alas!’ said the huntsman; ‘the king has ordered me to shoot you.’ The prince started at this, and said, ‘Let me live, and I will change dresses with you; you shall take my royal coat to show to my father, and do you give me your shabby one.’ ‘With all my heart,’ said the huntsman; ‘I am sure I shall be glad to save you, for I could not have shot you.’ Then he took the prince’s coat, and gave him the shabby one, and went away through the wood.
Some time after, three grand embassies came to the old king’s court, with rich gifts of gold and precious stones for his youngest son; now all these were sent from the three kings to whom he had lent his sword and loaf of bread, in order to rid them of their enemy and feed their people. This touched the old king’s heart, and he thought his son might still be guiltless, and said to his court, ‘O that my son were still alive! how it grieves me that I had him killed!’ ‘He is still alive,’ said the huntsman; ‘and I am glad that I had pity on him, but let him go in peace, and brought home his royal coat.’ At this the king was overwhelmed with joy, and made it known throughout all his kingdom, that if his son would come back to his court he would forgive him.
Meanwhile the princess was eagerly waiting till her deliverer should come back; and had a road made leading up to her palace all of shining gold; and told her courtiers that whoever came on horseback, and rode straight up to the gate upon it, was her true lover; and that they must let him in: but whoever rode on one side of it, they must be sure was not the right one; and that they must send him away at once.
The time soon came, when the eldest brother thought that he would make haste to go to the princess, and say that he was the one who had set her free, and that he should have her for his wife, and the kingdom with her. As he came before the palace and saw the golden road, he stopped to look at it, and he thought to himself, ‘It is a pity to ride upon this beautiful road’; so he turned aside and rode on the right-hand side of it. But when he came to the gate, the guards, who had seen the road he took, said to him, he could not be what he said he was, and must go about his business.
The second prince set out soon afterwards on the same errand; and when he came to the golden road, and his horse had set one foot upon it, he stopped to look at it, and thought it very beautiful, and said to himself, ‘What a pity it is that anything should tread here!’ Then he too turned aside and rode on the left side of it. But when he came to the gate the guards said he was not the true prince, and that he too must go away about his business; and away he went.
Now when the full year was come round, the third brother left the forest in which he had lain hid for fear of his father’s anger, and set out in search of his betrothed bride. So he journeyed on, thinking of her all the way, and rode so quickly that he did not even see what the road was made of, but went with his horse straight over it; and as he came to the gate it flew open, and the princess welcomed him with joy, and said he was her deliverer, and should now be her husband and lord of the kingdom. When the first joy at their meeting was over, the princess told him she had heard of his father having forgiven him, and of his wish to have him home again: so, before his wedding with the princess, he went to visit his father, taking her with him. Then he told him everything; how his brothers had cheated and robbed him, and yet that he had borne all those wrongs for the love of his father. And the old king was very angry, and wanted to punish his wicked sons; but they made their escape, and got into a ship and sailed away over the wide sea, and where they went to nobody knew and nobody cared.
And now the old king gathered together his court, and asked all his kingdom to come and celebrate the wedding of his son and the princess. And young and old, noble and squire, gentle and simple, came at once on the summons; and among the rest came the friendly dwarf, with the sugarloaf hat, and a new scarlet cloak.
 And the wedding was held, and the merry bells run.
 And all the good people they danced and they sung,
 And feasted and frolick’d I can’t tell how long.
== THE TWELVE HUNTSMEN ==
There was once a king’s son who had a bride whom he loved very much. And when he was sitting beside her and very happy, news came that his father lay sick unto death, and desired to see him once again before his end. Then he said to his beloved: ‘I must now go and leave you, I give you a ring as a remembrance of me. When I am king, I will return and fetch you.’ So he rode away, and when he reached his father, the latter was dangerously ill, and near his death. He said to him: ‘Dear son, I wished to see you once again before my end, promise me to marry as I wish,’ and he named a certain king’s daughter who was to be his wife. The son was in such trouble that he did not think what he was doing, and said: ‘Yes, dear father, your will shall be done,’ and thereupon the king shut his eyes, and died.
When therefore the son had been proclaimed king, and the time of mourning was over, he was forced to keep the promise which he had given his father, and caused the king’s daughter to be asked in marriage, and she was promised to him. His first betrothed heard of this, and fretted so much about his faithfulness that she nearly died. Then her father said to her: ‘Dearest child, why are you so sad? You shall have whatsoever you will.’ She thought for a moment and said: ‘Dear father, I wish for eleven girls exactly like myself in face, figure, and size.’ The father said: ‘If it be possible, your desire shall be fulfilled,’ and he caused a search to be made in his whole kingdom, until eleven young maidens were found who exactly resembled his daughter in face, figure, and size.
When they came to the king’s daughter, she had twelve suits of huntsmen’s clothes made, all alike, and the eleven maidens had to put on the huntsmen’s clothes, and she herself put on the twelfth suit. Thereupon she took her leave of her father, and rode away with them, and rode to the court of her former betrothed, whom she loved so dearly. Then she asked if he required any huntsmen, and if he would take all of them into his service. The king looked at her and did not know her, but as they were such handsome fellows, he said: ‘Yes,’ and that he would willingly take them, and now they were the king’s twelve huntsmen.
The king, however, had a lion which was a wondrous animal, for he knew all concealed and secret things. It came to pass that one evening he said to the king: ‘You think you have twelve huntsmen?’ ‘Yes,’ said the king, ‘they are twelve huntsmen.’ The lion continued: ‘You are mistaken, they are twelve girls.’ The king said: ‘That cannot be true! How will you prove that to me?’ ‘Oh, just let some peas be strewn in the ante-chamber,’ answered the lion, ‘and then you will soon see. Men have a firm step, and when they walk over peas none of them stir, but girls trip and skip, and drag their feet, and the peas roll about.’ The king was well pleased with the counsel, and caused the peas to be strewn.
There was, however, a servant of the king’s who favoured the huntsmen, and when he heard that they were going to be put to this test he went to them and repeated everything, and said: ‘The lion wants to make the king believe that you are girls.’ Then the king’s daughter thanked him, and said to her maidens: ‘Show some strength, and step firmly on the peas.’ So next morning when the king had the twelve huntsmen called before him, and they came into the ante-chamber where the peas were lying, they stepped so firmly on them, and had such a strong, sure walk, that not one of the peas either rolled or stirred. Then they went away again, and the king said to the lion: ‘You have lied to me, they walk just like men.’ The lion said: ‘They have been informed that they were going to be put to the test, and have assumed some strength. Just let twelve spinning-wheels be brought into the ante-chamber, and they will go to them and be pleased with them, and that is what no man would do.’ The king liked the advice, and had the spinning-wheels placed in the ante-chamber.
But the servant, who was well disposed to the huntsmen, went to them, and disclosed the project. So when they were alone the king’s daughter said to her eleven girls: ‘Show some constraint, and do not look round at the spinning-wheels.’ And next morning when the king had his twelve huntsmen summoned, they went through the ante-chamber, and never once looked at the spinning-wheels. Then the king again said to the lion: ‘You have deceived me, they are men, for they have not looked at the spinning-wheels.’ The lion replied: ‘They have restrained themselves.’ The king, however, would no longer believe the lion.
The twelve huntsmen always followed the king to the chase, and his liking for them continually increased. Now it came to pass that once when they were out hunting, news came that the king’s bride was approaching. When the true bride heard that, it hurt her so much that her heart was almost broken, and she fell fainting to the ground. The king thought something had happened to his dear huntsman, ran up to him, wanted to help him, and drew his glove off. Then he saw the ring which he had given to his first bride, and when he looked in her face he recognized her. Then his heart was so touched that he kissed her, and when she opened her eyes he said: ‘You are mine, and I am yours, and no one in the world can alter that.’ He sent a messenger to the other bride, and entreated her to return to her own kingdom, for he had a wife already, and someone who had just found an old key did not require a new one. Thereupon the wedding was celebrated, and the lion was again taken into favour, because, after all, he had told the truth.
== THE KING OF THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN ==
There was once a merchant who had only one child, a son, that was very young, and barely able to run alone. He had two richly laden ships then making a voyage upon the seas, in which he had embarked all his wealth, in the hope of making great gains, when the news came that both were lost. Thus from being a rich man he became all at once so very poor that nothing was left to him but one small plot of land; and there he often went in an evening to take his walk, and ease his mind of a little of his trouble.
One day, as he was roaming along in a brown study, thinking with no great comfort on what he had been and what he now was, and was like to be, all on a sudden there stood before him a little, rough-looking, black dwarf. ‘Prithee, friend, why so sorrowful?’ said he to the merchant; ‘what is it you take so deeply to heart?’ ‘If you would do me any good I would willingly tell you,’ said the merchant. ‘Who knows but I may?’ said the little man: ‘tell me what ails you, and perhaps you will find I may be of some use.’ Then the merchant told him how all his wealth was gone to the bottom of the sea, and how he had nothing left but that little plot of land. ‘Oh, trouble not yourself about that,’ said the dwarf; ‘only undertake to bring me here, twelve years hence, whatever meets you first on your going home, and I will give you as much as you please.’ The merchant thought this was no great thing to ask; that it would most likely be his dog or his cat, or something of that sort, but forgot his little boy Heinel; so he agreed to the bargain, and signed and sealed the bond to do what was asked of him.
But as he drew near home, his little boy was so glad to see him that he crept behind him, and laid fast hold of his legs, and looked up in his face and laughed. Then the father started, trembling with fear and horror, and saw what it was that he had bound himself to do; but as no gold was come, he made himself easy by thinking that it was only a joke that the dwarf was playing him, and that, at any rate, when the money came, he should see the bearer, and would not take it in.
About a month afterwards he went upstairs into a lumber-room to look for some old iron, that he might sell it and raise a little money; and there, instead of his iron, he saw a large pile of gold lying on the floor. At the sight of this he was overjoyed, and forgetting all about his son, went into trade again, and became a richer merchant than before.
Meantime little Heinel grew up, and as the end of the twelve years drew near the merchant began to call to mind his bond, and became very sad and thoughtful; so that care and sorrow were written upon his face. The boy one day asked what was the matter, but his father would not tell for some time; at last, however, he said that he had, without knowing it, sold him for gold to a little, ugly-looking, black dwarf, and that the twelve years were coming round when he must keep his word. Then Heinel said, ‘Father, give yourself very little trouble about that; I shall be too much for the little man.’
When the time came, the father and son went out together to the place agreed upon: and the son drew a circle on the ground, and set himself and his father in the middle of it. The little black dwarf soon came, and walked round and round about the circle, but could not find any way to get into it, and he either could not, or dared not, jump over it. At last the boy said to him. ‘Have you anything to say to us, my friend, or what do you want?’ Now Heinel had found a friend in a good fairy, that was fond of him, and had told him what to do; for this fairy knew what good luck was in store for him. ‘Have you brought me what you said you would?’ said the dwarf to the merchant. The old man held his tongue, but Heinel said again, ‘What do you want here?’ The dwarf said, ‘I come to talk with your father, not with you.’ ‘You have cheated and taken in my father,’ said the son; ‘pray give him up his bond at once.’ ‘Fair and softly,’ said the little old man; ‘right is right; I have paid my money, and your father has had it, and spent it; so be so good as to let me have what I paid it for.’ ‘You must have my consent to that first,’ said Heinel, ‘so please to step in here, and let us talk it over.’ The old man grinned, and showed his teeth, as if he should have been very glad to get into the circle if he could. Then at last, after a long talk, they came to terms. Heinel agreed that his father must give him up, and that so far the dwarf should have his way: but, on the other hand, the fairy had told Heinel what fortune was in store for him, if he followed his own course; and he did not choose to be given up to his hump-backed friend, who seemed so anxious for his company.
So, to make a sort of drawn battle of the matter, it was settled that Heinel should be put into an open boat, that lay on the sea-shore hard by; that the father should push him off with his own hand, and that he should thus be set adrift, and left to the bad or good luck of wind and weather. Then he took leave of his father, and set himself in the boat, but before it got far off a wave struck it, and it fell with one side low in the water, so the merchant thought that poor Heinel was lost, and went home very sorrowful, while the dwarf went his way, thinking that at any rate he had had his revenge.
The boat, however, did not sink, for the good fairy took care of her friend, and soon raised the boat up again, and it went safely on. The young man sat safe within, till at length it ran ashore upon an unknown land. As he jumped upon the shore he saw before him a beautiful castle but empty and dreary within, for it was enchanted. ‘Here,’ said he to himself, ‘must I find the prize the good fairy told me of.’ So he once more searched the whole palace through, till at last he found a white snake, lying coiled up on a cushion in one of the chambers.
Now the white snake was an enchanted princess; and she was very glad to see him, and said, ‘Are you at last come to set me free? Twelve long years have I waited here for the fairy to bring you hither as she promised, for you alone can save me. This night twelve men will come: their faces will be black, and they will be dressed in chain armour. They will ask what you do here, but give no answer; and let them do what they will—beat, whip, pinch, prick, or torment you—bear all; only speak not a word, and at twelve o’clock they must go away. The second night twelve others will come: and the third night twenty-four, who will even cut off your head; but at the twelfth hour of that night their power is gone, and I shall be free, and will come and bring you the Water of Life, and will wash you with it, and bring you back to life and health.’ And all came to pass as she had said; Heinel bore all, and spoke not a word; and the third night the princess came, and fell on his neck and kissed him. Joy and gladness burst forth throughout the castle, the wedding was celebrated, and he was crowned king of the Golden Mountain.
They lived together very happily, and the queen had a son. And thus eight years had passed over their heads, when the king thought of his father; and he began to long to see him once again. But the queen was against his going, and said, ‘I know well that misfortunes will come upon us if you go.’ However, he gave her no rest till she agreed. At his going away she gave him a wishing-ring, and said, ‘Take this ring, and put it on your finger; whatever you wish it will bring you; only promise never to make use of it to bring me hence to your father’s house.’ Then he said he would do what she asked, and put the ring on his finger, and wished himself near the town where his father lived.
Heinel found himself at the gates in a moment; but the guards would not let him go in, because he was so strangely clad. So he went up to a neighbouring hill, where a shepherd dwelt, and borrowed his old frock, and thus passed unknown into the town. When he came to his father’s house, he said he was his son; but the merchant would not believe him, and said he had had but one son, his poor Heinel, who he knew was long since dead: and as he was only dressed like a poor shepherd, he would not even give him anything to eat. The king, however, still vowed that he was his son, and said, ‘Is there no mark by which you would know me if I am really your son?’ ‘Yes,’ said his mother, ‘our Heinel had a mark like a raspberry on his right arm.’ Then he showed them the mark, and they knew that what he had said was true.
He next told them how he was king of the Golden Mountain, and was married to a princess, and had a son seven years old. But the merchant said, ‘that can never be true; he must be a fine king truly who travels about in a shepherd’s frock!’ At this the son was vexed; and forgetting his word, turned his ring, and wished for his queen and son. In an instant they stood before him; but the queen wept, and said he had broken his word, and bad luck would follow. He did all he could to soothe her, and she at last seemed to be appeased; but she was not so in truth, and was only thinking how she should punish him.
One day he took her to walk with him out of the town, and showed her the spot where the boat was set adrift upon the wide waters. Then he sat himself down, and said, ‘I am very much tired; sit by me, I will rest my head in your lap, and sleep a while.’ As soon as he had fallen asleep, however, she drew the ring from his finger, and crept softly away, and wished herself and her son at home in their kingdom. And when he awoke he found himself alone, and saw that the ring was gone from his finger. ‘I can never go back to my father’s house,’ said he; ‘they would say I am a sorcerer: I will journey forth into the world, till I come again to my kingdom.’
So saying he set out and travelled till he came to a hill, where three giants were sharing their father’s goods; and as they saw him pass they cried out and said, ‘Little men have sharp wits; he shall part the goods between us.’ Now there was a sword that cut off an enemy’s head whenever the wearer gave the words, ‘Heads off!’; a cloak that made the owner invisible, or gave him any form he pleased; and a pair of boots that carried the wearer wherever he wished. Heinel said they must first let him try these wonderful things, then he might know how to set a value upon them. Then they gave him the cloak, and he wished himself a fly, and in a moment he was a fly. ‘The cloak is very well,’ said he: ‘now give me the sword.’ ‘No,’ said they; ‘not unless you undertake not to say, “Heads off!” for if you do we are all dead men.’ So they gave it him, charging him to try it on a tree. He next asked for the boots also; and the moment he had all three in his power, he wished himself at the Golden Mountain; and there he was at once. So the giants were left behind with no goods to share or quarrel about.
As Heinel came near his castle he heard the sound of merry music; and the people around told him that his queen was about to marry another husband. Then he threw his cloak around him, and passed through the castle hall, and placed himself by the side of the queen, where no one saw him. But when anything to eat was put upon her plate, he took it away and ate it himself; and when a glass of wine was handed to her, he took it and drank it; and thus, though they kept on giving her meat and drink, her plate and cup were always empty.
Upon this, fear and remorse came over her, and she went into her chamber alone, and sat there weeping; and he followed her there. ‘Alas!’ said she to herself, ‘was I not once set free? Why then does this enchantment still seem to bind me?’
‘False and fickle one!’ said he. ‘One indeed came who set thee free, and he is now near thee again; but how have you used him? Ought he to have had such treatment from thee?’ Then he went out and sent away the company, and said the wedding was at an end, for that he was come back to the kingdom. But the princes, peers, and great men mocked at him. However, he would enter into no parley with them, but only asked them if they would go in peace or not. Then they turned upon him and tried to seize him; but he drew his sword. ‘Heads Off!’ cried he; and with the word the traitors’ heads fell before him, and Heinel was once more king of the Golden Mountain.
== DOCTOR KNOWALL ==
There was once upon a time a poor peasant called Crabb, who drove with two oxen a load of wood to the town, and sold it to a doctor for two talers. When the money was being counted out to him, it so happened that the doctor was sitting at table, and when the peasant saw how well he ate and drank, his heart desired what he saw, and would willingly have been a doctor too. So he remained standing a while, and at length inquired if he too could not be a doctor. ‘Oh, yes,’ said the doctor, ‘that is soon managed.’ ‘What must I do?’ asked the peasant. ‘In the first place buy yourself an A B C book of the kind which has a cock on the frontispiece; in the second, turn your cart and your two oxen into money, and get yourself some clothes, and whatsoever else pertains to medicine; thirdly, have a sign painted for yourself with the words: “I am Doctor Knowall,” and have that nailed up above your house-door.’ The peasant did everything that he had been told to do. When he had doctored people awhile, but not long, a rich and great lord had some money stolen. Then he was told about Doctor Knowall who lived in such and such a village, and must know what had become of the money. So the lord had the horses harnessed to his carriage, drove out to the village, and asked Crabb if he were Doctor Knowall. Yes, he was, he said. Then he was to go with him and bring back the stolen money. ‘Oh, yes, but Grete, my wife, must go too.’ The lord was willing, and let both of them have a seat in the carriage, and they all drove away together. When they came to the nobleman’s castle, the table was spread, and Crabb was told to sit down and eat. ‘Yes, but my wife, Grete, too,’ said he, and he seated himself with her at the table. And when the first servant came with a dish of delicate fare, the peasant nudged his wife, and said: ‘Grete, that was the first,’ meaning that was the servant who brought the first dish. The servant, however, thought he intended by that to say: ‘That is the first thief,’ and as he actually was so, he was terrified, and said to his comrade outside: ‘The doctor knows all: we shall fare ill, he said I was the first.’ The second did not want to go in at all, but was forced. So when he went in with his dish, the peasant nudged his wife, and said: ‘Grete, that is the second.’ This servant was equally alarmed, and he got out as fast as he could. The third fared no better, for the peasant again said: ‘Grete, that is the third.’ The fourth had to carry in a dish that was covered, and the lord told the doctor that he was to show his skill, and guess what was beneath the cover. Actually, there were crabs. The doctor looked at the dish, had no idea what to say, and cried: ‘Ah, poor Crabb.’ When the lord heard that, he cried: ‘There! he knows it; he must also know who has the money!’
On this the servants looked terribly uneasy, and made a sign to the doctor that they wished him to step outside for a moment. When therefore he went out, all four of them confessed to him that they had stolen the money, and said that they would willingly restore it and give him a heavy sum into the bargain, if he would not denounce them, for if he did they would be hanged. They led him to the spot where the money was concealed. With this the doctor was satisfied, and returned to the hall, sat down to the table, and said: ‘My lord, now will I search in my book where the gold is hidden.’ The fifth servant, however, crept into the stove to hear if the doctor knew still more. But the doctor sat still and opened his A B C book, turned the pages backwards and forwards, and looked for the cock. As he could not find it immediately he said: ‘I know you are there, so you had better come out!’ Then the fellow in the stove thought that the doctor meant him, and full of terror, sprang out, crying: ‘That man knows everything!’ Then Doctor Knowall showed the lord where the money was, but did not say who had stolen it, and received from both sides much money in reward, and became a renowned man.
== THE SEVEN RAVENS ==
There was once a man who had seven sons, and last of all one daughter. Although the little girl was very pretty, she was so weak and small that they thought she could not live; but they said she should at once be christened.
So the father sent one of his sons in haste to the spring to get some water, but the other six ran with him. Each wanted to be first at drawing the water, and so they were in such a hurry that all let their pitchers fall into the well, and they stood very foolishly looking at one another, and did not know what to do, for none dared go home. In the meantime the father was uneasy, and could not tell what made the young men stay so long. ‘Surely,’ said he, ‘the whole seven must have forgotten themselves over some game of play’; and when he had waited still longer and they yet did not come, he flew into a rage and wished them all turned into ravens. Scarcely had he spoken these words when he heard a croaking over his head, and looked up and saw seven ravens as black as coal flying round and round. Sorry as he was to see his wish so fulfilled, he did not know how what was done could be undone, and comforted himself as well as he could for the loss of his seven sons with his dear little daughter, who soon became stronger and every day more beautiful.
For a long time she did not know that she had ever had any brothers; for her father and mother took care not to speak of them before her: but one day by chance she heard the people about her speak of them. ‘Yes,’ said they, ‘she is beautiful indeed, but still ‘tis a pity that her brothers should have been lost for her sake.’ Then she was much grieved, and went to her father and mother, and asked if she had any brothers, and what had become of them. So they dared no longer hide the truth from her, but said it was the will of Heaven, and that her birth was only the innocent cause of it; but the little girl mourned sadly about it every day, and thought herself bound to do all she could to bring her brothers back; and she had neither rest nor ease, till at length one day she stole away, and set out into the wide world to find her brothers, wherever they might be, and free them, whatever it might cost her.
She took nothing with her but a little ring which her father and mother had given her, a loaf of bread in case she should be hungry, a little pitcher of water in case she should be thirsty, and a little stool to rest upon when she should be weary. Thus she went on and on, and journeyed till she came to the world’s end; then she came to the sun, but the sun looked much too hot and fiery; so she ran away quickly to the moon, but the moon was cold and chilly, and said, ‘I smell flesh and blood this way!’ so she took herself away in a hurry and came to the stars, and the stars were friendly and kind to her, and each star sat upon his own little stool; but the morning star rose up and gave her a little piece of wood, and said, ‘If you have not this little piece of wood, you cannot unlock the castle that stands on the glass-mountain, and there your brothers live.’ The little girl took the piece of wood, rolled it up in a little cloth, and went on again until she came to the glass-mountain, and found the door shut. Then she felt for the little piece of wood; but when she unwrapped the cloth it was not there, and she saw she had lost the gift of the good stars. What was to be done? She wanted to save her brothers, and had no key of the castle of the glass-mountain; so this faithful little sister took a knife out of her pocket and cut off her little finger, that was just the size of the piece of wood she had lost, and put it in the door and opened it.
As she went in, a little dwarf came up to her, and said, ‘What are you seeking for?’ ‘I seek for my brothers, the seven ravens,’ answered she. Then the dwarf said, ‘My masters are not at home; but if you will wait till they come, pray step in.’ Now the little dwarf was getting their dinner ready, and he brought their food upon seven little plates, and their drink in seven little glasses, and set them upon the table, and out of each little plate their sister ate a small piece, and out of each little glass she drank a small drop; but she let the ring that she had brought with her fall into the last glass.
On a sudden she heard a fluttering and croaking in the air, and the dwarf said, ‘Here come my masters.’ When they came in, they wanted to eat and drink, and looked for their little plates and glasses. Then said one after the other,
‘Who has eaten from my little plate? And who has been drinking out of my little glass?’
 ‘Caw! Caw! well I ween
 Mortal lips have this way been.’
When the seventh came to the bottom of his glass, and found there the ring, he looked at it, and knew that it was his father’s and mother’s, and said, ‘O that our little sister would but come! then we should be free.’ When the little girl heard this (for she stood behind the door all the time and listened), she ran forward, and in an instant all the ravens took their right form again; and all hugged and kissed each other, and went merrily home.
== THE WEDDING OF MRS FOX ==
FIRST STORY
There was once upon a time an old fox with nine tails, who believed that his wife was not faithful to him, and wished to put her to the test. He stretched himself out under the bench, did not move a limb, and behaved as if he were stone dead. Mrs Fox went up to her room, shut herself in, and her maid, Miss Cat, sat by the fire, and did the cooking. When it became known that the old fox was dead, suitors presented themselves. The maid heard someone standing at the house-door, knocking. She went and opened it, and it was a young fox, who said:
 ‘What may you be about, Miss Cat?
 Do you sleep or do you wake?’
She answered:
 ‘I am not sleeping, I am waking,
 Would you know what I am making?
 I am boiling warm beer with butter,
 Will you be my guest for supper?’
‘No, thank you, miss,’ said the fox, ‘what is Mrs Fox doing?’ The maid replied:
 ‘She is sitting in her room,
 Moaning in her gloom,
 Weeping her little eyes quite red,
 Because old Mr Fox is dead.’
‘Do just tell her, miss, that a young fox is here, who would like to woo her.’ ‘Certainly, young sir.’
 The cat goes up the stairs trip, trap,
 The door she knocks at tap, tap, tap,
 ‘Mistress Fox, are you inside?’
 ‘Oh, yes, my little cat,’ she cried.
 ‘A wooer he stands at the door out there.’
 ‘What does he look like, my dear?’
‘Has he nine as beautiful tails as the late Mr Fox?’ ‘Oh, no,’ answered the cat, ‘he has only one.’ ‘Then I will not have him.’
Miss Cat went downstairs and sent the wooer away. Soon afterwards there was another knock, and another fox was at the door who wished to woo Mrs Fox. He had two tails, but he did not fare better than the first. After this still more came, each with one tail more than the other, but they were all turned away, until at last one came who had nine tails, like old Mr Fox. When the widow heard that, she said joyfully to the cat:
 ‘Now open the gates and doors all wide,
 And carry old Mr Fox outside.’
But just as the wedding was going to be solemnized, old Mr Fox stirred under the bench, and cudgelled all the rabble, and drove them and Mrs Fox out of the house.
SECOND STORY
When old Mr Fox was dead, the wolf came as a suitor, and knocked at the door, and the cat who was servant to Mrs Fox, opened it for him. The wolf greeted her, and said:
 ‘Good day, Mrs Cat of Kehrewit,
 How comes it that alone you sit?
 What are you making good?’
The cat replied:
 ‘In milk I’m breaking bread so sweet,
 Will you be my guest, and eat?’
‘No, thank you, Mrs Cat,’ answered the wolf. ‘Is Mrs Fox not at home?’
The cat said:
 ‘She sits upstairs in her room,
 Bewailing her sorrowful doom,
 Bewailing her trouble so sore,
 For old Mr Fox is no more.’
The wolf answered:
 ‘If she’s in want of a husband now,
 Then will it please her to step below?’
 The cat runs quickly up the stair,
 And lets her tail fly here and there,
 Until she comes to the parlour door.
 With her five gold rings at the door she knocks:
 ‘Are you within, good Mistress Fox?
 If you’re in want of a husband now,
 Then will it please you to step below?
Mrs Fox asked: ‘Has the gentleman red stockings on, and has he a pointed mouth?’ ‘No,’ answered the cat. ‘Then he won’t do for me.’
When the wolf was gone, came a dog, a stag, a hare, a bear, a lion, and all the beasts of the forest, one after the other. But one of the good qualities which old Mr Fox had possessed, was always lacking, and the cat had continually to send the suitors away. At length came a young fox. Then Mrs Fox said: ‘Has the gentleman red stockings on, and has a little pointed mouth?’ ‘Yes,’ said the cat, ‘he has.’ ‘Then let him come upstairs,’ said Mrs Fox, and ordered the servant to prepare the wedding feast.
 ‘Sweep me the room as clean as you can,
 Up with the window, fling out my old man!
 For many a fine fat mouse he brought,
 Yet of his wife he never thought,
 But ate up every one he caught.’
Then the wedding was solemnized with young Mr Fox, and there was much rejoicing and dancing; and if they have not left off, they are dancing still.
== THE SALAD ==
As a merry young huntsman was once going briskly along through a wood, there came up a little old woman, and said to him, ‘Good day, good day; you seem merry enough, but I am hungry and thirsty; do pray give me something to eat.’ The huntsman took pity on her, and put his hand in his pocket and gave her what he had. Then he wanted to go his way; but she took hold of him, and said, ‘Listen, my friend, to what I am going to tell you; I will reward you for your kindness; go your way, and after a little time you will come to a tree where you will see nine birds sitting on a cloak. Shoot into the midst of them, and one will fall down dead: the cloak will fall too; take it, it is a wishing-cloak, and when you wear it you will find yourself at any place where you may wish to be. Cut open the dead bird, take out its heart and keep it, and you will find a piece of gold under your pillow every morning when you rise. It is the bird’s heart that will bring you this good luck.’
The huntsman thanked her, and thought to himself, ‘If all this does happen, it will be a fine thing for me.’ When he had gone a hundred steps or so, he heard a screaming and chirping in the branches over him, and looked up and saw a flock of birds pulling a cloak with their bills and feet; screaming, fighting, and tugging at each other as if each wished to have it himself. ‘Well,’ said the huntsman, ‘this is wonderful; this happens just as the old woman said’; then he shot into the midst of them so that their feathers flew all about. Off went the flock chattering away; but one fell down dead, and the cloak with it. Then the huntsman did as the old woman told him, cut open the bird, took out the heart, and carried the cloak home with him.
The next morning when he awoke he lifted up his pillow, and there lay the piece of gold glittering underneath; the same happened next day, and indeed every day when he arose. He heaped up a great deal of gold, and at last thought to himself, ‘Of what use is this gold to me whilst I am at home? I will go out into the world and look about me.’
Then he took leave of his friends, and hung his bag and bow about his neck, and went his way. It so happened that his road one day led through a thick wood, at the end of which was a large castle in a green meadow, and at one of the windows stood an old woman with a very beautiful young lady by her side looking about them. Now the old woman was a witch, and said to the young lady, ‘There is a young man coming out of the wood who carries a wonderful prize; we must get it away from him, my dear child, for it is more fit for us than for him. He has a bird’s heart that brings a piece of gold under his pillow every morning.’ Meantime the huntsman came nearer and looked at the lady, and said to himself, ‘I have been travelling so long that I should like to go into this castle and rest myself, for I have money enough to pay for anything I want’; but the real reason was, that he wanted to see more of the beautiful lady. Then he went into the house, and was welcomed kindly; and it was not long before he was so much in love that he thought of nothing else but looking at the lady’s eyes, and doing everything that she wished. Then the old woman said, ‘Now is the time for getting the bird’s heart.’ So the lady stole it away, and he never found any more gold under his pillow, for it lay now under the young lady’s, and the old woman took it away every morning; but he was so much in love that he never missed his prize.
‘Well,’ said the old witch, ‘we have got the bird’s heart, but not the wishing-cloak yet, and that we must also get.’ ‘Let us leave him that,’ said the young lady; ‘he has already lost his wealth.’ Then the witch was very angry, and said, ‘Such a cloak is a very rare and wonderful thing, and I must and will have it.’ So she did as the old woman told her, and set herself at the window, and looked about the country and seemed very sorrowful; then the huntsman said, ‘What makes you so sad?’ ‘Alas! dear sir,’ said she, ‘yonder lies the granite rock where all the costly diamonds grow, and I want so much to go there, that whenever I think of it I cannot help being sorrowful, for who can reach it? only the birds and the flies—man cannot.’ ‘If that’s all your grief,’ said the huntsman, ‘I’ll take you there with all my heart’; so he drew her under his cloak, and the moment he wished to be on the granite mountain they were both there. The diamonds glittered so on all sides that they were delighted with the sight and picked up the finest. But the old witch made a deep sleep come upon him, and he said to the young lady, ‘Let us sit down and rest ourselves a little, I am so tired that I cannot stand any longer.’ So they sat down, and he laid his head in her lap and fell asleep; and whilst he was sleeping on she took the cloak from his shoulders, hung it on her own, picked up the diamonds, and wished herself home again.
When he awoke and found that his lady had tricked him, and left him alone on the wild rock, he said, ‘Alas! what roguery there is in the world!’ and there he sat in great grief and fear, not knowing what to do. Now this rock belonged to fierce giants who lived upon it; and as he saw three of them striding about, he thought to himself, ‘I can only save myself by feigning to be asleep’; so he laid himself down as if he were in a sound sleep. When the giants came up to him, the first pushed him with his foot, and said, ‘What worm is this that lies here curled up?’ ‘Tread upon him and kill him,’ said the second. ‘It’s not worth the trouble,’ said the third; ‘let him live, he’ll go climbing higher up the mountain, and some cloud will come rolling and carry him away.’ And they passed on. But the huntsman had heard all they said; and as soon as they were gone, he climbed to the top of the mountain, and when he had sat there a short time a cloud came rolling around him, and caught him in a whirlwind and bore him along for some time, till it settled in a garden, and he fell quite gently to the ground amongst the greens and cabbages.
Then he looked around him, and said, ‘I wish I had something to eat, if not I shall be worse off than before; for here I see neither apples nor pears, nor any kind of fruits, nothing but vegetables.’ At last he thought to himself, ‘I can eat salad, it will refresh and strengthen me.’ So he picked out a fine head and ate of it; but scarcely had he swallowed two bites when he felt himself quite changed, and saw with horror that he was turned into an ass. However, he still felt very hungry, and the salad tasted very nice; so he ate on till he came to another kind of salad, and scarcely had he tasted it when he felt another change come over him, and soon saw that he was lucky enough to have found his old shape again.
Then he laid himself down and slept off a little of his weariness; and when he awoke the next morning he broke off a head both of the good and the bad salad, and thought to himself, ‘This will help me to my fortune again, and enable me to pay off some folks for their treachery.’ So he went away to try and find the castle of his friends; and after wandering about a few days he luckily found it. Then he stained his face all over brown, so that even his mother would not have known him, and went into the castle and asked for a lodging; ‘I am so tired,’ said he, ‘that I can go no farther.’ ‘Countryman,’ said the witch, ‘who are you? and what is your business?’ ‘I am,’ said he, ‘a messenger sent by the king to find the finest salad that grows under the sun. I have been lucky enough to find it, and have brought it with me; but the heat of the sun scorches so that it begins to wither, and I don’t know that I can carry it farther.’
When the witch and the young lady heard of his beautiful salad, they longed to taste it, and said, ‘Dear countryman, let us just taste it.’ ‘To be sure,’ answered he; ‘I have two heads of it with me, and will give you one’; so he opened his bag and gave them the bad. Then the witch herself took it into the kitchen to be dressed; and when it was ready she could not wait till it was carried up, but took a few leaves immediately and put them in her mouth, and scarcely were they swallowed when she lost her own form and ran braying down into the court in the form of an ass. Now the servant-maid came into the kitchen, and seeing the salad ready, was going to carry it up; but on the way she too felt a wish to taste it as the old woman had done, and ate some leaves; so she also was turned into an ass and ran after the other, letting the dish with the salad fall on the ground. The messenger sat all this time with the beautiful young lady, and as nobody came with the salad and she longed to taste it, she said, ‘I don’t know where the salad can be.’ Then he thought something must have happened, and said, ‘I will go into the kitchen and see.’ And as he went he saw two asses in the court running about, and the salad lying on the ground. ‘All right!’ said he; ‘those two have had their share.’ Then he took up the rest of the leaves, laid them on the dish and brought them to the young lady, saying, ‘I bring you the dish myself that you may not wait any longer.’ So she ate of it, and like the others ran off into the court braying away.
Then the huntsman washed his face and went into the court that they might know him. ‘Now you shall be paid for your roguery,’ said he; and tied them all three to a rope and took them along with him till he came to a mill and knocked at the window. ‘What’s the matter?’ said the miller. ‘I have three tiresome beasts here,’ said the other; ‘if you will take them, give them food and room, and treat them as I tell you, I will pay you whatever you ask.’ ‘With all my heart,’ said the miller; ‘but how shall I treat them?’ Then the huntsman said, ‘Give the old one stripes three times a day and hay once; give the next (who was the servant-maid) stripes once a day and hay three times; and give the youngest (who was the beautiful lady) hay three times a day and no stripes’: for he could not find it in his heart to have her beaten. After this he went back to the castle, where he found everything he wanted.
Some days after, the miller came to him and told him that the old ass was dead; ‘The other two,’ said he, ‘are alive and eat, but are so sorrowful that they cannot last long.’ Then the huntsman pitied them, and told the miller to drive them back to him, and when they came, he gave them some of the good salad to eat. And the beautiful young lady fell upon her knees before him, and said, ‘O dearest huntsman! forgive me all the ill I have done you; my mother forced me to it, it was against my will, for I always loved you very much. Your wishing-cloak hangs up in the closet, and as for the bird’s heart, I will give it you too.’ But he said, ‘Keep it, it will be just the same thing, for I mean to make you my wife.’ So they were married, and lived together very happily till they died.
== THE STORY OF THE YOUTH WHO WENT FORTH TO LEARN WHAT FEAR WAS ==
A certain father had two sons, the elder of who was smart and sensible, and could do everything, but the younger was stupid and could neither learn nor understand anything, and when people saw him they said: ‘There’s a fellow who will give his father some trouble!’ When anything had to be done, it was always the elder who was forced to do it; but if his father bade him fetch anything when it was late, or in the night-time, and the way led through the churchyard, or any other dismal place, he answered: ‘Oh, no father, I’ll not go there, it makes me shudder!’ for he was afraid. Or when stories were told by the fire at night which made the flesh creep, the listeners sometimes said: ‘Oh, it makes us shudder!’ The younger sat in a corner and listened with the rest of them, and could not imagine what they could mean. ‘They are always saying: “It makes me shudder, it makes me shudder!” It does not make me shudder,’ thought he. ‘That, too, must be an art of which I understand nothing!’
Now it came to pass that his father said to him one day: ‘Hearken to me, you fellow in the corner there, you are growing tall and strong, and you too must learn something by which you can earn your bread. Look how your brother works, but you do not even earn your salt.’ ‘Well, father,’ he replied, ‘I am quite willing to learn something—indeed, if it could but be managed, I should like to learn how to shudder. I don’t understand that at all yet.’ The elder brother smiled when he heard that, and thought to himself: ‘Goodness, what a blockhead that brother of mine is! He will never be good for anything as long as he lives! He who wants to be a sickle must bend himself betimes.’
The father sighed, and answered him: ‘You shall soon learn what it is to shudder, but you will not earn your bread by that.’
Soon after this the sexton came to the house on a visit, and the father bewailed his trouble, and told him how his younger son was so backward in every respect that he knew nothing and learnt nothing. ‘Just think,’ said he, ‘when I asked him how he was going to earn his bread, he actually wanted to learn to shudder.’ ‘If that be all,’ replied the sexton, ‘he can learn that with me. Send him to me, and I will soon polish him.’ The father was glad to do it, for he thought: ‘It will train the boy a little.’ The sexton therefore took him into his house, and he had to ring the church bell. After a day or two, the sexton awoke him at midnight, and bade him arise and go up into the church tower and ring the bell. ‘You shall soon learn what shuddering is,’ thought he, and secretly went there before him; and when the boy was at the top of the tower and turned round, and was just going to take hold of the bell rope, he saw a white figure standing on the stairs opposite the sounding hole. ‘Who is there?’ cried he, but the figure made no reply, and did not move or stir. ‘Give an answer,’ cried the boy, ‘or take yourself off, you have no business here at night.’
The sexton, however, remained standing motionless that the boy might think he was a ghost. The boy cried a second time: ‘What do you want here?—speak if you are an honest fellow, or I will throw you down the steps!’ The sexton thought: ‘He can’t mean to be as bad as his words,’ uttered no sound and stood as if he were made of stone. Then the boy called to him for the third time, and as that was also to no purpose, he ran against him and pushed the ghost down the stairs, so that it fell down the ten steps and remained lying there in a corner. Thereupon he rang the bell, went home, and without saying a word went to bed, and fell asleep. The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but he did not come back. At length she became uneasy, and wakened the boy, and asked: ‘Do you know where my husband is? He climbed up the tower before you did.’ ‘No, I don’t know,’ replied the boy, ‘but someone was standing by the sounding hole on the other side of the steps, and as he would neither give an answer nor go away, I took him for a scoundrel, and threw him downstairs. Just go there and you will see if it was he. I should be sorry if it were.’ The woman ran away and found her husband, who was lying moaning in the corner, and had broken his leg.
She carried him down, and then with loud screams she hastened to the boy’s father, ‘Your boy,’ cried she, ‘has been the cause of a great misfortune! He has thrown my husband down the steps so that he broke his leg. Take the good-for-nothing fellow out of our house.’ The father was terrified, and ran thither and scolded the boy. ‘What wicked tricks are these?’ said he. ‘The devil must have put them into your head.’ ‘Father,’ he replied, ‘do listen to me. I am quite innocent. He was standing there by night like one intent on doing evil. I did not know who it was, and I entreated him three times either to speak or to go away.’ ‘Ah,’ said the father, ‘I have nothing but unhappiness with you. Go out of my sight. I will see you no more.’
‘Yes, father, right willingly, wait only until it is day. Then will I go forth and learn how to shudder, and then I shall, at any rate, understand one art which will support me.’ ‘Learn what you will,’ spoke the father, ‘it is all the same to me. Here are fifty talers for you. Take these and go into the wide world, and tell no one from whence you come, and who is your father, for I have reason to be ashamed of you.’ ‘Yes, father, it shall be as you will. If you desire nothing more than that, I can easily keep it in mind.’
When the day dawned, therefore, the boy put his fifty talers into his pocket, and went forth on the great highway, and continually said to himself: ‘If I could but shudder! If I could but shudder!’ Then a man approached who heard this conversation which the youth was holding with himself, and when they had walked a little farther to where they could see the gallows, the man said to him: ‘Look, there is the tree where seven men have married the ropemaker’s daughter, and are now learning how to fly. Sit down beneath it, and wait till night comes, and you will soon learn how to shudder.’ ‘If that is all that is wanted,’ answered the youth, ‘it is easily done; but if I learn how to shudder as fast as that, you shall have my fifty talers. Just come back to me early in the morning.’ Then the youth went to the gallows, sat down beneath it, and waited till evening came. And as he was cold, he lighted himself a fire, but at midnight the wind blew so sharply that in spite of his fire, he could not get warm. And as the wind knocked the hanged men against each other, and they moved backwards and forwards, he thought to himself: ‘If you shiver below by the fire, how those up above must freeze and suffer!’ And as he felt pity for them, he raised the ladder, and climbed up, unbound one of them after the other, and brought down all seven. Then he stoked the fire, blew it, and set them all round it to warm themselves. But they sat there and did not stir, and the fire caught their clothes. So he said: ‘Take care, or I will hang you up again.’ The dead men, however, did not hear, but were quite silent, and let their rags go on burning. At this he grew angry, and said: ‘If you will not take care, I cannot help you, I will not be burnt with you,’ and he hung them up again each in his turn. Then he sat down by his fire and fell asleep, and the next morning the man came to him and wanted to have the fifty talers, and said: ‘Well do you know how to shudder?’ ‘No,’ answered he, ‘how should I know? Those fellows up there did not open their mouths, and were so stupid that they let the few old rags which they had on their bodies get burnt.’ Then the man saw that he would not get the fifty talers that day, and went away saying: ‘Such a youth has never come my way before.’
The youth likewise went his way, and once more began to mutter to himself: ‘Ah, if I could but shudder! Ah, if I could but shudder!’ A waggoner who was striding behind him heard this and asked: ‘Who are you?’ ‘I don’t know,’ answered the youth. Then the waggoner asked: ‘From whence do you come?’ ‘I know not.’ ‘Who is your father?’ ‘That I may not tell you.’ ‘What is it that you are always muttering between your teeth?’ ‘Ah,’ replied the youth, ‘I do so wish I could shudder, but no one can teach me how.’ ‘Enough of your foolish chatter,’ said the waggoner. ‘Come, go with me, I will see about a place for you.’ The youth went with the waggoner, and in the evening they arrived at an inn where they wished to pass the night. Then at the entrance of the parlour the youth again said quite loudly: ‘If I could but shudder! If I could but shudder!’ The host who heard this, laughed and said: ‘If that is your desire, there ought to be a good opportunity for you here.’ ‘Ah, be silent,’ said the hostess, ‘so many prying persons have already lost their lives, it would be a pity and a shame if such beautiful eyes as these should never see the daylight again.’
But the youth said: ‘However difficult it may be, I will learn it. For this purpose indeed have I journeyed forth.’ He let the host have no rest, until the latter told him, that not far from thence stood a haunted castle where anyone could very easily learn what shuddering was, if he would but watch in it for three nights. The king had promised that he who would venture should have his daughter to wife, and she was the most beautiful maiden the sun shone on. Likewise in the castle lay great treasures, which were guarded by evil spirits, and these treasures would then be freed, and would make a poor man rich enough. Already many men had gone into the castle, but as yet none had come out again. Then the youth went next morning to the king, and said: ‘If it be allowed, I will willingly watch three nights in the haunted castle.’
The king looked at him, and as the youth pleased him, he said: ‘You may ask for three things to take into the castle with you, but they must be things without life.’ Then he answered: ‘Then I ask for a fire, a turning lathe, and a cutting-board with the knife.’
The king had these things carried into the castle for him during the day. When night was drawing near, the youth went up and made himself a bright fire in one of the rooms, placed the cutting-board and knife beside it, and seated himself by the turning-lathe. ‘Ah, if I could but shudder!’ said he, ‘but I shall not learn it here either.’ Towards midnight he was about to poke his fire, and as he was blowing it, something cried suddenly from one corner: ‘Au, miau! how cold we are!’ ‘You fools!’ cried he, ‘what are you crying about? If you are cold, come and take a seat by the fire and warm yourselves.’ And when he had said that, two great black cats came with one tremendous leap and sat down on each side of him, and looked savagely at him with their fiery eyes. After a short time, when they had warmed themselves, they said: ‘Comrade, shall we have a game of cards?’ ‘Why not?’ he replied, ‘but just show me your paws.’ Then they stretched out their claws. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘what long nails you have! Wait, I must first cut them for you.’ Thereupon he seized them by the throats, put them on the cutting-board and screwed their feet fast. ‘I have looked at your fingers,’ said he, ‘and my fancy for card-playing has gone,’ and he struck them dead and threw them out into the water. But when he had made away with these two, and was about to sit down again by his fire, out from every hole and corner came black cats and black dogs with red-hot chains, and more and more of them came until he could no longer move, and they yelled horribly, and got on his fire, pulled it to pieces, and tried to put it out. He watched them for a while quietly, but at last when they were going too far, he seized his cutting-knife, and cried: ‘Away with you, vermin,’ and began to cut them down. Some of them ran away, the others he killed, and threw out into the fish-pond. When he came back he fanned the embers of his fire again and warmed himself. And as he thus sat, his eyes would keep open no longer, and he felt a desire to sleep. Then he looked round and saw a great bed in the corner. ‘That is the very thing for me,’ said he, and got into it. When he was just going to shut his eyes, however, the bed began to move of its own accord, and went over the whole of the castle. ‘That’s right,’ said he, ‘but go faster.’ Then the bed rolled on as if six horses were harnessed to it, up and down, over thresholds and stairs, but suddenly hop, hop, it turned over upside down, and lay on him like a mountain. But he threw quilts and pillows up in the air, got out and said: ‘Now anyone who likes, may drive,’ and lay down by his fire, and slept till it was day. In the morning the king came, and when he saw him lying there on the ground, he thought the evil spirits had killed him and he was dead. Then said he: ‘After all it is a pity,—for so handsome a man.’ The youth heard it, got up, and said: ‘It has not come to that yet.’ Then the king was astonished, but very glad, and asked how he had fared. ‘Very well indeed,’ answered he; ‘one night is past, the two others will pass likewise.’ Then he went to the innkeeper, who opened his eyes very wide, and said: ‘I never expected to see you alive again! Have you learnt how to shudder yet?’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘it is all in vain. If someone would but tell me!’
The second night he again went up into the old castle, sat down by the fire, and once more began his old song: ‘If I could but shudder!’ When midnight came, an uproar and noise of tumbling about was heard; at first it was low, but it grew louder and louder. Then it was quiet for a while, and at length with a loud scream, half a man came down the chimney and fell before him. ‘Hullo!’ cried he, ‘another half belongs to this. This is not enough!’ Then the uproar began again, there was a roaring and howling, and the other half fell down likewise. ‘Wait,’ said he, ‘I will just stoke up the fire a little for you.’ When he had done that and looked round again, the two pieces were joined together, and a hideous man was sitting in his place. ‘That is no part of our bargain,’ said the youth, ‘the bench is mine.’ The man wanted to push him away; the youth, however, would not allow that, but thrust him off with all his strength, and seated himself again in his own place. Then still more men fell down, one after the other; they brought nine dead men’s legs and two skulls, and set them up and played at nine-pins with them. The youth also wanted to play and said: ‘Listen you, can I join you?’ ‘Yes, if you have any money.’ ‘Money enough,’ replied he, ‘but your balls are not quite round.’ Then he took the skulls and put them in the lathe and turned them till they were round. ‘There, now they will roll better!’ said he. ‘Hurrah! now we’ll have fun!’ He played with them and lost some of his money, but when it struck twelve, everything vanished from his sight. He lay down and quietly fell asleep. Next morning the king came to inquire after him. ‘How has it fared with you this time?’ asked he. ‘I have been playing at nine-pins,’ he answered, ‘and have lost a couple of farthings.’ ‘Have you not shuddered then?’ ‘What?’ said he, ‘I have had a wonderful time! If I did but know what it was to shudder!’
The third night he sat down again on his bench and said quite sadly: ‘If I could but shudder.’ When it grew late, six tall men came in and brought a coffin. Then he said: ‘Ha, ha, that is certainly my little cousin, who died only a few days ago,’ and he beckoned with his finger, and cried: ‘Come, little cousin, come.’ They placed the coffin on the ground, but he went to it and took the lid off, and a dead man lay therein. He felt his face, but it was cold as ice. ‘Wait,’ said he, ‘I will warm you a little,’ and went to the fire and warmed his hand and laid it on the dead man’s face, but he remained cold. Then he took him out, and sat down by the fire and laid him on his breast and rubbed his arms that the blood might circulate again. As this also did no good, he thought to himself: ‘When two people lie in bed together, they warm each other,’ and carried him to the bed, covered him over and lay down by him. After a short time the dead man became warm too, and began to move. Then said the youth, ‘See, little cousin, have I not warmed you?’ The dead man, however, got up and cried: ‘Now will I strangle you.’
‘What!’ said he, ‘is that the way you thank me? You shall at once go into your coffin again,’ and he took him up, threw him into it, and shut the lid. Then came the six men and carried him away again. ‘I cannot manage to shudder,’ said he. ‘I shall never learn it here as long as I live.’
Then a man entered who was taller than all others, and looked terrible. He was old, however, and had a long white beard. ‘You wretch,’ cried he, ‘you shall soon learn what it is to shudder, for you shall die.’ ‘Not so fast,’ replied the youth. ‘If I am to die, I shall have to have a say in it.’ ‘I will soon seize you,’ said the fiend. ‘Softly, softly, do not talk so big. I am as strong as you are, and perhaps even stronger.’ ‘We shall see,’ said the old man. ‘If you are stronger, I will let you go—come, we will try.’ Then he led him by dark passages to a smith’s forge, took an axe, and with one blow struck an anvil into the ground. ‘I can do better than that,’ said the youth, and went to the other anvil. The old man placed himself near and wanted to look on, and his white beard hung down. Then the youth seized the axe, split the anvil with one blow, and in it caught the old man’s beard. ‘Now I have you,’ said the youth. ‘Now it is your turn to die.’ Then he seized an iron bar and beat the old man till he moaned and entreated him to stop, when he would give him great riches. The youth drew out the axe and let him go. The old man led him back into the castle, and in a cellar showed him three chests full of gold. ‘Of these,’ said he, ‘one part is for the poor, the other for the king, the third yours.’ In the meantime it struck twelve, and the spirit disappeared, so that the youth stood in darkness. ‘I shall still be able to find my way out,’ said he, and felt about, found the way into the room, and slept there by his fire. Next morning the king came and said: ‘Now you must have learnt what shuddering is?’ ‘No,’ he answered; ‘what can it be? My dead cousin was here, and a bearded man came and showed me a great deal of money down below, but no one told me what it was to shudder.’ ‘Then,’ said the king, ‘you have saved the castle, and shall marry my daughter.’ ‘That is all very well,’ said he, ‘but still I do not know what it is to shudder!’
Then the gold was brought up and the wedding celebrated; but howsoever much the young king loved his wife, and however happy he was, he still said always: ‘If I could but shudder—if I could but shudder.’ And this at last angered her. Her waiting-maid said: ‘I will find a cure for him; he shall soon learn what it is to shudder.’ She went out to the stream which flowed through the garden, and had a whole bucketful of gudgeons brought to her. At night when the young king was sleeping, his wife was to draw the clothes off him and empty the bucket full of cold water with the gudgeons in it over him, so that the little fishes would sprawl about him. Then he woke up and cried: ‘Oh, what makes me shudder so?—what makes me shudder so, dear wife? Ah! now I know what it is to shudder!’
== KING GRISLY-BEARD ==
A great king of a land far away in the East had a daughter who was very beautiful, but so proud, and haughty, and conceited, that none of the princes who came to ask her in marriage was good enough for her, and she only made sport of them.
Once upon a time the king held a great feast, and asked thither all her suitors; and they all sat in a row, ranged according to their rank—kings, and princes, and dukes, and earls, and counts, and barons, and knights. Then the princess came in, and as she passed by them she had something spiteful to say to every one. The first was too fat: ‘He’s as round as a tub,’ said she. The next was too tall: ‘What a maypole!’ said she. The next was too short: ‘What a dumpling!’ said she. The fourth was too pale, and she called him ‘Wallface.’ The fifth was too red, so she called him ‘Coxcomb.’ The sixth was not straight enough; so she said he was like a green stick, that had been laid to dry over a baker’s oven. And thus she had some joke to crack upon every one: but she laughed more than all at a good king who was there. ‘Look at him,’ said she; ‘his beard is like an old mop; he shall be called Grisly-beard.’ So the king got the nickname of Grisly-beard.
But the old king was very angry when he saw how his daughter behaved, and how she ill-treated all his guests; and he vowed that, willing or unwilling, she should marry the first man, be he prince or beggar, that came to the door.
Two days after there came by a travelling fiddler, who began to play under the window and beg alms; and when the king heard him, he said, ‘Let him come in.’ So they brought in a dirty-looking fellow; and when he had sung before the king and the princess, he begged a boon. Then the king said, ‘You have sung so well, that I will give you my daughter for your wife.’ The princess begged and prayed; but the king said, ‘I have sworn to give you to the first comer, and I will keep my word.’ So words and tears were of no avail; the parson was sent for, and she was married to the fiddler. When this was over the king said, ‘Now get ready to go—you must not stay here—you must travel on with your husband.’
Then the fiddler went his way, and took her with him, and they soon came to a great wood. ‘Pray,’ said she, ‘whose is this wood?’ ‘It belongs to King Grisly-beard,’ answered he; ‘hadst thou taken him, all had been thine.’ ‘Ah! unlucky wretch that I am!’ sighed she; ‘would that I had married King Grisly-beard!’ Next they came to some fine meadows. ‘Whose are these beautiful green meadows?’ said she. ‘They belong to King Grisly-beard, hadst thou taken him, they had all been thine.’ ‘Ah! unlucky wretch that I am!’ said she; ‘would that I had married King Grisly-beard!’
Then they came to a great city. ‘Whose is this noble city?’ said she. ‘It belongs to King Grisly-beard; hadst thou taken him, it had all been thine.’ ‘Ah! wretch that I am!’ sighed she; ‘why did I not marry King Grisly-beard?’ ‘That is no business of mine,’ said the fiddler: ‘why should you wish for another husband? Am not I good enough for you?’
At last they came to a small cottage. ‘What a paltry place!’ said she; ‘to whom does that little dirty hole belong?’ Then the fiddler said, ‘That is your and my house, where we are to live.’ ‘Where are your servants?’ cried she. ‘What do we want with servants?’ said he; ‘you must do for yourself whatever is to be done. Now make the fire, and put on water and cook my supper, for I am very tired.’ But the princess knew nothing of making fires and cooking, and the fiddler was forced to help her. When they had eaten a very scanty meal they went to bed; but the fiddler called her up very early in the morning to clean the house. Thus they lived for two days: and when they had eaten up all there was in the cottage, the man said, ‘Wife, we can’t go on thus, spending money and earning nothing. You must learn to weave baskets.’ Then he went out and cut willows, and brought them home, and she began to weave; but it made her fingers very sore. ‘I see this work won’t do,’ said he: ‘try and spin; perhaps you will do that better.’ So she sat down and tried to spin; but the threads cut her tender fingers till the blood ran. ‘See now,’ said the fiddler, ‘you are good for nothing; you can do no work: what a bargain I have got! However, I’ll try and set up a trade in pots and pans, and you shall stand in the market and sell them.’ ‘Alas!’ sighed she, ‘if any of my father’s court should pass by and see me standing in the market, how they will laugh at me!’
But her husband did not care for that, and said she must work, if she did not wish to die of hunger. At first the trade went well; for many people, seeing such a beautiful woman, went to buy her wares, and paid their money without thinking of taking away the goods. They lived on this as long as it lasted; and then her husband bought a fresh lot of ware, and she sat herself down with it in the corner of the market; but a drunken soldier soon came by, and rode his horse against her stall, and broke all her goods into a thousand pieces. Then she began to cry, and knew not what to do. ‘Ah! what will become of me?’ said she; ‘what will my husband say?’ So she ran home and told him all. ‘Who would have thought you would have been so silly,’ said he, ‘as to put an earthenware stall in the corner of the market, where everybody passes? but let us have no more crying; I see you are not fit for this sort of work, so I have been to the king’s palace, and asked if they did not want a kitchen-maid; and they say they will take you, and there you will have plenty to eat.’
Thus the princess became a kitchen-maid, and helped the cook to do all the dirtiest work; but she was allowed to carry home some of the meat that was left, and on this they lived.
She had not been there long before she heard that the king’s eldest son was passing by, going to be married; and she went to one of the windows and looked out. Everything was ready, and all the pomp and brightness of the court was there. Then she bitterly grieved for the pride and folly which had brought her so low. And the servants gave her some of the rich meats, which she put into her basket to take home.
All on a sudden, as she was going out, in came the king’s son in golden clothes; and when he saw a beautiful woman at the door, he took her by the hand, and said she should be his partner in the dance; but she trembled for fear, for she saw that it was King Grisly-beard, who was making sport of her. However, he kept fast hold, and led her in; and the cover of the basket came off, so that the meats in it fell about. Then everybody laughed and jeered at her; and she was so abashed, that she wished herself a thousand feet deep in the earth. She sprang to the door to run away; but on the steps King Grisly-beard overtook her, and brought her back and said, ‘Fear me not! I am the fiddler who has lived with you in the hut. I brought you there because I really loved you. I am also the soldier that overset your stall. I have done all this only to cure you of your silly pride, and to show you the folly of your ill-treatment of me. Now all is over: you have learnt wisdom, and it is time to hold our marriage feast.’
Then the chamberlains came and brought her the most beautiful robes; and her father and his whole court were there already, and welcomed her home on her marriage. Joy was in every face and every heart. The feast was grand; they danced and sang; all were merry; and I only wish that you and I had been of the party.
== IRON HANS ==
There was once upon a time a king who had a great forest near his palace, full of all kinds of wild animals. One day he sent out a huntsman to shoot him a roe, but he did not come back. ‘Perhaps some accident has befallen him,’ said the king, and the next day he sent out two more huntsmen who were to search for him, but they too stayed away. Then on the third day, he sent for all his huntsmen, and said: ‘Scour the whole forest through, and do not give up until you have found all three.’ But of these also, none came home again, none were seen again. From that time forth, no one would any longer venture into the forest, and it lay there in deep stillness and solitude, and nothing was seen of it, but sometimes an eagle or a hawk flying over it. This lasted for many years, when an unknown huntsman announced himself to the king as seeking a situation, and offered to go into the dangerous forest. The king, however, would not give his consent, and said: ‘It is not safe in there; I fear it would fare with you no better than with the others, and you would never come out again.’ The huntsman replied: ‘Lord, I will venture it at my own risk, of fear I know nothing.’
The huntsman therefore betook himself with his dog to the forest. It was not long before the dog fell in with some game on the way, and wanted to pursue it; but hardly had the dog run two steps when it stood before a deep pool, could go no farther, and a naked arm stretched itself out of the water, seized it, and drew it under. When the huntsman saw that, he went back and fetched three men to come with buckets and bale out the water. When they could see to the bottom there lay a wild man whose body was brown like rusty iron, and whose hair hung over his face down to his knees. They bound him with cords, and led him away to the castle. There was great astonishment over the wild man; the king, however, had him put in an iron cage in his courtyard, and forbade the door to be opened on pain of death, and the queen herself was to take the key into her keeping. And from this time forth everyone could again go into the forest with safety.
The king had a son of eight years, who was once playing in the courtyard, and while he was playing, his golden ball fell into the cage. The boy ran thither and said: ‘Give me my ball out.’ ‘Not till you have opened the door for me,’ answered the man. ‘No,’ said the boy, ‘I will not do that; the king has forbidden it,’ and ran away. The next day he again went and asked for his ball; the wild man said: ‘Open my door,’ but the boy would not. On the third day the king had ridden out hunting, and the boy went once more and said: ‘I cannot open the door even if I wished, for I have not the key.’ Then the wild man said: ‘It lies under your mother’s pillow, you can get it there.’ The boy, who wanted to have his ball back, cast all thought to the winds, and brought the key. The door opened with difficulty, and the boy pinched his fingers. When it was open the wild man stepped out, gave him the golden ball, and hurried away. The boy had become afraid; he called and cried after him: ‘Oh, wild man, do not go away, or I shall be beaten!’ The wild man turned back, took him up, set him on his shoulder, and went with hasty steps into the forest. When the king came home, he observed the empty cage, and asked the queen how that had happened. She knew nothing about it, and sought the key, but it was gone. She called the boy, but no one answered. The king sent out people to seek for him in the fields, but they did not find him. Then he could easily guess what had happened, and much grief reigned in the royal court.
When the wild man had once more reached the dark forest, he took the boy down from his shoulder, and said to him: ‘You will never see your father and mother again, but I will keep you with me, for you have set me free, and I have compassion on you. If you do all I bid you, you shall fare well. Of treasure and gold have I enough, and more than anyone in the world.’ He made a bed of moss for the boy on which he slept, and the next morning the man took him to a well, and said: ‘Behold, the gold well is as bright and clear as crystal, you shall sit beside it, and take care that nothing falls into it, or it will be polluted. I will come every evening to see if you have obeyed my order.’ The boy placed himself by the brink of the well, and often saw a golden fish or a golden snake show itself therein, and took care that nothing fell in. As he was thus sitting, his finger hurt him so violently that he involuntarily put it in the water. He drew it quickly out again, but saw that it was quite gilded, and whatsoever pains he took to wash the gold off again, all was to no purpose. In the evening Iron Hans came back, looked at the boy, and said: ‘What has happened to the well?’ ‘Nothing nothing,’ he answered, and held his finger behind his back, that the man might not see it. But he said: ‘You have dipped your finger into the water, this time it may pass, but take care you do not again let anything go in.’ By daybreak the boy was already sitting by the well and watching it. His finger hurt him again and he passed it over his head, and then unhappily a hair fell down into the well. He took it quickly out, but it was already quite gilded. Iron Hans came, and already knew what had happened. ‘You have let a hair fall into the well,’ said he. ‘I will allow you to watch by it once more, but if this happens for the third time then the well is polluted and you can no longer remain with me.’
On the third day, the boy sat by the well, and did not stir his finger, however much it hurt him. But the time was long to him, and he looked at the reflection of his face on the surface of the water. And as he still bent down more and more while he was doing so, and trying to look straight into the eyes, his long hair fell down from his shoulders into the water. He raised himself up quickly, but the whole of the hair of his head was already golden and shone like the sun. You can imagine how terrified the poor boy was! He took his pocket-handkerchief and tied it round his head, in order that the man might not see it. When he came he already knew everything, and said: ‘Take the handkerchief off.’ Then the golden hair streamed forth, and let the boy excuse himself as he might, it was of no use. ‘You have not stood the trial and can stay here no longer. Go forth into the world, there you will learn what poverty is. But as you have not a bad heart, and as I mean well by you, there is one thing I will grant you; if you fall into any difficulty, come to the forest and cry: “Iron Hans,” and then I will come and help you. My power is great, greater than you think, and I have gold and silver in abundance.’
Then the king’s son left the forest, and walked by beaten and unbeaten paths ever onwards until at length he reached a great city. There he looked for work, but could find none, and he learnt nothing by which he could help himself. At length he went to the palace, and asked if they would take him in. The people about court did not at all know what use they could make of him, but they liked him, and told him to stay. At length the cook took him into his service, and said he might carry wood and water, and rake the cinders together. Once when it so happened that no one else was at hand, the cook ordered him to carry the food to the royal table, but as he did not like to let his golden hair be seen, he kept his little cap on. Such a thing as that had never yet come under the king’s notice, and he said: ‘When you come to the royal table you must take your hat off.’ He answered: ‘Ah, Lord, I cannot; I have a bad sore place on my head.’ Then the king had the cook called before him and scolded him, and asked how he could take such a boy as that into his service; and that he was to send him away at once. The cook, however, had pity on him, and exchanged him for the gardener’s boy.
And now the boy had to plant and water the garden, hoe and dig, and bear the wind and bad weather. Once in summer when he was working alone in the garden, the day was so warm he took his little cap off that the air might cool him. As the sun shone on his hair it glittered and flashed so that the rays fell into the bedroom of the king’s daughter, and up she sprang to see what that could be. Then she saw the boy, and cried to him: ‘Boy, bring me a wreath of flowers.’ He put his cap on with all haste, and gathered wild field-flowers and bound them together. When he was ascending the stairs with them, the gardener met him, and said: ‘How can you take the king’s daughter a garland of such common flowers? Go quickly, and get another, and seek out the prettiest and rarest.’ ‘Oh, no,’ replied the boy, ‘the wild ones have more scent, and will please her better.’ When he got into the room, the king’s daughter said: ‘Take your cap off, it is not seemly to keep it on in my presence.’ He again said: ‘I may not, I have a sore head.’ She, however, caught at his cap and pulled it off, and then his golden hair rolled down on his shoulders, and it was splendid to behold. He wanted to run out, but she held him by the arm, and gave him a handful of ducats. With these he departed, but he cared nothing for the gold pieces. He took them to the gardener, and said: ‘I present them to your children, they can play with them.’ The following day the king’s daughter again called to him that he was to bring her a wreath of field-flowers, and then he went in with it, she instantly snatched at his cap, and wanted to take it away from him, but he held it fast with both hands. She again gave him a handful of ducats, but he would not keep them, and gave them to the gardener for playthings for his children. On the third day things went just the same; she could not get his cap away from him, and he would not have her money.
Not long afterwards, the country was overrun by war. The king gathered together his people, and did not know whether or not he could offer any opposition to the enemy, who was superior in strength and had a mighty army. Then said the gardener’s boy: ‘I am grown up, and will go to the wars also, only give me a horse.’ The others laughed, and said: ‘Seek one for yourself when we are gone, we will leave one behind us in the stable for you.’ When they had gone forth, he went into the stable, and led the horse out; it was lame of one foot, and limped hobblety jib, hobblety jib; nevertheless he mounted it, and rode away to the dark forest. When he came to the outskirts, he called ‘Iron Hans’ three times so loudly that it echoed through the trees. Thereupon the wild man appeared immediately, and said: ‘What do you desire?’ ‘I want a strong steed, for I am going to the wars.’ ‘That you shall have, and still more than you ask for.’ Then the wild man went back into the forest, and it was not long before a stable-boy came out of it, who led a horse that snorted with its nostrils, and could hardly be restrained, and behind them followed a great troop of warriors entirely equipped in iron, and their swords flashed in the sun. The youth made over his three-legged horse to the stable-boy, mounted the other, and rode at the head of the soldiers. When he got near the battlefield a great part of the king’s men had already fallen, and little was wanting to make the rest give way. Then the youth galloped thither with his iron soldiers, broke like a hurricane over the enemy, and beat down all who opposed him. They began to flee, but the youth pursued, and never stopped, until there was not a single man left. Instead of returning to the king, however, he conducted his troop by byways back to the forest, and called forth Iron Hans. ‘What do you desire?’ asked the wild man. ‘Take back your horse and your troops, and give me my three-legged horse again.’ All that he asked was done, and soon he was riding on his three-legged horse. When the king returned to his palace, his daughter went to meet him, and wished him joy of his victory. ‘I am not the one who carried away the victory,’ said he, ‘but a strange knight who came to my assistance with his soldiers.’ The daughter wanted to hear who the strange knight was, but the king did not know, and said: ‘He followed the enemy, and I did not see him again.’ She inquired of the gardener where his boy was, but he smiled, and said: ‘He has just come home on his three-legged horse, and the others have been mocking him, and crying: “Here comes our hobblety jib back again!” They asked, too: “Under what hedge have you been lying sleeping all the time?” So he said: “I did the best of all, and it would have gone badly without me.” And then he was still more ridiculed.’
The king said to his daughter: ‘I will proclaim a great feast that shall last for three days, and you shall throw a golden apple. Perhaps the unknown man will show himself.’ When the feast was announced, the youth went out to the forest, and called Iron Hans. ‘What do you desire?’ asked he. ‘That I may catch the king’s daughter’s golden apple.’ ‘It is as safe as if you had it already,’ said Iron Hans. ‘You shall likewise have a suit of red armour for the occasion, and ride on a spirited chestnut-horse.’ When the day came, the youth galloped to the spot, took his place amongst the knights, and was recognized by no one. The king’s daughter came forward, and threw a golden apple to the knights, but none of them caught it but he, only as soon as he had it he galloped away.
On the second day Iron Hans equipped him as a white knight, and gave him a white horse. Again he was the only one who caught the apple, and he did not linger an instant, but galloped off with it. The king grew angry, and said: ‘That is not allowed; he must appear before me and tell his name.’ He gave the order that if the knight who caught the apple, should go away again they should pursue him, and if he would not come back willingly, they were to cut him down and stab him.
On the third day, he received from Iron Hans a suit of black armour and a black horse, and again he caught the apple. But when he was riding off with it, the king’s attendants pursued him, and one of them got so near him that he wounded the youth’s leg with the point of his sword. The youth nevertheless escaped from them, but his horse leapt so violently that the helmet fell from the youth’s head, and they could see that he had golden hair. They rode back and announced this to the king.
The following day the king’s daughter asked the gardener about his boy. ‘He is at work in the garden; the queer creature has been at the festival too, and only came home yesterday evening; he has likewise shown my children three golden apples which he has won.’
The king had him summoned into his presence, and he came and again had his little cap on his head. But the king’s daughter went up to him and took it off, and then his golden hair fell down over his shoulders, and he was so handsome that all were amazed. ‘Are you the knight who came every day to the festival, always in different colours, and who caught the three golden apples?’ asked the king. ‘Yes,’ answered he, ‘and here the apples are,’ and he took them out of his pocket, and returned them to the king. ‘If you desire further proof, you may see the wound which your people gave me when they followed me. But I am likewise the knight who helped you to your victory over your enemies.’ ‘If you can perform such deeds as that, you are no gardener’s boy; tell me, who is your father?’ ‘My father is a mighty king, and gold have I in plenty as great as I require.’ ‘I well see,’ said the king, ‘that I owe my thanks to you; can I do anything to please you?’ ‘Yes,’ answered he, ‘that indeed you can. Give me your daughter to wife.’ The maiden laughed, and said: ‘He does not stand much on ceremony, but I have already seen by his golden hair that he was no gardener’s boy,’ and then she went and kissed him. His father and mother came to the wedding, and were in great delight, for they had given up all hope of ever seeing their dear son again. And as they were sitting at the marriage-feast, the music suddenly stopped, the doors opened, and a stately king came in with a great retinue. He went up to the youth, embraced him and said: ‘I am Iron Hans, and was by enchantment a wild man, but you have set me free; all the treasures which I possess, shall be your property.’
== CAT-SKIN ==
There was once a king, whose queen had hair of the purest gold, and was so beautiful that her match was not to be met with on the whole face of the earth. But this beautiful queen fell ill, and when she felt that her end drew near she called the king to her and said, ‘Promise me that you will never marry again, unless you meet with a wife who is as beautiful as I am, and who has golden hair like mine.’ Then when the king in his grief promised all she asked, she shut her eyes and died. But the king was not to be comforted, and for a long time never thought of taking another wife. At last, however, his wise men said, ‘this will not do; the king must marry again, that we may have a queen.’ So messengers were sent far and wide, to seek for a bride as beautiful as the late queen. But there was no princess in the world so beautiful; and if there had been, still there was not one to be found who had golden hair. So the messengers came home, and had had all their trouble for nothing.
Now the king had a daughter, who was just as beautiful as her mother, and had the same golden hair. And when she was grown up, the king looked at her and saw that she was just like this late queen: then he said to his courtiers, ‘May I not marry my daughter? She is the very image of my dead wife: unless I have her, I shall not find any bride upon the whole earth, and you say there must be a queen.’ When the courtiers heard this they were shocked, and said, ‘Heaven forbid that a father should marry his daughter! Out of so great a sin no good can come.’ And his daughter was also shocked, but hoped the king would soon give up such thoughts; so she said to him, ‘Before I marry anyone I must have three dresses: one must be of gold, like the sun; another must be of shining silver, like the moon; and a third must be dazzling as the stars: besides this, I want a mantle of a thousand different kinds of fur put together, to which every beast in the kingdom must give a part of his skin.’ And thus she thought he would think of the matter no more. But the king made the most skilful workmen in his kingdom weave the three dresses: one golden, like the sun; another silvery, like the moon; and a third sparkling, like the stars: and his hunters were told to hunt out all the beasts in his kingdom, and to take the finest fur out of their skins: and thus a mantle of a thousand furs was made.
When all were ready, the king sent them to her; but she got up in the night when all were asleep, and took three of her trinkets, a golden ring, a golden necklace, and a golden brooch, and packed the three dresses—of the sun, the moon, and the stars—up in a nutshell, and wrapped herself up in the mantle made of all sorts of fur, and besmeared her face and hands with soot. Then she threw herself upon Heaven for help in her need, and went away, and journeyed on the whole night, till at last she came to a large wood. As she was very tired, she sat herself down in the hollow of a tree and soon fell asleep: and there she slept on till it was midday.
Now as the king to whom the wood belonged was hunting in it, his dogs came to the tree, and began to snuff about, and run round and round, and bark. ‘Look sharp!’ said the king to the huntsmen, ‘and see what sort of game lies there.’ And the huntsmen went up to the tree, and when they came back again said, ‘In the hollow tree there lies a most wonderful beast, such as we never saw before; its skin seems to be of a thousand kinds of fur, but there it lies fast asleep.’ ‘See,’ said the king, ‘if you can catch it alive, and we will take it with us.’ So the huntsmen took it up, and the maiden awoke and was greatly frightened, and said, ‘I am a poor child that has neither father nor mother left; have pity on me and take me with you.’ Then they said, ‘Yes, Miss Cat-skin, you will do for the kitchen; you can sweep up the ashes, and do things of that sort.’ So they put her into the coach, and took her home to the king’s palace. Then they showed her a little corner under the staircase, where no light of day ever peeped in, and said, ‘Cat-skin, you may lie and sleep there.’ And she was sent into the kitchen, and made to fetch wood and water, to blow the fire, pluck the poultry, pick the herbs, sift the ashes, and do all the dirty work.
Thus Cat-skin lived for a long time very sorrowfully. ‘Ah! pretty princess!’ thought she, ‘what will now become of thee?’ But it happened one day that a feast was to be held in the king’s castle, so she said to the cook, ‘May I go up a little while and see what is going on? I will take care and stand behind the door.’ And the cook said, ‘Yes, you may go, but be back again in half an hour’s time, to rake out the ashes.’ Then she took her little lamp, and went into her cabin, and took off the fur skin, and washed the soot from off her face and hands, so that her beauty shone forth like the sun from behind the clouds. She next opened her nutshell, and brought out of it the dress that shone like the sun, and so went to the feast. Everyone made way for her, for nobody knew her, and they thought she could be no less than a king’s daughter. But the king came up to her, and held out his hand and danced with her; and he thought in his heart, ‘I never saw any one half so beautiful.’
When the dance was at an end she curtsied; and when the king looked round for her, she was gone, no one knew wither. The guards that stood at the castle gate were called in: but they had seen no one. The truth was, that she had run into her little cabin, pulled off her dress, blackened her face and hands, put on the fur-skin cloak, and was Cat-skin again. When she went into the kitchen to her work, and began to rake the ashes, the cook said, ‘Let that alone till the morning, and heat the king’s soup; I should like to run up now and give a peep: but take care you don’t let a hair fall into it, or you will run a chance of never eating again.’
As soon as the cook went away, Cat-skin heated the king’s soup, and toasted a slice of bread first, as nicely as ever she could; and when it was ready, she went and looked in the cabin for her little golden ring, and put it into the dish in which the soup was. When the dance was over, the king ordered his soup to be brought in; and it pleased him so well, that he thought he had never tasted any so good before. At the bottom he saw a gold ring lying; and as he could not make out how it had got there, he ordered the cook to be sent for. The cook was frightened when he heard the order, and said to Cat-skin, ‘You must have let a hair fall into the soup; if it be so, you will have a good beating.’ Then he went before the king, and he asked him who had cooked the soup. ‘I did,’ answered the cook. But the king said, ‘That is not true; it was better done than you could do it.’ Then he answered, ‘To tell the truth I did not cook it, but Cat-skin did.’ ‘Then let Cat-skin come up,’ said the king: and when she came he said to her, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am a poor child,’ said she, ‘that has lost both father and mother.’ ‘How came you in my palace?’ asked he. ‘I am good for nothing,’ said she, ‘but to be scullion-girl, and to have boots and shoes thrown at my head.’ ‘But how did you get the ring that was in the soup?’ asked the king. Then she would not own that she knew anything about the ring; so the king sent her away again about her business.
After a time there was another feast, and Cat-skin asked the cook to let her go up and see it as before. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but come again in half an hour, and cook the king the soup that he likes so much.’ Then she ran to her little cabin, washed herself quickly, and took her dress out which was silvery as the moon, and put it on; and when she went in, looking like a king’s daughter, the king went up to her, and rejoiced at seeing her again, and when the dance began he danced with her. After the dance was at an end she managed to slip out, so slyly that the king did not see where she was gone; but she sprang into her little cabin, and made herself into Cat-skin again, and went into the kitchen to cook the soup. Whilst the cook was above stairs, she got the golden necklace and dropped it into the soup; then it was brought to the king, who ate it, and it pleased him as well as before; so he sent for the cook, who was again forced to tell him that Cat-skin had cooked it. Cat-skin was brought again before the king, but she still told him that she was only fit to have boots and shoes thrown at her head.
But when the king had ordered a feast to be got ready for the third time, it happened just the same as before. ‘You must be a witch, Cat-skin,’ said the cook; ‘for you always put something into your soup, so that it pleases the king better than mine.’ However, he let her go up as before. Then she put on her dress which sparkled like the stars, and went into the ball-room in it; and the king danced with her again, and thought she had never looked so beautiful as she did then. So whilst he was dancing with her, he put a gold ring on her finger without her seeing it, and ordered that the dance should be kept up a long time. When it was at an end, he would have held her fast by the hand, but she slipped away, and sprang so quickly through the crowd that he lost sight of her: and she ran as fast as she could into her little cabin under the stairs. But this time she kept away too long, and stayed beyond the half-hour; so she had not time to take off her fine dress, and threw her fur mantle over it, and in her haste did not blacken herself all over with soot, but left one of her fingers white.
Then she ran into the kitchen, and cooked the king’s soup; and as soon as the cook was gone, she put the golden brooch into the dish. When the king got to the bottom, he ordered Cat-skin to be called once more, and soon saw the white finger, and the ring that he had put on it whilst they were dancing: so he seized her hand, and kept fast hold of it, and when she wanted to loose herself and spring away, the fur cloak fell off a little on one side, and the starry dress sparkled underneath it.
Then he got hold of the fur and tore it off, and her golden hair and beautiful form were seen, and she could no longer hide herself: so she washed the soot and ashes from her face, and showed herself to be the most beautiful princess upon the face of the earth. But the king said, ‘You are my beloved bride, and we will never more be parted from each other.’ And the wedding feast was held, and a merry day it was, as ever was heard of or seen in that country, or indeed in any other.
== SNOW-WHITE AND ROSE-RED ==
There was once a poor widow who lived in a lonely cottage. In front of the cottage was a garden wherein stood two rose-trees, one of which bore white and the other red roses. She had two children who were like the two rose-trees, and one was called Snow-white, and the other Rose-red. They were as good and happy, as busy and cheerful as ever two children in the world were, only Snow-white was more quiet and gentle than Rose-red. Rose-red liked better to run about in the meadows and fields seeking flowers and catching butterflies; but Snow-white sat at home with her mother, and helped her with her housework, or read to her when there was nothing to do.
The two children were so fond of one another that they always held each other by the hand when they went out together, and when Snow-white said: ‘We will not leave each other,’ Rose-red answered: ‘Never so long as we live,’ and their mother would add: ‘What one has she must share with the other.’
They often ran about the forest alone and gathered red berries, and no beasts did them any harm, but came close to them trustfully. The little hare would eat a cabbage-leaf out of their hands, the roe grazed by their side, the stag leapt merrily by them, and the birds sat still upon the boughs, and sang whatever they knew.
No mishap overtook them; if they had stayed too late in the forest, and night came on, they laid themselves down near one another upon the moss, and slept until morning came, and their mother knew this and did not worry on their account.
Once when they had spent the night in the wood and the dawn had roused them, they saw a beautiful child in a shining white dress sitting near their bed. He got up and looked quite kindly at them, but said nothing and went into the forest. And when they looked round they found that they had been sleeping quite close to a precipice, and would certainly have fallen into it in the darkness if they had gone only a few paces further. And their mother told them that it must have been the angel who watches over good children.
Snow-white and Rose-red kept their mother’s little cottage so neat that it was a pleasure to look inside it. In the summer Rose-red took care of the house, and every morning laid a wreath of flowers by her mother’s bed before she awoke, in which was a rose from each tree. In the winter Snow-white lit the fire and hung the kettle on the hob. The kettle was of brass and shone like gold, so brightly was it polished. In the evening, when the snowflakes fell, the mother said: ‘Go, Snow-white, and bolt the door,’ and then they sat round the hearth, and the mother took her spectacles and read aloud out of a large book, and the two girls listened as they sat and spun. And close by them lay a lamb upon the floor, and behind them upon a perch sat a white dove with its head hidden beneath its wings.
One evening, as they were thus sitting comfortably together, someone knocked at the door as if he wished to be let in. The mother said: ‘Quick, Rose-red, open the door, it must be a traveller who is seeking shelter.’ Rose-red went and pushed back the bolt, thinking that it was a poor man, but it was not; it was a bear that stretched his broad, black head within the door.
Rose-red screamed and sprang back, the lamb bleated, the dove fluttered, and Snow-white hid herself behind her mother’s bed. But the bear began to speak and said: ‘Do not be afraid, I will do you no harm! I am half-frozen, and only want to warm myself a little beside you.’
‘Poor bear,’ said the mother, ‘lie down by the fire, only take care that you do not burn your coat.’ Then she cried: ‘Snow-white, Rose-red, come out, the bear will do you no harm, he means well.’ So they both came out, and by-and-by the lamb and dove came nearer, and were not afraid of him. The bear said: ‘Here, children, knock the snow out of my coat a little’; so they brought the broom and swept the bear’s hide clean; and he stretched himself by the fire and growled contentedly and comfortably. It was not long before they grew quite at home, and played tricks with their clumsy guest. They tugged his hair with their hands, put their feet upon his back and rolled him about, or they took a hazel-switch and beat him, and when he growled they laughed. But the bear took it all in good part, only when they were too rough he called out: ‘Leave me alive, children,
 Snow-white, Rose-red,
 Will you beat your wooer dead?’
When it was bed-time, and the others went to bed, the mother said to the bear: ‘You can lie there by the hearth, and then you will be safe from the cold and the bad weather.’ As soon as day dawned the two children let him out, and he trotted across the snow into the forest.
Henceforth the bear came every evening at the same time, laid himself down by the hearth, and let the children amuse themselves with him as much as they liked; and they got so used to him that the doors were never fastened until their black friend had arrived.
When spring had come and all outside was green, the bear said one morning to Snow-white: ‘Now I must go away, and cannot come back for the whole summer.’ ‘Where are you going, then, dear bear?’ asked Snow-white. ‘I must go into the forest and guard my treasures from the wicked dwarfs. In the winter, when the earth is frozen hard, they are obliged to stay below and cannot work their way through; but now, when the sun has thawed and warmed the earth, they break through it, and come out to pry and steal; and what once gets into their hands, and in their caves, does not easily see daylight again.’
Snow-white was quite sorry at his departure, and as she unbolted the door for him, and the bear was hurrying out, he caught against the bolt and a piece of his hairy coat was torn off, and it seemed to Snow-white as if she had seen gold shining through it, but she was not sure about it. The bear ran away quickly, and was soon out of sight behind the trees.
A short time afterwards the mother sent her children into the forest to get firewood. There they found a big tree which lay felled on the ground, and close by the trunk something was jumping backwards and forwards in the grass, but they could not make out what it was. When they came nearer they saw a dwarf with an old withered face and a snow-white beard a yard long. The end of the beard was caught in a crevice of the tree, and the little fellow was jumping about like a dog tied to a rope, and did not know what to do.
He glared at the girls with his fiery red eyes and cried: ‘Why do you stand there? Can you not come here and help me?’ ‘What are you up to, little man?’ asked Rose-red. ‘You stupid, prying goose!’ answered the dwarf: ‘I was going to split the tree to get a little wood for cooking. The little bit of food that we people get is immediately burnt up with heavy logs; we do not swallow so much as you coarse, greedy folk. I had just driven the wedge safely in, and everything was going as I wished; but the cursed wedge was too smooth and suddenly sprang out, and the tree closed so quickly that I could not pull out my beautiful white beard; so now it is tight and I cannot get away, and the silly, sleek, milk-faced things laugh! Ugh! how odious you are!’
The children tried very hard, but they could not pull the beard out, it was caught too fast. ‘I will run and fetch someone,’ said Rose-red. ‘You senseless goose!’ snarled the dwarf; ‘why should you fetch someone? You are already two too many for me; can you not think of something better?’ ‘Don’t be impatient,’ said Snow-white, ‘I will help you,’ and she pulled her scissors out of her pocket, and cut off the end of the beard.
As soon as the dwarf felt himself free he laid hold of a bag which lay amongst the roots of the tree, and which was full of gold, and lifted it up, grumbling to himself: ‘Uncouth people, to cut off a piece of my fine beard. Bad luck to you!’ and then he swung the bag upon his back, and went off without even once looking at the children.
Some time afterwards Snow-white and Rose-red went to catch a dish of fish. As they came near the brook they saw something like a large grasshopper jumping towards the water, as if it were going to leap in. They ran to it and found it was the dwarf. ‘Where are you going?’ said Rose-red; ‘you surely don’t want to go into the water?’ ‘I am not such a fool!’ cried the dwarf; ‘don’t you see that the accursed fish wants to pull me in?’ The little man had been sitting there fishing, and unluckily the wind had tangled up his beard with the fishing-line; a moment later a big fish made a bite and the feeble creature had not strength to pull it out; the fish kept the upper hand and pulled the dwarf towards him. He held on to all the reeds and rushes, but it was of little good, for he was forced to follow the movements of the fish, and was in urgent danger of being dragged into the water.
The girls came just in time; they held him fast and tried to free his beard from the line, but all in vain, beard and line were entangled fast together. There was nothing to do but to bring out the scissors and cut the beard, whereby a small part of it was lost. When the dwarf saw that he screamed out: ‘Is that civil, you toadstool, to disfigure a man’s face? Was it not enough to clip off the end of my beard? Now you have cut off the best part of it. I cannot let myself be seen by my people. I wish you had been made to run the soles off your shoes!’ Then he took out a sack of pearls which lay in the rushes, and without another word he dragged it away and disappeared behind a stone.
It happened that soon afterwards the mother sent the two children to the town to buy needles and thread, and laces and ribbons. The road led them across a heath upon which huge pieces of rock lay strewn about. There they noticed a large bird hovering in the air, flying slowly round and round above them; it sank lower and lower, and at last settled near a rock not far away. Immediately they heard a loud, piteous cry. They ran up and saw with horror that the eagle had seized their old acquaintance the dwarf, and was going to carry him off.
The children, full of pity, at once took tight hold of the little man, and pulled against the eagle so long that at last he let his booty go. As soon as the dwarf had recovered from his first fright he cried with his shrill voice: ‘Could you not have done it more carefully! You dragged at my brown coat so that it is all torn and full of holes, you clumsy creatures!’ Then he took up a sack full of precious stones, and slipped away again under the rock into his hole. The girls, who by this time were used to his ingratitude, went on their way and did their business in town.
As they crossed the heath again on their way home they surprised the dwarf, who had emptied out his bag of precious stones in a clean spot, and had not thought that anyone would come there so late. The evening sun shone upon the brilliant stones; they glittered and sparkled with all colours so beautifully that the children stood still and stared at them. ‘Why do you stand gaping there?’ cried the dwarf, and his ashen-grey face became copper-red with rage. He was still cursing when a loud growling was heard, and a black bear came trotting towards them out of the forest. The dwarf sprang up in a fright, but he could not reach his cave, for the bear was already close. Then in the dread of his heart he cried: ‘Dear Mr Bear, spare me, I will give you all my treasures; look, the beautiful jewels lying there! Grant me my life; what do you want with such a slender little fellow as I? you would not feel me between your teeth. Come, take these two wicked girls, they are tender morsels for you, fat as young quails; for mercy’s sake eat them!’ The bear took no heed of his words, but gave the wicked creature a single blow with his paw, and he did not move again.
The girls had run away, but the bear called to them: ‘Snow-white and Rose-red, do not be afraid; wait, I will come with you.’ Then they recognized his voice and waited, and when he came up to them suddenly his bearskin fell off, and he stood there a handsome man, clothed all in gold. ‘I am a king’s son,’ he said, ‘and I was bewitched by that wicked dwarf, who had stolen my treasures; I have had to run about the forest as a savage bear until I was freed by his death. Now he has got his well-deserved punishment.
Snow-white was married to him, and Rose-red to his brother, and they divided between them the great treasure which the dwarf had gathered together in his cave. The old mother lived peacefully and happily with her children for many years. She took the two rose-trees with her, and they stood before her window, and every year bore the most beautiful roses, white and red.
== TOM TIT TOT ==
Once upon a time there was a woman, and she baked five pies. And when they came out of the oven, they were that overbaked the crusts were too hard to eat. So she says to her daughter:
“Darter,” says she, “put you them there pies on the shelf, and leave 'em there a little, and they'll come again.”—She meant, you know, the crust would get soft.
But the girl, she says to herself: “Well, if they'll come again, I'll eat 'em now.” And she set to work and ate 'em all, first and last.
Well, come supper-time the woman said: “Go you, and get one o' them there pies. I dare say they've come again now.”
The girl went and she looked, and there was nothing but the dishes. So back she came and says she: “Noo, they ain't come again.”
“Not one of 'em?” says the mother.
“Not one of 'em,” says she.
“Well, come again, or not come again,” said the woman “I'll have one for supper.”
“But you can't, if they ain't come,” said the girl.
“But I can,” says she. “Go you, and bring the best of 'em.”
“Best or worst,” says the girl, “I've ate 'em all, and you can't have one till that's come again.”
Well, the woman she was done, and she took her spinning to the door to spin, and as she span she sang:
 “My darter ha' ate five, five pies to-day.
 My darter ha' ate five, five pies to-day.”
 
The king was coming down the street, and he heard her sing, but what she sang he couldn't hear, so he stopped and said:
“What was that you were singing, my good woman?”
The woman was ashamed to let him hear what her daughter had been doing, so she sang, instead of that:
 “My darter ha' spun five, five skeins to-day.
 My darter ha' spun five, five skeins to-day.”
 
“Stars o' mine!” said the king, “I never heard tell of any one that could do that.”
Then he said: “Look you here, I want a wife, and I'll marry your daughter. But look you here,” says he, “eleven months out of the year she shall have all she likes to eat, and all the gowns she likes to get, and all the company she likes to keep; but the last month of the year she'll have to spin five skeins every day, and if she don't I shall kill her.”
“All right,” says the woman; for she thought what a grand marriage that was. And as for the five skeins, when the time came, there'd be plenty of ways of getting out of it, and likeliest, he'd have forgotten all about it.
Well, so they were married. And for eleven months the girl had all she liked to eat, and all the gowns she liked to get, and all the company she liked to keep.
But when the time was getting over, she began to think about the skeins and to wonder if he had 'em in mind. But not one word did he say about 'em, and she thought he'd wholly forgotten 'em.
However, the last day of the last month he takes her to a room she'd never set eyes on before. There was nothing in it but a spinning-wheel and a stool. And says he: “Now, my dear, here you'll be shut in to-morrow with some victuals and some flax, and if you haven't spun five skeins by the night, your head'll go off.”
And away he went about his business.
Well, she was that frightened, she'd always been such a gatless girl, that she didn't so much as know how to spin, and what was she to do to-morrow with no one to come nigh her to help her? She sat down on a stool in the kitchen, and law! how she did cry!
However, all of a sudden she heard a sort of a knocking low down on the door. She upped and oped it, and what should she see but a small little black thing with a long tail. That looked up at her right curious, and that said:
“What are you a-crying for?”
“What's that to you?” says she.
“Never you mind,” that said, “but tell me what you're a-crying for.”
“That won't do me no good if I do,” says she.
“You don't know that,” that said, and twirled that's tail round.
“Well,” says she, “that won't do no harm, if that don't do no good,” and she upped and told about the pies, and the skeins, and everything.
“This is what I'll do,” says the little black thing, “I'll come to your window every morning and take the flax and bring it spun at night.”
“What's your pay?” says she.
That looked out of the corner of that's eyes, and that said: “I'll give you three guesses every night to guess my name, and if you haven't guessed it before the month's up you shall be mine.”
Well, she thought she'd be sure to guess that's name before the month was up. “All right,” says she, “I agree.”
“All right,” that says, and law! how that twirled that's tail.
Well, the next day, her husband took her into the room, and there was the flax and the day's food.
“Now there's the flax,” says he, “and if that ain't spun up this night, off goes your head.” And then he went out and locked the door.
He'd hardly gone, when there was a knocking against the window.
She upped and she oped it, and there sure enough was the little old thing sitting on the ledge.
“Where's the flax?” says he.
“Here it be,” says she. And she gave it to him.
Well, come the evening a knocking came again to the window. She upped and she oped it, and there was the little old thing with five skeins of flax on his arm.
“Here it be,” says he, and he gave it to her.
“Now, what's my name?” says he.
“What, is that Bill?” says she.
“Noo, that ain't,” says he, and he twirled his tail.
“Is that Ned?” says she.
“Noo, that ain't,” says he, and he twirled his tail.
“Well, is that Mark?” says she.
“Noo, that ain't,” says he, and he twirled his tail harder, and away he flew.
Well, when her husband came in, there were the five skeins ready for him. “I see I shan't have to kill you to-night, my dear,” says he; “you'll have your food and your flax in the morning,” says he, and away he goes.
Well, every day the flax and the food were brought, and every day that there little black impet used to come mornings and evenings. And all the day the girl sat trying to think of names to say to it when it came at night. But she never hit on the right one. And as it got towards the end of the month, the impet began to look so maliceful, and that twirled that's tail faster and faster each time she gave a guess.
At last it came to the last day but one. The impet came at night along with the five skeins, and that said,
“What, ain't you got my name yet?”
“Is that Nicodemus?” says she.
“Noo, t'ain't,” that says.
“Is that Sammle?” says she.
“Noo, t'ain't,” that says.
“A-well, is that Methusalem?” says she.
“Noo, t'ain't that neither,” that says.
Then that looks at her with that's eyes like a coal o' fire, and that says: “Woman, there's only to-morrow night, and then you'll be mine!” And away it flew.
Well, she felt that horrid. However, she heard the king coming along the passage. In he came, and when he sees the five skeins, he says, says he,
“Well, my dear,” says he, “I don't see but what you'll have your skeins ready to-morrow night as well, and as I reckon I shan't have to kill you, I'll have supper in here to-night.” So they brought supper, and another stool for him, and down the two sat.
Well, he hadn't eaten but a mouthful or so, when he stops and begins to laugh.
“What is it?” says she.
“A-why,” says he, “I was out a-hunting to-day, and I got away to a place in the wood I'd never seen before And there was an old chalk-pit. And I heard a kind of a sort of a humming. So I got off my hobby, and I went right quiet to the pit, and I looked down. Well, what should there be but the funniest little black thing you ever set eyes on. And what was that doing, but that had a little spinning-wheel, and that was spinning wonderful fast, and twirling that's tail. And as that span that sang:
 “Nimmy nimmy not
 My name's Tom Tit Tot.”
 
Well, when the girl heard this, she felt as if she could have jumped out of her skin for joy, but she didn't say a word.
Next day that there little thing looked so maliceful when he came for the flax. And when night came, she heard that knocking against the window panes. She oped the window, and that come right in on the ledge. That was grinning from ear to ear, and Oo! that's tail was twirling round so fast.
“What's my name?” that says, as that gave her the skeins.
“Is that Solomon?” she says, pretending to be afeard.
“Noo, t'ain't,” that says, and that came further into the room.
“Well, is that Zebedee?” says she again.
“Noo, t'ain't,” says the impet. And then that laughed and twirled that's tail till you couldn't hardly see it.
“Take time, woman,” that says; “next guess, and you're mine.” And that stretched out that's black hands at her.
Well, she backed a step or two, and she looked at it, and then she laughed out, and says she, pointing her finger at it: “NIMMY NIMMY NOT, YOUR NAME'S TOM TIT TOT!”
Well, when that heard her, that gave an awful shriek and away that flew into the dark, and she never saw it any more.
== THE THREE SILLIES ==
Once upon a time there was a farmer and his wife who had one daughter, and she was courted by a gentleman. Every evening he used to come and see her, and stop to supper at the farmhouse, and the daughter used to be sent down into the cellar to draw the beer for supper. So one evening she had gone down to draw the beer, and she happened to look up at the ceiling while she was drawing, and she saw a mallet stuck in one of the beams. It must have been there a long, long time, but somehow or other she had never noticed it before, and she began a-thinking. And she thought it was very dangerous to have that mallet there, for she said to herself: “Suppose him and me was to be married, and we was to have a son, and he was to grow up to be a man, and come down into the cellar to draw the beer, like as I'm doing now, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him, what a dreadful thing it would be!” And she put down the candle and the jug, and sat herself down and began a-crying.
Well, they began to wonder upstairs how it was that she was so long drawing the beer, and her mother went down to see after her, and she found her sitting on the settle crying, and the beer running over the floor. “Why, whatever is the matter?” said her mother. “Oh, mother!” says she, “look at that horrid mallet! Suppose we was to be married, and was to have a son, and he was to grow up, and was to come down to the cellar to draw the beer, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him, what a dreadful thing it would be!” “Dear, dear! what a dreadful thing it would be!” said the mother, and she sat her down aside of the daughter and started a-crying too. Then after a bit the father began to wonder that they didn't come back, and he went down into the cellar to look after them himself, and there they two sat a-crying, and the beer running all over the floor. “Whatever is the matter?” says he. “Why,” says the mother, “look at that horrid mallet. Just suppose, if our daughter and her sweetheart was to be married, and was to have a son, and he was to grow up, and was to come down into the cellar to draw the beer, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him, what a dreadful thing it would be!” “Dear, dear, dear! so it would!” said the father, and he sat himself down aside of the other two, and started a-crying.
Now the gentleman got tired of stopping up in the kitchen by himself, and at last he went down into the cellar too, to see what they were after; and there they three sat a-crying side by side, and the beer running all over the floor. And he ran straight and turned the tap. Then he said: “Whatever are you three doing, sitting there crying, and letting the beer run all over the floor?”
“Oh!” says the father, “look at that horrid mallet! Suppose you and our daughter was to be married, and was to have a son, and he was to grow up, and was to come down into the cellar to draw the beer, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him!” And then they all started a-crying worse than before. But the gentleman burst out a-laughing, and reached up and pulled out the mallet, and then he said: “I've travelled many miles, and I never met three such big sillies as you three before; and now I shall start out on my travels again, and when I can find three bigger sillies than you three, then I'll come back and marry your daughter.” So he wished them good-bye, and started off on his travels, and left them all crying because the girl had lost her sweetheart.
Well, he set out, and he travelled a long way, and at last he came to a woman's cottage that had some grass growing on the roof. And the woman was trying to get her cow to go up a ladder to the grass, and the poor thing durst not go. So the gentleman asked the woman what she was doing. “Why, lookye,” she said, “look at all that beautiful grass. I'm going to get the cow on to the roof to eat it. She'll be quite safe, for I shall tie a string round her neck, and pass it down the chimney, and tie it to my wrist as I go about the house, so she can't fall off without my knowing it.” “Oh, you poor silly!” said the gentleman, “you should cut the grass and throw it down to the cow!” But the woman thought it was easier to get the cow up the ladder than to get the grass down, so she pushed her and coaxed her and got her up, and tied a string round her neck, and passed it down the chimney, and fastened it to her own wrist. And the gentleman went on his way, but he hadn't gone far when the cow tumbled off the roof, and hung by the string tied round her neck, and it strangled her. And the weight of the cow tied to her wrist pulled the woman up the chimney, and she stuck fast half-way and was smothered in the soot.
Well, that was one big silly.
And the gentleman went on and on, and he went to an inn to stop the night, and they were so full at the inn that they had to put him in a double-bedded room, and another traveller was to sleep in the other bed. The other man was a very pleasant fellow, and they got very friendly together; but in the morning, when they were both getting up, the gentleman was surprised to see the other hang his trousers on the knobs of the chest of drawers and run across the room and try to jump into them, and he tried over and over again, and couldn't manage it; and the gentleman wondered whatever he was doing it for. At last he stopped and wiped his face with his handkerchief. “Oh dear,” he says, “I do think trousers are the most awkwardest kind of clothes that ever were. I can't think who could have invented such things. It takes me the best part of an hour to get into mine every morning, and I get so hot! How do you manage yours?” So the gentleman burst out a-laughing, and showed him how to put them on; and he was very much obliged to him, and said he never should have thought of doing it that way.
So that was another big silly.
Then the gentleman went on his travels again; and he came to a village, and outside the village there was a pond, and round the pond was a crowd of people. And they had got rakes, and brooms, and pitchforks, reaching into the pond; and the gentleman asked what was the matter. “Why,” they say, “matter enough! Moon's tumbled into the pond, and we can't rake her out anyhow!” So the gentleman burst out a-laughing, and told them to look up into the sky, and that it was only the shadow in the water. But they wouldn't listen to him, and abused him shamefully, and he got away as quick as he could.
So there was a whole lot of sillies bigger than them three sillies at home. So the gentleman turned back home again and married the farmer's daughter, and if they didn't live happy for ever after, that's nothing to do with you or me.
== THE OLD WOMAN AND HER PIG ==
An old woman was sweeping her house, and she found a little crooked sixpence. “What,” said she, “shall I do with this little sixpence? I will go to market, and buy a little pig.”
As she was coming home, she came to a stile: but the piggy wouldn't go over the stile.
She went a little further, and she met a dog. So she said to the dog: “Dog! bite pig; piggy won't go over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the dog wouldn't.
She went a little further, and she met a stick. So she said: “Stick! stick! beat dog! dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the stick wouldn't.
She went a little further, and she met a fire. So she said: “Fire! fire! burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the fire wouldn't.
She went a little further, and she met some water. So she said: “Water, water! quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the water wouldn't.
She went a little further, and she met an ox. So she said: “Ox! ox! drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the ox wouldn't.
She went a little further, and she met a butcher. So she said: “Butcher! butcher! kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the butcher wouldn't.
She went a little further, and she met a rope. So she said: “Rope! rope! hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the rope wouldn't.
She went a little further, and she met a rat. So she said: “Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the rat wouldn't.
She went a little further, and she met a cat. So she said: “Cat! cat! kill rat; rat won't gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home to-night.” But the cat said to her, “If you will go to yonder cow, and fetch me a saucer of milk, I will kill the rat.” So away went the old woman to the cow.
But the cow said to her: “If you will go to yonder hay-stack, and fetch me a handful of hay, I'll give you the milk.” So away went the old woman to the haystack and she brought the hay to the cow.
As soon as the cow had eaten the hay, she gave the old woman the milk; and away she went with it in a saucer to the cat.
As soon as the cat had lapped up the milk, the cat began to kill the rat; the rat began to gnaw the rope; the rope began to hang the butcher; the butcher began to kill the ox; the ox began to drink the water; the water began to quench the fire; the fire began to burn the stick; the stick began to beat the dog; the dog began to bite the pig; the little pig in a fright jumped over the stile, and so the old woman got home that night.
== HOW JACK WENT TO SEEK HIS FORTUNE ==
Once on a time there was a boy named Jack, and one morning he started to go and seek his fortune.
He hadn't gone very far before he met a cat.
“Where are you going, Jack?” said the cat.
“I am going to seek my fortune.”
“May I go with you?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “the more the merrier.”
So on they went, jiggelty-jolt, jiggelty-jolt.
They went a little further and they met a dog.
“Where are you going, Jack?” said the dog.
“I am going to seek my fortune.”
“May I go with you?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “the more the merrier.”
So on they went, jiggelty-jolt, jiggelty-jolt. They went a little further and they met a goat.
“Where are you going, Jack?” said the goat.
“I am going to seek my fortune.”
“May I go with you?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “the more the merrier.”
So on they went, jiggelty-jolt, jiggelty-jolt.
They went a little further and they met a bull.
“Where are you going, Jack?” said the bull.
“I am going to seek my fortune.”
“May I go with you?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “the more the merrier.”
So on they went, jiggelty-jolt, jiggelty-jolt.
They went a little further and they met a rooster.
“Where are you going, Jack?” said the rooster.
“I am going to seek my fortune.”
“May I go with you?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “the more the merrier.”
So on they went, jiggelty-jolt, jiggelty-jolt.
Well, they went on till it was about dark, and they began to think of some place where they could spend the night. About this time they came in sight of a house, and Jack told them to keep still while he went up and looked in through the window. And there were some robbers counting over their money. Then Jack went back and told them to wait till he gave the word, and then to make all the noise they could. So when they were all ready Jack gave the word, and the cat mewed, and the dog barked, and the goat bleated, and the bull bellowed, and the rooster crowed, and all together they made such a dreadful noise that it frightened the robbers all away.
And then they went in and took possession of the house. Jack was afraid the robbers would come back in the night, and so when it came time to go to bed he put the cat in the rocking-chair, and he put the dog under the table, and he put the goat upstairs, and he put the bull down cellar, and the rooster flew up on to the roof, and Jack went to bed.
By-and-by the robbers saw it was all dark and they sent one man back to the house to look after their money. Before long he came back in a great fright and told them his story.
“I went back to the house,” said he, “and went in and tried to sit down in the rocking-chair, and there was an old woman knitting, and she stuck her knitting-needles into me.” That was the cat, you know.
“I went to the table to look after the money and there was a shoemaker under the table, and he stuck his awl into me.” That was the dog, you know.
“I started to go upstairs, and there was a man up there threshing, and he knocked me down with his flail.” That was the goat, you know.
“I started to go down cellar, and there was a man down there chopping wood, and he knocked me up with his axe.” That was the bull, you know.
“But I shouldn't have minded all that if it hadn't been for that little fellow on top of the house, who kept a-hollering, 'Chuck him up to me-e! Chuck him up to me-e!'” Of course that was the cock-a-doodle-do.
== MR. VINEGAR ==
Mr. and Mrs. Vinegar lived in a vinegar bottle. Now, one day, when Mr. Vinegar was from home, Mrs. Vinegar, who was a very good housewife, was busily sweeping her house, when an unlucky thump of the broom brought the whole house clitter-clatter, clitter-clatter, about her ears. In an agony of grief she rushed forth to meet her husband.
On seeing him she exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Vinegar, Mr. Vinegar, we are ruined, I have knocked the house down, and it is all to pieces!” Mr. Vinegar then said: “My dear, let us see what can be done. Here is the door; I will take it on my back, and we will go forth to seek our fortune.”
They walked all that day, and at nightfall entered a thick forest. They were both very, very tired, and Mr. Vinegar said: “My love, I will climb up into a tree, drag up the door, and you shall follow.” He accordingly did so, and they both stretched their weary limbs on the door, and fell fast asleep.
In the middle of the night Mr. Vinegar was disturbed by the sound of voices underneath, and to his horror and dismay found that it was a band of thieves met to divide their booty.
“Here, Jack,” said one, “here's five pounds for you; here, Bill, here's ten pounds for you; here, Bob, here's three pounds for you.”
Mr. Vinegar could listen no longer; his terror was so great that he trembled and trembled, and shook down the door on their heads. Away scampered the thieves, but Mr. Vinegar dared not quit his retreat till broad daylight.
He then scrambled out of the tree, and went to lift up the door. What did he see but a number of golden guineas. “Come down, Mrs. Vinegar,” he cried; “come down, I say; our fortune's made, our fortune's made! Come down, I say.”
Mrs. Vinegar got down as fast as she could, and when she saw the money she jumped for joy. “Now, my dear,” said she, “I'll tell you what you shall do. There is a fair at the neighbouring town; you shall take these forty guineas and buy a cow. I can make butter and cheese, which you shall sell at market, and we shall then be able to live very comfortably.”
Mr. Vinegar joyfully agrees, takes the money, and off he goes to the fair. When he arrived, he walked up and down, and at length saw a beautiful red cow. It was an excellent milker, and perfect in every way. “Oh,” thought Mr. Vinegar, “if I had but that cow, I should be the happiest, man alive.”
So he offers the forty guineas for the cow, and the owner said that, as he was a friend, he'd oblige him. So the bargain was made, and he got the cow and he drove it backwards and forwards to show it.
By-and-by he saw a man playing the bagpipes—Tweedle-dum tweedle-dee. The children followed him about, and he appeared to be pocketing money on all sides. “Well,” thought Mr. Vinegar, “if I had but that beautiful instrument I should be the happiest man alive—my fortune would be made.”
So he went up to the man. “Friend,” says he, “what a beautiful instrument that is, and what a deal of money you must make.” “Why, yes,” said the man, “I make a great deal of money, to be sure, and it is a wonderful instrument.” “Oh!” cried Mr. Vinegar, “how I should like to possess it!” “Well,” said the man, “as you are a friend, I don't much mind parting with it; you shall have it for that red cow.” “Done!” said the delighted Mr. Vinegar. So the beautiful red cow was given for the bagpipes.
He walked up and down with his purchase; but it was in vain he tried to play a tune, and instead of pocketing pence, the boys followed him hooting, laughing, and pelting.
Poor Mr. Vinegar, his fingers grew very cold, and, just as he was leaving the town, he met a man with a fine thick pair of gloves. “Oh, my fingers are so very cold,” said Mr. Vinegar to himself. “Now if I had but those beautiful gloves I should be the happiest man alive.” He went up to the man, and said to him, “Friend, you seem to have a capital pair of gloves there.” “Yes, truly,” cried the man; “and my hands are as warm as possible this cold November day.” “Well,” said Mr. Vinegar, “I should like to have them.”. “What will you give?” said the man; “as you are a friend, I don't much mind letting you have them for those bagpipes.” “Done!” cried Mr. Vinegar. He put on the gloves, and felt perfectly happy as he trudged homewards.
At last he grew very tired, when he saw a man coming towards him with a good stout stick in his hand.
“Oh,” said Mr. Vinegar, “that I had but that stick! I should then be the happiest man alive.” He said to the man: “Friend! what a rare good stick you have got.” “Yes,” said the man; “I have used it for many a long mile, and a good friend it has been; but if you have a fancy for it, as you are a friend, I don't mind giving it to you for that pair of gloves.” Mr. Vinegar's hands were so warm, and his legs so tired, that he gladly made the exchange.
As he drew near to the wood where he had left his wife, he heard a parrot on a tree calling out his name: “Mr. Vinegar, you foolish man, you blockhead, you simpleton; you went to the fair, and laid out all your money in buying a cow. Not content with that, you changed it for bagpipes, on which you could not play, and which were not worth one-tenth of the money. You fool, you—you had no sooner got the bagpipes than you changed them for the gloves, which were not worth one-quarter of the money; and when you had got the gloves, you changed them for a poor miserable stick; and now for your forty guineas, cow, bagpipes, and gloves, you have nothing to show but that poor miserable stick, which you might have cut in any hedge.” On this the bird laughed and laughed, and Mr. Vinegar, falling into a violent rage, threw the stick at its head. The stick lodged in the tree, and he returned to his wife without money, cow, bagpipes, gloves, or stick, and she instantly gave him such a sound cudgelling that she almost broke every bone in his skin.
NIX NOUGHT NOTHING
There once lived a king and a queen as many a one has been. They were long married and had no children; but at last a baby-boy came to the queen when the king was away in the far countries. The queen would not christen the boy till the king came back, and she said, “We will just call him Nix Nought Nothing until his father comes home.” But it was long before he came home, and the boy had grown a nice little laddie. At length the king was on his way back; but he had a big river to cross, and there was a whirlpool, and he could not get over the water. But a giant came up to him, and said “I'll carry you over.” But the king said: “What's your pay?” “O give me Nix, Nought, Nothing, and I will carry you over the water on my back.” The king had never heard that his son was called Nix Nought Nothing, and so he said: “O, I'll give you that and my thanks into the bargain.” When the king got home again, he was very happy to see his wife again, and his young son. She told him that she had not given the child any name, but just Nix Nought Nothing, until he should come home again himself. The poor king was in a terrible case. He said: “What have I done? I promised to give the giant who carried me over the river on his back, Nix Nought Nothing.” The king and the queen were sad and sorry, but they said: “When the giant comes we will give him the hen-wife's boy; he will never know the difference.” The next day the giant came to claim the king's promise, and he sent for the hen-wife's boy; and the giant went away with the boy on his back. He travelled till he came to a big stone, and there he sat down to rest. He said,
“Hidge, Hodge, on my back, what time of day is that?”
The poor little boy said: “It is the time that my mother, the hen-wife, takes up the eggs for the queen's breakfast.”
The Giant was very angry, and dashed the boy's head on the stone and killed him.
So he went back in a tower of a temper and this time they gave him the gardener's boy. He went off with him on his back till they got to the stone again when the giant sat down to rest. And he said:
“Hidge, Hodge, on my back, what time of day do you make that?”
The gardener's boy said: “Sure it's the time that my mother takes up the vegetables for the queen's dinner.” Then the giant was right wild and dashed his brains out on the stone.
Then the giant went back to the king's house in a terrible temper and said he would destroy them all if they did not give him Nix Nought Nothing this time. They had to do it; and when he came to the big stone, the giant said: “What time of day is that?” Nix Nought Nothing said: “It is the time that my father the king will be sitting down to supper.” The giant said: “I've got the right one now;” and took Nix Nought Nothing to his own house and brought him up till he was a man.
The giant had a bonny daughter, and she and the lad grew very fond of each other. The giant said one day to Nix Nought Nothing: “I've work for you to-morrow. There is a stable seven miles long and seven miles broad, and it has not been cleaned for seven years, and you must clean it to-morrow, or I will have you for my supper.”
The giant's daughter went out next morning with the lad's breakfast, and found him in a terrible state, for always as he cleaned out a bit, it just fell in again. The giant's daughter said she would help him, and she cried all the beasts in the field, and all the fowls of the air, and in a minute they all came, and carried away everything that was in the stable and made it all clean before the giant came home. He said: “Shame on the wit that helped you; but I have a worse job for you to-morrow.” Then he said to Nix Nought Nothing: “There's a lake seven miles long, and seven miles deep, and seven miles broad, and you must drain it to-morrow by nightfall, or else I'll have you for my supper.” Nix Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to lave the water with his pail, but the lake was never getting any less, and he didn't know what to do; but the giant's daughter called on all the fish in the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank it dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said: “I've a worse job for you to-morrow; there is a tree, seven miles high, and no branch on it, till you get to the top, and there is a nest with seven eggs in it, and you must bring down all the eggs without breaking one, or else I'll have you for my supper.” At first the giant's daughter did not know how to help Nix Nought Nothing; but she cut off first her fingers and then her toes, and made steps of them, and he clomb the tree and got all the eggs safe till he came just to the bottom, and then one was broken. So they determined to run away together and after the giant's daughter had tidied up her hair a bit and got her magic flask they set out together as fast as they could run. And they hadn't got but three fields away when they looked back and saw the giant walking along at top speed after them. “Quick, quick,” called out the giant's daughter, “take my comb from my hair and throw it down.” Nix Nought Nothing took her comb from her hair and threw it down, and out of every one of its prongs there sprung up a fine thick briar in the way of the giant. You may be sure it took him a long time to work his way through the briar bush and by the time he was well through Nix Nought Nothing and his sweetheart had run on a tidy step away from him. But he soon came along after them and was just like to catch 'em up when the giant's daughter called out to Nix Nought Nothing, “Take my hair dagger and throw it down, quick, quick.” So Nix Nought Nothing threw down the hair dagger and out of it grew as quick as lightning a thick hedge of sharp razors placed criss-cross. The giant had to tread very cautiously to get through all this and meanwhile the young lovers ran on, and on, and on, till they were nearly out of sight. But at last the giant was through, and it wasn't long before he was like to catch them up. But just as he was stretching out his hand to catch Nix Nought Nothing his daughter took out her magic flask and dashed it on the ground. And as it broke out of it welled a big, big wave that grew, and that grew, till it reached the giant's waist and then his neck, and when it got to his head, he was drowned dead, and dead, and dead indeed. So he goes out of the story.
But Nix Nought Nothing fled on till where do you think they came to? Why, to near the castle of Nix Nought Nothing's father and mother. But the giant's daughter was so weary that she couldn't move a step further. So Nix Nought Nothing told her to wait there while he went and found out a lodging for the night. And he went on towards the lights of the castle, and on the way he came to the cottage of the hen-wife whose boy had had his brains dashed out by the giant. Now she knew Nix Nought Nothing in a moment, and hated him because he was the cause of her son's death. So when he asked his way to the castle she put a spell upon him, and when he got to the castle, no sooner was he let in than he fell down dead asleep upon a bench in the hall. The king and queen tried all they could do to wake him up, but all in vain. So the king promised that if any lady could wake him up she should marry him. Meanwhile the giant's daughter was waiting and waiting for him to come back. And she went up into a tree to watch for him. The gardener's daughter, going to draw water in the well, saw the shadow of the lady in the water and thought it was herself, and said; “If I'm so bonny, if I'm so brave, why do you send me to draw water?” So she threw down her pail and went to see if she could wed the sleeping stranger. And she went to the hen-wife, who taught her an unspelling catch which would keep Nix Nought Nothing awake as long as the gardener's daughter liked. So she went up to the castle and sang her catch and Nix Nought Nothing was wakened for a bit and they promised to wed him to the gardener's daughter. Meanwhile the gardener went down to draw water from the well and saw the shadow of the lady in the water. So he looks up and finds her, and he brought the lady from the tree, and led her into his house. And he told her that a stranger was to marry his daughter, and took her up to the castle and showed her the man: and it was Nix Nought Nothing asleep in a chair. And she saw him, and cried to him: “Waken, waken, and speak to me!” But he would not waken, and soon she cried:
 “I cleaned the stable, I laved the lake, and I clomb the tree,
 And all for the love of thee,
 And thou wilt not waken and speak to me.”
 
The king and the queen heard this, and came to the bonny young lady, and she said:
“I cannot get Nix Nought Nothing to speak to me for all that I can do.”
Then were they greatly astonished when she spoke of Nix Nought Nothing, and asked where he was, and she said: “He that sits there in the chair.” Then they ran to him and kissed him and called him their own dear son; so they called for the gardener's daughter and made her sing her charm, and he wakened, and told them all that the giant's daughter had done for him, and of all her kindness. Then they took her in their arms and kissed her, and said she should now be their daughter, for their son should marry her. But they sent for the hen-wife and put her to death. And they lived happy all their days.
== JACK HANNAFORD ==
There was an old soldier who had been long in the wars—so long, that he was quite out-at-elbows, and he did not know where to go to find a living. So he walked up moors, down glens, till at last he came to a farm, from which the good man had gone away to market. The wife of the farmer was a very foolish woman, who had been a widow when he married her; the farmer was foolish enough, too, and it is hard to say which of the two was the more foolish. When you've heard my tale you may decide.
Now before the farmer goes to market says he to his wife: “Here is ten pounds all in gold, take care of it till I come home.” If the man had not been a fool he would never have given the money to his wife to keep. Well, off he went in his cart to market, and the wife said to herself: “I will keep the ten pounds quite safe from thieves;” so she tied it up in a rag, and she put the rag up the parlour chimney.
“There,” said she, “no thieves will ever find it now, that is quite sure.”
Jack Hannaford, the old soldier, came and rapped at the door.
“Who is there?” asked the wife.
“Jack Hannaford.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Paradise.”
“Lord a' mercy! and maybe you've seen my old man there,” alluding to her former husband.
“Yes, I have.”
“And how was he a-doing?” asked the goody.
“But middling; he cobbles old shoes, and he has nothing but cabbage for victuals.”
“Deary me!” exclaimed the woman. “Didn't he send a message to me?”
“Yes, he did,” replied Jack Hannaford. “He said that he was out of leather, and his pockets were empty, so you were to send him a few shillings to buy a fresh stock of leather.”
“He shall have them, bless his poor soul!” And away went the wife to the parlour chimney, and she pulled the rag with the ten pounds in it from the chimney, and she gave the whole sum to the soldier, telling him that her old man was to use as much as he wanted, and to send back the rest.
It was not long that Jack waited after receiving the money; he went off as fast as he could walk.
Presently the farmer came home and asked for his money. The wife told him that she had sent it by a soldier to her former husband in Paradise, to buy him leather for cobbling the shoes of the saints and angels of Heaven. The farmer was very angry, and he swore that he had never met with such a fool as his wife. But the wife said that her husband was a greater fool for letting her have the money.
There was no time to waste words; so the farmer mounted his horse and rode off after Jack Hannaford. The old soldier heard the horse's hoofs clattering on the road behind him, so he knew it must be the farmer pursuing him. He lay down on the ground, and shading his eyes with one hand, looked up into the sky, and pointed heavenwards with the other hand.
“What are you about there?” asked the farmer, pulling up.
“Lord save you!” exclaimed Jack: “I've seen a rare sight.”
“What was that?”
“A man going straight up into the sky, as if he were walking on a road.”
“Can you see him still?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Where?”
“Get off your horse and lie down.”
“If you will hold the horse.”
Jack did so readily.
“I cannot see him,” said the farmer.
“Shade your eyes with your hand, and you'll soon see a man flying away from you.”
Sure enough he did so, for Jack leaped on the horse, and rode away with it. The farmer walked home without his horse.
“You are a bigger fool than I am,” said the wife; “for I did only one foolish thing, and you have done two.”
BINNORIE
Once upon a time there were two king's daughters lived in a bower near the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie. And Sir William came wooing the eldest and won her love and plighted troth with glove and with ring. But after a time he looked upon the youngest, with her cherry cheeks and golden hair, and his love grew towards her till he cared no longer for the eldest one. So she hated her sister for taking away Sir William's love, and day by day her hate grew upon her, and she plotted and she planned how to get rid of her.
So one fine morning, fair and clear, she said to her sister, “Let us go and see our father's boats come in at the bonny mill-stream of Binnorie.” So they went there hand in hand. And when they got to the river's bank the youngest got upon a stone to watch for the coming of the boats. And her sister, coming behind her, caught her round the waist and dashed her into the rushing mill-stream of Binnorie.
“O sister, sister, reach me your hand!” she cried, as she floated away, “and you shall have half of all I've got or shall get.”
“No, sister, I'll reach you no hand of mine, for I am the heir to all your land. Shame on me if I touch the hand that has come 'twixt me and my own heart's love.”
“O sister, O sister, then reach me your glove!” she cried, as she floated further away, “and you shall have your William again.”
“Sink on,” cried the cruel princess, “no hand or glove of mine you'll touch. Sweet William will be all mine when you are sunk beneath the bonny mill-stream of Binnorie.” And she turned and went home to the king's castle.
And the princess floated down the mill-stream, sometimes swimming and sometimes sinking, till she came near the mill. Now the miller's daughter was cooking that day, and needed water for her cooking. And as she went to draw it from the stream, she saw something floating towards the mill-dam, and she called out, “Father! father! draw your dam. There's something white—a merry maid or a milk-white swan—coming down the stream.” So the miller hastened to the dam and stopped the heavy cruel mill-wheels. And then they took out the princess and laid her on the bank.
Fair and beautiful she looked as she lay there. In her golden hair were pearls and precious stones; you could not see her waist for her golden girdle; and the golden fringe of her white dress came down over her lily feet. But she was drowned, drowned!
And as she lay there in her beauty a famous harper passed by the mill-dam of Binnorie, and saw her sweet pale face. And though he travelled on far away he never forgot that face, and after many days he came back to the bonny mill-stream of Binnorie. But then all he could find of her where they had put her to rest were her bones and her golden hair. So he made a harp out of her breast-bone and her hair, and travelled on up the hill from the mill-dam of Binnorie, till he came to the castle of the king her father.
That night they were all gathered in the castle hall to hear the great harper—king and queen, their daughter and son, Sir William and all their Court. And first the harper sang to his old harp, making them joy and be glad or sorrow and weep just as he liked. But while he sang he put the harp he had made that day on a stone in the hall. And presently it began to sing by itself, low and clear, and the harper stopped and all were hushed.
And this was what the harp sung:
 “O yonder sits my father, the king,
 Binnorie, O Binnorie;
 And yonder sits my mother, the queen;
 By the bonny mill-dams o' Binnorie,
 
 “And yonder stands my brother Hugh,
 Binnorie, O Binnorie;
 And by him, my William, false and true;
 By the bonny mill-dams o' Binnorie.”
 
Then they all wondered, and the harper told them how he had seen the princess lying drowned on the bank near the bonny mill-dams o' Binnorie, and how he had afterwards made this harp out of her hair and breast-bone. Just then the harp began singing again, and this was what it sang out loud and clear:
 “And there sits my sister who drownèd me
 By the bonny mill-dams o' Binnorie.”
 
And the harp snapped and broke, and never sang more.
CAP O' RUSHES
Well, there was once a very rich gentleman, and he'd three daughters, and he thought he'd see how fond they were of him. So he says to the first, “How much do you love me, my dear?”
“Why,” says she, “as I love my life.”
“That's good,” says he.
So he says to the second, “How much do you love me, my dear?”
“Why,” says she, “better nor all the world.”
“That's good,” says he.
So he says to the third, “How much do you love me, my dear?”
“Why, I love you as fresh meat loves salt,” says she.
Well, he was that angry. “You don't love me at all,” says he, “and in my house you stay no more.” So he drove her out there and then, and shut the door in her face.
Well, she went away on and on till she came to a fen, and there she gathered a lot of rushes and made them into a kind of a sort of a cloak with a hood, to cover her from head to foot, and to hide her fine clothes. And then she went on and on till she came to a great house.
“Do you want a maid?” says she.
“No, we don't,” said they.
“I haven't nowhere to go,” says she; “and I ask no wages, and do any sort of work,” says she.
“Well,” says they, “if you like to wash the pots and scrape the saucepans you may stay,” said they.
So she stayed there and washed the pots and scraped the saucepans and did all the dirty work. And because she gave no name they called her “Cap o' Rushes.”
Well, one day there was to be a great dance a little way off, and the servants were allowed to go and look on at the grand people. Cap o' Rushes said she was too tired to go, so she stayed at home.
But when they were gone she offed with her cap o' rushes, and cleaned herself, and went to the dance. And no one there was so finely dressed as her.
Well, who should be there but her master's son, and what should he do but fall in love with her the minute he set eyes on her. He wouldn't dance with any one else.
But before the dance was done Cap o' Rushes slipt off, and away she went home. And when the other maids came back she was pretending to be asleep with her cap o' rushes on.
Well, next morning they said to her, “You did miss a sight, Cap o' Rushes!”
“What was that?” says she.
“Why, the beautifullest lady you ever see, dressed right gay and ga'. The young master, he never took his eyes off her.”
“Well, I should have liked to have seen her,” says Cap o' Rushes.
“Well, there's to be another dance this evening, and perhaps she'll be there.”
But, come the evening, Cap o' Rushes said she was too tired to go with them. Howsoever, when they were gone, she offed with her cap o' rushes and cleaned herself, and away she went to the dance.
The master's son had been reckoning on seeing her, and he danced with no one else, and never took his eyes off her. But, before the dance was over, she slipt off, and home she went, and when the maids came back she, pretended to be asleep with her cap o' rushes on.
Next day they said to her again, “Well, Cap o' Rushes, you should ha' been there to see the lady. There she was again, gay and ga', and the young master he never took his eyes off her.”
“Well, there,” says she, “I should ha' liked to ha' seen her.”
“Well,” says they, “there's a dance again this evening, and you must go with us, for she's sure to be there.”
Well, come this evening, Cap o' Rushes said she was too tired to go, and do what they would she stayed at home. But when they were gone she offed with her cap o' rushes and cleaned herself, and away she went to the dance.
The master's son was rarely glad when he saw her. He danced with none but her and never took his eyes off her. When she wouldn't tell him her name, nor where she came from, he gave her a ring and told her if he didn't see her again he should die.
Well, before the dance was over, off she slipped, and home she went, and when the maids came home she was pretending to be asleep with her cap o' rushes on.
Well, next day they says to her, “There, Cap o' Rushes, you didn't come last night, and now you won't see the lady, for there's no more dances.”
“Well I should have rarely liked to have seen her,” says she.
The master's son he tried every way to find out where the lady was gone, but go where he might, and ask whom he might, he never heard anything about her. And he got worse and worse for the love of her till he had to keep his bed.
“Make some gruel for the young master,” they said to the cook. “He's dying for the love of the lady.” The cook she set about making it when Cap o' Rushes came in.
“What are you a-doing of?”, says she.
“I'm going to make some gruel for the young master,” says the cook, “for he's dying for love of the lady.”
“Let me make it,” says Cap o' Rushes.
Well, the cook wouldn't at first, but at last she said yes, and Cap o' Rushes made the gruel. And when she had made it she slipped the ring into it on the sly before the cook took it upstairs.
The young man he drank it and then he saw the ring at the bottom.
“Send for the cook,” says he.
So up she comes.
“Who made this gruel here?” says he.
“I did,” says the cook, for she was frightened.
And he looked at her,
“No, you didn't,” says he. “Say who did it, and you shan't be harmed.”
“Well, then, 'twas Cap o' Rushes,” says she.
“Send Cap o' Rushes here,” says he.
So Cap o' Rushes came.
“Did you make my gruel?” says he.
“Yes, I did,” says she.
“Where did you get this ring?” says he.
“From him that gave it me,” says she.
“Who are you, then?” says the young man.
“I'll show you,” says she. And she offed with her cap o' rushes, and there she was in her beautiful clothes.
Well, the master's son he got well very soon, and they were to be married in a little time. It was to be a very grand wedding, and every one was asked far and near. And Cap o' Rushes' father was asked. But she never told anybody who she was.
But before the wedding she went to the cook, and says she:
“I want you to dress every dish without a mite o' salt.”
“That'll be rare nasty,” says the cook.
“That doesn't signify,” says she.
“Very well,” says the cook.
Well, the wedding-day came, and they were married. And after they were married all the company sat down to the dinner. When they began to eat the meat, that was so tasteless they couldn't eat it. But Cap o' Rushes' father he tried first one dish and then another, and then he burst out crying.
“What is the matter?” said the master's son to him.
“Oh!” says he, “I had a daughter. And I asked her how much she loved me. And she said 'As much as fresh meat loves salt.' And I turned her from my door, for I thought she didn't love me. And now I see she loved me best of all. And she may be dead for aught I know.”
“No, father, here she is!” says Cap o' Rushes. And she goes up to him and puts her arms round him.
And so they were happy ever after.
JACK AND THE BEANSTALK
There was once upon a time a poor widow who had an only son named Jack, and a cow named Milky-white. And all they had to live on was the milk the cow gave every morning which they carried to the market and sold. But one morning Milky-white gave no milk and they didn't know what to do.
“What shall we do, what shall we do?” said the widow, wringing her hands.
“Cheer up, mother, I'll go and get work somewhere,” said Jack.
“We've tried that before, and nobody would take you,” said his mother; “we must sell Milky-white and with the money do something, start shop, or something.”
“All right, mother,” says Jack; “it's market-day today, and I'll soon sell Milky-white, and then we'll see what we can do.”
So he took the cow's halter in his hand, and off he starts. He hadn't gone far when he met a funny-looking old man who said to him: “Good morning, Jack.”
“Good morning to you,” said Jack, and wondered how he knew his name.
“Well, Jack, and where are you off to?” said the man.
“I'm going to market to sell our cow here.”
“Oh, you look the proper sort of chap to sell cows,” said the man; “I wonder if you know how many beans make five.”
“Two in each hand and one in your mouth,” says Jack, as sharp as a needle.
“Right you are,” said the man, “and here they are the very beans themselves,” he went on pulling out of his pocket a number of strange-looking beans. “As you are so sharp,” says he, “I don't mind doing a swop with you—your cow for these beans.”
“Walker!” says Jack; “wouldn't you like it?”
“Ah! you don't know what these beans are,” said the man; “if you plant them over-night, by morning they grow right up to the sky.”
“Really?” says Jack; “you don't say so.”
“Yes, that is so, and if it doesn't turn out to be true you can have your cow back.”
“Right,” says Jack, and hands him over Milky-white's halter and pockets the beans.
Back goes Jack home, and as he hadn't gone very far it wasn't dusk by the time he got to his door.
“What back, Jack?” said his mother; “I see you haven't got Milky-white, so you've sold her. How much did you get for her?”
“You'll never guess, mother,” says Jack.
“No, you don't say so. Good boy! Five pounds, ten, fifteen, no, it can't be twenty.”
“I told you you couldn't guess, what do you say to these beans; they're magical, plant them over-night and——”
“What!” says Jack's mother, “have you been such a fool, such a dolt, such an idiot, as to give away my Milky-white, the best milker in the parish, and prime beef to boot, for a set of paltry beans. Take that! Take that! Take that! And as for your precious beans here they go out of the window. And now off with you to bed. Not a sup shall you drink, and not a bit shall you swallow this very night.”
So Jack went upstairs to his little room in the attic, and sad and sorry he was, to be sure, as much for his mother's sake, as for the loss of his supper.
At last he dropped off to sleep.
When he woke up, the room looked so funny. The sun was shining into part of it, and yet all the rest was quite dark and shady. So Jack jumped up and dressed himself and went to the window. And what do you think he saw? why, the beans his mother had thrown out of the window into the garden, had sprung up into a big beanstalk which went up and up and up till it reached the sky. So the man spoke truth after all.
The beanstalk grew up quite close past Jack's window, so all he had to do was to open it and give a jump on to the beanstalk which was made like a big plaited ladder. So Jack climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed till at last he reached the sky. And when he got there he found a long broad road going as straight as a dart. So he walked along and he walked along and he walked along till he came to a great big tall house, and on the doorstep there was a great big tall woman.
“Good morning, mum,” says Jack, quite polite-like. “Could you be so kind as to give me some breakfast.” For he hadn't had anything to eat, you know, the night before and was as hungry as a hunter.
“It's breakfast you want, is it?” says the great big tall woman, “it's breakfast you'll be if you don't move off from here. My man is an ogre and there's nothing he likes better than boys broiled on toast. You'd better be moving on or he'll soon be coming.”
“Oh! please mum, do give me something to eat, mum. I've had nothing to eat since yesterday morning, really and truly, mum,” says Jack. “I may as well be broiled, as die of hunger.”
Well, the ogre's wife wasn't such a bad sort, after all. So she took Jack into the kitchen, and gave him a junk of bread and cheese and a jug of milk. But Jack hadn't half finished these when thump! thump! thump! the whole house began to tremble with the noise of someone coming.
“Goodness gracious me! It's my old man,” said the ogre's wife, “what on earth shall I do? Here, come quick and jump in here.” And she bundled Jack into the oven just as the ogre came in.
He was a big one, to be sure. At his belt he had three calves strung up by the heels, and he unhooked them and threw them down on the table and said: “Here, wife, broil me a couple of these for breakfast. Ah what's this I smell?
 Fee-fi-fo-fum,
 I smell the blood of an Englishman,
 Be he alive, or be he dead
 I'll have his bones to grind my bread.”
 
“Nonsense, dear,” said his wife, “you're dreaming. Or perhaps you smell the scraps of that little boy you liked so much for yesterday's dinner. Here, go you and have a wash and tidy up, and by the time you come back your breakfast'll be ready for you.”
So the ogre went off, and Jack was just going to jump out of the oven and run off when the woman told him not. “Wait till he's asleep,” says she; “he always has a snooze after breakfast.”
Well, the ogre had his breakfast, and after that he goes to a big chest and takes out of it a couple of bags of gold and sits down counting them till at last his head began to nod and he began to snore till the whole house shook again.
Then Jack crept out on tiptoe from his oven, and as he was passing the ogre he took one of the bags of gold under his arm, and off he pelters till he came to the beanstalk, and then he threw down the bag of gold which of course fell in to his mother's garden, and then he climbed down and climbed down till at last he got home and told his mother and showed her the gold and said: “Well, mother, wasn't I right about the beans. They are really magical, you see.”
So they lived on the bag of gold for some time, but at last they came to the end of that so Jack made up his mind to try his luck once more up at the top of the beanstalk. So one fine morning he got up early, and got on to the beanstalk, and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed till at last he got on the road again and came to the great big tall house he had been to before. There, sure enough, was the great big tall woman a-standing on the door-step.
“Good morning, mum,” says Jack, as bold as brass, “could you be so good as to give me something to eat?”
“Go away, my boy,” said the big, tall woman, “or else my man will eat you up for breakfast. But aren't you the youngster who came here once before? Do you know, that very day, my man missed one of his bags of gold.”
“That's strange, mum,” says Jack, “I dare say I could tell you something about that but I'm so hungry I can't speak till I've had something to eat.”
Well the big tall woman was that curious that she took him in and gave him something to eat. But he had scarcely begun munching it as slowly as he could when thump! thump! thump! they heard the giant's footstep, and his wife hid Jack away in the oven.
All happened as it did before. In came the ogre as he did before, said: “Fee-fi-fo-fum,” and had his breakfast off three broiled oxen. Then he said: “Wife, bring me the hen that lays the golden eggs.” So she brought it, and the ogre said: “Lay,” and it laid an egg all of gold. And then the ogre began to nod his head, and to snore till the house shook.
Then Jack crept out of the oven on tiptoe and caught hold of the golden hen, and was off before you could say “Jack Robinson.” But this time the hen gave a cackle which woke the ogre, and just as Jack got out of the house he heard him calling: “Wife, wife, what have you done with my golden hen?”
And the wife said: “Why, my dear?”
But that was all Jack heard, for he rushed off to the beanstalk and climbed down like a house on fire. And when he got home he showed his mother the wonderful hen and said “Lay,” to it; and it laid a golden egg every time he said “Lay.”
Well, Jack was not content, and it wasn't very long before he determined to have another try at his luck up there at the top of the beanstalk. So one fine morning, he got up early, and went on to the beanstalk, and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed till he got to the top. But this time he knew better than to go straight to the ogre's house. And when he got near it he waited behind a bush till he saw the ogre's wife come out with a pail to get some water, and then he crept into the house and got into the copper. He hadn't been there long when he heard thump! thump! thump! as before, and in come the ogre and his wife.
“Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman,” cried out the ogre; “I smell him, wife, I smell him.”
“Do you, my dearie?” says the ogre's wife. “Then if it's that little rogue that stole your gold and the hen that laid the golden eggs he's sure to have got into the oven.” And they both rushed to the oven. But Jack wasn't there, luckily, and the ogre's wife said: “There you are again with your fee-fi-fo-fum. Why of course it's the laddie you caught last night that I've broiled for your breakfast. How forgetful I am, and how careless you are not to tell the difference between a live un and a dead un.”
So the ogre sat down to the breakfast and ate it, but every now and then he would mutter: “Well, I could have sworn——” and he'd get up and search the larder and the cupboards, and everything, only luckily he didn't think of the copper.
After breakfast was over, the ogre called out: “Wife, wife, bring me my golden harp.” So she brought it and put it on the table before him. Then he said: “Sing!” and the golden harp sang most beautifully. And it went on singing till the ogre fell asleep, and commenced to snore like thunder.
Then Jack lifted up the copper-lid very quietly and got down like a mouse and crept on hands and knees till he got to the table when he got up and caught hold of the golden harp and dashed with it towards the door. But the harp called out quite loud: “Master! Master!” and the ogre woke up just in time to see Jack running off with his harp.
Jack ran as fast as he could, and the ogre came rushing after, and would soon have caught him only Jack had a start and dodged him a bit and knew where he was going. When he got to the beanstalk the ogre was not more than twenty yards away when suddenly he saw Jack disappear like, and when he got up to the end of the road he saw Jack underneath climbing down for dear life. Well, the ogre didn't like trusting himself to such a ladder, and he stood and waited, so Jack got another start. But just then the harp cried out: “Master! master!” and the ogre swung himself down on to the beanstalk which shook with his weight. Down climbs Jack, and after him climbed the ogre. By this time Jack had climbed down and climbed down and climbed down till he was very nearly home. So he called out: “Mother! mother! bring me an axe, bring me an axe.” And his mother came rushing out with the axe in her hand, but when she came to the beanstalk she stood stock still with fright for there she saw the ogre just coming down below the clouds.
But Jack jumped down and got hold of the axe and gave a chop at the beanstalk which cut it half in two. The ogre felt the beanstalk shake and quiver so he stopped to see what was the matter. Then Jack gave another chop with the axe, and the beanstalk was cut in two and began to topple over. Then the ogre fell down and broke his crown, and the beanstalk came toppling after.
Then Jack showed his mother his golden harp, and what with showing that and selling the golden eggs, Jack and his mother became very rich, and he married a great princess, and they lived happy ever after.
== THE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS ==
 Once upon a time when pigs spoke rhyme
 And monkeys chewed tobacco,
 And hens took snuff to make them tough,
 And ducks went quack, quack, quack, O!
There was an old sow with three little pigs, and as she had not enough to keep them, she sent them out to seek their fortune. The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him:
“Please, man, give me that straw to build me a house.”
Which the man did, and the little pig built a house with it. Presently came along a wolf, and knocked at the door, and said:
“Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”
To which the pig answered:
“No, no, by the hair of my chiny chin chin.”
The wolf then answered to that:
“Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in.”
So he huffed, and he puffed, and he blew his house in, and ate up the little pig.
The second little pig met a man with a bundle of furze, and said:
“Please, man, give me that furze to build a house.”
Which the man did, and the pig built his house. Then along came the wolf, and said:
“Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”
“No, no, by the hair of my chiny chin chin.”
“Then I'll puff, and I'll huff, and I'll blow your house in.”
So he huffed, and he puffed, and he puffed, and he huffed, and at last he blew the house down, and he ate up the little pig.
The third little pig met a man with a load of bricks, and said:
“Please, man, give me those bricks to build a house with.”
So the man gave him the bricks, and he built his house with them. So the wolf came, as he did to the other little pigs, and said:
“Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”
“No, no, by the hair of my chiny chin chin.”
“Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in.”
Well, he huffed, and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed, and he puffed and huffed; but he could not get the house down. When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing, blow the house down, he said:
“Little pig, I know where there is a nice field of turnips.”
“Where?” said the little pig.
“Oh, in Mr. Smith's Home-field, and if you will be ready tomorrow morning I will call for you, and we will go together, and get some for dinner.”
“Very well,” said the little pig, “I will be ready. What time do you mean to go?”
“Oh, at six o'clock.”
Well, the little pig got up at five, and got the turnips before the wolf came (which he did about six) and who said:
“Little Pig, are you ready?”
The little pig said: “Ready! I have been and come back again, and got a nice potful for dinner.”
The wolf felt very angry at this, but thought that he would be up to the little pig somehow or other, so he said:
“Little pig, I know where there is a nice apple-tree.”
“Where?” said the pig.
“Down at Merry-garden,” replied the wolf, “and if you will not deceive me I will come for you, at five o'clock tomorrow and get some apples.”
Well, the little pig bustled up the next morning at four o'clock, and went off for the apples, hoping to get back before the wolf came; but he had further to go, and had to climb the tree, so that just as he was coming down from it, he saw the wolf coming, which, as you may suppose, frightened him very much. When the wolf came up he said:
“Little pig, what! are you here before me? Are they nice apples?”
“Yes, very,” said the little pig. “I will throw you down one.”
And he threw it so far, that, while the wolf was gone to pick it up, the little pig jumped down and ran home. The next day the wolf came again, and said to the little pig:
“Little pig, there is a fair at Shanklin this afternoon, will you go?”
“Oh yes,” said the pig, “I will go; what time shall you be ready?”
“At three,” said the wolf. So the little pig went off before the time as usual, and got to the fair, and bought a butter-churn, which he was going home with, when he saw the wolf coming. Then he could not tell what to do. So he got into the churn to hide, and by so doing turned it round, and it rolled down the hill with the pig in it, which frightened the wolf so much, that he ran home without going to the fair. He went to the little pig's house, and told him how frightened he had been by a great round thing which came down the hill past him. Then the little pig said:
“Hah, I frightened you, then. I had been to the fair and bought a butter-churn, and when I saw you, I got into it, and rolled down the hill.”
Then the wolf was very angry indeed, and declared he would eat up the little pig, and that he would get down the chimney after him. When the little pig saw what he was about, he hung on the pot full of water, and made up a blazing fire, and, just as the wolf was coming down, took off the cover, and in fell the wolf; so the little pig put on the cover again in an instant, boiled him up, and ate him for supper, and lived happy ever afterwards.
== THE MASTER AND HIS PUPIL ==
There was once a very learned man in the north-country who knew all the languages under the sun, and who was acquainted with all the mysteries of creation. He had one big book bound in black calf and clasped with iron, and with iron corners, and chained to a table which was made fast to the floor; and when he read out of this book, he unlocked it with an iron key, and none but he read from it, for it contained all the secrets of the spiritual world. It told how many angels there were in heaven, and how they marched in their ranks, and sang in their quires, and what were their several functions, and what was the name of each great angel of might. And it told of the demons, how many of them there were, and what were their several powers, and their labours, and their names, and how they might be summoned, and how tasks might be imposed on them, and how they might be chained to be as slaves to man.
Now the master had a pupil who was but a foolish lad, and he acted as servant to the great master, but never was he suffered to look into the black book, hardly to enter the private room.
One day the master was out, and then the lad, as curious as could be, hurried to the chamber where his master kept his wondrous apparatus for changing copper into gold, and lead into silver, and where was his mirror in which he could see all that was passing in the world, and where was the shell which when held to the ear whispered all the words that were being spoken by anyone the master desired to know about. The lad tried in vain with the crucibles to turn copper and lead into gold and silver—he looked long and vainly into the mirror; smoke and clouds passed over it, but he saw nothing plain, and the shell to his ear produced only indistinct murmurings, like the breaking of distant seas on an unknown shore. “I can do nothing,” he said; “as I don't know the right words to utter, and they are locked up in yon book.”
He looked round, and, see! the book was unfastened; the master had forgotten to lock it before he went out. The boy rushed to it, and unclosed the volume. It was written with red and black ink, and much of it he could not understand; but he put his finger on a line and spelled it through.
At once the room was darkened, and the house trembled; a clap of thunder rolled through the passage and the old room, and there stood before him a horrible, horrible form, breathing fire, and with eyes like burning lamps. It was the demon Beelzebub, whom he had called up to serve him.
“Set me a task!” said he, with a voice like the roaring of an iron furnace.
The boy only trembled, and his hair stood up.
“Set me a task, or I shall strangle thee!”
But the lad could not speak. Then the evil spirit stepped towards him, and putting forth his hands touched his throat. The fingers burned his flesh. “Set me a task!”
“Water yon flower,” cried the boy in despair, pointing to a geranium which stood in a pot on the floor. Instantly the spirit left the room, but in another instant he returned with a barrel on his back, and poured its contents over the flower; and again and again he went and came, and poured more and more water, till the floor of the room was ankle-deep.
“Enough, enough!” gasped the lad; but the demon heeded him not; the lad didn't know the words by which to send him away, and still he fetched water.
It rose to the boy's knees and still more water was poured. It mounted to his waist, and Beelzebub still kept on bringing barrels full. It rose to his armpits, and he scrambled to the table-top. And now the water in the room stood up to the window and washed against the glass, and swirled around his feet on the table. It still rose; it reached his breast. In vain he cried; the evil spirit would not be dismissed, and to this day he would have been pouring water, and would have drowned all Yorkshire. But the master remembered on his journey that he had not locked his book, and therefore returned, and at the moment when the water was bubbling about the pupil's chin, rushed into the room and spoke the words which cast Beelzebub back into his fiery home.
== THE STORY OF THE THREE BEARS ==
Once upon a time there were Three Bears, who lived together in a house of their own, in a wood. One of them was a Little, Small Wee Bear; and one was a Middle-sized Bear, and the other was a Great, Huge Bear. They had each a pot for their porridge, a little pot for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; and a middle-sized pot for the Middle Bear, and a great pot for the Great, Huge Bear. And they had each a chair to sit in; a little chair for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; and a middle-sized chair for the Middle Bear; and a great chair for the Great, Huge Bear. And they had each a bed to sleep in; a little bed for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; and a middle-sized bed for the Middle Bear; and a great bed for the Great, Huge Bear.
One day, after they had made the porridge for their breakfast, and poured it into their porridge-pots, they walked out into the wood while the porridge was cooling, that they might not burn their mouths, by beginning too soon to eat it. And while they were walking, a little old Woman came to the house. She could not have been a good, honest old Woman; for first she looked in at the window, and then she peeped in at the keyhole; and seeing nobody in the house, she lifted the latch. The door was not fastened, because the Bears were good Bears, who did nobody any harm, and never suspected that anybody would harm them. So the little old Woman opened the door, and went in; and well pleased she was when she saw the porridge on the table. If she had been a good little old Woman, she would have waited till the Bears came home, and then, perhaps, they would have asked her to breakfast; for they were good Bears—a little rough or so, as the manner of Bears is, but for all that very good-natured and hospitable. But she was an impudent, bad old Woman, and set about helping herself.
So first she tasted the porridge of the Great, Huge Bear, and that was too hot for her; and she said a bad word about that. And then she tasted the porridge of the Middle Bear, and that was too cold for her; and she said a bad word about that too. And then she went to the porridge of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and tasted that; and that was neither too hot, nor too cold, but just right; and she liked it so well, that she ate it all up: but the naughty old Woman said a bad word about the little porridge-pot, because it did not hold enough for her.
Then the little old Woman sate down in the chair of the Great, Huge Bear, and that was too hard for her. And then she sate down in the chair of the Middle Bear, and that was too soft for her. And then she sate down in the chair of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and that was neither too hard, nor too soft, but just right. So she seated herself in it, and there she sate till the bottom of the chair came out, and down she came, plump upon the ground. And the naughty old Woman said a wicked word about that too.
Then the little old Woman went upstairs into the bed-chamber in which the three Bears slept. And first she lay down upon the bed of the Great, Huge Bear; but that was too high at the head for her. And next she lay down upon the bed of the Middle Bear; and that was too high at the foot for her. And then she lay down upon the bed of the Little, Small, Wee Bear; and that was neither too high at the head, nor at the foot, but just right. So she covered herself up comfortably, and lay there till she fell fast asleep.
By this time the Three Bears thought their porridge would be cool enough; so they came home to breakfast. Now the little old Woman had left the spoon of the Great, Huge Bear, standing in his porridge.
“Somebody has been at my porridge!”
said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice. And when the Middle Bear looked at his, he saw that the spoon was standing in it too. They were wooden spoons; if they had been silver ones, the naughty old Woman would have put them in her pocket.
“Somebody has been at my porridge!”
said the Middle Bear in his middle voice.
Then the Little, Small, Wee Bear looked at his, and there was the spoon in the porridge-pot, but the porridge was all gone.
“Somebody has been at my porridge, and has eaten it all up!”
said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.
Upon this the Three Bears, seeing that some one had entered their house, and eaten up the Little, Small, Wee Bear's breakfast, began to look about them. Now the little old Woman had not put the hard cushion straight when she rose from the chair of the Great, Huge Bear.
“Somebody has been sitting in my chair!”
said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice.
And the little old Woman had squatted down the soft cushion of the Middle Bear.
“Somebody has been sitting in my chair!”
said the Middle Bear, in his middle voice.
And you know what the little old Woman had done to the third chair.
“Somebody has been sitting in my chair and has sate the bottom out of it!”
said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.
Then the Three Bears thought it necessary that they should make farther search; so they went upstairs into their bedchamber. Now the little old Woman had pulled the pillow of the Great, Huge Bear, out of its place.
“Somebody has been lying in my bed!”
said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice.
And the little old Woman had pulled the bolster of the Middle Bear out of its place.
“Somebody has been lying in my bed!”
said the Middle Bear, in his middle voice.
And when the Little, Small, Wee Bear came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place; and the pillow in its place upon the bolster; and upon the pillow was the little old Woman's ugly, dirty head,—which was not in its place, for she had no business there.
“Somebody has been lying in my bed,—and here she is!”
said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.
The little old Woman had heard in her sleep the great, rough, gruff voice of the Great, Huge Bear; but she was so fast asleep that it was no more to her than the roaring of wind, or the rumbling of thunder. And she had heard the middle voice, of the Middle Bear, but it was only as if she had heard some one speaking in a dream. But when she heard the little, small, wee voice of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, it was so sharp, and so shrill, that it awakened her at once. Up she started; and when she saw the Three Bears on one side of the bed, she tumbled herself out at the other, and ran to the window. Now the window was open, because the Bears, like good, tidy Bears, as they were, always opened their bedchamber window when they got up in the morning. Out the little old Woman jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there; or found her way out of the wood, and was taken up by the constable and sent to the House of Correction for a vagrant as she was, I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never saw anything more of her.
== HENNY-PENNY ==
One day Henny-penny was picking up corn in the cornyard when—whack!—something hit her upon the head. “Goodness gracious me!” said Henny-penny; “the sky's a-going to fall; I must go and tell the king.”
So she went along and she went along and she went along till she met Cocky-locky. “Where are you going, Henny-penny?” says Cocky-locky. “Oh! I'm going to tell the king the sky's a-falling,” says Henny-penny. “May I come with you?” says Cocky-locky. “Certainly,” says Henny-penny. So Henny-penny and Cocky-locky went to tell-the king the sky was falling.
They went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they met Ducky-daddles. “Where are you going to, Henny-penny and Cocky-locky?” says Ducky-daddles. “Oh! we're going to tell the king the sky's a-falling,” said Henny-penny and Cocky-locky. “May I come with you?” says Ducky-daddles. “Certainly,” said Henny-penny and Cocky-locky. So Henny-penny, Cocky-locky and Ducky-daddles went to tell the king the sky was a-falling.
So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they met Goosey-poosey, “Where are you going to, Henny-penny, Cocky-locky and Ducky-daddles?” said Goosey-poosey. “Oh! we're going to tell the king the sky's a-falling,” said Henny-penny and Cocky-locky and Ducky-daddles. “May I come with you,” said Goosey-poosey. “Certainly,” said Henny-penny, Cocky-locky and Ducky-daddles. So Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles and Goosey-poosey went to tell the king the sky was a-falling.
So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they met Turkey-lurkey. “Where are you going, Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, and Goosey-poosey?” says Turkey-lurkey. “Oh! we're going to tell the king the sky's a-falling,” said Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles and Goosey-poosey. “May I come with you? Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles and Goosey-poosey?” said Turkey-lurkey. “Why, certainly, Turkey-lurkey,” said Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, and Goosey-poosey. So Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey and Turkey-lurkey all went to tell the king the sky was a-falling.
So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they met Foxy-woxy, and Foxy-woxy said to Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey and Turkey-lurkey: “Where are you going, Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey?” And Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey said to Foxy-woxy: “We're going to tell the king the sky's a-falling.” “Oh! but this is not the way to the king, Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey and Turkey-lurkey,” says Foxy-woxy; “I know the proper way; shall I show it you?” “Why certainly, Foxy-woxy,” said Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey. So Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, Turkey-lurkey, and Foxy-woxy all went to tell the king the sky was a-falling. So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they came to a narrow and dark hole. Now this was the door of Foxy-woxy's cave. But Foxy-woxy said to Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey: “This is the short way to the king's palace you'll soon get there if you follow me. I will go first and you come after, Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey.” “Why of course, certainly, without doubt, why not?” said Henny-Penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey.
So Foxy-woxy went into his cave, and he didn't go very far but turned round to wait for Henny-Penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey and Turkey-lurkey. So at last at first Turkey-lurkey went through the dark hole into the cave. He hadn't got far when “Hrumph,” Foxy-woxy snapped off Turkey-lurkey's head and threw his body over his left shoulder. Then Goosey-poosey went in, and “Hrumph,” off went her head and Goosey-poosey was thrown beside Turkey-lurkey. Then Ducky-daddles waddled down, and “Hrumph,” snapped Foxy-woxy, and Ducky-daddles' head was off and Ducky-daddles was thrown alongside Turkey-lurkey and Goosey-poosey. Then Cocky-locky strutted down into the cave and he hadn't gone far when “Snap, Hrumph!” went Foxy-woxy and Cocky-locky was thrown alongside of Turkey-lurkey, Goosey-poosey and Ducky-daddles.
But Foxy-woxy had made two bites at Cocky-locky, and when the first snap only hurt Cocky-locky, but didn't kill him, he called out to Henny-penny. So she turned tail and ran back home, so she never told the king the sky was a-falling.
== CHILDE ROWLAND ==
hilde Rowland and his brothers twain Were playing at the ball, And there was their sister Burd Ellen In the midst, among them all.
 Childe Rowland kicked it with his foot
 And caught it with his knee;
 At last as he plunged among them all
 O'er the church he made it flee.
 
 Burd Ellen round about the aisle
 To seek the ball is gone,
 But long they waited, and longer still,
 And she came not back again.
 
 They sought her east, they sought her west,
 They sought her up and down,
 And woe were the hearts of those brethren,
 For she was not to be found.
So at last her eldest brother went to the Warlock Merlin and told him all the case, and asked him if he knew where Burd Ellen was. “The fair Burd Ellen,” said the Warlock Merlin, “must have been carried off by the fairies, because she went round the church 'wider shins'—the opposite way to the sun. She is now in the Dark Tower of the King of Elfland; it would take the boldest knight in Christendom to bring her back.”
“If it is possible to bring her back,” said her brother, “I'll do it, or perish in the attempt.”
“Possible it is,” said the Warlock Merlin, “but woe to the man or mother's son that attempts it, if he is not well taught beforehand what he is to do.”
The eldest brother of Burd Ellen was not to be put off, by any fear of danger, from attempting to get her back, so he begged the Warlock Merlin to tell him what he should do, and what he should not do, in going to seek his sister. And after he had been taught, and had repeated his lesson, he set out for Elfland.
 But long they waited, and longer still,
 With doubt and muckle pain,
 But woe were the hearts of his brethren,
 For he came not back again.
Then the second brother got tired and sick of waiting, and he went to the Warlock Merlin and asked him the same as his brother. So he set out to find Burd Ellen.
 But long they waited, and longer still,
 With muckle doubt and pain,
 And woe were his mother's and brother's heart,
 For he came not back again.
And when they had waited and waited a good long time, Childe Rowland, the youngest of Burd Ellen's brothers, wished to go, and went to his mother, the good queen, to ask her to let him go. But she would not at first, for he was the last of her children she now had, and if he was lost, all would be lost. But he begged, and he begged, till at last the good queen let him go, and gave him his father's good brand that never struck in vain. And as she girt it round his waist, she said the spell that would give it victory.
So Childe Rowland said good-bye to the good queen, his mother, and went to the cave of the Warlock Merlin. “Once more, and but once more,” he said to the Warlock, “tell how man or mother's son may rescue Burd Ellen and her brothers twain.”
“Well, my son,” said the Warlock Merlin, “there are but two things, simple they may seem, but hard they are to do. One thing to do, and one thing not to do. And the thing to do is this: after you have entered the land of Fairy, whoever speaks to you, till you meet the Burd Ellen, you must out with your father's brand and off with their head. And what you've not to do is this: bite no bit, and drink no drop, however hungry or thirsty you be; drink a drop, or bite a bit, while in Elfland you be and never will you see Middle Earth again.”
So Childe Rowland said the two things over and over again, till he knew them by heart, and he thanked the Warlock Merlin and went on his way. And he went along, and along, and along, and still further along, till he came to the horse-herd of the King of Elfland feeding his horses. These he knew by their fiery eyes, and knew that he was at last in the land of Fairy. “Canst thou tell me,” said Childe Rowland to the horse-herd, “where the King of Elfland's Dark Tower is?” “I cannot tell thee,” said the horse-herd, “but go on a little further and thou wilt come to the cow-herd, and he, maybe, can tell thee.”
Then, without a word more, Childe Rowland drew the good brand that never struck in vain, and off went the horse-herd's head, and Childe Rowland went on further, till he came to the cow-herd, and asked him the same question. “I can't tell thee,” said he, “but go on a little farther, and thou wilt come to the hen-wife, and she is sure to know.” Then Childe Rowland out with his good brand, that never struck in vain, and off went the cow-herd's head. And he went on a little further, till he came to an old woman in a grey cloak, and he asked her if she knew where the Dark Tower of the King of Elfland was. “Go on a little further,” said the hen-wife, “till you come to a round green hill, surrounded with terrace-rings, from the bottom to the top; go round it three times, widershins, and each time say:
 Open, door! open, door!
 And let me come in.
and the third time the door will open, and you may go in.” And Childe Rowland was just going on, when he remembered what he had to do; so he out with the good brand, that never struck in vain, and off went the hen-wife's head.
Then he went on, and on, and on, till he came to the round green hill with the terrace-rings from top to bottom, and he went round it three times, widershins, saying each time:
 Open, door! open, door!
 And let me come in.
And the third time the door did open, and he went in, and it closed with a click, and Childe Rowland was left in the dark.
It was not exactly dark, but a kind of twilight or gloaming. There were neither windows nor candles, and he could not make out where the twilight came from, if not through the walls and roof. These were rough arches made of a transparent rock, incrusted with sheepsilver and rock spar, and other bright stones. But though it was rock, the air was quite warm, as it always is in Elfland. So he went through this passage till at last he came to two wide and high folding-doors which stood ajar. And when he opened them, there he saw a most wonderful and glorious sight. A large and spacious hall, so large that it seemed to be as long, and as broad, as the green hill itself. The roof was supported by fine pillars, so large and lofty, that the pillars of a cathedral were as nothing to them. They were all of gold and silver, with fretted work, and between them and around them, wreaths of flowers, composed of what do you think? Why, of diamonds and emeralds, and all manner of precious stones. And the very key-stones of the arches had for ornaments clusters of diamonds and rubies, and pearls, and other precious stones. And all these arches met in the middle of the roof, and just there, hung by a gold chain, an immense lamp made out of one big pearl hollowed out and quite transparent. And in the middle of this was a big, huge carbuncle, which kept spinning round and round, and this was what gave light by its rays to the whole hall, which seemed as if the setting sun was shining on it.
The hall was furnished in a manner equally grand, and at one end of it was a glorious couch of velvet, silk and gold, and there sate Burd Ellen, combing her golden hair with a silver comb. And when she saw Childe Rowland she stood up and said:
 “God pity ye, poor luckless fool,
 What have ye here to do?
 
 “Hear ye this, my youngest brother,
 Why didn't ye bide at home?
 Had you a hundred thousand lives
 Ye couldn't spare any a one.
 
 “But sit ye down; but woe, O, woe,
 That ever ye were born,
 For come the King of Elfland in,
 Your fortune is forlorn.”
 
Then they sate down together, and Childe Rowland told her all that he had done, and she told him how their two brothers had reached the Dark Tower, but had been enchanted by the King of Elfland, and lay there entombed as if dead. And then after they had talked a little longer Childe Rowland began to feel hungry from his long travels, and told his sister Burd Ellen how hungry he was and asked for some food, forgetting all about the Warlock Merlin's warning.
Burd Ellen looked at Childe Rowland sadly, and shook her head, but she was under a spell, and could not warn him. So she rose up, and went out, and soon brought back a golden basin full of bread and milk. Childe Rowland was just going to raise it to his lips, when he looked at his sister and remembered why he had come all that way. So he dashed the bowl to the ground, and said: “Not a sup will I swallow, nor a bit will I bite, till Burd Ellen is set free.”
Just at that moment they heard the noise of some one approaching, and a loud voice was heard saying:
 “Fee, fi, fo, fum,
 I smell the blood of a Christian man,
 Be he dead, be he living, with my brand,
 I'll dash his brains from his brain-pan.”
 
And then the folding-doors of the hall were burst open, and the King of Elfland rushed in.
“Strike then, Bogle, if thou darest,” shouted out Childe Rowland, and rushed to meet him with his good brand that never yet did fail. They fought, and they fought, and they fought, till Childe Rowland beat the King of Elfland down on to his knees, and caused him to yield and beg for mercy. “I grant thee mercy,” said Childe Rowland, “release my sister from thy spells and raise my brothers to life, and let us all go free, and thou shalt be spared.” “I agree,” said the Elfin King, and rising up he went to a chest from which he took a phial filled with a blood-red liquor. With this he anointed the ears, eyelids, nostrils, lips, and finger-tips, of the two brothers, and they sprang at once into life, and declared that their souls had been away, but had now returned. The Elfin king then said some words to Burd Ellen, and she was disenchanted, and they all four passed out of the hall, through the long passage, and turned their back on the Dark Tower, never to return again. And they reached home, and the good queen, their mother, and Burd Ellen never went round a church widershins again.
== THE HISTORY OF TOM THUMB ==
In the days of the great Prince Arthur, there lived a mighty magician, called Merlin, the most learned and skilful enchanter the world has ever seen.
This famous magician, who could take any form he pleased, was travelling about as a poor beggar, and being very tired, he stopped at the cottage of a ploughman to rest himself, and asked for some food.
The countryman bade him welcome, and his wife, who was a very good-hearted woman, soon brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some coarse brown bread on a platter.
Merlin was much pleased with the kindness of the ploughman and his wife; but he could not help noticing that though everything was neat and comfortable in the cottage, they seemed both to be very unhappy. He therefore asked them why they were so melancholy, and learned that they were miserable because they had no children.
The poor woman said, with tears in her eyes: “I should be the happiest creature in the world if I had a son; although he was no bigger than my husband's thumb, I would be satisfied.”
Merlin was so much amused with the idea of a boy no bigger than a man's thumb, that he determined to grant the poor woman's wish. Accordingly, in a short time after, the ploughman's wife had a son, who, wonderful to relate! was not a bit bigger than his father's thumb.
The queen of the fairies, wishing to see the little fellow, came in at the window while the mother was sitting up in the bed admiring him. The queen kissed the child, and, giving it the name of Tom Thumb, sent for some of the fairies, who dressed her little godson according to her orders:
 “An oak-leaf hat he had for his crown;
 His shirt of web by spiders spun;
 With jacket wove of thistle's down;
 His trowsers were of feathers done.
 His stockings, of apple-rind, they tie
 With eyelash from his mother's eye
 His shoes were made of mouse's skin,
 Tann'd with the downy hair within.”
 
Tom never grew any larger than his father's thumb, which was only of ordinary size; but as he got older he became very cunning and full of tricks. When he was old enough to play with the boys, and had lost all his own cherry-stones, he used to creep into the bags of his playfellows, fill his pockets, and, getting out without their noticing him, would again join in the game.
One day, however, as he was coming out of a bag of cherry-stones, where he had been stealing as usual, the boy to whom it belonged chanced to see him. “Ah, ah! my little Tommy,” said the boy, “so I have caught you stealing my cherry-stones at last, and you shall be rewarded for your thievish tricks.” On saying this, he drew the string tight round his neck, and gave the bag such a hearty shake, that poor little Tom's legs, thighs, and body were sadly bruised. He roared out with pain, and begged to be let out, promising never to steal again.
A short time afterwards his mother was making a batter-pudding, and Tom, being very anxious to see how it was made, climbed up to the edge of the bowl; but his foot slipped, and he plumped over head and ears into the batter, without his mother noticing him, who stirred him into the pudding-bag, and put him in the pot to boil.
The batter filled Tom's mouth, and prevented him from crying; but, on feeling the hot water, he kicked and struggled so much in the pot, that his mother thought that the pudding was bewitched, and, pulling it out of the pot, she threw it outside the door. A poor tinker, who was passing by, lifted up the pudding, and, putting it into his budget, he then walked off. As Tom had now got his mouth cleared of the batter, he then began to cry aloud, which so frightened the tinker that he flung down the pudding and ran away. The pudding being broke to pieces by the fall, Tom crept out covered all over with the batter, and walked home. His mother, who was very sorry to see her darling in such a woeful state, put him into a teacup, and soon washed off the batter; after which she kissed him, and laid him in bed.
Soon after the adventure of the pudding, Tom's mother went to milk her cow in the meadow, and she took him along with her. As the wind was very high, for fear of being blown away, she tied him to a thistle with a piece of fine thread. The cow soon observed Tom's oak-leaf hat, and liking the appearance of it, took poor Tom and the thistle at one mouthful. While the cow was chewing the thistle Tom was afraid of her great teeth, which threatened to crush him in pieces, and he roared out as loud as he could: “Mother, mother!”
“Where are you, Tommy, my dear Tommy?” said his mother.
“Here, mother,” replied he, “in the red cow's mouth.”
His mother began to cry and wring her hands; but the cow, surprised at the odd noise in her throat, opened her mouth and let Tom drop out. Fortunately his mother caught him in her apron as he was falling to the ground, or he would have been dreadfully hurt. She then put Tom in her bosom and ran home with him.
Tom's father made him a whip of a barley straw to drive the cattle with, and having one day gone into the fields, he slipped a foot and rolled into the furrow. A raven, which was flying over, picked him up, and flew with him over the sea, and there dropped him.
A large fish swallowed Tom the moment he fell into the sea, which was soon after caught, and bought for the table of King Arthur. When they opened the fish in order to cook it, every one was astonished at finding such a little boy, and Tom was quite delighted at being free again. They carried him to the king, who made Tom his dwarf, and he soon grew a great favourite at court; for by his tricks and gambols he not only amused the king and queen, but also all the Knights of the Round Table.
It is said that when the king rode out on horseback, he often took Tom along with him, and if a shower came on, he used to creep into his majesty's waistcoat-pocket, where he slept till the rain was over.
King Arthur one day asked Tom about his parents, wishing to know if they were as small as he was, and whether they were well off. Tom told the king that his father and mother were as tall as anybody about the court, but in rather poor circumstances. On hearing this, the king carried Tom to his treasury, the place where he kept all his money, and told him to take as much money as he could carry home to his parents, which made the poor little fellow caper with joy. Tom went immediately to procure a purse, which was made of a water-bubble, and then returned to the treasury, where he received a silver threepenny-piece to put into it.
Our little hero had some difficulty in lifting the burden upon his back; but he at last succeeded in getting it placed to his mind, and set forward on his journey. However, without meeting with any accident, and after resting himself more than a hundred times by the way, in two days and two nights he reached his father's house in safety.
Tom had travelled forty-eight hours with a huge silver-piece on his back, and was almost tired to death, when his mother ran out to meet him, and carried him into the house. But he soon returned to Court.
As Tom's clothes had suffered much in the batter-pudding, and the inside of the fish, his majesty ordered him a new suit of clothes, and to be mounted as a knight on a mouse.
 Of Butterfly's wings his shirt was made,
 His boots of chicken's hide;
 And by a nimble fairy blade,
 Well learned in the tailoring trade,
 His clothing was supplied.
 A needle dangled by his side;
 A dapper mouse he used to ride,
 Thus strutted Tom in stately pride!
It was certainly very diverting to see Tom in this dress and mounted on the mouse, as he rode out a-hunting with the king and nobility, who were all ready to expire with laughter at Tom and his fine prancing charger.
The king was so charmed with his address that he ordered a little chair to be made, in order that Tom might sit upon his table, and also a palace of gold, a span high, with a door an inch wide, to live in. He also gave him a coach, drawn by six small mice.
The queen was so enraged at the honours conferred on Sir Thomas that she resolved to ruin him, and told the king that the little knight had been saucy to her.
The king sent for Tom in great haste, but being fully aware of the danger of royal anger, he crept into an empty snail-shell, where he lay for a long time until he was almost starved with hunger; but at last he ventured to peep out, and seeing a fine large butterfly on the ground, near the place of his concealment, he got close to it and jumping astride on it, was carried up into the air. The butterfly flew with him from tree to tree and from field to field, and at last returned to the court, where the king and nobility all strove to catch him; but at last poor Tom fell from his seat into a watering-pot, in which he was almost drowned.
When the queen saw him she was in a rage, and said he should be beheaded; and he was again put into a mouse trap until the time of his execution.
However a cat, observing something alive in the trap, patted it about till the wires broke, and set Thomas at liberty.
The king received Tom again into favour, which he did not live to enjoy, for a large spider one day attacked him; and although he drew his sword and fought well, yet the spider's poisonous breath at last overcame him.
 He fell dead on the ground where he stood,
 And the spider suck'd every drop of his blood.
King Arthur and his whole court were so sorry at the loss of their little favourite that they went into mourning and raised a fine white marble monument over his grave with the following epitaph:
 Here lies Tom Thumb, King Arthur's knight,
 Who died by a spider's cruel bite.
 He was well known in Arthur's court,
 Where he afforded gallant sport;
 He rode at tilt and tournament,
 And on a mouse a-hunting went.
 Alive he filled the court with mirth;
 His death to sorrow soon gave birth.
 Wipe, wipe your eyes, and shake your head
 And cry,—Alas! Tom Thumb is dead!
== JOHNNY-CAKE ==
Once upon a time there was an old man, and an old woman, and a little boy. One morning the old woman made a Johnny-cake, and put it in the oven to bake. “You watch the Johnny-cake while your father and I go out to work in the garden.” So the old man and the old woman went out and began to hoe potatoes, and left the little boy to tend the oven. But he didn't watch it all the time, and all of a sudden he heard a noise, and he looked up and the oven door popped open, and out of the oven jumped Johnny-cake, and went rolling along end over end, towards the open door of the house. The little boy ran to shut the door, but Johnny-cake was too quick for him and rolled through the door, down the steps, and out into the road long before the little boy could catch him. The little boy ran after him as fast as he could clip it, crying out to his father and mother, who heard the uproar, and threw down their hoes and gave chase too. But Johnny-cake outran all three a long way, and was soon out of sight, while they had to sit down, all out of breath, on a bank to rest.
On went Johnny-cake, and by-and-by he came to two well-diggers who looked up from their work and called out: “Where ye going, Johnny-cake?”
He said: “I've outrun an old man, and an old woman, and a little boy, and I can outrun you too-o-o!”
“Ye can, can ye? we'll see about that?” said they; and they threw down their picks and ran after him, but couldn't catch up with him, and soon they had to sit down by the roadside to rest.
On ran Johnny-cake, and by-and-by he came to two ditch-diggers who were digging a ditch. “Where ye going, Johnny-cake?” said they. He said: “I've outrun an old man, and an old woman, and a little boy, and two well-diggers, and I can outrun you too-o-o!”
“Ye can, can ye? we'll see about that!” said they; and they threw down their spades, and ran after him too. But Johnny-cake soon outstripped them also, and seeing they could never catch him, they gave up the chase and sat down to rest.
On went Johnny-cake, and by-and-by he came to a bear. The bear said: “Where are ye going, Johnny-cake?”
He said: “I've outrun an old man, and an old woman and a little boy, and two well-diggers, and two ditch-diggers, and I can outrun you too-o-o!”
“Ye can, can ye?” growled the bear, “we'll see about that!” and trotted as fast as his legs could carry him after Johnny-cake, who never stopped to look behind him. Before long the bear was left so far behind that he saw he might as well give up the hunt first as last, so he stretched himself out by the roadside to rest.
On went Johnny-cake, and by-and-by he came to a wolf. The wolf said:—“Where ye going, Johnny-cake?” He said: “I've outrun an old man, and an old woman, and a little boy, and two well-diggers, and two ditch-diggers and a bear, and I can outrun you too-o-o!”
“Ye can, can ye?” snarled the wolf, “we'll see about that!” And he set into a gallop after Johnny-cake, who went on and on so fast that the wolf too saw there was no hope of overtaking him, and he too lay down to rest.
On went Johnny-cake, and by-and-by he came to a fox that lay quietly in a corner of the fence. The fox called out in a sharp voice, but without getting up: “Where ye going Johnny-cake?”
He said: “I've outrun an old man, and an old woman, and a little boy, and two well-diggers, and two ditch-diggers, a bear, and a wolf, and I can outrun you too-o-o!”
The fox said: “I can't quite hear you, Johnny-cake, won't you come a little closer?” turning his head a little to one side.
Johnny-cake stopped his race for the first time, and went a little closer, and called out in a very loud voice “I've outrun an old man, and an old woman, and a little boy, and two well-diggers, and two ditch-diggers, and a bear, and a wolf, and I can outrun you too-o-o.”
“Can't quite hear you; won't you come a little closer?” said the fox in a feeble voice, as he stretched out his neck towards Johnny-cake, and put one paw behind his ear.
Johnny-cake came up close, and leaning towards the fox screamed out: I'VE OUTRUN AN OLD MAN, AND AN OLD WOMAN, AND A LITTLE BOY, AND TWO WELL-DIGGERS, AND TWO DITCH-DIGGERS, AND A BEAR, AND A WOLF, AND I CAN OUTRUN YOU TOO-O-O!”
“You can, can you?” yelped the fox, and he snapped up the Johnny-cake in his sharp teeth in the twinkling of an eye.
== EARL MAR'S DAUGHTER ==
One fine summer's day Earl Mar's daughter went into the castle garden, dancing and tripping along. And as she played and sported she would stop from time to time to listen to the music of the birds. After a while as she sat under the shade of a green oak tree she looked up and spied a sprightly dove sitting high up on one of its branches. She looked up and said: “Coo-my-dove, my dear, come down to me and I will give you a golden cage. I'll take you home and pet you well, as well as any bird of them all.” Scarcely had she said these words when the dove flew down from the branch and settled on her shoulder, nestling up against her neck while she smoothed its feathers. Then she took it home to her own room.
The day was done and the night came on and Earl Mar's daughter was thinking of going to sleep when, turning round, she found at her side a handsome young man. She was startled, for the door had been locked for hours. But she was a brave girl and said: “What are you doing here, young man, to come and startle me so? The door was barred these hours ago; how ever did you come here?”
“Hush! hush!” the young man whispered. “I was that cooing dove that you coaxed from off the tree.”
“But who are you then?” she said quite low; “and how came you to be changed into that dear little bird?”
“My name is Florentine, and my mother is a queen, and something more than a queen, for she knows magic and spells, and because I would not do as she wished she turned me into a dove by day, but at night her spells lose their power and I become a man again. To-day I crossed the sea and saw you for the first time and I was glad to be a bird that I could come near you. Unless you love me, I shall never be happy more.”
“But if I love you,” says she, “will you not fly away and leave me one of these fine days?”
“Never, never,” said the prince; “be my wife and I'll be yours for ever. By day a bird, by night a prince, I will always be by your side as a husband, dear.”
So they were married in secret and lived happily in the castle and no one knew that every night Coo-my-dove became Prince Florentine. And every year a little son came to them as bonny as bonny could be. But as each son was born Prince Florentine carried the little thing away on his back over the sea to where the queen his mother lived and left the little one with her.
Seven years passed thus and then a great trouble came to them. For the Earl Mar wished to marry his daughter to a noble of high degree who came wooing her. Her father pressed her sore but she said: “Father dear, I do not wish to marry; I can be quite happy with Coo-my-dove here.”
Then her father got into a mighty rage and swore a great big oath, and said: “To-morrow, so sure as I live and eat, I'll twist that birdie's neck,” and out he stamped from her room.
“Oh, oh!” said Coo-my-dove; “it's time that I was away,” and so he jumped upon the window-sill and in a moment was flying away. And he flew and he flew till he was over the deep, deep sea, and yet on he flew till he came to his mother's castle. Now the queen his mother was taking her walk abroad when she saw the pretty dove flying overhead and alighting on the castle walls.
“Here, dancers come and dance your jigs,” she called, “and pipers, pipe you well, for here's my own Florentine, come back to me to stay for he's brought no bonny boy with him this time.”
“No, mother,” said Florentine, “no dancers for me and no minstrels, for my dear wife, the mother of my seven, boys, is to be wed to-morrow, and sad's the day for me.”
“What can I do, my son?” said the queen, “tell me, and it shall be done if my magic has power to do it.”
“Well then, mother dear, turn the twenty-four dancers and pipers into twenty-four grey herons, and let my seven sons become seven white swans, and let me be a goshawk and their leader.”
“Alas! alas! my son,” she said, “that may not be; my magic reaches not so far. But perhaps my teacher, the spaewife of Ostree, may know better.” And away she hurries to the cave of Ostree, and after a while comes out as white as white can be and muttering over some burning herbs she brought out of the cave. Suddenly Coo-my-dove changed into a goshawk and around him flew twenty-four grey herons and above them flew seven cygnets.
Without a word or a good-bye off they flew over the deep blue sea which was tossing and moaning. They flew and they flew till they swooped down on Earl Mar's castle just as the wedding party were setting out for the church. First came the men-at-arms and then the bridegroom's friends, and then Earl Mar's men, and then the bridegroom, and lastly, pale and beautiful, Earl Mar's daughter herself. They moved down slowly to stately music till they came past the trees on which the birds were settling. A word from Prince Florentine, the goshawk, and they all rose into the air, herons beneath, cygnets above, and goshawk circling above all. The weddineers wondered at the sight when, swoop! the herons were down among them scattering the men-at-arms. The swanlets took charge of the bride while the goshawk dashed down and tied the bridegroom to a tree. Then the herons gathered themselves together into one feather bed and the cygnets placed their mother upon them, and suddenly they all rose in the air bearing the bride away with them in safety towards Prince Florentine's home. Surely a wedding party was never so disturbed in this world. What could the weddineers do? They saw their pretty bride carried away and away till she and the herons and the swans and the goshawk disappeared, and that very day Prince Florentine brought Earl Mar's daughter to the castle of the queen his mother, who took the spell off him and they lived happy ever afterwards.
== MR. MIACCA ==
Tommy Grimes was sometimes a good boy, and sometimes a bad boy; and when he was a bad boy, he was a very bad boy. Now his mother used to say to him: “Tommy, Tommy, be a good boy, and don't go out of the street, or else Mr. Miacca will take you.” But still when he was a bad boy he would go out of the street; and one day, sure enough, he had scarcely got round the corner, when Mr. Miacca did catch him and popped him into a bag upside down, and took him off to his house.
When Mr. Miacca got Tommy inside, he pulled him out of the bag and set him down, and felt his arms and legs. “You're rather tough,” says he; “but you're all I've got for supper, and you'll not taste bad boiled. But body o' me, I've forgot the herbs, and it's bitter you'll taste without herbs. Sally! Here, I say, Sally!” and he called Mrs. Miacca.
So Mrs. Miacca came out of another room and said: “What d'ye want, my dear?”
“Oh, here's a little boy for supper,” said Mr. Miacca, “and I've forgot the herbs. Mind him, will ye, while I go for them.”
“All right, my love,” says Mrs. Miacca, and off he goes.
Then Tommy Grimes said to Mrs. Miacca: “Does Mr. Miacca always have little boys for supper?”
“Mostly, my dear,” said Mrs. Miacca, “if little boys are bad enough, and get in his way.”
“And don't you have anything else but boy-meat? No pudding?” asked Tommy.
“Ah, I loves pudding,” says Mrs. Miacca. “But it's not often the likes of me gets pudding.”
“Why, my mother is making a pudding this very day,” said Tommy Grimes, “and I am sure she'd give you some, if I ask her. Shall I run and get some?”
“Now, that's a thoughtful boy,” said Mrs. Miacca, “only don't be long and be sure to be back for supper.”
So off Tommy pelters, and right glad he was to get off so cheap; and for many a long day he was as good as good could be, and never went round the corner of the street. But he couldn't always be good; and one day he went round the corner, and as luck would have it, he hadn't scarcely got round it when Mr. Miacca grabbed him up, popped him in his bag, and took him home.
When he got him there, Mr. Miacca dropped him out; and when he saw him, he said: “Ah, you're the youngster what served me and my missus that shabby trick, leaving us without any supper. Well, you shan't do it again. I'll watch over you myself. Here, get under the sofa, and I'll set on it and watch the pot boil for you.”
So poor Tommy Grimes had to creep under the sofa, and Mr. Miacca sat on it and waited for the pot to boil. And they waited, and they waited, but still the pot didn't boil, till at last Mr. Miacca got tired of waiting, and he said: “Here, you under there, I'm not going to wait any longer; put out your leg, and I'll stop your giving us the slip.”
So Tommy put out a leg, and Mr. Miacca got a chopper, and chopped it off, and pops it in the pot.
Suddenly he calls out: “Sally, my dear, Sally!” and nobody answered. So he went into the next room to look out for Mrs. Miacca, and while he was there, Tommy crept out from under the sofa and ran out of the door. For it was a leg of the sofa that he had put out.
So Tommy Grimes ran home, and he never went round the corner again till he was old enough to go alone.
== WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT ==
In the reign of the famous King Edward III. there was a little boy called Dick Whittington, whose father and mother died when he was very young. As poor Dick was not old enough to work, he was very badly off; he got but little for his dinner, and sometimes nothing at all for his breakfast; for the people who lived in the village were very poor indeed, and could not spare him much more than the parings of potatoes, and now and then a hard crust of bread.
Now Dick had heard a great many very strange things about the great city called London; for the country people at that time thought that folks in London were all fine gentlemen and ladies; and that there was singing and music there all day long; and that the streets were all paved with gold.
One day a large waggon and eight horses, all with bells at their heads, drove through the village while Dick was standing by the sign-post. He thought that this waggon must be going to the fine town of London; so he took courage, and asked the waggoner to let him walk with him by the side of the waggon. As soon as the waggoner heard that poor Dick had no father or mother, and saw by his ragged clothes that he could not be worse off than he was, he told him he might go if he would, so off they set together.
So Dick got safe to London, and was in such a hurry to see the fine streets paved all over with gold, that he did not even stay to thank the kind waggoner; but ran off as fast as his legs would carry him, through many of the streets, thinking every moment to come to those that were paved with gold; for Dick had seen a guinea three times in his own little village, and remembered what a deal of money it brought in change; so he thought he had nothing to do but to take up some little bits of the pavement, and should then have as much money as he could wish for.
Poor Dick ran till he was tired, and had quite forgot his friend the waggoner; but at last, finding it grow dark, and that every way he turned he saw nothing but dirt instead of gold, he, sat down in a dark corner and cried himself to sleep.
Little Dick was all night in the streets; and next morning, being very hungry, he got up and walked about, and asked everybody he met to give him a halfpenny to keep him from starving; but nobody stayed to answer him, and only two or three gave him a halfpenny; so that the poor boy was soon quite weak and faint for the want of victuals.
In this distress he asked charity of several people, and one of them said crossly: “Go to work, for an idle rogue.” “That I will,” says Dick, “I will to go work for you, if you will let me.” But the man only cursed at him and went on.
At last a good-natured looking gentleman saw how hungry he looked. “Why don't you go to work my lad?” said he to Dick. “That I would, but I do not know how to get any,” answered Dick. “If you are willing, come along with me,” said the gentleman, and took him to a hay-field, where Dick worked briskly, and lived merrily till the hay was made.
After this he found himself as badly off as before; and being almost starved again, he laid himself down at the door of Mr. Fitzwarren, a rich merchant. Here he was soon seen by the cook-maid, who was an ill-tempered creature, and happened just then to be very busy dressing dinner for her master and mistress; so she called out to poor Dick: “What business have you there, you lazy rogue? there is nothing else but beggars; if you do not take yourself away, we will see how you will like a sousing of some dish-water; I have some here hot enough to make you jump.”
Just at that time Mr. Fitzwarren himself came home to dinner; and when he saw a dirty ragged boy lying at the door, he said to him: “Why do you lie there, my boy? You seem old enough to work; I am afraid you are inclined to be lazy.”
“No, indeed, sir,” said Dick to him, “that is not the case, for I would work with all my heart, but I do not know anybody, and I believe I am very sick for the want of food.”
“Poor fellow, get up; let me see what ails you.” Dick now tried to rise, but was obliged to lie down again, being too weak to stand, for he had not eaten any food for three days, and was no longer able to run about and beg a halfpenny of people in the street. So the kind merchant ordered him to be taken into the house, and have a good dinner given him, and be kept to do what work he was able to do for the cook.
Little Dick would have lived very happy in this good family if it had not been for the ill-natured cook. She used to say: “You are under me, so look sharp; clean the spit and the dripping-pan, make the fires, wind up the jack, and do all the scullery work nimbly, or—” and she would shake the ladle at him. Besides, she was so fond of basting, that when she had no meat to baste, she would baste poor Dick's head and shoulders with a broom, or anything else that happened to fall in her way. At last her ill-usage of him was told to Alice, Mr. Fitzwarren's daughter, who told the cook she should be turned away if she did not treat him kinder.
The behaviour of the cook was now a little better; but besides this Dick had another hardship to get over. His bed stood in a garret, where there were so many holes in the floor and the walls that every night he was tormented with rats and mice. A gentleman having given Dick a penny for cleaning his shoes, he thought he would buy a cat with it. The next day he saw a girl with a cat, and asked her, “Will you let me have that cat for a penny?” The girl said: “Yes, that I will, master, though she is an excellent mouser.”
Dick hid his cat in the garret, and always took care to carry a part of his dinner to her; and in a short time he had no more trouble with the rats and mice, but slept quite sound every night.
Soon after this, his master had a ship ready to sail; and as it was the custom that all his servants should have some chance for good fortune as well as himself, he called them all into the parlour and asked them what they would send out.
They all had something that they were willing to venture except poor Dick, who had neither money nor goods, and therefore could send nothing. For this reason he did not come into the parlour with the rest; but Miss Alice guessed what was the matter, and ordered him to be called in. She then said: “I will lay down some money for him, from my own purse;” but her father told her: “This will not do, for it must be something of his own.”
When poor Dick heard this, he said: “I have nothing but a cat which I bought for a penny some time since of a little girl.”
“Fetch your cat then, my lad,” said Mr. Fitzwarren, “and let her go.”
Dick went upstairs and brought down poor puss, with tears in his eyes, and gave her to the captain; “For,” he said, “I shall now be kept awake all night by the rats and mice.” All the company laughed at Dick's odd venture; and Miss Alice, who felt pity for him, gave him some money to buy another cat.
This, and many other marks of kindness shown him by Miss Alice, made the ill-tempered cook jealous of poor Dick, and she began to use him more cruelly than ever, and always made game of him for sending his cat to sea.
She asked him: “Do you think your cat will sell for as much money as would buy a stick to beat you?”
At last poor Dick could not bear this usage any longer, and he thought he would run away from his place; so he packed up his few things, and started very early in the morning, on All-hallows Day, the first of November. He walked as far as Holloway; and there sat down on a stone, which to this day is called “Whittington's Stone,” and began to think to himself which road he should take.
While he was thinking what he should do, the Bells of Bow Church, which at that time were only six, began to ring, and their sound seemed to say to him:
“Turn again, Whittington, Thrice Lord Mayor of London.”
“Lord Mayor of London!” said he to himself. “Why, to be sure, I would put up with almost anything now, to be Lord Mayor of London, and ride in a fine coach, when I grow to be a man! Well, I will go back, and think nothing of the cuffing and scolding of the old cook, if I am to be Lord Mayor of London at last.”
Dick went back, and was lucky enough to get into the house, and set about his work, before the old cook came downstairs.
We must now follow Miss Puss to the coast of Africa. The ship with the cat on board, was a long time at sea; and was at last driven by the winds on a part of the coast of Barbary, where the only people were the Moors, unknown to the English. The people came in great numbers to see the sailors, because they were of different colour to themselves, and treated them civilly; and, when they became better acquainted, were very eager to buy the fine things that the ship was loaded with.
When the captain saw this, he sent patterns of the best things he had to the king of the country; who was so much pleased with them, that he sent for the captain to the palace. Here they were placed, as it is the custom of the country, on rich carpets flowered with gold and silver. The king and queen were seated at the upper end of the room; and a number of dishes were brought in for dinner. They had not sat long, when a vast number of rats and mice rushed in, and devoured all the meat in an instant. The captain wondered at this, and asked if these vermin were not unpleasant.
“Oh yes,” said they, “very offensive, and the king would give half his treasure to be freed of them, for they not only destroy his dinner, as you see, but they assault him in his chamber, and even in bed, and so that he is obliged to be watched while he is sleeping, for fear of them.”
The captain jumped for joy; he remembered poor Whittington and his cat, and told the king he had a creature on board the ship that would despatch all these vermin immediately. The king jumped so high at the joy which the news gave him, that his turban dropped off his head. “Bring this creature to me,” says he; “vermin are dreadful in a court, and if she will perform what you say, I will load your ship with gold and jewels in exchange for her.”
The captain, who knew his business, took this opportunity to set forth the merits of Miss Puss. He told his majesty; “It is not very convenient to part with her, as, when she is gone, the rats and mice may destroy the goods in the ship—but to oblige your majesty, I will fetch her.”
“Run, run!” said the queen; “I am impatient to see the dear creature.”
Away went the captain to the ship, while another dinner was got ready. He put Puss under his arm, and arrived at the place just in time to see the table full of rats. When the cat saw them, she did not wait for bidding, but jumped out of the captain's arms, and in a few minutes laid almost all the rats and mice dead at her feet. The rest of them in their fright scampered away to their holes.
The king was quite charmed to get rid so easily of such plagues, and the queen desired that the creature who had done them so great a kindness might be brought to her, that she might look at her. Upon which the captain called: “Pussy, pussy, pussy!” and she came to him. He then presented her to the queen, who started back, and was afraid to touch a creature who had made such a havoc among the rats and mice. However, when the captain stroked the cat and called: “Pussy, pussy,” the queen also touched her and cried: “Putty, putty,” for she had not learned English. He then put her down on the queen's lap, where she purred and played with her majesty's hand, and then purred herself to sleep.
The king, having seen the exploits of Mrs. Puss, and being informed that her kittens would stock the whole country, and keep it free from rats, bargained with the captain for the whole ship's cargo, and then gave him ten times as much for the cat as all the rest amounted to.
The captain then took leave of the royal party, and set sail with a fair wind for England, and after a happy voyage arrived safe in London.
One morning, early, Mr. Fitzwarren had just come to his counting-house and seated himself at the desk, to count over the cash, and settle the business for the day, when somebody came tap, tap, at the door. “Who's there?” said Mr. Fitzwarren. “A friend,” answered the other; “I come to bring you good news of your ship Unicorn.” The merchant, bustling up in such a hurry that he forgot his gout, opened the door, and who should he see waiting but the captain and factor, with a cabinet of jewels, and a bill of lading; when he looked at this the merchant lifted up his eyes and thanked Heaven for sending him such a prosperous voyage.
They then told the story of the cat, and showed the rich present that the king and queen had sent for her to poor Dick. As soon as the merchant heard this, he called out to his servants:
 “Go send him in, and tell him of his fame;
 Pray call him Mr. Whittington by name.”
 
Mr. Fitzwarren now showed himself to be a good man; for when some of his servants said so great a treasure was too much for him, he answered: “God forbid I should deprive him of the value of a single penny, it is his own, and he shall have it to a farthing.” He then sent for Dick, who at that time was scouring pots for the cook, and was quite dirty. He would have excused himself from coming into the counting-house, saying, “The room is swept, and my shoes are dirty and full of hob-nails.” But the merchant ordered him to come in.
Mr. Fitzwarren ordered a chair to be set for him, and so he began to think they were making game of him, at the same time said to them: “Do not play tricks with a poor simple boy, but let me go down again, if you please, to my work.”
“Indeed, Mr. Whittington,” said the merchant, “we are all quite in earnest with you, and I most heartily rejoice in the news that these gentlemen have brought you; for the captain has sold your cat to the King of Barbary, and brought you in return for her more riches than I possess in the whole world; and I wish you may long enjoy them!”
Mr. Fitzwarren then told the men to open the great treasure they had brought with them; and said: “Mr. Whittington has nothing to do but to put it in some place of safety.”
Poor Dick hardly knew how to behave himself for joy. He begged his master to take what part of it he pleased, since he owed it all to his kindness. “No, no,” answered Mr. Fitzwarren, “this is all your own; and I have no doubt but you will use it well.”
Dick next asked his mistress, and then Miss Alice, to accept a part of his good fortune; but they would not, and at the same time told him they felt great joy at his good success. But this poor fellow was too kind-hearted to keep it all to himself; so he made a present to the captain, the mate, and the rest of Mr. Fitzwarren's servants; and even to the ill-natured old cook.
After this Mr. Fitzwarren advised him to send for a proper tailor and get himself dressed like a gentleman; and told him he was welcome to live in his house till he could provide himself with a better.
When Whittington's face was washed, his hair curled, his hat cocked, and he was dressed in a nice suit of clothes he was as handsome and genteel as any young man who visited at Mr. Fitzwarren's; so that Miss Alice, who had once been so kind to him, and thought of him with pity, now looked upon him as fit to be her sweetheart; and the more so, no doubt, because Whittington was now always thinking what he could do to oblige her, and making her the prettiest presents that could be.
Mr. Fitzwarren soon saw their love for each other, and proposed to join them in marriage; and to this they both readily agreed. A day for the wedding was soon fixed; and they were attended to church by the Lord Mayor, the court of aldermen, the sheriffs, and a great number of the richest merchants in London, whom they afterwards treated with a very rich feast.
History tells us that Mr. Whittington and his lady liven in great splendour, and were very happy. They had several children. He was Sheriff of London, thrice Lord Mayor, and received the honour of knighthood by Henry V.
He entertained this king and his queen at dinner after his conquest of France so grandly, that the king said “Never had prince such a subject;” when Sir Richard heard this, he said: “Never had subject such a prince.”
The figure of Sir Richard Whittington with his cat in his arms, carved in stone, was to be seen till the year 1780 over the archway of the old prison of Newgate, which he built for criminals.
THE LAIDLY WORM OF SPINDLESTON HEUGH
In Bamborough Castle once lived a king who had a fair wife and two children, a son named Childe Wynd and a daughter named Margaret. Childe Wynd went forth to seek his fortune, and soon after he had gone the queen his mother died. The king mourned her long and faithfully, but one day while he was hunting he came across a lady of great beauty, and became so much in love with her that he determined to marry her. So he sent word home that he was going to bring a new queen to Bamborough Castle.
Princess Margaret was not very glad to hear of her mother's place being taken, but she did not repine but did her father's bidding. And at the appointed day came down to the castle gate with the keys all ready to hand over to her stepmother. Soon the procession drew near, and the new queen came towards Princess Margaret who bowed low and handed her the keys of the castle. She stood there with blushing cheeks and eye on ground, and said: “O welcome, father dear, to your halls and bowers, and welcome to you my new mother, for all that's here is yours,” and again she offered the keys. One of the king's knights who had escorted the new queen, cried out in admiration: “Surely this northern Princess is the loveliest of her kind.” At that the new queen flushed up and cried out: “At least your courtesy might have excepted me,” and then she muttered below her breath: “I'll soon put an end to her beauty.”
That same night the queen, who was a noted witch, stole down to a lonely dungeon wherein she did her magic and with spells three times three, and with passes nine times nine she cast Princess Margaret under her spell. And this was her spell:
 I weird ye to be a Laidly Worm,
 And borrowed shall ye never be,
 Until Childe Wynd, the King's own son
 Come to the Heugh and thrice kiss thee;
 Until the world comes to an end,
 Borrowed shall ye never be.
So Lady Margaret went to bed a beauteous maiden, and rose up a Laidly Worm. And when her maidens came in to dress her in the morning they found coiled up on the bed a dreadful dragon, which uncoiled itself and came towards them. But they ran away shrieking, and the Laidly Worm crawled and crept, and crept and crawled till it reached the Heugh or rock of the Spindlestone, round which it coiled itself, and lay there basking with its terrible snout in the air.
Soon the country round about had reason to know of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh. For hunger drove the monster out from its cave and it used to devour everything it could come across. So at last they went to a mighty warlock and asked him what they should do. Then he consulted his works and his familiar, and told them: “The Laidly Worm is really the Princess Margaret and it is hunger that drives her forth to do such deeds. Put aside for her seven kine, and each day as the sun goes down, carry every drop of milk they yield to the stone trough at the foot of the Heugh, and the Laidly Worm will trouble the country no longer. But if ye would that she be borrowed to her natural shape, and that she who bespelled her be rightly punished, send over the seas for her brother, Childe Wynd.”
All was done as the warlock advised, the Laidly Worm lived on the milk of the seven kine, and the country was troubled no longer. But when Childe Wynd heard the news, he swore a mighty oath to rescue his sister and revenge her on her cruel stepmother. And three-and-thirty of his men took the oath with him. Then they set to work and built a long ship, and its keel they made of the rowan tree. And when all was ready, they out with their oars and pulled sheer for Bamborough Keep.
But as they got near the keep, the stepmother felt by her magic power that something was being wrought against her, so she summoned her familiar imps and said: “Childe Wynd is coming over the seas; he must never land. Raise storms, or bore the hull, but nohow must he touch shore.” Then the imps went forth to meet Childe Wynd's ship, but when they got near, they found they had no power over the ship, for its keel was made of the rowan tree. So back they came to the queen witch, who knew not what to do. She ordered her men-at-arms to resist Childe Wynd if he should land near them, and by her spells she caused the Laidly Worm to wait by the entrance of the harbour.
As the ship came near, the Worm unfolded its coils, and dipping into the sea, caught hold of the ship of Childe Wynd, and banged it off the shore. Three times Childe Wynd urged his men on to row bravely and strong, but each time the Laidly Worm kept it off the shore. Then Childe Wynd ordered the ship to be put about, and the witch-queen thought he had given up the attempt. But instead of that, he only rounded the next point and landed safe and sound in Budle Creek, and then, with sword drawn and bow bent, rushed up followed by his men, to fight the terrible Worm that had kept him from landing.
But the moment Childe Wynd had landed, the witch-queen's power over the Laidly Worm had gone, and she went back to her bower all alone, not an imp, nor a man-at-arms to help her, for she knew her hour was come. So when Childe Wynd came rushing up to the Laidly Worm it made no attempt to stop him or hurt him, but just as he was going to raise his sword to slay it, the voice of his own sister Margaret came from its jaws saying:
 “O, quit your sword, unbend your bow,
 And give me kisses three;
 For though I am a poisonous worm,
 No harm I'll do to thee.”
 
Childe Wynd stayed his hand, but he did not know what to think if some witchery were not in it. Then said the Laidly Worm again:
 “O, quit your sword, unbend your bow,
 And give me kisses three,
 If I'm not won ere set of sun,
 Won never shall I be.”
 
Then Childe Wynd went up to the Laidly Worm and kissed it once; but no change came over it. Then Childe Wynd kissed it once more; but yet no change came over it. For a third time he kissed the loathsome thing, and with a hiss and a roar the Laidly Worm reared back and before Childe Wynd stood his sister Margaret. He wrapped his cloak about her, and then went up to the castle with her. When he reached the keep, he went off to the witch queen's bower, and when he saw her, he touched her with a twig of a rowan tree. No sooner had he touched her than she shrivelled up and shrivelled up, till she became a huge ugly toad, with bold staring eyes and a horrible hiss. She croaked and she hissed, and then hopped away down the castle steps, and Childe Wynd took his father's place as king, and they all lived happy afterwards.
But to this day, the loathsome toad is seen at times, haunting the neighbourhood of Bamborough Keep, and the wicked witch-queen is a Laidly Toad.
THE CAT AND THE MOUSE
 The cat and the mouse
 Play'd in the malt-house:
The cat bit the mouse's tail off. “Pray, puss, give me my tail.” “No,” says the cat, “I'll not give you your tail, till you go to the cow, and fetch me some milk.”
 First she leapt and then she ran,
 Till she came to the cow, and thus began:
“Pray, Cow, give me milk, that I may give cat milk, that cat may give me my own tail again.” “No,” said the cow, “I will give you no milk, till you go to the farmer, and get me some hay.”
 First she leapt, and then she ran,
 Till she came to the farmer and thus began:
“Pray, Farmer, give me hay, that I may give cow hay, that cow may give me milk, that I may give cat milk, that cat may give me my own tail again.” “No,” says the farmer, “I'll give you no hay, till you go to the butcher and fetch me some meat.”
 First she leapt, and then she ran,
 Till she came to the butcher, and thus began:
“Pray, Butcher, give me meat, that I may give farmer meat, that farmer may give me hay, that I may give cow hay, that cow may give me milk, that I may give cat milk, that cat may give me my own tail again.” “No,” says the butcher, “I'll give you no meat, till you go to the baker and fetch me some bread.”
 First she leapt and then she ran,
 Till she came to the baker, and thus began:
“Pray, Baker, give me bread, that I may give butcher bread, that butcher may give me meat, that I may give farmer meat, that farmer may give me hay, that I may give cow hay, that cow may give me milk, that I may give cat milk, that cat may give me my own tail again.”
 “Yes,” says the baker, “I'll give you some bread,
 But if you eat my meal, I'll cut off your head.”
 
Then the baker gave mouse bread, and mouse gave butcher bread, and butcher gave mouse meat, and mouse gave farmer meat, and farmer gave mouse hay, and mouse gave cow hay, and cow gave mouse milk, and mouse gave cat milk, and cat gave mouse her own tail again!
== THE FISH AND THE RING ==
Once upon a time, there was a mighty baron in the North Countrie who was a great magician that knew everything that would come to pass. So one day, when his little boy was four years old, he looked into the Book of Fate to see what would happen to him. And to his dismay, he found that his son would wed a lowly maid that had just been born in a house under the shadow of York Minster. Now the Baron knew the father of the little girl was very, very poor, and he had five children already. So he called for his horse, and rode into York; and passed by the father's house, and saw him sitting by the door, sad and doleful. So he dismounted and went up to him and said: “What is the matter, my good man?” And the man said: “Well, your honour, the fact is, I've five children already, and now a sixth's come, a little lass, and where to get the bread from to fill their mouths, that's more than I can say.”
“Don't be downhearted, my man,” said the Baron. “If that's your trouble, I can help you. I'll take away the last little one, and you wont have to bother about her.”
“Thank you kindly, sir,” said the man; and he went in and brought out the lass and gave her to the Baron, who mounted his horse and rode away with her. And when he got by the bank of the river Ouse, he threw the little, thing into the river, and rode off to his castle.
But the little lass didn't sink; her clothes kept her up for a time, and she floated, and she floated, till she was cast ashore just in front of a fisherman's hut. There the fisherman found her, and took pity on the poor little thing and took her into his house, and she lived there till she was fifteen years old, and a fine handsome girl.
One day it happened that the Baron went out hunting with some companions along the banks of the River Ouse, and stopped at the fisherman's hut to get a drink, and the girl came out to give it to them. They all noticed her beauty, and one of them said to the Baron: “You can read fates, Baron, whom will she marry, d'ye think?”
“Oh! that's easy to guess,” said the Baron; “some yokel or other. But I'll cast her horoscope. Come here girl, and tell me on what day you were born?”
“I don't know, sir,” said the girl, “I was picked up just here after having been brought down by the river about fifteen years ago.”
Then the Baron knew who she was, and when they went away, he rode back and said to the girl: “Hark ye, girl, I will make your fortune. Take this letter to my brother in Scarborough, and you will be settled for life.” And the girl took the letter and said she would go. Now this was what he had written in the letter:
“Dear Brother,—Take the bearer and put her to death immediately.
“Yours affectionately,
“Albert.”
So soon after the girl set out for Scarborough, and slept for the night at a little inn. Now that very night a band of robbers broke into the inn, and searched the girl, who had no money, and only the letter. So they opened this and read it, and thought it a shame. The captain of the robbers took a pen and paper and wrote this letter:
“Dear Brother,—Take the bearer and marry her to my son immediately.
“Yours affectionately,
“Albert.”
And then he gave it to the girl, bidding her begone. So she went on to the Baron's brother at Scarborough, a noble knight, with whom the Baron's son was staying. When she gave the letter to his brother, he gave orders for the wedding to be prepared at once, and they were married that very day.
Soon after, the Baron himself came to his brother's castle, and what was his surprise to find that the very thing he had plotted against had come to pass. But he was not to be put off that way; and he took out the girl for a walk, as he said, along the cliffs. And when he got her all alone, he took her by the arms, and was going to throw her over. But she begged hard for her life. “I have not done anything,” she said: “if you will only spare me, I will do whatever you wish. I will never see you or your son again till you desire it.” Then the Baron took off his gold ring and threw it into the sea, saying: “Never let me see your face till you can show me that ring;” and he let her go.
The poor girl wandered on and on, till at last she came to a great noble's castle, and she asked to have some work given to her; and they made her the scullion girl of the castle, for she had been used to such work in the fisherman's hut.
Now one day, who should she see coming up to the noble's house but the Baron and his brother and his son, her husband. She didn't know what to do; but thought they would not see her in the castle kitchen. So she went back to her work with a sigh, and set to cleaning a huge big fish that was to be boiled for their dinner. And, as she was cleaning it, she saw something shine inside it, and what do you think she found? Why, there was the Baron's ring, the very one he had thrown over the cliff at Scarborough. She was right glad to see it, you may be sure. Then she cooked the fish as nicely as she could, and served it up.
Well, when the fish came on the table, the guests liked it so well that they asked the noble who cooked it. He said he didn't know, but called to his servants: “Ho, there, send up the cook that cooked that fine fish.” So they went down to the kitchen and told the girl she was wanted in the hall. Then she washed and tidied herself and put the Baron's gold ring on her thumb and went up into the hall.
When the banqueters saw such a young and beautiful cook they were surprised. But the Baron was in a tower of a temper, and started up as if he would do her some violence. So the girl went up to him with her hand before her with the ring on it; and she put it down before him on the table. Then at last the Baron saw that no one could fight against Fate, and he handed her to a seat and announced to all the company that this was his son's true wife; and he took her and his son home to his castle; and they all lived as happy as could be ever afterwards.
== HE MAGPIE'S NEST ==
 Once upon a time when pigs spoke rhyme
 And monkeys chewed tobacco,
 And hens took snuff to make them tough,
 And ducks went quack, quack, quack, O!
All the birds of the air came to the magpie and asked her to teach them how to build nests. For the magpie is the cleverest bird of all at building nests. So she put all the birds round her and began to show them how to do it. First of all she took some mud and made a sort of round cake with it.
“Oh, that's how it's done,” said the thrush; and away it flew, and so that's how thrushes build their nests.
Then the magpie took some twigs and arranged them round in the mud.
“Now I know all about it,” says the blackbird, and off he flew; and that's how the blackbirds make their nests to this very day.
Then the magpie put another layer of mud over the twigs.
“Oh that's quite obvious,” said the wise owl, and away it flew; and owls have never made better nests since.
After this the magpie took some twigs and twined them round the outside.
“The very thing!” said the sparrow, and off he went; so sparrows make rather slovenly nests to this day.
Well, then Madge Magpie took some feathers and stuff and lined the nest very comfortably with it.
“That suits me,” cried the starling, and off it flew; and very comfortable nests have starlings.
So it went on, every bird taking away some knowledge of how to build nests, but, none of them waiting to the end. Meanwhile Madge Magpie went on working and working without, looking up till the only bird that remained was the turtle-dove, and that hadn't paid any attention all along, but only kept on saying its silly cry “Take two, Taffy, take two-o-o-o.”
At last the magpie heard this just as she was putting a twig across. So she said: “One's enough.”
But the turtle-dove kept on saying: “Take two, Taffy, take two-o-o-o.”
Then the magpie got angry and said: “One's enough I tell you.”
Still the turtle-dove cried: “Take two, Taffy, take two-o-o-o.”
At last, and at last, the magpie looked up and saw nobody near her but the silly turtle-dove, and then she got rare angry and flew away and refused to tell the birds how to build nests again. And that is why different birds build their nests differently.
KATE CRACKERNUTS
Once upon a time there was a king and a queen, as in many lands have been. The king had a daughter, Anne, and the queen had one named Kate, but Anne was far bonnier than the queen's daughter, though they loved one another like real sisters. The queen was jealous of the king's daughter being bonnier than her own, and cast about to spoil her beauty. So she took counsel of the henwife, who told her to send the lassie to her next morning fasting.
So next morning early, the queen said to Anne, “Go, my dear, to the henwife in the glen, and ask her for some eggs.” So Anne set out, but as she passed through the kitchen she saw a crust, and she took and munched it as she went along.
When she came to the henwife's she asked for eggs, as she had been told to do; the henwife said to her, “Lift the lid off that pot there and see.” The lassie did so, but nothing happened. “Go home to your minnie and tell her to keep her larder door better locked,” said the henwife. So she went home to the queen and told her what the henwife had said. The queen knew from this that the lassie had had something to eat, so watched the next morning and sent her away fasting; but the princess saw some country-folk picking peas by the roadside, and being very kind she spoke to them and took a handful of the peas, which she ate by the way.
When she came to the henwife's, she said, “Lift the lid off the pot and you'll see.” So Anne lifted the lid but nothing happened. Then the henwife was rare angry and said to Anne, “Tell your minnie the pot won't boil if the fire's away.” So Anne went home and told the queen.
The third day the queen goes along with the girl herself to the henwife. Now, this time, when Anne lifted the lid off the pot, off falls her own pretty head, and on jumps a sheep's head.
So the queen was now quite satisfied, and went back home.
Her own daughter, Kate, however, took a fine linen cloth and wrapped it round her sister's head and took her by the hand and they both went out to seek their fortune. They went on, and they went on, and they went on, till they came to a castle. Kate knocked at the door and asked for a night's lodging for herself and a sick sister. They went in and found it was a king's castle, who had two sons, and one of them was sickening away to death and no one could find out what ailed him. And the curious thing was that whoever watched him at night was never seen any more. So the king had offered a peck of silver to anyone who would stop up with him. Now Katie was a very brave girl, so she offered to sit up with him.
Till midnight all goes well. As twelve o clock rings, however, the sick prince rises, dresses himself, and slips downstairs. Kate followed, but he didn't seem to notice her. The prince went to the stable, saddled his horse, called his hound, jumped into the saddle, and Kate leapt lightly up behind him. Away rode the prince and Kate through the greenwood, Kate, as they pass, plucking nuts from the trees and filling her apron with them. They rode on and on till they came to a green hill. The prince here drew bridle and spoke, “Open, open, green hill, and let the young prince in with his horse and his hound,” and Kate added, “and his lady him behind.”
Immediately the green hill opened and they passed in. The prince entered a magnificent hall, brightly lighted up, and many beautiful fairies surrounded the prince and led him off to the dance. Meanwhile, Kate, without being noticed, hid herself behind the door. There she sees the prince dancing, and dancing, and dancing, till he could dance no longer and fell upon a couch. Then the fairies would fan him till he could rise again and go on dancing.
At last the cock crew, and the prince made all haste to get on horseback; Kate jumped up behind, and home they rode. When the morning sun rose they came in and found Kate sitting down by the fire and cracking her nuts. Kate said the prince had a good night; but she would not sit up another night unless she was to get a peck of gold. The second night passed as the first had done. The prince got up at midnight and rode away to the green hill and the fairy ball, and Kate went with him, gathering nuts as they rode through the forest. This time she did not watch the prince, for she knew he would dance and dance, and dance. But she sees a fairy baby playing with a wand, and overhears one of the fairies say: “Three strokes of that wand would make Kate's sick sister as bonnie as ever she was.” So Kate rolled nuts to the fairy baby, and rolled nuts till the baby toddled after the nuts and let fall the wand, and Kate took it up and put it in her apron. And at cockcrow they rode home as before, and the moment Kate got home to her room she rushed and touched Anne three times with the wand, and the nasty sheep's head fell off and she was her own pretty self again. The third night Kate consented to watch, only if she should marry the sick prince. All went on as on the first two nights. This time the fairy baby was playing with a birdie; Kate heard one of the fairies say: “Three bites of that birdie would make the sick prince as well as ever he was.” Kate rolled all the nuts she had to the fairy baby till the birdie was dropped, and Kate put it in her apron.
At cockcrow they set off again, but instead of cracking her nuts as she used to do, this time Kate plucked the feathers off and cooked the birdie. Soon there arose a very savoury smell. “Oh!” said the sick prince, “I wish I had a bite of that birdie,” so Kate gave him a bite of the birdie, and he rose up on his elbow. By-and-by he cried out again: “Oh, if I had another bite of that birdie!” so Kate gave him another bite, and he sat up on his bed. Then he said again: “Oh! if I only had a third bite of that birdie!” So Kate gave him a third bite, and he rose quite well, dressed himself, and sat down by the fire, and when the folk came in next morning they found Kate and the young prince cracking nuts together. Meanwhile his brother had seen Annie and had fallen in love with her, as everybody did who saw her sweet pretty face. So the sick son married the well sister, and the well son married the sick sister, and they all lived happy and died happy, and never drank out of a dry cappy.
THE CAULD LAD OF HILTON
At Hilton Hall, long years ago, there lived a Brownie that was the contrariest Brownie you ever knew. At night, after the servants had gone to bed, it would turn everything topsy-turvy, put sugar in the salt-cellars, pepper into the beer, and was up to all kinds of pranks. It would throw the chairs down, put tables on their backs, rake out fires, and do as much mischief as could be. But sometimes it would be in a good temper, and then!—“What's a Brownie?” you say. Oh, it's a kind of a sort of a Bogle, but it isn't so cruel as a Redcap! What! you don't know what's a Bogle or a Redcap! Ah, me! what's the world a-coming to? Of course a Brownie is a funny little thing, half man, half goblin, with pointed ears and hairy hide. When you bury a treasure, you scatter over it blood drops of a newly slain kid or lamb, or, better still, bury the animal with the treasure, and a Brownie will watch over it for you, and frighten everybody else away.
Where was I? Well, as I was a-saying, the Brownie at Hilton Hall would play at mischief, but if the servants laid out for it a bowl of cream, or a knuckle cake spread with honey, it would clear away things for them, and make everything tidy in the kitchen. One night, however, when the servants had stopped up late, they heard a noise in the kitchen, and, peeping in, saw the Brownie swinging to and fro on the Jack chain, and saying:
 “Woe's me! woe's me!
 The acorn's not yet
 Fallen from the tree,
 That's to grow the wood,
 That's to make the cradle,
 That's to rock the bairn,
 That's to grow to the man,
 That's to lay me.
 Woe's me! woe's me!”
 
So they took pity on the poor Brownie, and asked the nearest henwife what they should do to send it away. “That's easy enough,” said the henwife, and told them that a Brownie that's paid for its service, in aught that's not perishable, goes away at once. So they made a cloak of Lincoln green, with a hood to it, and put it by the hearth and watched. They saw the Brownie come up, and seeing the hood and cloak, put them on, and frisk about, dancing on one leg and saying:
 “I've taken your cloak, I've taken your hood;
 The Cauld Lad of Hilton will do no more good.”
 
And with that it vanished, and was never seen or heard of afterwards.
THE ASS, THE TABLE, AND THE STICK
A lad named Jack was once so unhappy at home through his father's ill-treatment, that he made up his mind to run away and seek his fortune in the wide world.
He ran, and he ran, till he could run no longer, and then he ran right up against a little old woman who was gathering sticks. He was too much out of breath to beg pardon, but the woman was good-natured, and she said he seemed to be a likely lad, so she would take him to be her servant, and would pay him well. He agreed, for he was very hungry, and she brought him to her house in the wood, where he served her for a twelvemonths and a day.
When the year had passed, she called him to her, and said she had good wages for him. So she presented him with an ass out of the stable, and he had but to pull Neddy's ears to make him begin at once to ee—aw! And when he brayed there dropped from his mouth silver sixpences, and half crowns, and golden guineas.
The lad was well pleased with the wage he had received, and away he rode till he reached an inn. There he ordered the best of everything, and when the innkeeper refused to serve him without being paid beforehand, the boy went off to the stable, pulled the ass's ears and obtained his pocket full of money. The host had watched all this through a crack in the door, and when night came on he put an ass of his own for the precious Neddy of the poor youth. So Jack without knowing that any change had been made, rode away next morning to his father's house.
Now, I must tell you that near his home dwelt a poor widow with an only daughter. The lad and the maiden were fast friends and true loves; but when Jack asked his father's leave to marry the girl, “Never till you have the money to keep her,” was the reply. “I have that, father,” said the lad, and going to the ass he pulled its long ears; well, he pulled, and he pulled, till one of them came off in his hands; but Neddy, though he hee-hawed and he hee-hawed let fall no half crowns or guineas. The father picked up a hay-fork and beat his son out of the house. I promise you he ran. Ah! he ran and ran till he came bang against the door, and burst it open, and there he was in a joiner's shop. “You're a likely lad,” said the joiner; “serve me for a twelvemonths and a day and I will pay you well.'” So he agreed, and served the carpenter for a year and a day. “Now,” said the master, “I will give you your wage;” and he presented him with a table, telling him he had but to say, “Table, be covered,” and at once it would be spread with lots to eat and drink.
Jack hitched the table on his back, and away he went with it till he came to the inn. “Well, host,” shouted he, “my dinner to-day, and that of the best.”
“Very sorry, but there is nothing in the house but ham and eggs.”
“Ham and eggs for me!” exclaimed Jack. “I can do better than that.—Come, my table, be covered!”
At once the table was spread with turkey and sausages, roast mutton, potatoes, and greens. The publican opened his eyes, but he said nothing, not he.
That night he fetched down from his attic a table very like that of Jack, and exchanged the two. Jack, none the wiser, next morning hitched the worthless table on to his back and carried it home. “Now, father, may I marry my lass?” he asked.
“Not unless you can keep her,” replied the father. “Look here!” exclaimed Jack. “Father, I have a table which does all my bidding.”
“Let me see it,” said the old man.
The lad set it in the middle of the room, and bade it be covered; but all in vain, the table remained bare. In a rage, the father caught the warming-pan down from the wall and warmed his son's back with it so that the boy fled howling from the house, and ran and ran till he came to a river and tumbled in. A man picked him out and bade him assist him in making a bridge over the river; and how do you think he was doing it? Why, by casting a tree across; so Jack climbed up to the top of the tree and threw his weight on it, so that when the man had rooted the tree up, Jack and the tree-head dropped on the farther bank.
“Thank you,” said the man; “and now for what you have done I will pay you;” so saying, he tore a branch from the tree, and fettled it up into a club with his knife. “There,” exclaimed he; “take this stick, and when you say to it, 'Up stick and bang him,' it will knock any one down who angers you.”
The lad was overjoyed to get this stick—so away he went with it to the inn, and as soon as the publican, appeared, “Up stick and bang him!” was his cry. At the word the cudgel flew from his hand and battered the old publican on the back, rapped his head, bruised his arms tickled his ribs, till he fell groaning on the floor; still the stick belaboured the prostrate man, nor would Jack call it off till he had got back the stolen ass and table. Then he galloped home on the ass, with the table on his shoulders, and the stick in his hand. When he arrived there he found his father was dead, so he brought his ass into the stable, and pulled its ears till he had filled the manger with money.
It was soon known through the town that Jack had returned rolling in wealth, and accordingly all the girls in the place set their caps at him. “Now,” said Jack, “I shall marry the richest lass in the place; so tomorrow do you all come in front of my house with your money in your aprons.”
Next morning the street was full of girls with aprons held out, and gold and silver in them; but Jack's own sweetheart was among them, and she had neither gold nor silver, nought but two copper pennies, that was all she had.
“Stand aside, lass;” said Jack to her, speaking roughly. “Thou hast no silver nor gold—stand off from the rest.” She obeyed, and the tears ran down her cheeks, and filled her apron with diamonds.
“Up stick and bang them!” exclaimed Jack; whereupon the cudgel leaped up, and running along the line of girls, knocked them all on the heads and left them senseless on the pavement. Jack took all their money and poured it into his truelove's lap. “Now, lass,” he exclaimed, “thou art the richest, and I shall marry thee.”
== FAIRY OINTMENT ==
Dame Goody was a nurse that looked after sick people, and minded babies. One night she was woke up at midnight, and when she went downstairs, she saw a strange squinny-eyed, little ugly old fellow, who asked her to come to his wife who was too ill to mind her baby. Dame Goody didn't like the look of the old fellow, but business is business; so she popped on her things, and went down to him. And when she got down to him, he whisked her up on to a large coal-black horse with fiery eyes, that stood at the door; and soon they were going at a rare pace, Dame Goody holding on to the old fellow like grim death.
They rode, and they rode, till at last they stopped before a cottage door. So they got down and went in and found the good woman abed with the children playing about; and the babe, a fine bouncing boy, beside her.
Dame Goody took the babe, which was as fine a baby boy as you'd wish to see. The mother, when she handed the baby to Dame Goody to mind, gave her a box of ointment, and told her to stroke the baby's eyes with it as soon as it opened them. After a while it began to open its eyes. Dame Goody saw that it had squinny eyes just like its father. So she took the box of ointment and stroked its two eyelids with it. But she couldn't help wondering what it was for, as she had never seen such a thing done before. So she looked to see if the others were looking, and, when they were not noticing she stroked her own right eyelid with the ointment.
No sooner had she done so, than everything seemed changed about her. The cottage became elegantly furnished. The mother in the bed was a beautiful lady, dressed up in white silk. The little baby was still more beautiful than before, and its clothes were made of a sort of silvery gauze. Its little brothers and sisters around the bed were flat-nosed imps with pointed ears, who made faces at one another, and scratched their polls. Sometimes they would pull the sick lady's ears with their long and hairy paws. In fact, they were up to all kinds of mischief; and Dame Goody knew that she had got into a house of pixies. But she said nothing to nobody, and as soon as the lady was well enough to mind the baby, she asked the old fellow to take her back home. So he came round to the door with the coal-black horse with eyes of fire, and off they went as fast as before, or perhaps a little faster, till they came to Dame Goody's cottage, where the squinny-eyed old fellow lifted her down and left her, thanking her civilly enough, and paying her more than she had ever been paid before for such service.
Now next day happened to be market-day, and as Dame Goody had been away from home, she wanted many things in the house, and trudged off to get them at the market. As she was buying the things she wanted, who should she see but the squinny-eyed old fellow who had taken her on the coal-black horse. And what do you think he was doing? Why he went about from stall to stall taking up things from each, here some fruit, and there some eggs, and so on; and no one seemed to take any notice.
Now Dame Goody did not think it her business to interfere, but she thought she ought not to let so good a customer pass without speaking. So she ups to him and bobs a curtsey and said: “Gooden, sir, I hopes as how your good lady and the little one are as well as——”
But she couldn't finish what she was a-saying, for the funny old fellow started back in surprise, and he says to her, says he: “What! do you see me today?”
“See you,” says she, “why, of course I do, as plain as the sun in the skies, and what's more,” says she, “I see you are busy too, into the bargain.”
“Ah, you see too much,” said he; “now, pray, with which eye do you see all this?”
“With the right eye to be sure,” said she, as proud as can be to find him out.
“The ointment! The ointment!” cried the old pixy thief. “Take that for meddling with what don't concern you: you shall see me no more.” And with that he struck her on her right eye, and she couldn't see him any more; and, what was worse, she was blind on the right side from that hour till the day of her death.
== THE WELL OF THE WORLD'S END ==
Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, though it wasn't in my time, nor in your time, nor any one else's time, there was a girl whose mother had died, and her father had married again. And her stepmother hated her because she was more beautiful than herself, and she was very cruel to her. She used to make her do all the servant's work, and never let her have any peace. At last, one day, the stepmother thought to get rid of her altogether; so she handed her a sieve and said to her: “Go, fill it at the Well of the World's End and bring it home to me full, or woe betide you.” For she thought she would never be able to find the Well of the World's End, and, if she did, how could she bring home a sieve full of water?
Well, the girl started off, and asked every one she met to tell her where was the Well of the World's End. But nobody knew, and she didn't know what to do, when a queer little old woman, all bent double, told her where it was, and how she could get to it. So she did what the old woman told her, and at last arrived at the Well of the World's End. But when she dipped the sieve in the cold, cold water, it all ran out again. She tried and she tried again, but every time it was the same; and at last she sate down and cried as if her heart would break.
Suddenly she heard a croaking voice, and she looked up and saw a great frog with goggle eyes looking at her and speaking to her.
“What's the matter, dearie?” it said.
“Oh, dear, oh dear,” she said, “my stepmother has sent me all this long way to fill this sieve with water from the Well of the World's End, and I can't fill it no how at all.”
“Well,” said the frog, “if you promise me to do whatever I bid you for a whole night long, I'll tell you how to fill it.”
So the girl agreed, and then the frog said:
 “Stop it with moss and daub it with clay,
 And then it will carry the water away;”
 
and then it gave a hop, skip and jump, and went flop into the Well of the World's End.
So the girl looked about for some moss, and lined the bottom of the sieve with it, and over that she put some clay, and then she dipped it once again into the Well of the World's End; and this time, the water didn't run out, and she turned to go away.
Just then the frog popped up its head out of the Well of the World's End, and said: “Remember your promise.”
“All right,” said the girl; for thought she, “what harm can a frog do me?”
So she went back to her stepmother, and brought the sieve full of water from the Well of the World's End. The stepmother was fine and angry, but she said nothing at all.
That very evening they heard something tap tapping at the door low down, and a voice cried out:
 “Open the door, my hinny, my heart,
 Open the door, my own darling;
 Mind you the words that you and I spoke,
 Down in the meadow, at the World's End Well.”
 
“Whatever can that be?” cried out the stepmother, and the girl had to tell her all about it, and what she had promised the frog.
“Girls must keep their promises,” said the stepmother. “Go and open the door this instant.” For she was glad the girl would have to obey a nasty frog.
So the girl went and opened the door, and there was the frog from the Well of the World's End. And it hopped, and it skipped, and it jumped, till it reached the girl, and then it said:
 “Lift me to your knee, my hinny, my heart;
 Lift me to your knee, my own darling;
 Remember the words you and I spoke,
 Down in the meadow by the World's End Well.”
 
But the girl didn't like to, till her stepmother said “Lift it up this instant, you hussy! Girls must keep their promises!”
So at last she lifted the frog up on to her lap, and it lay there for a time, till at last it said:
 “Give me some supper, my hinny, my heart,
 Give me some supper, my darling;
 Remember the words you and I spake,
 In the meadow, by the Well of the World's End.”
 
Well, she didn't mind doing that, so she got it a bowl of milk and bread, and fed it well. And when the frog, had finished, it said:
 “Go with me to bed, my hinny, my heart,
 Go with me to bed, my own darling;
 Mind you the words you spake to me,
 Down by the cold well, so weary.”
 
But that the girl wouldn't do, till her stepmother said: “Do what you promised, girl; girls must keep their promises. Do what you're bid, or out you go, you and your froggie.”
So the girl took the frog with her to bed, and kept it as far away from her as she could. Well, just as the day was beginning to break what should the frog say but:
 “Chop off my head, my hinny, my heart,
 Chop off my head, my own darling;
 Remember the promise you made to me,
 Down by the cold well so weary.”
 
At first the girl wouldn't, for she thought of what the frog had done for her at the Well of the World's End. But when the frog said the words over again, she went and took an axe and chopped off its head, and lo! and behold, there stood before her a handsome young prince, who told her that he had been enchanted by a wicked magician, and he could never be unspelled till some girl would do his bidding for a whole night, and chop off his head at the end of it.
The stepmother was that surprised when she found the young prince instead of the nasty frog, and she wasn't best pleased, you may be sure, when the prince told her that he was going to marry her stepdaughter because she had unspelled him. So they were married and went away to live in the castle of the king, his father, and all the stepmother had to console her was, that it was all through her that her stepdaughter was married to a prince.
---- 
== MASTER OF ALL MASTERS ==
A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant. At last a funny-looking old gentleman engaged her, and took her home to his house. When she got there, he told her that he had something to teach her, for that in his house he had his own names for things.
He said to her: “What will you call me?”
“Master or mister, or whatever you please sir,” says she.
He said: “You must call me 'master of all masters.' And what would you call this?” pointing to his bed.
“Bed or couch, or whatever you please, sir.”
“No, that's my 'barnacle.' And what do you call these?” said he pointing to his pantaloons.
“Breeches or trousers, or whatever you please, sir.”
“You must call them 'squibs and crackers.' And what would you call her?” pointing to the cat.
“Cat or kit, or whatever you please, sir.”
“You must call her 'white-faced simminy.' And this now,” showing the fire, “what would you call this?”
“Fire or flame, or whatever you please, sir.”
“You must call it 'hot cockalorum,' and what this?” he went on, pointing to the water.
“Water or wet, or whatever you please, sir.”
“No, 'pondalorum' is its name. And what do you call all this?” asked he, as he pointed to the house.
“House or cottage, or whatever you please, sir.”
“You must call it 'high topper mountain.'”
That very night the servant woke her master up in a fright and said: “Master of all masters, get out of your barnacle and put on your squibs and crackers. For white-faced simminy has got a spark of hot cockalorum on its tail, and unless you get some pondalorum high topper mountain will be all on hot cockalorum.” .... That's all.
---- 
== THE THREE HEADS OF THE WELL ==
Long before Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, there reigned in the eastern part of England a king who kept his Court at Colchester. In the midst of all his glory, his queen died, leaving behind her an only daughter, about fifteen years of age, who for her beauty and kindness was the wonder of all that knew her. But the king hearing of a lady who had likewise an only daughter, had a mind to marry her for the sake of her riches, though she was old, ugly, hook-nosed, and hump-backed. Her daughter was a yellow dowdy, full of envy and ill-nature; and, in short, was much of the same mould as her mother. But in a few weeks the king, attended by the nobility and gentry, brought his deformed bride to the palace, where the marriage rites were performed. They had not been long in the Court before they set the king against his own beautiful daughter by false reports. The young princess having lost her father's love, grew weary of the Court, and one day, meeting with her father in the garden, she begged him, with tears in her eyes, to let her go and seek her fortune; to which the king consented, and ordered her mother-in-law to give her what she pleased. She went to the queen, who gave her a canvas bag of brown bread and hard cheese, with a bottle of beer; though this was but a pitiful dowry for a king's daughter. She took it, with thanks, and proceeded on her journey, passing through groves, woods, and valleys, till at length she saw an old man sitting on a stone at the mouth of a cave, who said: “Good morrow, fair maiden, whither away so fast?”
“Aged father,” says she, “I am going to seek my fortune.”
“What have you got in your bag and bottle?”
“In my bag I have got bread and cheese, and in my bottle good small beer. Would you like to have some?”
“Yes,” said he, “with all my heart.”
With that the lady pulled out her provisions, and bade him eat and welcome. He did so, and gave her many thanks, and said: “There is a thick thorny hedge before you, which you cannot get through, but take this wand in your hand, strike it three times, and say, 'Pray, hedge, let me come through,' and it will open immediately; then, a little further, you will find a well; sit down on the brink of it, and there will come up three golden heads, which will speak; and whatever they require, that do.” Promising she would, she took her leave of him. Coming to the hedge and using the old man's wand, it divided, and let her through; then, coming to the well, she had no sooner sat down than a golden head came up singing:
 “Wash me, and comb me,
 And lay me down softly.
 And lay me on a bank to dry,
 That I may look pretty,
 When somebody passes by.”
 
“Yes,” said she, and taking it in her lap combed it with a silver comb, and then placed it upon a primrose bank. Then up came a second and a third head, saying the same as the former. So she did the same for them, and then, pulling out her provisions, sat down to eat her dinner.
Then said the heads one to another: “What shall we weird for this damsel who has used us so kindly?”
The first said: “I weird her to be so beautiful that she shall charm the most powerful prince in the world.”
The second said: “I weird her such a sweet voice as shall far exceed the nightingale.”
The third said: “My gift shall be none of the least, as she is a king's daughter, I'll weird her so fortunate that she shall become queen to the greatest prince that reigns.”
She then let them down into the well again, and so went on her journey. She had not travelled long before she saw a king hunting in the park with his nobles. She would have avoided him, but the king, having caught a sight of her, approached, and what with her beauty and sweet voice, fell desperately in love with her, and soon induced her to marry him.
This king finding that she was the King of Colchester's daughter, ordered some chariots to be got ready, that he might pay the king, his father-in-law, a visit. The chariot in which the king and queen rode was adorned with rich gems of gold. The king, her father, was at first astonished that his daughter had been so fortunate, till the young king let him know of all that had happened. Great was the joy at Court amongst all, with the exception of the queen and her club-footed daughter, who were ready to burst with envy. The rejoicings, with feasting and dancing, continued many days. Then at length they returned home with the dowry her father gave her.
The hump-backed princess, perceiving that her sister had been so lucky in seeking her fortune, wanted to do the same; so she told her mother, and all preparations were made, and she was furnished with rich dresses, and with sugar, almonds, and sweetmeats, in great quantities, and a large bottle of Malaga sack. With these she went the same road as her sister; and coming near the cave, the old man said: “Young woman, whither so fast?”
“What's that to you?” said she.
“Then,” said he, “what have you in your bag and bottle?”
She answered: “Good things, which you shall not be troubled with.”
“Won't you give me some?” said he.
“No, not a bit, nor a drop, unless it would choke you.”
The old man frowned, saying: “Evil fortune attend ye!”
Going on, she came to the hedge, through which she espied a gap, and thought to pass through it; but the hedge closed, and the, thorns ran into her flesh, so that it was with great difficulty that she got through. Being now all over blood, she searched for water to wash herself, and, looking round, she saw the well. She sat down on the brink of it, and one of the heads came up, saying: “Wash me, comb me, and lay me down softly,” as before, but she banged it with her bottle, saying, “Take that for your washing.” So the second and third heads came up, and met with no better treatment than the first. Whereupon the heads consulted among themselves what evils to plague her with for such usage.
The first said: “Let her be struck with leprosy in her face.”
The second: “Let her voice be as harsh as a corn-crake's.”
The third said: “Let her have for husband but a poor country cobbler.”
Well, she goes on till she came to a town, and it being market-day, the people looked at her, and, seeing such a mangy face, and hearing such a squeaky voice, all fled but a poor country cobbler. Now he not long before had mended the shoes of an old hermit, who, having no money gave him a box of ointment for the cure of the leprosy, and a bottle of spirits for a harsh voice. So the cobbler having a mind to do an act of charity, was induced to go up to her and ask her who she was.
“I am,” said she, “the King of Colchester's daughter-in-law.”
“Well,” said the cobbler, “if I restore you to your natural complexion, and make a sound cure both in face and voice, will you in reward take me for a husband?”
“Yes, friend,” replied she, “with all my heart!”
With this the cobbler applied the remedies, and they made her well in a few weeks; after which they were married, and so set forward for the Court at Colchester. When the queen found that her daughter had married nothing but a poor cobbler, she hanged herself in wrath. The death of the queen so pleased the king, who was glad to get rid of her so soon, that he gave the cobbler a hundred pounds to quit the Court with his lady, and take to a remote part of the kingdom, where he lived many years mending shoes, his wife spinning the thread for him.
 BLUEBEARD
There was a man who had fine houses, both in town and country, a deal of silver and gold plate, embroidered furniture, and coaches gilded all over with gold. But this man had the misfortune to have a blue beard, which made him so frightfully ugly, that all the women and girls ran away from him.
One of his neighbours, a lady of quality, had two daughters who were perfect beauties. He desired of her one of them in marriage, leaving to her the choice which of the two she would bestow upon him. They would neither of them have him, and each made the other welcome of him, being not able to bear the thought of marrying a man who had a blue beard. And what besides gave them disgust and aversion, was his having already been married to several wives, and nobody ever knew what became of them.
Blue Beard, to engage their affection, took them, with the lady their mother, and three or four ladies of their acquaintance, with other young people of the neighbourhood, to one of his country seats, where they stayed a whole week. There was nothing then to be seen but parties of pleasure, hunting, fishing, dancing, mirth and feasting. Nobody went to bed, but all passed the night in playing tricks upon each other. In short, every thing succeeded so well, that the youngest daughter began to think the master of the house not to have a beard so very blue, and that he was a mighty civil gentleman. As soon as they returned home, the marriage was concluded.
About a month afterwards Blue Beard told his wife that he was obliged to take a country journey for six weeks at least, about affairs of very great consequence, desiring her to divert herself in his absence, to send for her friends and acquaintances, to carry them into the country, if she pleased, and to make good cheer wherever she was.
"Here," said he, "are the keys of the two great wardrobes, wherein I have my best furniture; these are of my silver and gold plate, which is not every day in use; these open my strong boxes, which hold my money, both gold and silver; these my caskets of jewels; and this is the master-key to all my apartments. But for this little one here, it is the key of the closet at the end of the great gallery on the ground floor. Open them all; go into all and every one of them; except that little closet which I forbid you, and forbid it in such a manner that, if you happen to open it, there will be no bounds to my just anger and resentment."
She promised to observe, very exactly, whatever he had ordered; when he, after having embraced her, got into his coach and proceeded on his journey.
Her neighbours and good friends did not stay to be sent for by the newmarried lady, so great was their impatience to see all the rich furniture of her house, not daring to come while her husband was there, because of his blue beard which frightened them. They ran thro' all the rooms, closets, and wardrobes, which were all so rich and fine, that they seemed to surpass one another.
After that, they went up into the two great rooms, where were the best and richest furniture; they could not sufficiently admire the number and beauty of the tapestry, beds, couches, cabinets, stands, tables, and looking-glasses in which you might see yourself from head to foot; some of them were framed with glass, others with silver, plain and gilded, the finest and most magnificent which were ever seen. They ceased not to extol and envy the happiness of their friend, who in the mean time no way diverted herself in looking upon all these rich things, because of the impatience she had to go and open the closet of the ground floor. She was so much pressed by her curiosity, that, without considering that it was very uncivil to leave her company, she went down a little back-stair-case, and with such excessive haste, that she had twice or thrice like to have broken her neck.
Being come to the closet door, she made a stop for some time, thinking upon her husband's orders, and considering what unhappiness might attend her if she was disobedient; but the temptation was so strong she could not overcome it. She took then the little key, and opened it trembling; but could not at first see any thing plainly, because the windows were shut. After some moments she began to perceive that the floor was all covered over with clotted blood, in which were reflected the bodies of several dead women ranged against the walls: these were all the wives whom Blue Beard had married and murdered one after another. She was like to have died for fear, and the key, which she pulled out of the lock, fell out of her hand.
After having somewhat recovered her senses, she took up the key, locked the door, and went up stairs into her chamber to recover herself; but she could not, so much was she frightened. Having observed that the key of the closet was stained with blood, she tried two or three times to wipe it off, but the blood would not come off; in vain did she wash it, and even rub it with soap and sand, the blood still remained, for the key was a Fairy, and she could never make it quite clean; when the blood was gone off from one side, it came again on the other.
Blue Beard returned from his journey the same evening, and said, he had received letters upon the road, informing him that the affair he went about was ended to his advantage. His wife did all she could to convince him she was extremely glad of his speedy return. Next morning he asked her for the keys, which she gave him, but with such a trembling hand, that he easily guessed what had happened.
"What," said he, "is not the key of my closet among the rest?"
"I must certainly," answered she, "have left it above upon the table."
"Fail not," said Blue Beard, "to bring it me presently."
After putting him off several times, she was forced tobring him the key. Blue Beard, having very attentively considered it, said to his wife:
"How comes this blood upon the key?"
"I do not know," cried the poor woman, paler than death.
"You do not know," replied Blue Beard; "I very well know, you were resolved to go into the closet, were you not? Mighty well, Madam; you shall go in, and take your place among the ladies you saw there."
Upon this she threw herself at her husband's feet, and begged his pardon with all the signs of a true repentance for her disobedience. She would have melted a rock, so beautiful and sorrowful was she; but Blue Beard had a heart harder than any rock.
"You must die, Madam," said he, "and that presently."
"Since I must die," answered she, looking upon him with her eyes all bathed in tears, "give me some little time to say my prayers."
"I give you," replied Blue Beard, "half a quarter of an hour, but not one moment more."
When she was alone, she called out to her sister, and said to her:
"Sister Anne" (for that was her name), "go up I beg you, upon the top of the tower, and look if my brothers are not coming; they promised me that they would come to-day, and if you see them, give them a sign to make haste." Her sister Anne went up upon the top of the tower, and the poor afflicted wife cried out from time to time, "Anne, sister Anne, do you see any one coming?"
And sister Anne said:
"I see nothing but the sun, which makes a dust, and the grass growing green."
In the mean while Blue Beard, holding a great scimitar in his hand, cried out as loud as he could bawl to his wife:
"Come down instantly, or I shall come up to you."
"One moment longer, if you please," said his wife, and then she cried out very softly:
"Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see any body coming?"
And sister Anne answered:
"I see nothing but the sun, which makes a dust, and the grass growing green."
"Come down quickly," cried Blue Beard, "or I will come up to you."
"I am coming," answered his wife; and then she cried:
"Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see any one coming?"
"I see," replied sister Anne, "a great dust that comes this way."
"Are they my brothers?"
"Alas! no, my dear sister, I see a flock of sheep."
"Will you not come down?" cried Blue Beard.
"One moment longer," said his wife, and then she cried out:
"Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see nobody coming?"
"I see," said she, "two horsemen coming, but they are yet a great way off."
"God be praised," she cried presently, "they are my brothers; I am beckoning to them, as well as I can, for them to make haste."
Then Blue Beard bawled out so loud, that he made the whole house tremble. The distressed wife came down, and threw herself at his feet, all in tears, with her hair about her shoulders.
"Nought will avail," said Blue Beard, "you must die"; then, taking hold of her hair with one hand, and lifting up his scimitar with the other, he was going to take off her head.
The poor lady turning about to him, and looking at him with dying eyes, desired him to afford her one little moment to recollect herself.
"No, no," said he, "recommend thyself to God," and was just ready to strike.
At this very instant there was such a loud knocking at the gate, that Blue Beard made a sudden stop. The gate was opened, and presently entered two horsemen, who drawing their swords, ran directly to Blue Beard. He knew them to be his wife's brothers, one a dragoon, the other a musqueteer; so that he ran away immediately to save himself; but the two brothers pursued so close, that they overtook him before he could get to the steps of the porch, when they ran their swords thro' his body and left him dead. The poor wife was almost as dead as her husband, and had not strength enough to rise and welcome her brothers.
Blue Beard had no heirs, and so his wife became mistress of all his estate. She made use of one part of it to marry her sister Anne to a young gentleman who had loved her a long while; another part to buy captains' commissions for her brothers; and the rest to marry herself to a very worthy gentleman, who made her forget the ill time she had passed with Blue Beard.
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY IN THE WOODS
There were formerly a King and a Queen, who were so sorry that they had no children, so sorry that it cannot be expressed. They went to all the waters in the world; vows, pilgrimages, all ways were tried and all to no purpose. At last, however, the Queen proved with child, and was brought to bed of a daughter. There was a very fine christening; and the Princess had for her godmothers all the Fairies they could find in the whole kingdom (they found seven), that every one of them might give her a gift, as was the custom of Fairies in those days, and that by this means the Princess might have all the perfections imaginable. After the ceremonies of the christening were over, all the company returned to the King's palace, where was prepared a great feast for the Fairies. There was placed before every one of them a magnificent cover with a case of massive gold, wherein were a spoon, knife and fork, all of pure gold set with diamonds and rubies. But as they were all sitting down at table, they saw come into the hall a very old Fairy whom they had not invited, because it was above fifty years since she had been out of a certain tower, and she was believed to be either dead or inchanted. The King ordered her a cover, but could not furnish her with a case of gold as the others, because they had seven only made for the seven Fairies. The old Fairy fancied she was slighted, and muttered some threat between her teeth. One of the young Fairies, who sat by her, overheard how she grumbled; and judging that she might give the little Princess some unlucky gift, went, as soon as they rose from the table, and hid herself behind the hangings, that she might speak last, and repair, as much as possible she could, the evil which the old Fairy might intend.
In the mean while all the Fairies began to give their gifts to the Princess. The youngest gave her for gift, that she should be the most beautiful person in the world; the next, that she should have the wit of an angel; the third, that she should have a wonderful grace in every thing she did; the fourth, that she should dance perfectly well; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale; and the sixth, that she should play upon all kinds of music to the utmost perfection.
The old Fairy's turn coming next, with a head shaking more with spite than age, she said, that the Princess should have her hand pierced with a spindle, and die of the wound. This terrible gift made the whole company tremble, and every body fell a-crying.
At this very instant the young Fairy came out from behind the hangings, and spake these words aloud:
"Be reassured, O King and Queen; your daughter shall not die of this disaster: it is true, I have no power to undo intirely what my elder has done. The Princess shall indeed pierce her hand with a spindle; but instead of dying, she shall only fall into a profound sleep, which shall last a hundred years; at the expiration of which a king's son shall come and awake her."
The King, to avoid the misfortune foretold by the old Fairy, caused immediately proclamations to be made, whereby every-body was forbidden, on pain of death, to spin with a distaff and spindle or to have so much as any spindle in their houses.
About fifteen or sixteen years after, the King and Queen being gone to one of their houses of pleasure, the young Princess happened one day to divert herself running up and down the palace; when going up from one apartment to another, she came into a little room on the top of a tower, where a good old woman, alone, was spinning with her spindle. This good woman had never heard of the King's proclamation against spindles.
"What are you doing there, Goody?" said the Princess.
"I am spinning, my pretty child," said the old woman, who did not know who she was.
"Ha!" said the Princess, "this is very pretty; how do you do it? Give it to me, that I may see if I can do so." She had no sooner taken the spindle into her hand, than, whether being very hasty at it, somewhat unhandy, or that the decree of the Fairy had so ordained it, it ran into her hand, and she fell down in a swoon.
The good old woman not knowing very well what to do in this affair, cried out for help. People came in from every quarter in great numbers; they threw water upon the Princess's face, unlaced her, struck her on the palms of her hands, and rubbed her temples with Hungary-water; but nothing would bring her to herself.
And now the King, who came up at the noise, bethought himself of the prediction of the Fairies, and judging very well that this must necessarily come to pass, since the Fairies had said it, caused the Princess to be carried into the finest apartment in his palace, and to be laid upon a bed all embroidered with gold and silver. One would have taken her for an angel, she was so very beautiful; for her swooning away had not diminished one bit of her complexion; her cheeks were carnation, and her lips like coral; indeed her eyes were shut, but she was heard to breathe softly, which satisfied those about her that she was not dead. The King commanded that they should not disturb her, but let her sleep quietly till her hour of awakening was come.
The good Fairy, who had saved her life by condemning her to sleep a hundred years, was in the kingdom of Matakin, twelve thousand leagues off, when this accident befell the Princess; but she was instantly informed of it by a little dwarf, who had boots of seven leagues, that is, boots with which he could tread over seven leagues of ground at one stride. The Fairy came away immediately, and she arrived, about an hour after, in a fiery chariot, drawn by dragons. The King handed her out of the chariot, and she approved every thing he had done; but, as she had a very great foresight, she thought, when the Princess should awake, she might not know what to do with herself, being all alone in this old palace; and this was what she did: She touched with her wand every thing in the palace (except the King and the Queen), governesses, maids of honour, ladies of the bedchamber, gentlemen, officers, stewards, cooks, under-cooks, scullions, guards, with their beef-eaters, pages, footmen; she likewise touched all the horses which were in the stables, as well as their grooms, the great dogs in the outward court, and pretty little Mopsey too, the Princess's little spaniel-bitch, which lay by her on the bed.
Immediately upon her touching them, they all fell asleep, that they might not awake before their mistress, and that they might be ready to wait upon her when she wanted them. The very spits at the fire, as full as they could hold of partridges and pheasants, did fall asleep, and the fire likewise. All this was done in a moment. Fairies are not long in doing their business.
And now the King and the Queen, having kissed their dear child without waking her, went out of the palace, and put forth a proclamation, that nobody should dare to come near it. This, however, was not necessary; for, in a quarter of an hour's time, there grew up, all round about the park, such a vast number of trees, great and small, bushes and brambles, twining one within another, that neither man nor beast could pass thro'; so that nothing could be seen but the very top of the towers of the palace; and that too, not unless it was a good way off. Nobody doubted but the Fairy gave herein a sample of her art, that the Princess, while she continued sleeping, might have nothing to fear from any curious people.
When a hundred years were gone and past, the son of the King then reigning, and who was of another family from that of the sleeping Princess, being gone a-hunting on that side of the country, asked, what were those towers which he saw in the middle of a great thick wood? Every one answered according as they had heard; some said that it was a ruinous old castle, haunted by spirits; others, that all the sorcerers and witches of the country kept there their sabbath, or nights meeting. The common opinion was that an Ogre lived there, and that he carried thither all the little children he could catch, that he might eat them up at his leisure, without any-body's being able to follow him, as having himself, only, the power to pass thro' the wood. The Prince was at a stand, not knowing what to believe, when a very aged countryman spake to him thus: "May it please your Royal Highness, it is now above fifty years since I heard my father, who had heard my grandfather, say that there then was in this castle, a Princess, the most beautiful was ever seen; that she must sleep there a hundred years, and should be awaked by a king's son; for whom she was reserved." The young Prince was all on fire at these words, believing, without a moment's doubt, that he could put an end to this rare adventure; and pushed on by love and honour resolved that moment to look into it.
Scarce had he advanced towards the wood, when all the great trees, the bushes and brambles, gave way of themselves to let him pass thro'; he walked up to the castle which he saw at the end of a large avenue which he went into; and what a little surprised him was, that he saw none of his people could follow him, because the trees closed again, as soon as he had pass'd thro' them. However, he did not cease from continuing his way; a young and amorous Prince is always valiant. He came into a spacious outward court, where everything he saw might have frozen up the most fearless person with horror. There reigned over all a most frightful silence; the image of death everywhere shewed itself, and there was nothing to be seen but stretched out bodies of men and animals, all seeming to be dead. He, however, very well knew, by the ruby faces and pimpled noses of the beef-eaters, that they were only asleep; and their goblets, wherein still remained some drops of wine, shewed plainly, that they fell asleep in their cups.
He then crossed a court paved with marble, went up the stairs, and came into the guard-chamber, where the guards were standing in their ranks, with their muskets upon their shoulders, and snoring as loud as they could. After that he went through several rooms full of gentlemen and ladies, all asleep, some standing, others sitting. At last he came into a chamber all gilded with gold, where he saw, upon a bed, the curtains of which were all open, the finest sight was ever beheld: a Princess, who appeared to be about fifteen or sixteen years of age, and whose bright, and in a manner resplendent beauty, had somewhat in it divine. He approached with trembling and admiration, and fell down before her upon his knees. And now, as the inchantment was at an end, the Princess awaked, and looking on him with eyes more tender than the first view might seem to admit of: "Is it you, my Prince," said she to him, "you have tarried long."
The Prince, charmed with these words, and much more with the manner in which they were spoken, knew not how to shew his joy and gratitude; he assured her, that he loved her better than he did himself; his discourse was not well connected, but it pleased her all the more; little eloquence, a great deal of love. He was more at a loss than she, and we need not wonder at it; she had time to think on what to say to him; for it is very probable (though history mentions nothing of it) that the good Fairy, during so long a sleep, had entertained her with pleasant dreams. In short, when they talked four hours together, they said not half what they had to say.
In the mean while, all the palace awaked; every one thought upon their particular business; and as all of them were not in love, they were ready to die for hunger; the chief lady of honour, being as sharp set as other folks, grew very impatient, and told the Princess aloud, That supper was served up. The Prince helped the Princess to rise, she was entirely dressed, and very magnificently, but his Royal Highness took care not to tell her that she was dressed like his great grand-mother, and had a point-band peeping over a high collar; she looked not a bit the less beautiful and charming for all that.
They went into the great hall of looking-glasses, where they supped, and were served by the Princess's officers; the violins and hautboys played old tunes, but very excellent, tho' it was now above a hundred years since they had been played; and after supper, without losing any time, the lord almoner married them in the chapel of the castle, and the chief lady of honour drew the curtains. They had but very little sleep; the Princess had no occasion, and the Prince left her next morning to return into the city, where his father must needs have been anxious on his account. The Prince told him that he lost his way in the forest, as he was hunting, and that he had lain at the cottage of a collier, who gave him cheese and brown bread.
The King his father, who was of an easy disposition, believed him; but his mother could not be persuaded this was true; and seeing that he went almost every day a-hunting, and that he always had some excuse ready when he had laid out three or four nights together, she no longer doubted he had some little amour, for he lived with the Princess above two whole years, and had by her two children, the eldest of which, who was a daughter, was named Aurora, and the youngest, who was a son, they called Day, because he was even handsomer and more beautiful than his sister.
The Queen said more than once to her son, in order to bring him to speak freely to her, that a young man must e'en take his pleasure; but he never dared to trust her with his secret; he feared her, tho' he loved her; for she was of the race of the Ogres, and the King would never have married her, had it not been for her vast riches; it was even whispered about the court, that she had Ogreish inclinations, and that, whenever she saw little children passing by, she had all the difficulty in the world to refrain from falling upon them. And so the Prince would never tell her one word.
But when the King was dead, which happened about two years afterwards; and he saw himself lord and master, he openly declared his marriage; and he went in great ceremony to fetch his Queen from the castle. They made a magnificent entry into the capital city, she riding between her two children.
Some time after, the King went to make war with the Emperor Cantalabutte, his neighbour. He left the government of the kingdom to the Queen his mother, and earnestly recommended to her care his wife and children. He was like to be at war all the summer, and as soon as he departed, the Queen-mother sent her daughter-in-law and her children to a country-house among the woods, that she might with the more ease gratify her horrible longing. ome few days afterwards she went thither herself, and said to her clerk of the kitchen:
"I have a mind to eat little Aurora for my dinner to morrow."
"Ah! Madam," cried the clerk of the kitchen.
"I will have it so," replied the Queen (and this she spake in the tone of an Ogress, who had a strong desire to eat fresh meat), "and will eat her with a Sauce Robert."
The poor man knowing very well that he must not play tricks with Ogresses, took his great knife and went up into little Aurora's chamber. She was then four years old, and came up to him jumping and laughing, to take him about the neck, and ask him for some sugar-candy. Upon which he began to weep, the great knife fell out of his hand, and he went into the back-yard, and killed a little lamb, and dressed it with such good sauce, that his mistress assured him she had never eaten anything so good in her life. He had at the same time taken up little Aurora, and carried her to his wife, to conceal her in the lodging he had at the end of the court yard.
About eight days afterwards, the wicked Queen said to the clerk of the kitchen:
"I will sup upon little Day."
He answered not a word, being resolved to cheat her, as he had done before. He went to find out little Day, and saw him with a little foil in his hand, with which he was fencing with a great monkey; the child being then only three years of age. He took him up in his arms, and carried him to his wife, that she might conceal him in her chamber along with his sister, and in the room of little Day cooked up a young kid very tender, which the Ogress found to be wonderfully good.
This was hitherto all mighty well: but one evening this wicked Queen said to her clerk of the kitchen:
"I will eat the Queen with the same sauce I had with her children."
It was now that the poor clerk of the kitchen despaired of being able to deceive her. The young Queen was turned of twenty, not reckoning the hundred years she had been asleep: her skin was somewhat tough, tho' very fair and white; and how to find in the yard a beast so firm, was what puzzled him. He took then a resolution, that he might save his own life, to cut the Queen's throat; and going up into her chamber, with intent to do it at once, he put himself into as great a fury as he could possibly, and came into the young Queen's room with his dagger in his hand. He would not, however, surprise her, but told her, with a great deal of respect, the orders he had received from the Queen-mother.
"Do it, do it," said she stretching out her neck, "execute your orders, and then I shall go and see my children, my poor children, whom I so much and so tenderly loved," for she thought them dead ever since they had been taken away without her knowledge.
"No, no, Madam," cried the poor clerk of the kitchen, all in tears, "you shall not die, and yet you shall see your children again; but it must be in my lodgings, where I have concealed them, and I shall deceive the Queen once more, by giving her in your stead a young hind."
Upon this he forthwith conducted her to his chamber; where leaving her to embrace her children, and cry along with them, he went and dressed a hind, which the Queen had for her supper, and devoured it with the same appetite, as if it had been the young Queen. Exceedingly was she delighted with her cruelty, and she had invented a story to tell the King, at his return, how ravenous wolves had eaten up the Queen his wife, and her two children.
One evening, as she was, according to her custom, rambling round about the courts and yards of the palace, to see if she could smell any fresh meat, she heard, in a ground-room little Day crying, for his mamma was going to whip him, because he had been naughty; and she heard, at the same time, little Aurora begging pardon for her brother.
The Ogress presently knew the voice of the Queen and her children, and being quite mad that she had been thus deceived, she commanded next morning, by break of day (with a most horrible voice, which made every body tremble) that they should bring into the middle of the great court a large tub, which she caused to be filled with toads, vipers, snakes, and all sorts of serpents, in order to have thrown into it the Queen and her children, the clerk of the kitchen, his wife and maid; all whom she had given orders should be brought thither with their hands tied behind them.
They were brought out accordingly, and the executioners were just going to throw them into the tub, when the King (who was not so soon expected) entered the court on horse-back (for he came post) and asked, with the utmost astonishment, what was the meaning of that horrible spectacle? No one dared to tell him; when the Ogress, all inraged to see what had happened, threw herself head-foremost into the tub, and was instantly devoured by the ugly creatures she had ordered to be thrown into it for others. The King could not but be very sorry, for she was his mother; but he soon comforted himself with his beautiful wife, and his pretty children.
THE MASTER CAT; OR, PUSS-IN-BOOTS
there was a miller, who left no more estate to the three sons he had, than his Mill, his Ass, and his Cat. The partition was soon made. Neither the scrivener nor attorney were sent for. They would soon have eaten up all the poor patrimony. The eldest had the Mill, the second the Ass, and the youngest nothing but the Cat.
The poor young fellow was quite comfortless at having so poor a lot.
"My brothers," said he, "may get their living handsomely enough, by joining their stocks together; but for my part, when I have eaten up my Cat, and made me a muff of his skin, I must die with hunger."
The Cat, who heard all this, but made as if he did not, said to him with a grave and serious air:
"Do not thus afflict yourself, my good master; you have only to give me a bag, and get a pair of boots made for me, that I may scamper thro' the dirt and the brambles, and you shall see that you have not so bad a portion of me as you imagine."
Tho' the Cat's master did not build very much upon what he said, he had however often seen him play a great many cunning tricks to catch rats and mice; as when he used to hang by the heels, or hide himself in the meal, and make as if he were dead; so that he did not altogether despair of his affording him some help in his miserable condition.
When the Cat had what he asked for, he booted himself very gallantly; and putting his bag about his neck, he held the strings of it in his two fore paws, and went into a warren where was great abundance of rabbits. He put bran and sow-thistle into his bag, and stretching himself out at length, as if he had been dead, he waited for some young rabbit, not yet acquainted with the deceits of the world, to come and rummage his bag for what he had put into it.
Scarce was he lain down, but he had what he wanted; a rash and foolish young rabbit jumped into his bag, and Monsieur Puss, immediately drawing close the strings, took and killed him without pity. Proud of his prey, he went with it to the palace, and asked to speak with his Majesty. He was shewed up stairs into the King's apartment, and, making a low reverence, said to him:
"I have brought you, sir, a rabbit of the warren which my noble lord the Marquis of Carabas" (for that was the title which Puss was pleased to give his master) "has commanded me to present to your Majesty from him."
"Tell thy master," said the King, "that I thank him, and that he does me a great deal of pleasure."
Another time he went and hid himself among some standing corn, holding still his bag open; and when a brace of partridges ran into it, he drew the strings, and so caught them both. He went and made a present of these to the King, as he had done before of the rabbit which he took in the warren. The King in like manner received the partridges with great pleasure, and ordered him some money to drink.
The Cat continued for two or three months, thus to carry his Majesty, from time to time, game of his master's taking. One day in particular, when he knew for certain that the King was to take the air, along the river side, with his daughter, the most beautiful Princess in the world, he said to his master:
"If you will follow my advice, your fortune is made; you have nothing else to do, but go and wash yourself in the river, in that part I shall shew you, and leave the rest to me."
The Marquis of Carabas did what the Cat advised him to, without knowing why or wherefore.
While he was washing, the King passed by, and the Cat began to cry out, as loud as he could:
"Help, help, my lord Marquis of Carabas is drowning."
At this noise the King put his head out of his coach-window, and finding it was the Cat who had so often brought him such good game, he commanded his guards to run immediately to the assistance of his lordship the Marquis of Carabas.
While they were drawing the poor Marquis out of the river, the Cat came up to the coach, and told the King that while his master was washing, there came by some rogues, who went off with his clothes, tho' he had cried out "Thieves, thieves," several times, as loud as he could. This cunning Cat had hidden them under a great stone. The King immediately commanded the officers of his wardrobe to run and fetch one of his best suits for the lord Marquis of Carabas.
The King received him with great kindness, and as the fine clothes he had given him extremely set off his good mien (for he was well made, and very handsome in his person), the King's daughter took a secret inclination to him, and the Marquis of Carabas had no sooner cast two or three respectful and somewhat tender glances, but she fell in love with him to distraction. The King would needs have him come into his coach, and take part of the airing. The Cat, quite overjoyed to see his project begin to succeed, marched on before, and meeting with some countrymen, who were mowing a meadow, he said to them:
"Good people, you who are mowing, if you do not tell the King, that the meadow you mow belongs to my lord Marquis of Carabas, you shall be chopped as small as mince-meat."
The King did not fail asking of the mowers, to whom the meadow they were mowing belonged.
"To my lord Marquis of Carabas," answered they all together; for the Cat's threats had made them terribly afraid.
"Truly a fine estate," said the King to the Marquis of Carabas.
"You see, sir," said the Marquis, "this is a meadow which never fails to yield a plentiful harvest every year.
The Master Cat, who still went on before, met with some reapers, and said to them:
"Good people, you who are reaping, if you do not tell the King that all this corn belongs to the Marquis of Carabas, you shall be chopped as small as mince-meat."
The King, who passed by a moment after, would needs know to whom all that corn, which he then saw, did belong. "To my lord Marquis of Carabas," replied the reapers; and the King again congratulated the Marquis.
The Master Cat, who went always before, said the same words to all he met; and the King was astonished at the vast estates of my lord Marquis of Carabas.
Monsieur Puss came at last to a stately castle, the master of which was an Ogre, the richest had ever been known; for all the lands which the King had then gone over belonged to this castle. The Cat, who had taken care to inform himself who this Ogre was, and what he could do, asked to speak with him, saying, he could not pass so near his castle, without having the honour of paying his respects to him.
The Ogre received him as civilly as an Ogre could do, and made him sit down.
"I have been assured," said the Cat, "that you have the gift of being able to change yourself into all sorts of creatures you have a mind to; you can, for example, transform yourself into a lion, or elephant, and the like."
"This is true," answered the Ogre very briskly, "and to convince you, you shall see me now become a lion."
Puss was so sadly terrified at the sight of a lion so near him, that he immediately got into the gutter, not without abundance of trouble and danger, because of his boots, which were ill-suited for walking upon the tiles. A little while after, when Puss saw that the Ogre had resumed his natural form, he came down, and owned he had been very much frightened.
"I have been moreover informed," said the Cat, "but I know not how to believe it, that you have also the power to take on you the shape of the smallest animals; for example, to change yourself into a rat or a mouse; but I must own to you, I take this to be impossible."
"Impossible?" cried the Ogre, "you shall see that presently," and at the same time changed into a mouse, and began to run about the floor.
Puss no sooner perceived this, but he fell upon him, and ate him up.
Meanwhile the King, who saw, as he passed, this fine castle of the Ogre's, had a mind to go into it. Puss, who heard the noise of his Majesty's coach running over the drawbridge, ran out and said to the King:
"Your Majesty is welcome to this castle of my lord Marquis of Carabas."
"What! my lord Marquis?" cried the King, "and does this castle also belong to you? There can be nothing finer than this court, and all the stately buildings which surround it; let us go into it, if you please."
The Marquis gave his hand to the Princess, and followed the King, who went up first. They passed into a spacious hall, where they found a magnificent collation which the Ogre had prepared for his friends, who were that very day to visit him, but dared not to enter knowing the King was there. His Majesty was perfectly charmed with the good qualities of my lord Marquis of Carabas, as was his daughter who was fallen violently in love with him; and seeing the vast estate he possessed, said to him, after having drank five or six glasses:
"It will be owing to yourself only, my lord Marquis, if you are not my son-in-law."
The Marquis making several low bows, accepted the honour which his Majesty conferred upon him, and forthwith, that very same day, married the Princess.
Puss became a great lord, and never ran after mice any more, but only for his diversion.
CINDERILLA; OR, THE GLASS SLIPPER
Once there was a gentleman who married, for his second wife, the proudest and most haughty woman that was ever seen. She had, by a former husband, two daughters of her own humour and they were indeed exactly like her in all things. He had likewise, by another wife, a young daughter, but of unparalleled goodness and sweetness of temper, which she took from her mother, who was the best creature in the world.
No sooner were the ceremonies of the wedding over, but the stepmother began to shew herself in her colours. She could not bear the good qualities of this pretty girl; and the less, because they made her own daughters appear the more odious. She employed her in the meanest work of the house; she scoured the dishes, tables, &c. and rubbed Madam's chamber, and those of Misses, her daughters; she lay up in a sorry garret, upon a wretched straw-bed, while her sisters lay in fine rooms, with floors all inlaid, upon beds of the very newest fashion, and where they had looking-glasses so large, that they might see themselves at their full length, from head to foot.
The poor girl bore all patiently, and dared not tell her father, who would have rattled her off; for his wife governed him intirely. When she had done her work, she used to go into the chimney-corner, and sit down among cinders and ashes, which made her commonly be called Cinder-breech; but the youngest, who was not so rude and uncivil as the eldest, called her Cinderilla. However, Cinderilla, notwithstanding her mean apparel, was a hundred times handsomer than her sisters, tho' they were always dressed very richly.
It happened that the King's son gave a ball, and invited all persons of fashion to it. Our young misses were also invited; for they cut a very grand figure among the quality. They were mightily delighted at this invitation, and wonderfully busy in chusing out such gowns, petticoats, and head-clothes as might best become them. This was a new trouble to Cinderilla; for it was she who ironed her sisters' linen, and plaited their ruffles; they talked all day long of nothing but how they should be dressed. "For my part," said the eldest, "I will wear my red velvet suit, with French trimming." "And I," said the youngest, "shall only have my usual petticoat; but then, to make amends for that, I will put on my gold-flowered manteau, and my diamond stomacher, which is far from being the most ordinary one in the world." They sent for the best tire-woman they could get, to make up their head-dresses, and adjust their double-pinners, and they had their red brushes, and patches from the fashionable maker. 
Cinderilla was likewise called up to them to be consulted in all these matters, for she had excellent notions, and advised them always for the best, nay and offered her service to dress their heads, which they were very willing she should do. As she was doing this, they said to her:
"Cinderilla, would you not be glad to go to the ball?"
"Ah!" said she, "you only jeer at me; it is not for such as I am to go thither."
"Thou art in the right of it," replied they, "it would make the people laugh to see a Cinder-breech at a ball."
Any one but Cinderilla would have dressed their heads awry, but she was very good, and dressed them perfectly well. They were almost two days without eating, so much they were transported with joy; they broke above a dozen of laces in trying to be laced up close, that they might have a fine slender shape, and they were continually at their looking-glass. At last the happy day came; they went to Court, and Cinderilla followed them with her eyes as long as she could, and when she had lost sight of them she fell a-crying.
Her godmother, who saw her all in tears, asked her what was the matter.
"I wish I could——, I wish I could—;" she was not able to speak the rest, being interrupted by her tears and sobbing.
This godmother of hers, who was a Fairy, said to her:
"Thou wishest thou couldest go to the ball, is it not so?"
"Y—es," cried Cinderilla, with a great sigh.
"Well," said her godmother, "be but a good girl, and I will contrive that thou shalt go." Then she took her into her chamber, and said to her:
"Run into the garden, and bring me a pumpkin."
Cinderilla went immediately to gather the finest she could get, and brought it to her godmother, not being able to imagine how this pumpkin could make her go to the ball. Her godmother scooped out all the inside of it, leaving nothing but the rind; which done, she struck it with her wand, and the pumpkin was instantly turned into a fine coach, gilded all over with gold.
She then went to look into her mouse-trap, where she found six mice all alive, and ordered Cinderilla to lift up a little the trap-door, when giving each mouse, as it went out, a little tap with her wand, the mouse was at that moment turned into a fair horse, which altogether made a very fine set of six horses of a beautiful mouse-coloured dapple-grey.
Being at a loss for a coachman, "I will go and see," says Cinderilla, "if there be never a rat in the rat-trap, that we may make a coachman of him."
"Thou art in the right," replied her godmother; "go and look."
Cinderilla brought the trap to her, and in it there were three huge rats. The Fairy made choice of one of the three, which had the largest beard, and, having touched him with her wand, he was turned into a fat jolly coachman, who had the smartest whiskers eyes ever beheld.
After that, she said to her:
"Go again into the garden, and you will find six lizards behind the watering pot; bring them to me."
She had no sooner done so, but her godmother turned them into six footmen, who skipped up immediately behind the coach, with their liveries all bedaubed with gold and silver, and clung as close behind it, as if they had done nothing else their whole lives. The Fairy then said to Cinderilla:
"Well, you see here an equipage fit to go to the ball with; are you not pleased with it?"
"O yes," cried she, "but must I go thither as I am, in these poison nasty rags?"
Her godmother only just touched her with her wand, and, at the same instant, her clothes were turned into cloth of gold and silver, all beset with jewels. This done she gave her a pair of glass-slippers, the prettiest in the whole world. 
Being thus decked out, she got up into her coach; but her godmother, above all things, commanded her not to stay till after midnight, telling her, at the same time, that if she stayed at the ball one moment longer, her coach would be a pumpkin again, her horses mice, her coachman a rat, her footmen lizards, and her clothes become just as they were before.
She promised her godmother, she would not fail of leaving the ball before midnight; and then away she drove, scarce able to contain herself for joy. The King's son, who was told that a great Princess, whom nobody knew, was come, ran out to receive her; he gave her his hand as she alighted out of the coach, and led her into the hall, among all the company. There was immediately a profound silence, they left off dancing, and the violins ceased to play, so attentive was every one to contemplate the singular beauty of this unknown new comer. Nothing was then heard but a confused noise of,
"Ha! how handsome she is! Ha! how handsome she is!"
The King himself, old as he was, could not help ogling her, and telling the Queen softly, "that it was a long time since he had seen so beautiful and lovely a creature." All the ladies were busied in considering her clothes and head-dress, that they might have some made next day after the same pattern, provided they could meet with such fine materials, and as able hands to make them.
The King's son conducted her to the most honourable seat, and afterwards took her out to dance with him: she danced so very gracefully, that they all more and more admired her. A fine collation was served up, whereof the young Prince ate not a morsel, so intently was he busied in gazing on her. She went and sat down by her sisters, shewing them a thousand civilities, giving them part of the oranges and citrons which the Prince had presented her with; which very much surprised them, for they did not know her.
While Cinderilla was thus amusing her sisters, she heard the clock strike eleven and three quarters, whereupon she immediately made a curtesy to the company, and hasted away as fast as she could.
Being got home, she ran to seek out her godmother, and after having thanked her, she said, "she could not but heartily wish she might go next day to the ball, because the King's son had desired her." As she was eagerly telling her godmother whatever had passed at the ball, her two sisters knocked at the door which Cinderilla ran and opened.
"How long you have stayed," cried she, gaping, rubbing her eyes, and stretching herself as if she had been just awaked out of her sleep; she had not, however, any manner of inclination to sleep since they went from home.
"If thou hadst been at the ball," said one of her sisters, "thou wouldst not have been tired with it; there came thither the finest Princess, the most beautiful ever was seen with mortal eyes; she shewed us a thousand civilities, and gave us oranges and citrons." Cinderilla was transported with joy; she asked them the name of that Princess; but they told her they did not know it; and that the King's son was very anxious to learn it, and would give all the world to know who she was. At this Cinderilla, smiling, replied:
"She must then be very beautiful indeed; Lord! how happy have you been; could not I see her? Ah! dear Miss Charlotte, do lend me your yellow suit of cloaths which you wear every day!"
"Ay, to be sure!" cried Miss Charlotte, "lend my cloaths to such a dirty Cinder-breech as thou art; who's the fool then?"
Cinderilla, indeed, expected some such answer, and was very glad of the refusal; for she would have been sadly put to it, if her sister had lent her what she asked for jestingly.
The next day the two sisters were at the ball, and so was Cinderilla, but dressed more magnificently than before. The King's son was always by her, and never ceased his compliments and amorous speeches to her; to whom all this was so far from being tiresome, that she quite forgot what her godmother had recommended to her, so that she, at last, counted the clock striking twelve, when she took it to be no more than eleven; she then rose up, and fled as nimble as a deer.
The Prince followed, but could not overtake her. She left behind one of her glass slippers, which the Prince took up most carefully. She got home, but quite out of breath, without coach or footmen, and in her nasty old cloaths, having nothing left her of all her finery, but one of the little slippers, fellow to that she dropped. The guards at the palace gate were asked if they had not seen a Princess go out; who said, they had seen nobody go out, but a young girl, very meanly dressed, and who had more the air of a poor country wench, than a gentle-woman.
When the two sisters returned from the ball, Cinderilla asked them if they had been well diverted, and if the fine lady had been there. They told her, Yes, but that she hurried away immediately when it struck twelve, and with so much haste, that she dropped one of her little glass slippers, the prettiest in the world, and which the King's son had taken up; that he had done nothing but look at it during all the latter part of the ball, and that most certainly he was very much in love with the beautiful person who owned the little slipper.
What they said was very true; for a few days after, the King's son caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet, that he would marry her whose foot this slipper would just fit. They whom he employed began to try it on upon the Princesses, then the duchesses, and all the Court, but in vain. It was brought to the two sisters, who did all they possibly could to thrust their feet into the slipper, but they could not effect it.
Cinderilla, who saw all this, and knew her slipper, said to them laughing:
"Let me see if it will not fit me?"
Her sisters burst out a-laughing, and began to banter her. The gentleman who was sent to try the slipper, looked earnestly at Cinderilla, and finding her very handsome, said it was but just that she should try, and that he had orders to let every one make tryal. He invited Cinderilla to sit down, and putting the slipper to her foot, he found it went on very easily, and fitted her, as if it had been made of wax. The astonishment her two sisters were in was excessively great, but still abundantly greater, when Cinderilla pulled out of her pocket the other slipper, and put it on her foot. Thereupon, in came her godmother, who having touched, with her wand, Cinderilla's cloaths, made them richer and more magnificent than any of those she had before.
And now her two sisters found her to be that fine beautiful lady whom they had seen at the ball. They threw themselves at her feet, to beg pardon for all the ill treatment they had made her undergo. Cinderilla took them up, and as she embraced them, cried that she forgave them with all her heart, and desired them always to love her.
She was conducted to the young Prince, dressed as she was; he thought her more charming than ever, and, a few days after, married her.
Cinderilla, who was no less good than beautiful, gave her two sisters lodgings in the palace, and that very same day matched them with two great lords of the court. 
RIQUET WITH THE TUFT
There was, once upon a time, a Queen, who was brought to bed of a son, so hideously ugly, that it was long disputed, whether he had human form. A Fairy, who was at his birth, affirmed, he would be very lovable for all that, since he should be indowed with abundance of wit. She even added, that it would be in his power, by virtue of a gift she had just then given him, to bestow on the person he most loved as much wit as he pleased. All this somewhat comforted the poor Queen, who was under a grievous affliction for having brought into the world such an ugly brat. It is true, that this child no sooner began to prattle, but he said a thousand pretty things, and that in all his actions there was something so taking, that he charmed every-body. I forgot to tell you, that he came into the world with a little tuft of hair upon his head, which made them call him Riquet with the Tuft, for Riquet was the family name.
Seven or eight years after this, the Queen of a neighbouring kingdom was delivered of two daughters at a birth. The first-born of these was beautiful beyond compare, whereat the Queen was so very glad, that those present were afraid that her excess of joy would do her harm. The same Fairy, who had assisted at the birth of little Riquet with the Tuft, was here also; and, to moderate the Queen's gladness, she declared, that this little Princess should have no wit at all, but be as stupid as she was pretty. This mortified the Queen extreamly, but some moments afterwards she had far greater sorrow; for, the second daughter she was delivered of, was very ugly.
"Do not afflict yourself so much, Madam," said the Fairy; "your daughter shall have so great a portion of wit, that her want of beauty will scarcely be perceived."
"God grant it," replied the Queen; "but is there no way to make the eldest, who is so pretty, have some little wit?"
"I can do nothing for her, Madam, as to wit," answered the Fairy, "but everything as to beauty; and as there is nothing but what I would do for your satisfaction, I give her for gift, that she shall have the power to make handsome the person who shall best please her."
As these Princesses grew up, their perfections grew up with them; all the public talk was of the beauty of the eldest, and the wit of the youngest. It is true also that their defects increased considerably with their age; the youngest visibly grew uglier and uglier, and the eldest became every day more and more stupid; she either made no answer at all to what was asked her, or said something very silly; she was with all this so unhandy, that she could not place four pieces of china upon the mantlepiece, without breaking one of them, nor drink a glass of water without spilling half of it upon her cloaths. Tho' beauty is a very great advantage in young people, yet here the youngest sister bore away the bell, almost always, in all companies from the eldest; people would indeed, go first to the Beauty to look upon, and admire her, but turn aside soon after to the Wit, to hear a thousand most entertaining and agreeable turns, and it was amazing to see, in less than a quarter of an hour's time, the eldest with not a soul with her and the whole company crowding about the youngest. The eldest, tho' she was unaccountably dull, could not but notice it, and would have given all her beauty to have half the wit of her sister. The Queen, prudent as she was, could not help reproaching her several times, which had like to have made this poor Princess die for grief.
One day, as she retired into the wood to bewail her misfortune, she saw, coming to her, a little man, very disagreeable, but most magnificently dressed. This was the young Prince Riquet with the Tuft, who having fallen in love with her, by seeing her picture, many of which went all the world over, had left his father's kingdom, to have the pleasure of seeing and talking with her.
Overjoyed to find her thus all alone, he addressed himself to her with all imaginable politeness and respect. Having observed, after he had made her the ordinary compliments, that she was extremely melancholy, he said to her:
"I cannot comprehend, Madam, how a person so beautiful as you are, can be so sorrowful as you seem to be; for tho' I can boast of having seen infinite numbers of ladies exquisitely charming, I can say that I never beheld any one whose beauty approaches yours."
"You are pleased to say so," answered the Princess, and here she stopped.
"Beauty," replied Riquet with the Tuft, "is such a great advantage, that it ought to take the place of all things; and since you possess this treasure, I see nothing that can possibly very much afflict you."
"I had far rather," cried the Princess, "be as ugly as you are, and have wit, than have the beauty I possess, and be so stupid as I am."
"There is nothing, Madam," returned he, "shews more that we have wit, than to believe we have none; and it is the nature of that excellent quality, that the more people have of it, the more they believe they want it."
"I do not know that," said the Princess; "but I know, very well, that I am very senseless, and thence proceeds the vexation which almost kills me."
"If that be all, Madam, which troubles you, I can very easily put an end to your affliction."
"And how will you do that?" cried the Princess.
"I have the power, Madam," replied Riquet with the Tuft, "to give to that person whom I shall love best, as much wit as can be had; and as you, Madam, are that very person, it will be your fault only, if you have not as great a share of it as any one living, provided you will be pleased to marry me."
The Princess remained quite astonished, and answered not a word.
“HE HAD RESERVED FOR HIMSELF."
"I see," replied Riquet with the Tuft, "that this proposal makes you very uneasy, and I do not wonder at it, but I will give you a whole year to consider of it."
The Princess had so little wit, and, at the same time, so great a longing to have some, that she imagined the end of that year would never be; therefore she accepted the proposal which was made her. She had no sooner promised Riquet with the Tuft that she would marry him on that day twelvemonth, than she found herself quite otherwise than she was before; she had an incredible facility of speaking whatever she pleased, after a polite, easy, and natural manner; she began that moment a very gallant conversation with Riquet with the Tuft, wherein she tattled at such a rate, that Riquet with the Tuft believed he had given her more wit than he had reserved for himself.
When she returned to the palace, the whole Court knew not what to think of such a sudden and extraordinary change; for they heard from her now as much sensible discourse, and as many infinitely witty turns, as they had stupid and silly impertinences before. The whole Court was overjoyed at it beyond imagination; it pleased all but her younger sister; because having no longer the advantage of her in respect of wit, she appeared, in comparison of her, a very disagreeable, homely puss. The King governed himself by her advice, and would even sometimes hold a council in her apartment. The noise of this change spreading every where, all the young Princes of the neighbouring kingdoms strove all they could to gain her favour, and almost all of them asked her in marriage; but she found not one of them had wit enough for her, and she gave them all a hearing, but would not engage herself to any.
However, there came one so powerful, rich, witty and handsome, that she could not help having a good inclination for him. Her father perceived it, and told her that she was her own mistress as to the choice of a husband, and that she might declare her intentions. As the more wit we have, the greater difficulty we find to make a firm resolution upon such affairs, this made her desire her father, after having thanked him, to give her time to consider of it.
She went accidentally to walk in the same wood where she met Riquet with the Tuft, to think, the more conveniently, what she ought to do. While she was walking in a profound meditation, she heard a confused noise under her feet, as it were of a great many people who went backwards and forwards, and were very busy. Having listened more attentively, she heard one say:
"Bring me that pot"; another "Give me that kettle"; and a third, "Put some wood upon the fire."
The ground at the same time opened, and she seemingly saw under her feet, a great kitchen full of cooks, scullions, and all sorts of servants necessary for a magnificent entertainment. There came out of it a company of roasters, to the number of twenty, or thirty, who went to plant themselves in a fine alley of wood, about a very long table, with their larding pins in their hands, and skewers in their caps, who began to work, keeping time, to the tune of a very harmonious song.
The Princess, all astonished at this sight, asked them who they worked for.
"For Prince Riquet with the Tuft," said the chief of them, "who is to be married to-morrow."
The Princess was more surprised than ever, and recollecting that it was now that day twelvemonth on which she had promised to marry Riquet with the Tuft, she was like to sink into the ground.
What made her forget this was that, when she made this promise, she was very silly, and having obtained that vast stock of wit which the Prince had bestowed on her, she had intirely forgot her stupidity. She continued walking, but had not taken thirty steps before Riquet with the Tuft presented himself to her, bravely and most magnificently dressed, like a Prince who was going to be married.
"You see, Madam," said he, "I am very exact in keeping my word, and doubt not, in the least, but you are come hither to perform yours, and to make me, by giving me your hand, the happiest of men."
"I shall freely own to you," answered the Princess, "that I have not yet taken any resolution on this affair, and believe I never shall take such a one as you desire."
"You astonish me, Madam," said Riquet with the Tuft.
"I believe it," said the Princess, "and surely if I had to do with a clown, or a man of no wit, I should find myself very much at a loss. 'A Princess always observes her word,' would he say to me, 'and you must marry me, since you promised to do so.' But as he whom I talk to is the man of the world who is master of the greatest sense and judgment, I am sure he will hear reason. You know, that when I was but a fool, I could, notwithstanding, never come to a resolution to marry you; why will you have me, now I have so much judgment as you gave me, and which makes me a more difficult person than I was at that time, to come to such a resolution, which I could not then determine to agree to? If you sincerely thought to make me your wife, you have been greatly in the wrong to deprive me of my dull simplicity, and make me see things much more clearly than I did."
"If a man of no wit and sense," replied Riquet with the Tuft, "would be entitled, as you say, to reproach you for breach of your word, why will you not let me, Madam, do likewise in a matter wherein all the happiness of my life is concerned? Is it reasonable that persons of wit and sense should be in a worse condition than those who have none? Can you pretend this; you who have so great a share, and desired so earnestly to have it? But let us come to fact, if you please. Setting aside my ugliness and deformity, is there any thing in me which displeases you? Are you dissatisfied with my birth, my wit, humour, or manners?"
"Not at all," answered the Princess; "I love you and respect you in all that you mention." "If it be so," said Riquet with the Tuft, "I am like to be happy, since it is in your power to make me the most lovable of men."
"How can that be?" said the Princess.
"It will come about," said Riquet with the Tuft; "if you love me enough to wish it to be so; and that you may no ways doubt, Madam, of what I say, know that the same Fairy, who, on my birth-day, gave me for gift the power of making the person who should please me extremely witty and judicious, has, in like manner, given you for gift the power of making him, whom you love, and would grant that favour to, extremely handsome."
"If it be so," said the Princess, "I wish, with all my heart, that you may be the most lovable Prince in the world, and I bestow it on you, as much as I am able."
The Princess had no sooner pronounced these words, but Riquet with the Tuft appeared to her the finest Prince upon earth; the handsomest and most amiable man she ever saw. Some affirm that it was not the enchantments of the Fairy which worked this change, but that love alone caused the metamorphosis. They say, that the Princess, having made due reflection on the perseverance of her lover, his discretion, and all the good qualities of his mind, his wit and judgment, saw no longer the deformity of his body, nor the ugliness of his face; that his hump seemed to her no more than the homely air of one who has a broad back; and that whereas till then she saw him limp horribly, she found it nothing more than a certain sidling air, which charmed her. They say farther, that his eyes, which were very squinting, seemed to her all the more bright and sparkling; that their irregularity passed in her judgment for a mark of a violent excess of love; and, in short, that his great red nose had, in her opinion, somewhat of the martial and heroic.
Howsoever it was, the Princess promised immediately to marry him, on condition he obtained her father's consent. The King being acquainted that his daughter had abundance of esteem for Riquet with the Tuft, whom he knew otherwise for a most sage and judicious Prince, received him for his son-in-law with pleasure; and the next morning their nuptials were celebrated, as Riquet with the Tuft had foreseen, and according to the orders he had a long time before given.
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