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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moonshine & Clover, by Laurence Housman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Moonshine & Clover
+
+Author: Laurence Housman
+
+Illustrator: Clemence Housman
+
+Release Date: January 5, 2011 [EBook #34852]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOONSHINE & CLOVER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Beginners Projects, Suzanne Shell, Emmy and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MOONSHINE & CLOVER
+
+
+          This selection of fairy-tales is reprinted from
+          the following original editions, now out of print:
+
+          _A Farm in Fairyland_  (1894)
+          _The House of Joy_     (1895)
+          _The Field of Clover_  (1898)
+          _The Blue Moon_        (1904)
+
+[Illustration:
+
+          SHINE, MOON! GROW CLOVER!
+          WHEN MY DAY IS OVER.  L.H.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MOONSHINE & CLOVER
+
+BY LAURENCE HOUSMAN
+
+ENGRAVED BY CLEMENCE HOUSMAN
+
+          NEW YORK
+          HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY]
+
+
+
+
+  _Made and
+  Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,
+  London and Aylesbury._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                             PAGE
+
+    THE PRINCE WITH THE NINE SORROWS           13
+    HOW LITTLE DUKE JARL SAVED THE CASTLE      27
+    A CAPFUL OF MOONSHINE                      37
+    THE STORY OF THE HERONS                    47
+    THE CROWN'S WARRANTY                       70
+    ROCKING-HORSE LAND                         83
+    JAPONEL                                    95
+    GAMMELYN, THE DRESSMAKER                  103
+    THE FEEDING OF THE EMIGRANTS              113
+    WHITE BIRCH                               119
+    THE LUCK OF THE ROSES                     129
+    THE WHITE DOE                             138
+    THE MOON-STROKE                           153
+    THE GENTLE COCKATRICE                     164
+    THE GREEN BIRD                            177
+    THE MAN WHO KILLED THE CUCKOO             187
+    A CHINESE FAIRY-TALE                      198
+    HAPPY RETURNS                             211
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINCE WITH THE NINE SORROWS
+
+    "Eight white peahens went down to the gate:
+     'Wait!' they said, 'little sister, wait!'
+     They covered her up with feathers so fine;
+     And none went out, when there went back nine."
+
+
+A LONG time ago there lived a King and a Queen, who had an only son. As
+soon as he was born his mother gave him to the forester's wife to be
+nursed; for she herself had to wear her crown all day and had no time
+for nursing. The forester's wife had just given birth to a little
+daughter of her own; but she loved both children equally and nursed them
+together like twins.
+
+One night the Queen had a dream that made the half of her hair turn
+grey. She dreamed that she saw the Prince her son at the age of twenty
+lying dead with a wound over the place of his heart; and near him his
+foster-sister was standing, with a royal crown on her head, and his
+heart bleeding between her hands.
+
+The next morning the Queen sent in great haste for the family Fairy, and
+told her of the dream. The Fairy said, "This can have but one meaning,
+and it is an evil one. There is some danger that threatens your son's
+life in his twentieth year, and his foster-sister is to be the cause of
+it; also, it seems she is to make herself Queen. But leave her to me,
+and I will avert the evil chance; for the dream coming beforehand shows
+that the Fates mean that he should be saved."
+
+The Queen said, "Do anything; only do not destroy the forester's wife's
+child, for, as yet at least, she has done no wrong. Let her only be
+carried away to a safe place and made secure and treated well. I will
+not have my son's happiness grow out of another one's grave."
+
+The Fairy said, "Nothing is so safe as a grave when the Fates are about.
+Still, I think I can make everything quite safe within reason, and leave
+you a clean as well as a quiet conscience."
+
+The little Prince and the forester's daughter grew up together till they
+were a year old; then, one day, when their nurse came to look for them,
+the Prince was found, but his foster-sister was lost; and though the
+search for her was long, she was never seen again, nor could any trace
+of her be found.
+
+The baby Prince pined and pined, and was so sorrowful over her loss that
+they feared for a time that he was going to die. But his foster-mother,
+in spite of her grief over her own child's disappearance, nursed him so
+well and loved him so much that after a while he recovered his strength.
+
+Then the forester's wife gave birth to another daughter, as if to
+console herself for the loss of the first. But the same night that the
+child was born the Queen had just the same dream over again. She dreamed
+that she saw her son lying dead at the age of twenty; and there was the
+wound in his breast, and the forester's daughter was standing by with
+his heart in her hand and a royal crown upon her head.
+
+The poor Queen's hair had gone quite white when she sent again for the
+family Fairy, and told her how the dream had repeated itself. The Fairy
+gave her the same advice as before, quieting her fears, and assuring her
+that however persistent the Fates might be in threatening the Prince's
+life, all in the end should be well.
+
+Before another year was passed the second of the forester's daughters
+had disappeared; and the Prince and his foster-mother cried themselves
+ill over a loss that had been so cruelly renewed. The Queen, seeing how
+great were the sorrow and the love that the Prince bore for his
+foster-sisters, began to doubt in her heart and say, "What have I done?
+Have I saved my son's life by taking away his heart?"
+
+Now every year the same thing took place, the forester's wife giving
+birth to a daughter, and the Queen on the same night having the same
+fearful dream of the fate that threatened her son in his twentieth year;
+and afterwards the family Fairy would come, and then one day the
+forester's wife's child would disappear, and be heard of no more.
+
+At last when nine daughters in all had been born to the forester's wife
+and lost to her when they were but a year old, the Queen fell very ill.
+Every day she grew weaker and weaker, and the little Prince came and sat
+by her, holding her hand and looking at her with a sorrowful face. At
+last one night (it was just a year after the last of the forester's
+children had disappeared) she woke suddenly, stretching out her arms
+and crying. "Oh, Fairy," she cried, "the dream, the dream!" And covering
+her face with her hands, she died.
+
+The little Prince was now more than ten years old, and the very saddest
+of mortals. He said that there were nine sorrows hidden in his heart, of
+which he could not get rid; and that at night, when all the birds went
+home to roost, he heard cries of lamentation and pain; but whether these
+came from very far away, or out of his own heart he could not tell.
+
+Yet he grew slenderly and well, and had such grace and tenderness in his
+nature that all who saw him loved him. His foster-mother, when he spoke
+to her of his nine sorrows, tried to comfort him, calling him her own
+nine joys; and, indeed, he was all the joy left in life for her.
+
+When the Prince neared his twentieth year, the King his father felt that
+he himself was becoming old and weary of life. "I shall not live much
+longer," he thought: "very soon my son will be left alone in the world.
+It is right, therefore, now that he should know of the danger ahead that
+threatens his life." For till then the Prince had not known anything;
+all had been kept a secret between the Queen and the King and the family
+Fairy.
+
+The old King knew of the Prince's nine sorrows, and often he tried to
+believe that they came by chance, and had nothing to do with the secret
+that sat at the root of his son's life. But now he feared more and more
+to tell the Prince the story of those nine dreams, lest the knowledge
+should indeed serve but as the crowning point of his sorrows, and
+altogether break his heart for him.
+
+Yet there was so much danger in leaving the thing untold that at last he
+summoned the Prince to his bedside, meaning to tell him all. The King
+had worn himself so ill with anxiety and grief in thinking over the
+matter, that now to tell all was the only means of saving his life.
+
+The Prince came and knelt down, and leaned his head on his father's
+pillow; and the King whispered into his ear the story of the dreams, and
+of how for his sake all the Prince's foster-sisters had been spirited
+away.
+
+Before his tale was done he could no longer bear to look into his son's
+face, but closed his eyes, and, with long silences between, spoke as one
+who prayed.
+
+When he had ended he lay quite still, and the Prince kissed his closed
+eyelids and went softly out of the room.
+
+"Now I know," he said to himself; "now at last!" And he came through the
+wood and knocked at his foster-mother's door. "Other mother," he said to
+her, "give me a kiss for each of my sisters, for now I am going out into
+the world to find them, to be rid of the sorrows in my heart."
+
+"They can never be found!" she cried, but she kissed him nine times.
+"And this," she said, "was Monica, and this was Ponica, and this was
+Veronica," and so she went over every name. "But now they are only
+names!" she wept, as she let him go.
+
+He went along, and he went along, mile after mile. "Where may you be
+going to, fair sir?" asked an old peasant, at whose cabin the Prince
+sought shelter when night came to the first day of his wanderings.
+"Truly," answered the Prince, "I do not know how far or whither I need
+to go; but I have a finger-post in my heart that keeps pointing me."
+
+So that night he stayed there, and the next day he went on.
+
+"Where to so fast?" asked a woodcutter when the second night found him
+in the thickest and loneliest parts of the forest. "Here the night is so
+dark and the way so dangerous, one like you should not go alone."
+
+"Nay, I know nothing," said the Prince, "only I feel like a weather-cock
+in a wind that keeps turning me to its will!"
+
+After many days he came to a small long valley rich in woods and
+water-courses, but no road ran through it. More and more it seemed like
+the world's end, a place unknown, or forgotten of its old inhabitants.
+Just at the end of the valley, where the woods opened into clear slopes
+and hollows towards the west, he saw before him, low and overgrown, the
+walls of a little tumble-down grange. "There," he said to himself when
+he saw it, "I can find shelter for to-night. Never have I felt so tired
+before, or such a pain at my heart!"
+
+Before long he came to a little gate, and a winding path that led in
+among lawns and trees to the door of an old house. The house seemed as
+if it had been once lived in, but there was no sign of any life about
+it now. He pushed open the door, and suddenly there was a sharp rustling
+of feathers, and nine white peahens rose up from the ground and flew out
+of the window into the garden.
+
+The Prince searched the whole house over, and found it a mere ruin; the
+only signs of life to be seen were the white feathers that lifted and
+blew about over the floors.
+
+Outside, the garden was gathering itself together in the dusk, and the
+peahens were stepping daintily about the lawns, picking here and there
+between the blades of grass. They seemed to suit the gentle sadness of
+the place, which had an air of grief that has grown at ease with itself.
+
+The Prince went out into the garden, and walked about among the quietly
+stepping birds; but they took no heed of him. They came picking up their
+food between his very feet, as though he were not there. Silence held
+all the air, and in the cleft of the valley the day drooped to its end.
+
+Just before it grew dark, the nine white peahens gathered together at
+the foot of a great elm, and lifting up their throats they wailed in
+chorus. Their lamentable cry touched the Prince's heart; "Where," he
+asked himself, "have I heard such sorrow before?" Then all with one
+accord the birds sprang rustling up to the lowest boughs of the elm, and
+settled themselves to roost.
+
+The Prince went back to the house, to find some corner amid its
+half-ruined rooms to sleep in. But there the air was close, and an
+unpleasant smell of moisture came from the floor and walls: so, the
+night being warm, he returned to the garden, and folding himself in his
+cloak lay down under the tree where the nine peahens were at roost.
+
+For a long time he tried to sleep, but could not, there was so much pain
+and sorrow in his heart.
+
+Presently when it was close upon midnight, over his head one of the
+birds stirred and ruffled through all its feathers; and he heard a soft
+voice say:
+
+"Sisters, are you awake?"
+
+All the other peahens lifted their heads, and turned towards the one
+that had spoken, saying, "Yes, sister, we are awake."
+
+Then the first one said again, "Our brother is here."
+
+They all said, "He is our enemy; it is for him that we endure this
+sorrow."
+
+"To-night," said the first, "we may all be free."
+
+They answered, "Yes, we may all be free! Who will go down and peck out
+his heart? Then we shall be free."
+
+And the first who had spoken said, "I will go down!"
+
+"Do not fail, sister!" said all the others. "For if you fail you can
+speak to us no more."
+
+The first peahen answered, "Do not fear that I shall fail!" And she
+began stepping down the long boughs of the elm.
+
+The Prince lying below heard all that was said. "Ah! poor sisters," he
+thought, "have I found you at last; and are all these sorrows brought
+upon you for me?" And he unloosed his doublet, and opened his vest,
+making his breast bare for the peahen to come and peck out his heart.
+
+He lay quite still with his eyes shut, and when she reached the ground
+the peahen found him lying there, as it seemed to her fast asleep, with
+his white breast bare for the stroke of her beak.
+
+Then so fair he looked to her, and so gentle in his youth, that she had
+pity on him, and stood weeping by his side, and laying her head against
+his, whispered, "O, brother, once we lay as babes together and were
+nursed at the same breast! How can I peck out your heart?"
+
+Then she stole softly back into the tree, and crouched down again by her
+companions. They said to her, "Our minute of midnight is nearly gone. Is
+there blood on your beak! Have you our brother's heart for us?" But the
+other answered never a word.
+
+In the morning the peahens came rustling down out of the elm, and went
+searching for fat carnation buds and anemone seeds among the flower-beds
+in the garden. To the Prince they showed no sign either of hatred or
+fear, but went to and fro carelessly, pecking at the ground about his
+feet. Only one came with drooping head and wings, and sleeked itself to
+his caress, and the Prince, stooping down, whispered in her ear, "O,
+sister, why did you not peck out my heart?"
+
+At night, as before, the peahens all cried in chorus as they went up
+into the elm; and the Prince came and wrapped himself in his cloak, and
+lay down at the foot of it to watch.
+
+At midnight the eight peahens lifted their heads, and said, "Sister, why
+did you fail last night?" But their sister gave them not a word.
+
+"Alas!" they said, "now she has failed, unless one of us succeed, we
+shall never hear her speak with her human voice again. Why is it that
+you weep so," they said again, "now when deliverance is so near?" For
+the poor peahen was shaken with weeping, and her tears fell down in loud
+drops upon the ground.
+
+Then the next sister said, "I will go down! He is asleep. Be certain, I
+will not fail!" So she climbed softly down the tree, and the Prince
+opened his shirt and laid his breast bare for her to come and take out
+his heart.
+
+Presently she stood by his side, and when she saw him, she too had pity
+on him for the youth and kindness of his face. And once she shut her
+eyes, and lifted her head for the stroke; but then weakness seized her,
+and she laid her head softly upon his heart and said, "Once the breast
+that gave me milk gave milk also to you. You were my sister's brother,
+and she spared you. How can I peck out your heart?" And having said this
+she went softly back into the tree, and crouched down again among her
+sisters.
+
+They said to her, "Have you blood upon your beak? Is his heart ours?"
+But she answered them no word.
+
+The next day the two sisters, who because their hearts betrayed them had
+become mute, followed the Prince wherever he went, and stretched up
+their heads to his caress. But the others went and came indifferently,
+careless except for food; for until midnight their human hearts were
+asleep; only now the two sisters who had given their voices away had
+regained their human hearts perpetually.
+
+That night the same thing happened as before. "Sisters," said the
+youngest, "to-night I will go down, since the two eldest of us have
+failed. My wrong is fresher in my heart than theirs! Be sure I shall not
+fail!" So the youngest peahen came down from the tree, and the Prince
+laid his heart bare for her beak; but the bird could not find the will
+to peck it out. And so it was the next night, and the next, until eight
+nights were gone.
+
+So at last only one peahen was left. At midnight she raised her head,
+saying, "Sisters, are you awake?"
+
+They all turned, and gazed at her weeping, but could say no word.
+
+Then she said, "You have all failed, having all tried but me. Now if I
+fail we shall remain mute and captive for ever, more undone by the loss
+of our last remaining gift of speech than we were at first. But I tell
+you, dear sisters, I will not fail; for the happiness of you all lies
+with me now!"
+
+Then she went softly down the tree; and one by one they all went
+following her, and weeping, to see what the end would be.
+
+They stood some way apart, watching with upturned heads, and their poor
+throats began catching back a wish to cry as the little peahen, the last
+of the sisters, came and stood by the Prince.
+
+Then she, too, looked in his face, and saw the white breast made bare
+for her beak; and the love of him went deep down into her heart. And she
+tried and tried to shut her eyes and deal the stroke, but could not.
+
+She trembled and sighed, and turned to look at her sisters, where they
+all stood weeping silently together. "They have spared him," she said
+to herself: "why should not I?"
+
+But the Prince, seeing that she, too, was about to fail like the rest of
+them, turned and said, as if in his sleep, "Come, come, little peahen,
+and peck out my heart!"
+
+At that she turned back again to him, and laid her head down upon his
+heart and cried more sadly than them all.
+
+Then he said, "You have eight sisters, and a mother who cries for her
+children to return!" Yet still she thought he was dreaming, and speaking
+only in his sleep. The other peahens came no nearer, but stood weeping
+silently. She looked from him to them. "O," she cried, "I have a wicked
+heart, to let one stand in the way of nine!" Then she threw up her neck
+and cried lamentably with her peafowl's voice, wishing that the Prince
+would wake up and see her, and so escape. And at that all the other
+peahens lifted up their heads and wailed with her: but the Prince never
+turned, nor lifted a finger, nor uttered a sound.
+
+Then she drew in a deep breath, and closed her eyes fast. "Let my
+sisters go, but let me be as I am!" she cried; and with that she stooped
+down, and pecked out his heart.
+
+All her sisters shrieked as their human shapes returned to them. "O,
+sister! O, wicked little sister!" they cried, "What have you done?"
+
+The little white peahen crouched close down to the side of the dead
+Prince. "I loved him more than you all!" she tried to say: but she only
+lifted her head, and wailed again and again the peafowl's cry.
+
+The Prince's heart lay beating at her feet, so glad to be rid of its
+nine sorrows that mere joy made it live on, though all the rest of the
+body lay cold.
+
+The peahen leaned down upon the Prince's breast, and there wailed
+without ceasing: then suddenly, piercing with her beak her own breast,
+she drew out her own living heart and laid it in the place where his had
+been.
+
+And, as she did so, the wound where she had pierced him closed and
+became healed; and her heart was, as it were, buried in the Prince's
+breast. In her death agony she could feel it there, her own heart
+leaping within his breast for joy.
+
+The Prince, who had seemed to be dead, flushed from head to foot as the
+warmth of life came back to him; with one deep breath he woke, and found
+the little white peahen lying as if dead between his arms.
+
+Then he laughed softly and rose (his goodness making him wise), and
+taking up his own still beating heart he laid it into the place of hers.
+At the first beat of it within her breast, the peahen became transformed
+as all her sisters had been, and her own human form came back to her.
+And the pain and the wound in her breast grew healed together, so that
+she stood up alive and well in the Prince's arms.
+
+"Dear heart!" said he: and "Dear, dear heart!" said she; but whether
+they were speaking of their own hearts or of each other's, who can tell?
+for which was which they themselves did not know.
+
+Then all round was so much embracing and happiness that it is out of
+reach for tongue or pen to describe. For truly the Prince and his
+foster-sisters loved each other well, and could put no bounds upon
+their present contentment. As for the Prince and the one who had plucked
+out his heart, of no two was the saying ever more truly told that they
+had lost their hearts to each other; nor was ever love in the world
+known before that carried with it such harmony as theirs.
+
+And so it all came about according to the Queen's dream, that the
+forester's daughter wore the royal crown upon her head, and held the
+Prince's heart in her hand.
+
+Long before he died the old King was made happy because the dream he had
+so much feared had become true. And the forester's wife was happy before
+she died. And as for the Prince and his wife and his foster-sisters,
+they were all rather happy; and none of them is dead yet.
+
+
+
+
+HOW LITTLE DUKE JARL SAVED THE CASTLE
+
+
+DUKE JARL had found a good roost for himself when his long work of
+expelling the invader was ended. Seawards and below the town, in the
+mouth of the river, stood a rock, thrusting out like a great tusk ready
+to rip up any armed vessel that sought passage that way. On the top of
+this he had built himself a castle, and its roots went deep, deep down
+into the solid stone. No man knew how deep the deepest of the
+foundations went; but wherever they were, just there was old Duke Jarl's
+sleeping-chamber. Thither he had gone to sleep when the world no longer
+needed him; and he had not yet returned.
+
+That was three hundred years ago, and still the solid rock vaulted the
+old warrior's slumber; and over his head men talked of him, and told how
+he was reserving the strength of his old age till his country should
+again call for him.
+
+The call seemed to come now; for his descendant, little Duke Jarl the
+Ninth, was but a child; and being in no fear of him, the invader had
+returned, and the castle stood besieged. Also, farther than the eye
+could see from the topmost tower, the land lay all overrun, its richness
+laid waste by armed bands who gathered in its harvest by the sword, and
+the town itself lay under tribute; from the tower one could see the busy
+quays, and the enemy loading his ships with rich merchandise.
+
+Sent up there to play in safety, little Duke Jarl could not keep his red
+head from peering over the parapet. He began making fierce faces at the
+enemy--he was still too young to fight: and quick a grey goose-shaft
+came and sang its shrill song at his ear. So close had it gone that a
+little of the ducal blood trickled out over his collar. His face worked
+with rage; leaning far out over the barrier, he began shouting, "I will
+tell Duke Jarl of you!" till an attendant ran up and snatched him away
+from danger.
+
+Things were going badly: the castle was cut off from the land, and on
+the seaward side the foe had built themselves a great mole within which
+their warships could ride at anchor safe from the reach of storm. Thus
+there was no way left by which help or provender could come in.
+
+Little Duke Jarl saw men round him growing more gaunt and thin day by
+day, but he did not understand why, till he chanced once upon a soldier
+gnawing a foul bone for the stray bits of meat that clung to it; then he
+learned that all in the castle except himself had been put upon
+quarter-rations, though every day there was more and more fighting work
+to be done.
+
+So that day when the usual white bread and savouries were brought to
+him, he flung them all downstairs, telling the cook that the day he
+really became Duke he would have his head off if he ever dared to send
+him anything again but the common fare.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Hearing of it, the old Chief Constable picked up little Master Ninth
+Duke between finger and thumb, and laughed, holding him in the air.
+"With you alive," said he, "we shall not have to wake Duke Jarl after
+all!" The little Duke asked when he would let him have a sword; and the
+Constable clapped his cheeks and ran back cheerfully at a call from the
+palisades.
+
+But others carried heavy looks, thinking, "Long before his fair promise
+can come to anything our larders will be empty and our walls gone!"
+
+It was no great time after this that the Duke's Constable was the only
+man who saw reason in holding out. That became known all through the
+castle, and the cook, honest fellow, brought up little Jarl's dinner one
+day with tears in his eyes. He set down his load of dainties. "It is no
+use!" said he, "you may as well eat to-day, since to-morrow we give up
+the castle."
+
+"Who dares to say 'we'?" cried little Duke Jarl, springing to his feet.
+
+"All but the Constable," said the cook; "even now they are in the
+council-hall, trying to make him see reason. Whether or no, they will
+not let him hold on."
+
+Little Jarl found the doors of the great hall barred to the thunderings
+of his small fist: for, in truth, these men could not bear to look upon
+one who had in his veins the blood of old Duke Jarl, when they were
+about to give up his stronghold to the enemy.
+
+So little Jarl made his way up to the bowery, where was a minstrel's
+window looking down into the hall. Sticking out his head so that he
+might see down to where the council was sitting, "If you give up the
+castle, I will tell Duke Jarl!" he cried. Hearing his young master's
+voice, the Constable raised his eyes; but not able to see him for tears
+in them, called out: "Tell him quick, for here it is all against one!
+Only for one day more have they promised to follow my bidding, and keep
+the carrion crows from coming to Jarl's nest."
+
+And even as he spoke came the renewed cry of attack, and the answering
+shout of "Jarl, Jarl!" from the defenders upon the walls. Then all leapt
+up, overturning the council-board, and ran out to the battlements to
+carry on with what courage was left to them a hopeless contest for one
+more day.
+
+Little Duke Jarl remained like a beating heart in the great empty keep.
+He ran wildly from room to room, calling in rage and desperation on old
+Jarl to return and fight. From roof to basement he ran, commanding the
+spirit of his ancestor to appear, till at last he found himself in the
+deepest cellars of all. Down there he could hear but faintly the sound
+of the fighting; yet it seemed to him that through the stone he could
+hear the slow booming of the sea, and as he went deeper into the
+castle's foundations the louder had grown its note. "Does the sea come
+in all the way under the castle?" he wondered. "Oh that it would sap the
+foundations and sink castle and all, rather than let them give up old
+Jarl's stronghold to his enemies!"
+
+All was quite dark here, where the castle stood embedded; but now and
+then little Duke Jarl could feel a puff of wind on his face, and
+presently he was noticing how it came, as if timed to the booming of the
+sea underneath: whenever came the sound of a breaking wave, with it came
+a draught of air. He wondered if, so low down, there might not be some
+secret opening to the shore.
+
+Groping in the direction of the gusts, his feet came upon stairs. So low
+and narrow was the entrance, he had to turn sideways and stoop; but when
+he had burrowed through a thickness of wall he was able to stand
+upright; and again he found stairs leading somewhere.
+
+Down, these led down. He had never been so low before. And what a storm
+there must be outside! Against these walls the thunders of the sea grew
+so loud he could no longer hear the tramp of his own feet descending.
+
+And now the wind came at him in great gusts; first came the great boom
+of the sea, and then a blast of air. The way twisted and circled, making
+his head giddy for a fall; his feet slipped on the steepness and slime
+of the descent, and at each turn the sound grew more appalling, and the
+driving force of the wind more and more like the stroke of a man's fist.
+
+Presently the shock of it threw him from his standing, so that he had to
+lie down and slide feet foremost, clinging with his eyelids and nails to
+break the violence of his descent. And now the air was so full of
+thunder that his teeth shook in their sockets, and his bones jarred in
+his flesh. The darkness growled and roared; the wind kept lifting him
+backwards--the force of it seemed almost to flay the skin off his face;
+and still he went on, throwing his full weight against the air ahead.
+
+Then for a moment he felt himself letting go altogether: solid walls
+slipping harshly past him in the darkness, he fell; and came headlong,
+crashed and bruised, to a standstill.
+
+At first his brain was all in a mist; then, raising himself, he saw a
+dim blue light falling through a low vaulted chamber. At the end of it
+sat old Jarl, like adamant in slumber. His head was down on his breast,
+buried in a great burning bush of hair and beard; his hands, gripping
+the arms of his iron throne, had twisted them like wire; and the weight
+of his feet where they rested had hollowed a socket in the stone floor
+for them to sink into.
+
+All his hair and his armour shone with a red-and-blue flame; and the
+light of him struck the vaulting and the floor like the rays of a torch
+as it burns. Over his head a dark tunnel, bored in the solid rock,
+reached up a hollow throat seawards. But not by that way came the wind
+and the sound of the sea; it was old Jarl himself, breathing peacefully
+in his sleep, waiting for the hour which should call his strength to
+life.
+
+Young Duke Jarl ran swiftly across the chamber, and struck old Jarl's
+knees, crying, "Wake, Jarl! or the castle will be taken!" But the
+sleeper did not stir. Then he climbed the iron bars of the Duke's chair,
+and reaching high, caught hold of the red beard. "Forefather!" he cried,
+"wake, or the castle will be betrayed!"
+
+But still old Duke Jarl snored a drowsy hurricane.
+
+Then little Jarl sprang upon his knee, and seizing him by the head,
+pulled to move its dead weight, and finding he could not, struck him
+full on the mouth, crying, "Jarl, Jarl, old thunderbolt! wake, or you
+will betray the castle!"
+
+At that old Jarl hitched himself in his seat, and "Humph!" cried he,
+drawing in a deep breath.
+
+In rushed the wind whistling from the sea, and all down the way by which
+little Duke Jarl had come; like the wings of cranes flying homewards in
+spring, so it whistled when old Jarl drew in his breath.
+
+Off his knee dropped little Ninth Jarl, buffeted speechless to earth.
+And old Jarl, letting go a breath, settled himself back to slumber.
+
+Far up overhead, at the darkening-in of night, the besiegers saw the
+eyes of the castle flash red for an instant, and shut again; then they
+heard the castle-rock bray out like a great trumpet, and they trembled,
+crying, "That is old Jarl's warhorn; he is awake out of slumber!"
+
+They had reason enough to fear; for suddenly upon their ships-of-war
+there crashed, as though out of the bowels of the earth, wind and a
+black sandblast; and coming, it took the reefed sails and rigging, and
+snapped the masts and broke every vessel from its moorings, and drove
+all to wreck and ruin against the great mole that had been built to
+shelter them.
+
+And away inland, beyond the palisades and under the entrenched camp of
+the besiegers, the ground pitched and rocked, so that every tent fell
+grovelling; and whenever the ground gaped, captains and men-at-arms were
+swallowed down in detachments.
+
+Hardly had the call of old Jarl's warhorn ceased, before the Constable
+commanded the castle gates to be thrown open, and out he came leading a
+gaunt and hungry band of Jarl-folk warriors; for over in the enemy's
+camp they had scent of a hot supper which must be cooked and eaten
+before dawn. And in a little while, when the cooking was at its height,
+young Duke Jarl stuck his red head out over the battlements, and
+laughed.
+
+So this has told how old Duke Jarl once turned and talked in his sleep;
+but to tell of the real awakening of old Jarl would be quite another
+story.
+
+
+
+
+A CAPFUL OF MOONSHINE
+
+
+ON the top of Drundle Head, away to the right, where the foot-track
+crossed, it was known that the fairies still came and danced by night.
+But though Toonie went that way every evening on his road home from
+work, never once had he been able to spy them.
+
+So one day he said to the old faggot-maker, "How is it that one gets to
+see a fairy?" The old man answered, "There are some to whom it comes by
+nature; but for others three things are needed--a handful of courage, a
+mouthful of silence, and a capful of moonshine. But if you would be
+trying it, take care that you don't go wrong once too often; for with
+the third time you will fall into the hands of the fairies and be their
+bondsman. But if you manage to see the fairies, you may ask whatever you
+like of them."
+
+Toonie believed in himself so much that the very next night he took his
+courage in both hands, filled his cap with moonshine, shut his mouth,
+and set out.
+
+Just after he had started he passed, as he thought, a priest riding by
+on a mule. "Good evening to you, Toonie," called the priest.
+
+"Good evening, your reverence," cried Toonie, and flourished off his
+cap, so that out fell his capful of moonshine. And though he went on all
+the way up over the top of Drundle Head, never a fairy did he spy; for
+he forgot that, in passing what he supposed to be the priest, he had let
+go both his mouthful of silence and his capful of moonshine.
+
+The next night, when he was coming to the ascent of the hill, he saw a
+little elderly man wandering uncertainly over the ground ahead of him;
+and he too seemed to have his hands full of courage and his cap full of
+moonshine. As Toonie drew near, the other turned about and said to him,
+"Can you tell me, neighbour, if this be the way to the fairies?"
+
+"Why, you fool," cried Toonie, "a moment ago it was! But now you have
+gone and let go your mouthful of silence!"
+
+"To be sure, to be sure--so I have!" answered the old man sadly; and
+turning about, he disappeared among the bushes.
+
+As for Toonie, he went on right over the top of Drundle Head, keeping
+his eyes well to the right; but never a fairy did he see. For he too had
+on the way let go his mouthful of silence.
+
+Toonie, when his second failure came home to him, was quite vexed with
+himself for his folly and mismanagement. So that it should not happen
+again, he got his wife to tie on his cap of moonshine so firmly that it
+could not come off, and to gag up his mouth so that no word could come
+out of it. And once more taking his courage in both hands, he set out.
+
+For a long way he went and nothing happened, so he was in good hopes of
+getting the desire of his eyes before the night was over; and, clenching
+his fists tight upon his courage, he pressed on.
+
+He had nearly reached to the top of Drundle Head, when up from the
+ground sprang the same little elderly man of the evening before, and
+began beating him across the face with a hazel wand. And at that Toonie
+threw up both hands and let go his courage, and turned and tried to run
+down the hill.
+
+When her husband did not return, Toonie's wife became a kind of a widow.
+People were very kind to her, and told her that Toonie was not
+dead--that he had only fallen into the hands of the good-folk; but all
+day long she sat and cried, "I fastened on his cap of moonshine, and I
+tied up his tongue; and for all that he has gone away and left me!" And
+so she cried until her child was born and named little Toonie in memory
+of his lost father.
+
+After a while people, looking at him, began to shake their heads; for as
+he grew older it became apparent that his tongue was tied, seeing that
+he remained quite dumb in spite of all that was done to teach him; and
+his head was full of moonshine, so that he could understand nothing
+clearly by day--only as night came on his wits gathered, and he seemed
+to find a meaning for things. And some said it was his mother's fault,
+and some that it was his father's, and some that he was a changeling
+sent by the fairies, and that the real child had been taken to share his
+father's bondage. But which of these things was true Little Toonie
+himself had no idea.
+
+After a time Little Toonie began to grow big, as is the way with
+children, and at last he became bigger than ever old Toonie had been.
+But folk still called him Little Toonie, because his head was so full of
+moonshine; and his mother, finding he was no good to her, sold him to
+the farmer, by whom, since he had no wits for anything better, he was
+set to pull at waggon and plough just as if he were a cart-horse; and,
+indeed, he was almost as strong as one. To make him work, carter and
+ploughman used to crack their whips over his back; and Little Toonie
+took it as the most natural thing in the world, because his brain was
+full of moonshine, so that he understood nothing clearly by day.
+
+But at night he would lie in his stable among the horses, and wonder
+about the moonlight that stretched wide over all the world and lay free
+on the bare tops of the hills; and he thought--would it not be good to
+be there all alone, with the moonbeams laying their white hands down on
+his head? And so it came that one night, finding the door of his stable
+unlocked, he ran out into the open world a free man.
+
+A soft wind breathed at large, and swung slowly in the black-silver
+treetops. Over them Little Toonie could see the quiet slopes of Drundle
+Head, asleep in the moonlight.
+
+Before long, following the lead of his eyes, he had come to the bottom
+of the ascent. There before him went walking a little shrivelled elderly
+man, looking to right and left as if uncertain of the road.
+
+As Little Toonie drew near, the other one turned and spoke. "Can you
+tell me," said he, "if this be the way to the fairies?"
+
+Little Toonie had no tongue to give an answer; so, looking at his
+questioner, he wagged his head and went on.
+
+Quickening his pace, the old man came alongside and began peering; then
+he smiled to himself, and after a bit spoke out. "So you have lost your
+cap, neighbour? Then you will never be able to find the fairies." For he
+did not know that Little Toonie, who wore no cap on his head, carried
+his capful of moonshine safe underneath his skull, where it had been
+since the hour of his birth.
+
+The little elderly man slipped from his side, disappearing suddenly
+among the bushes, and Toonie went on alone. So presently he was more
+than half way up the ascent, and could see along the foot-track of the
+thicket the silver moonlight lying out over the open ahead.
+
+He had nearly reached to the top of the hill, when up from the ground
+sprang the little elderly man, and began beating him across the face
+with a hazel wand. Toonie thought surely this must be some carter or
+ploughman beating him to make him go faster; so he made haste to get on
+and be rid of the blows.
+
+Then, all of a sudden, the little elderly man threw away his hazel
+stick, and fell down, clutching at Little Toonie's ankles, whining and
+praying him not to go on.
+
+"Now that I have failed to keep you from coming," he cried, "my masters
+will put me to death for it! I am a dead man, I tell you, if you go
+another step!"
+
+Toonie could not understand what the old fellow meant, and he could not
+speak to him. But the poor creature clung to his feet, holding them to
+prevent him from taking another step; so Toonie just stooped down, and
+(for he was so little and light) picked him up by the scruff, and by the
+slack of his breeches, so that his arms and legs trailed together along
+the ground.
+
+In the open moonlight ahead little people were all agog; bright dewdrops
+were shivering down like rain, where flying feet alighted--shot from
+bent grass-blades like arrows from a drawn bow. Tight, panting little
+bodies, of which one could count the ribs, and faces flushed with fiery
+green blood, sprang everywhere. But at Toonie's coming one cried up
+shriller than a bat; and at once rippling burrows went this way and that
+in the long grass, and stillness followed after.
+
+The poor, dangling old man, whom Toonie was still carrying, wriggled and
+whined miserably, crying, "Come back, masters, for it is no use--this
+one sees you! He has got past me and all my poor skill to stop him. Set
+me free, for you see I am too old to keep the door for you any longer!"
+
+Out buzzed the fairies, hot and angry as a swarm of bees. They came and
+fastened upon the unhappy old man, and began pulling him. "To the
+ant-hills!" they cried; "off with him to the ant-hills!" But when they
+found that Toonie still held him, quickly they all let go.
+
+One fairy, standing out from the rest, pulled off his cap and bowed low.
+"What is your will, master mortal?" he inquired; "for until you have
+taken your wish and gone, we are all slaves at your bidding."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They all cringed round him, the cruel little people; but he answered
+nothing. The moonbeams came thick, laying their slender white palms
+graciously upon Toonie's head; and he, looking up, opened his mouth for
+a laugh that gave no sound.
+
+"Ah, so! That is why--he is a mute!" cried the fairies.
+
+Quickly one dipped his cap along the grass and brought it filled with
+dew. He sprang up, and poured it upon Toonie's tongue; and as the fairy
+dew touched it, "Now speak!" they all cried in chorus, and fawned and
+cringed, waiting for him to give them the word.
+
+Cudgelling his brain for what it all meant, he said, "Tell me first what
+wish I may have."
+
+"Whatever you like to ask," said they, "for you have become one of our
+free men. Tell us your name?"
+
+"I am called Little Toonie," said he, "the son of old Toonie that was
+lost."
+
+"Why, as I live and remember," cried the little elderly man, "old Toonie
+was me!" Then he threw himself grovelling at his son's feet, and began
+crying: "Oh, be quick and take me away! Make them give me up to you: ask
+to have me! I am your poor, loving old father whom you never saw; all
+these years have I been looking and longing for you! Now take me away,
+for they are a proud, cruel people, as spiteful as they are small; and
+my back has been broken twenty years in their bondage."
+
+The fairies began to look blue, for they hate nothing so much as to give
+up one whom they have once held captive. "We can give you gold," said
+they, "or precious stones, or the root of long living, or the waters of
+happiness, or the sap of youth, or the seed of plenty, or the blossom
+of beauty. Choose any of these, and we can give it you."
+
+The old man again caught hold of his son's feet. "Don't choose these,"
+he whimpered, "choose me!"
+
+So because he had a capful of moonshine in his head, and because the
+moonbeams were laying their white hands on his hair, he chose the weak,
+shrivelled old man, who crouched and clung to him, imploring not to be
+let go.
+
+The fairies, for spite and anger, bestowed every one a parting pinch on
+their tumbledown old bondsman; then they handed him to his son, and
+swung back with careless light hearts to their revels.
+
+As father and son went down the hill together, the old man whistled and
+piped like a bird. "Why, why!" he said, "you are a lad of strength and
+inches: with you to work and look after me, I can keep on to a merry old
+age! Ay, ay, I have had long to wait for it; but wisdom is justified in
+her children."
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE HERONS
+
+
+A LONG time ago there lived a King and a Queen who loved each other
+dearly. They had both fallen in love at first sight; and as their love
+began so it went on through all their life. Yet this, which was the
+cause of all their happiness, was the cause also of all their
+misfortunes.
+
+In his youth, when he was a beautiful young bachelor, the King had had
+the ill-luck to attract the heart of a jealous and powerful Fairy; and
+though he never gave her the least hope or encouragement, when she heard
+that his love had been won at first sight by a mere mortal, her rage and
+resentment knew no bounds. She said nothing, however, but bided her
+time.
+
+After they had been married a year the Queen presented her husband with
+a little daughter; before she was yet a day old she was the most
+beautiful object in the world, and life seemed to promise her nothing
+but fortune and happiness.
+
+The family Fairy came to the blessing of the new-born; and she, looking
+at it as it lay beautifully asleep in its cradle, and seeing that it had
+already as much beauty and health as the heart could desire, promised it
+love as the next best gift it was within her power to offer. The Queen,
+who knew how much happiness her own love had brought her, was kissing
+the good Fairy with all the warmth of gratitude, when a black kite came
+and perched upon the window-sill crying: "And I will give her love at
+first sight! The first living thing that she sets eyes on she shall love
+to distraction, whether it be man or monster, prince or pauper, bird,
+beast or reptile." And as the wicked Fairy spoke she clapped her wings,
+and up through the boards of the floor, and out from under the bed, and
+in through the window, came a crowd of all the ugliest shapes in the
+world. Thick and fast they came, gathering about the cradle and lifting
+their heads over the edge of it, waiting for the poor little Princess to
+wake up and fall in love at first sight with one of them.
+
+Luckily the child was asleep; and the good Fairy, after driving away the
+black kite and the crowd of beasts it had called to its aid, wrapped the
+Princess up in a shawl and carried her away to a dark room where no
+glimmer of light could get in.
+
+She said to the Queen: "Till I can devise a better way, you must keep
+her in the dark; and when you take her into the open air you must
+blindfold her eyes. Some day, when she is of a fit age, I will bring a
+handsome Prince for her; and only to him shall you unblindfold her at
+last, and make love safe for her."
+
+She went, leaving the King and Queen deeply stricken with grief over the
+harm which had befallen their daughter. They did not dare to present
+even themselves before her eyes lest love for them, fatal and consuming,
+should drive her to distraction. In utter darkness the Queen would sit
+and cherish her daughter, clasping her to her breast, and calling her by
+all sweet names; but the little face, except by stealth when it was
+sound asleep, she never dared to see, nor did the baby-Princess know the
+face of the mother who loved her.
+
+By and by, however, the family Fairy came again, saying: "Now, I have a
+plan by which your child may enjoy the delights of seeing, and no ill
+come of it." And she caused to be made a large chamber, the whole of one
+side of which was a mirror. High up in the opposite wall were windows so
+screened that from below no one could look out of them, but across on to
+the mirror came all the sweet sights of the world, glimpses of wood and
+field, and the sun and the moon and the stars, and of every bird as it
+flew by. So the little Princess was brought and set in a screened place
+looking towards the mirror, and there her eyes learned gradually all the
+beautiful things of the world. Over the screen, in the glass before her,
+she learned to know her mother's face, and to love it dearly in a gentle
+child-like fashion; and when she could talk she became very wise,
+understanding all that was told her about the danger of looking at
+anything alive, except by its reflection in the glass.
+
+When she went out into the open air for her health, she always wore a
+bandage over her eyes, lest she should look, and love something too
+well: but in the chamber of the mirror her eyes were free to see
+whatever they could. The good Fairy, making herself invisible, came and
+taught her to read and make music, and draw; so that before she was
+fifteen she was the most charming and accomplished, as well as the most
+beautiful Princess of her day.
+
+At last the Fairy said that the time was come for her world of
+reflections to be made real, and she went away to fetch the ideal Prince
+that the Princess might at first sight fall in love with him.
+
+The very day after she was gone, as the morning was fine, the Princess
+went out with one of her maids for a wait through the woods. Over her
+patient eyes she wore a bandage of green silk, through which she felt
+the sunlight fall pleasantly.
+
+Out of doors the Princess knew most things by their sounds. She passed
+under rustling leaves, and along by the side of running water; and at
+last she heard the silence of the water, and knew that she was standing
+by the great fish-pond in the middle of the wood. Then she said to her
+waiting-woman, "Is there not some great bird fishing out there, for I
+hear the dipping of his bill, and the water falling off it as he draws
+out the fish?"
+
+And just as she was saying that, the wicked Fairy, who had long bided
+her time, coming softly up from behind, pushed the waiting-woman off the
+bank into the deep water of the pond. Then she snatched away the silk
+bandage, and before the Princess had time to think or close her eyes,
+she had lost her heart to a great heron that was standing half-way up to
+his feathers fishing among the reeds.
+
+The Princess, with her eyes set free, laughed for joy at the sight of
+him. She stretched out her arms from the bank and cried most musically
+for the bird to come to her; and he came in grave, stately fashion, with
+trailing legs, and slow sobbing creak of his wings, and settled down on
+the bank beside her. She drew his slender neck against her white
+throat, and laughed and cried with her arms round him, loving him so
+that she forgot all in the world beside. And the heron looked gravely at
+her with kind eyes, and, bird-like, gave her all the love he could, but
+not more; and so, presently, casting his grey wings abroad, lifted
+himself and sailed slowly back to his fishing among the reeds.
+
+The waiting-woman had got herself out of the water, and stood wringing
+her clothes and her hands beside the Princess. "O, sweet mistress," she
+cried, with lamentation, "now is all the evil come about which it was
+our whole aim to avoid! And what, and what will the Queen your mother
+say?"
+
+But the Princess answered, smiling, "Foolish girl, I had no thought of
+what happiness meant till now! See you where my love is gone? and did
+you notice the bend of his neck, and the exceeding length of his legs,
+and the stretch of his grey wings as he flew? This pond is his hall of
+mirrors, wherein he sees the reflection of all his world. Surely I, from
+my hall of mirrors, am the true mate for him!"
+
+Her maid, seeing how far the evil had gone, and that no worse could now
+happen, ran back to the palace and curdled all the court's blood with
+her news. The King and the Queen and all their nobility rushed down, and
+there they found the Princess with the heron once more in her arms,
+kissing and fondling it with all the marks of a sweet and maidenly
+passion. "Dear mother," she said, as soon as she saw the Queen, "the
+happiness, which you feared would be sorrow, has come; and it is such
+happiness I have no name for it! And the evil that you so dreaded, see
+how sweet it is! And how sweet it is to see all the world with my own
+eyes and you also at last!" And for the first time in her life she
+kissed her mother's face in the full light of day.
+
+But her mother hung sobbing upon her neck, "O, my darling, my
+beautiful," she wept, "does your heart belong for ever to this grey
+bird?"
+
+Her daughter answered, "He is more than all the world to me! Is he not
+goodly to look upon? Have you considered the bend of his neck, the
+length of his legs, and the waving of his wings; his skill also when he
+fishes: what imagination, what presence of mind!"
+
+"Alas, alas," sorrowed the Queen, "dear daughter, is this all true to
+you?"
+
+"Mother," cried the Princess, clinging to her with entreaty, "is all the
+world blind but me?"
+
+The heron had become quite fond of the Princess; wherever she went it
+followed her, and, indeed, without it nowhere would she go. Whenever it
+was near her, the Princess laughed and sang, and when it was out of her
+sight she became sad as night. All the courtiers wept to see her in such
+bondage. "Ah," said she, "your eyes have been worn out with looking at
+things so long; mine have been kept for me in a mirror."
+
+When the good family Fairy came (for she was at once sent for by the
+Queen, and told of all that had happened), she said, "Dear Madam, there
+are but two things you can do: either you can wring the heron's neck,
+and leave the Princess to die of grief; or you can make the Princess
+happy in her own way, by----" Her voice dropped, and she looked from
+the King to the Queen before she went on. "At her birth I gave your
+daughter love for my gift; now it is hers, will you let her keep it?"
+
+The King and the Queen looked softly at each other. "Do not take love
+from her," said they, "let her keep it!"
+
+"There is but one way," answered the Fairy.
+
+"Do not tell me the way," said the Queen weeping, "only let the way be!"
+
+So they went with the Fairy down to the great pond, and there sat the
+Princess, with the grey heron against her heart. She smiled as she saw
+them come. "I see good in your hearts towards me!" she cried. "Dear
+godmother, give me the thing that I want, that my love may be happy!"
+
+Then the Fairy stroked her but once with her wand, and two grey herons
+suddenly rose up from the bank, and sailed away to a hiding-place in the
+reeds.
+
+The Fairy said to the Queen, "You have made your daughter happy; and
+still she will have her voice and her human heart, and will remember you
+with love and gratitude; but her greatest love will be to the grey
+heron, and her home among the reeds."
+
+So the changed life of the Princess began; every day her mother went
+down to the pool and called, and the Princess came rising up out of the
+reeds, and folded her grey wings over her mother's heart. Every day her
+mother said, "Daughter of mine, are you happy?"
+
+And the Princess answered her, "Yes, for I love and am loved."
+
+Yet each time the mother heard more and more of a note of sadness come
+into her daughter's voice; and at last one day she said, "Answer me
+truly, as the mother who brought you into the world, whether you be
+happy in your heart of hearts or no?"
+
+Then the heron-Princess laid her head on the Queen's heart, and said,
+"Mother, my heart is breaking with love!"
+
+"For whom, then?" asked the Queen astonished.
+
+"For my grey heron, whom I love, and who loves me so much. And yet it is
+love that divides us, for I am still troubled with a human heart, and
+often it aches with sorrow because all the love in it can never be fully
+understood or shared by my heron; and I have my human voice left, and
+that gives me a hundred things to say all day, for which there is no
+word in heron's language, and so he cannot understand them. Therefore
+these things only make a gulf between him and me. For all the other grey
+herons in the pools there is happiness, but not for me who have too big
+a heart between my wings."
+
+Her mother said softly, "Wait, wait, little heron-daughter, and it shall
+be well with you!" Then she went to the Fairy and said, "My daughter's
+heart is lonely among the reeds, for the grey heron's love covers but
+half of it. Give her some companions of her own kind that her hours may
+become merry again!"
+
+So the Fairy took and turned five of the Princess's ladies'-maids into
+herons, and sent them down to the pool.
+
+The five herons stood each on one leg in the shallows of the pool, and
+cried all day long; and their tears fell down into the water and
+frightened away the fish that came their way. For they had human hearts
+that cried out to be let go. "O, cruel, cruel," they wept, whenever the
+heron-Princess approached, "see what we suffer because of you, and what
+they have made of us for your sake!"
+
+The Princess came to her mother and said, "Dear mother, take them away,
+for their cry wearies me, and the pool is bitter with their tears! They
+only awake the human part of my heart that wants to sleep; presently,
+maybe, if it is let alone, it will forget itself."
+
+Her mother said, "It is my coming every day also that keeps it awake."
+The Princess answered, "This sorrow belongs to my birthright; you must
+still come; but for the others, let the Fairy take them away."
+
+So the Fairy came and released the five ladies'-maids whom she had
+changed into herons. And they came up out of the water, stripping
+themselves of their grey feather-skins and throwing them back into the
+pool. The Fairy said, "You foolish maids, you have thrown away a gift
+that you should have valued; these skins you could have kept and held as
+heirlooms in your family."
+
+The five maids answered, "We want to forget that there are such things
+as herons in the world!"
+
+After much thought the Queen said to the Fairy, "You have changed a
+Princess into a heron, and five maids into herons and back again; cannot
+you change one heron into a Prince?" But the Fairy answered sadly, "Our
+power has limits; we can bring down, but we cannot bring up, if there be
+no heart to answer our call. The five maids only followed their hearts,
+that were human, when I called them back; but a heron has only a
+heron's heart, and unless his heart become too great for a bird and he
+earn a human one, I cannot change him to a higher form." "How can he
+earn a human one?" asked the Queen. "Only if he love the Princess so
+well that his love for her becomes stronger than his life," answered the
+Fairy. "Then he will have earned a human body, and then I can give him
+the form that his heart suits best. There may be a chance, if we wait
+for it and are patient, for the Princess's love is great and may work
+miracles."
+
+A little while after this, the Queen watching, saw that the two herons
+were making a nest among the reeds. "What have you there?" said the
+mother to her daughter. "A little hollow place," answered the
+heron-Princess, "and in it the moon lies." A little while after she said
+again, "What have you there, now, little daughter?" And her daughter
+answered, "Only a small hollow space; but in it two moons lie."
+
+The Queen told the family Fairy how in a hollow of the reeds lay two
+moons. "Now," said the Fairy, "we will wait no longer. If your
+daughter's love has touched the heron's heart and made it grow larger
+than a bird's, I can help them both to happiness; but if not, then birds
+they must still remain."
+
+Among the reeds the heron said in bird language to his wife, "Go and
+stretch your wings for a little while over the water; it is weary work
+to wait here so long in the reeds." The heron-Princess looked at him
+with her bird's eyes, and all the human love in her heart strove, like a
+fountain that could not get free, to make itself known through them;
+also her tongue was full of the longing to utter sweet words, but she
+kept them back, knowing they were beyond the heron's power to
+understand. So she answered merely in heron's language, "Come with me,
+and I will come!"
+
+They rose, wing beating beside wing; and the reflection of their grey
+breasts slid out under them over the face of the water.
+
+Higher they went and higher, passing over the tree tops, and keeping
+time together as they flew. All at once the wings of the grey heron
+flagged, then took a deep beat; he cried to the heron-Princess, "Turn,
+and come home, yonder there is danger flying to meet us!" Before them
+hung a brown blot in the air, that winged and grew large. The two herons
+turned and flew back. "Rise," cried the grey heron, "we must rise!" and
+the Princess knew what was behind, and struggled with the whole strength
+of her wings for escape.
+
+The grey heron was bearing ahead on stronger wing. "With me, with me!"
+he cried. "If it gets above us, one of us is dead!" But the falcon had
+fixed his eye on the Princess for his quarry, and flew she fast, or flew
+she slow, there was little chance for her now. Up and up she strained,
+but still she was behind her mate, and still the falcon gained.
+
+The heron swung back to her side; she saw the anguish and fear of his
+downward glance as his head ranged by hers. Past her the falcon went,
+towering for the final swoop.
+
+The Princess cried in heron's language, "Farewell, dear mate, and
+farewell, two little moons among the reeds!" But the grey heron only
+kept closer to her side.
+
+Overhead the falcon closed in its wings and fell like a dead weight out
+of the clouds. "Drop!" cried the grey heron to his mate.
+
+At his word she dropped; but he stayed, stretching up his wings, and,
+passing between the descending falcon and its prey, caught in his own
+body the death-blow from its beak. Drops of his blood fell upon the
+heron-Princess.
+
+He stricken in body, she in soul, together they fell down to the margin
+of the pool. The falcon still clung fleshing its beak in the neck of its
+prey. The heron-Princess threw back her head, and, darting furiously,
+struck her own sharp bill deep into the falcon's breast. The bird threw
+out its wings with a hoarse cry and fell back dead, with a little tuft
+of the grey heron's feathers still upon its beak.
+
+The heron-Princess crouched down, and covered with her wings the dying
+form of her mate; in her sorrow she spoke to him in her own tongue,
+forgetting her bird's language. The grey heron lifted his head, and,
+gazing tenderly, answered her with a human voice:
+
+"Dear wife," he said, "at last I have the happiness so long denied to me
+of giving utterance in the speech that is your own to the love that you
+have put into my heart. Often I have heard you speak and have not
+understood; now something has touched my heart, and changed it, so that
+I can both speak and understand."
+
+"O, beloved!" She laid her head down by his. "The ends of the world
+belong to us now. Lie down, and die gently by my side, and I will die
+with you, breaking my heart with happiness."
+
+"No," said the grey heron, "do not die yet! Remember the two little
+moons that lie in the hollow among the reeds." Then he laid his head
+down by hers, being too weak to say more.
+
+They folded their wings over each other, and closed their eyes; nor did
+they know that the Fairy was standing by them, till she stroked them
+both softly with her wand, saying to each of them the same words:
+
+"Human heart, and human form, come out of the grey heron!"
+
+And out of the grey heron-skins came two human forms; the one was the
+Princess restored again to her own shape, but the other was a beautiful
+youth, with a bird-like look about the eyes, and long slender limbs. The
+Princess, as she gazed on him, found hardly any change, for love
+remained the same, binding him close to her heart; and, grey heron or
+beautiful youth, he was all one to her now.
+
+Then came the Queen, weeping for joy, and embracing them both, and after
+them, the Fairy. "O, how good an ending," she cried, "has come to that
+terrible dream! Let it never be remembered or mentioned between us
+more!" And she began to lead the way back to the palace.
+
+But the youth, to whom the Fairy gave the name of Prince Heron, turned
+and took up the two heron-skins which he and his wife had let fall, and
+followed, carrying them upon his arm. And as they came past the bed of
+reeds, the Princess went aside, and, stooping down in a certain place
+drew out from thence something which she came carrying, softly wrapped
+in the folds of her gown.
+
+With what rejoicing the Princess and her husband were welcomed by the
+King and all the Court needs not to be told. For a whole month the
+festivities continued; and whenever she showed herself, there was the
+Princess sitting with two eggs in her lap, and her hands over them to
+keep them warm. The King was impatient. "Why cannot you send them down
+to the poultry yard to be hatched?" he said.
+
+But the Princess replied smiling, "My moons are my own, and I will keep
+them to myself."
+
+"Do you hear?" she said one day, at last; and everybody who listened
+could hear something going "tap, tap," inside the shells. Presently the
+eggs cracked, and out of each, at the same moment, came a little grey
+heron.
+
+When she saw that they were herons, the Queen wrung her hands. "O
+Fairy," she cried, "what a disappointment is this! I had hoped two
+beautiful babies would have come out of those shells."
+
+But the Fairy said, "It is no matter. Half of their hearts are human
+already; birds' hearts do not beat so. If you wish it, I can change
+them." So she stroked them softly with her wand, saying to each, "Human
+heart, and human form, come out of the grey heron!"
+
+Yet she had to stroke them three times before they would turn; and she
+said to the Princess, "My dear, you were too satisfied with your lot
+when you laid your moon-children. I doubt if more than a quarter of them
+is human."
+
+"I was very satisfied," said the Princess, and she laughed across to her
+husband.
+
+At last, however, on the third stroke of the wand, the heron's skins
+dropped off, and they changed into a pair of very small babies, a boy
+and a girl. But the difference between them and other children was, that
+instead of hair, their heads were covered with a fluff of downy grey
+feathers; also they had queer, round, bird-like eyes, and were able to
+sleep standing.
+
+Now, after this the happiness of the Princess was great; but the Fairy
+said to her, "Do not let your husband see the heron-skins again for some
+while, lest with the memory a longing for his old life should return to
+him and take him away from you. Only by exchange with another can he
+ever get back his human form again, if he surrenders it of his own free
+will. And who is there so poor that he would willingly give up his human
+form to become a bird?"
+
+So the Princess took the four coats of feathers--her own and her
+husband's and her two children's--and hid them away in a closet of which
+she alone kept the key. It was a little gold key, and to make it safe
+she hung it about her neck, and wore it night and day.
+
+The Prince said to her, "What is that little key that you wear always
+hung round your neck?"
+
+She answered him, "It is the key to your happiness and mine. Do not ask
+more than that!" At that there was a look in his face that made her
+say, "You _are_ happy, are you not?"
+
+He kissed her, saying, "Happy, indeed! Have I not you to make me so?"
+Yet though, indeed, he told no untruth, and was happy whenever she was
+with him, there were times when a restlessness and a longing for wings
+took hold of him; for, as yet, the life of a man was new and half
+strange to him, and a taint of his old life still mixed itself with his
+blood. But to her he was ashamed to say what might seem a complaint
+against his great fortune; so when she said "happiness," he thought, "Is
+it just the turning of that key that I want before my happiness can be
+perfect?"
+
+Therefore, one night when the early season of spring made his longing
+strong in him, he took the key from the Princess while she slept, and
+opened the little closet in which hung the four feather coats. And when
+he saw his own, all at once he remembered the great pools of water, and
+how they lay in the shine and shadow of the moonlight, while the fish
+rose in rings upon their surface. And at that so great a longing came
+into him to revisit his old haunts that he reached out his hand and took
+down the heron-skin from its nail and put it over himself; so that
+immediately his old life took hold of him, and he flew out of the window
+in the form of a grey heron.
+
+In the morning the Princess found the key gone from her neck, and her
+husband's place empty. She went in haste to the closet, and there stood
+the door wide with the key in it, and only three heron-skins hanging
+where four had used to be.
+
+Then she came crying to the family Fairy, "My husband has taken his
+heron-skin and is gone! Tell me what I can do!"
+
+The Fairy pitied her with all her heart, but could do nothing. "Only by
+exchange," said she, "can he get back his human shape; and who is there
+so poor that he would willingly lose his own form to become a bird? Only
+your children, who are but half human, can put their heron-skins on and
+off as they like and when they like."
+
+In deep grief the Princess went to look for her husband down by the
+pools in the wood. But now his shame and sorrow at having deceived her
+were so great that as soon as he heard her voice he hid himself among
+the reeds, for he knew now that, having put on his heron-skin again, he
+could not take it off unless some one gave him a human form in exchange.
+
+At last, however, so pitiful was the cry of the Princess for him, that
+he could bear to hear it no more; but rising up from the reeds came
+trailing to her sadly over the water. "Ah, dear love!" she said when he
+was come to her, "if I had not distrusted you, you would not have
+deceived me: thus, for my fault we are punished." So she sorrowed, and
+he answered her:
+
+"Nay, dear love, for if I had not deceived you, you would not have
+distrusted me. I thought I was not happy, yet I feared to tell it you."
+Thus they sorrowed together, both laying on themselves the blame and the
+burden.
+
+Then she said to him: "Be here for me to-night, for now I must go; but
+then I shall return."
+
+She went back to the palace, and told her mother of all that had
+happened. "And now," she said, "you who know where my happiness lies
+will not forbid me from following it; for my heart is again with the
+grey heron." And the Queen wept, but would not say her no.
+
+So that night the Princess went and kissed her children as they slept
+standing up in their beds, with their funny feather-pates to one side;
+and then she took down her skin of feathers and put it on, and became
+changed once more into a grey heron. And again she went up to the two in
+their cots, and kissed their birdish heads saying: "They who can change
+at will, being but half human, they will come and visit us in the great
+pool by the wood, and bring back word of us here."
+
+In the morning the Princess was gone, and the two children when they
+woke looked at each other and said: "Did we dream last night?"
+
+They both answered each other, "Yes, first we dreamed that our mother
+came and kissed us; and we liked that. And then we dreamed that a grey
+heron came and kissed us, and we liked that better still!" They waved
+their arms up and down. "Why have we not wings?" they kept asking. All
+day long they did this, playing that they were birds. If a window were
+opened, it was with the greatest difficulty that they were kept from
+trying to fly through.
+
+In the Court they were known as the "Feather-pates"; nothing could they
+be taught at all. When they were rebuked they would stand on one leg and
+sigh with their heads on one side; but no one ever saw tears come out
+of their birdish eyes.
+
+Now at night they would dream that two grey herons came and stood by
+their bedsides, kissing them; "And where in the world," they said when
+they woke, "_are_ our wings?"
+
+One day, wandering about in the palace, they came upon the closet in
+which hung the two little feather coats. "O!!!" they cried, and opened
+hard bright eyes at each other, nodding, for now they knew what they
+would do. "If we told, they would be taken from us," they said; and they
+waited till it was night. Then they crept back and took the two little
+coats from their pegs, and, putting them on, were turned into two young
+herons.
+
+Through the window they flew, away down to the great fish-pond in the
+wood. Their father and mother saw them coming, and clapped their wings
+for joy. "See," they said, "our children come to visit us, and our
+hearts are left to us to love with. What further happiness can we want?"
+But when they were not looking at each other they sighed.
+
+All night long the two young herons stayed with their parents; they
+bathed, and fished, and flew, till they were weary. Then the Princess
+showed them the nest among the reeds, and told them all the story of
+their lives.
+
+"But it is much nicer to be herons than to be real people," said the
+young ones, sadly, and became very sorrowful when dawn drew on, and
+their mother told them to go back to the palace and hang up the feather
+coats again, and be as they had been the day before.
+
+Long, long the day now seemed to them; they hardly waited till it was
+night before they took down their feather-skins, and, putting them on,
+flew out and away to the fish-pond in the wood.
+
+So every night they went, when all in the palace were asleep; and in the
+morning came back before anyone was astir, and were found by their
+nurses lying demurely between the sheets, just as they had been left the
+night before.
+
+One day the Queen when she went to see her daughter said to her, "My
+child, your two children are growing less like human beings and more
+like birds every day. Nothing will they learn or do, but stand all day
+flapping their arms up and down, and saying, 'Where are our wings, where
+are our wings?' The idea of one of them ever coming to the throne makes
+your father's hair stand on end under his crown."
+
+"Oh, mother," said the heron-Princess, "I have made a sad bed for you
+and my father to lie on!"
+
+One day the two children said to each other, "Our father and mother are
+sad, because they want to be real persons again, instead of having wings
+and catching fish the way we like to do. Let us give up being real
+persons, which is all so much trouble, and such a want of exercise, and
+make them exchange with us!" But when the two young herons went down to
+the pond and proposed it to them, their parents said, "You are young;
+you do not know what you would be giving up." Nor would they consent to
+it at all.
+
+Now one morning it happened that the Feather-pates were so late in
+returning to the palace that the Queen, coming into their chamber,
+found the two beds empty; and just as she had turned away to search for
+them elsewhere, she heard a noise of wings and saw the two young herons
+come flying in through the window. Then she saw them take off their
+feather-skins and hang them up in the closet, and after that go and lie
+down in their beds so as to look as if they had been there all night.
+
+The Queen struck her hands together with horror at the sight, but she
+crept away softly, so that they did not know they had been found out.
+But as soon as they were out of their beds and at play in another part
+of the palace, the Queen went to the closet, and setting fire to the two
+heron-skins where they hung, burnt them till not a feather of them was
+left, and only a heap of grey ashes remained to tell what had become of
+them.
+
+At night, when the Feather-pates went to the closet and found their
+skins gone, and saw what had become of them, their grief knew no bounds.
+They trembled with fear and rage, and tears rained out of their eyes as
+they beheld themselves deprived of their bird bodies and made into real
+persons for good and all.
+
+"We won't be real persons!" they cried. But for all their crying they
+knew no way out of it. They made themselves quite ill with grief; and
+that night, for the first time since they had found their way to the
+closet, they stayed where their nurses had put them, and did not even
+stand up in their beds to go to sleep. There they lay with gasping
+mouth, and big bird-like eyes all languid with grief, and hollow grey
+cheeks.
+
+Presently their father and mother came seeking for them, wondering why
+they had not come down to the fish-pond as they were wont. "Where are
+you, my children?" cried the heron-Princess, putting her head in through
+the window.
+
+"Here we are, both at death's door!" they cried. "Come and see us die!
+Our wicked grandam has burnt our feather-skins and made us into real
+persons for ever and ever, Amen. But we will die rather!"
+
+The parent herons, when they heard that, flew in through the window and
+bent down over the little ones' beds.
+
+The two children reached up their arms. "Give us your feathers!" they
+cried. "We shall die if you don't! We _will_ die if you don't! O, do!"
+But still the parent birds hesitated, nor knew what to do.
+
+"Bend down, and let me whisper something!" said the boy to his father:
+and "Bend down, and whisper!" cried the girl to her mother. And father
+and mother bent down over the faces of their sick children. Then these,
+both together, caught hold of them, and crying, "Human heart, and human
+form, exchange with the grey heron!" pulled off their parents'
+feather-skins, and put them upon themselves.
+
+And there once more stood Prince Heron and the Princess in human shape,
+while the two children had turned into herons in their place.
+
+The young herons laughed and shouted and clapped their wings for joy.
+"Are you not happy now?" cried they. And when their parents saw the joy,
+not only in their children's eyes, but in each other's, and felt their
+hearts growing glad in the bodies they had regained, then they owned
+that the Feather-pates had been wise in their generation, and done well
+according to their lights.
+
+So it came about that the Prince and the Princess lived happily ever
+after, and the two young herons lived happily also, and were the
+best-hearted birds the world ever saw.
+
+In course of time the Prince and Princess had other children, who
+pleased the old King better than the first had done. But the parents
+loved none better than the two who lived as herons by the great
+fish-pond in the wood; nor could there be greater love than was found
+between these and their younger brothers and sisters, whose nature it
+was to be real persons.
+
+
+
+
+THE CROWN'S WARRANTY
+
+
+FIVE hundred years ago or more, a king died, leaving two sons: one was
+the child of his first wife, and the other of his second, who surviving
+him became his widow. When the king was dying he took off the royal
+crown which he wore, and set it upon the head of the elder born, the son
+of his first wife, and said to him: "God is the lord of the air, and of
+the water, and of the dry land: this gift cometh to thee from God. Be
+merciful, over whatsoever thou holdest power, as God is!" And saying
+these words he laid his hands upon the heads of his two sons and died.
+
+Now this crown was no ordinary crown, for it was made of the gold
+brought by the Wise Men of the East when they came to worship at
+Bethlehem. Every king that had worn it since then had reigned well and
+uprightly, and had been loved by all his people; but only to himself was
+it known what virtue lay in his crown; and every king at dying gave it
+to his son with the same words of blessing.
+
+So, now, the king's eldest son wore the crown; and his step-mother knew
+that her own son could not wear it while he lived, therefore she looked
+on and said nothing. Now he was known to all the people of his country,
+because of his right to the throne, as the king's son; and his brother,
+the child of the second wife, was called the queen's son. But as yet
+they were both young, and cared little enough for crowns.
+
+After the king's death the queen was made regent till the king's son
+should be come to a full age; but already the little king wore the royal
+crown his father had left him, and the queen looked on and said nothing.
+
+More than three years went by, and everybody said how good the queen was
+to the little king who was not her own son; and the king's son, for his
+part, was good to her and to his step-brother, loving them both; and all
+by himself he kept thinking, having his thoughts guarded and circled by
+his golden crown, "How shall I learn to be a wise king, and to be
+merciful when I have power, as God is?"
+
+So to everything that came his way, to his playthings and his pets, to
+his ministers and his servants, he played the king as though already his
+word made life and death. People watching him said, "Everything that has
+touch with the king's son loves him." They told strange tales of him:
+only in fairy books could they be believed, because they were so
+beautiful; and all the time the queen, getting a good name for herself,
+looked on and said nothing.
+
+One night the king's son was lying half-asleep upon his bed, with wise
+dreams coming and going under the circle of his gold crown, when a mouse
+ran out of the wainscot and came and jumped up upon the couch. The poor
+mouse had turned quite white with fear and horror, and was trembling in
+every limb as it cried its news into the king's ear. "O king's son," it
+said, "get up and run for your life! I was behind the wainscot in the
+queen's closet, and this is what I heard: if you stay here, when you
+wake up to-morrow you will be dead!"
+
+The king's son got up, and all alone in the dark night stole out of the
+palace, seeking safety for his dear life. He sighed to himself, "There
+was a pain in my crown ever since I wore it. Alas, mother, I thought you
+were too kind a step-mother to do this!"
+
+Outside it was still winter: there was no warmth in the world, and not a
+leaf upon the trees. He wandered away and away, wondering where he
+should hide.
+
+The queen, when her villains came and told her the king's son was not to
+be found, went and looked in her magic crystal to find trace of him. As
+soon as it grew light, for in the darkness the crystal could show her
+nothing, she saw many miles away the king's son running to hide himself
+in the forest. So she sent out her villains to search until they should
+find him.
+
+As they went the sun grew hot in the sky, and birds began singing. "It
+is spring!" cried the messengers. "How suddenly it has come!" They rode
+on till they came to the forest.
+
+The king's son, stumbling along through the forest under the bare
+boughs, thought, "Even here where shall I hide? Nowhere is there a leaf
+to cover me." But when the sun grew warm he looked up; and there were
+all the trees breaking into bud and leaf, making a green heaven above
+his head. So when he was too weary to go farther, he climbed into the
+largest tree he could find; and the leaves covered him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The queen's messengers searched through all the forest but could not
+find him; so they went back to her empty handed, not having either
+the king's crown or his heart to show. "Fools!" she cried, looking in
+her magic crystal, "he was in the big sycamore under which you stopped
+to give your horses provender!"
+
+The sycamore said to the king's son, "The queen's eye is on you; get
+down and run for your life till you get to the hollow tarn-stones among
+the hills! But if you stay here, when you wake to-morrow you will be
+dead."
+
+When the queen's messengers came once more to the forest they found it
+all wintry again, and without leaf; only the sycamore was in full green,
+clapping its hands for joy in the keen and bitter air.
+
+The messengers searched, and beat down the leaves, but the king's son
+was not there. They went back to the queen. She looked long in her magic
+crystal, but little could she see; for the king's son had hidden himself
+in a small cave beside the tarn-stones, and into the darkness the
+crystal could not pry.
+
+Presently she saw a flight of birds crossing the blue, and every bird
+carried a few crumbs of bread in its beak. Then she ran and called to
+her villains, "Follow the birds, and they will take you to where the
+little wizard is; for they are carrying bread to feed him, and they are
+all heading for the tarn-stones up on the hills."
+
+The birds said to the king's son, "Now you are rested; we have fed you,
+and you are not hungry. The queen's eye is on you. Up, and run for your
+life! If you stay here, when you wake up to-morrow you will be dead."
+
+"Where shall I go?" said the king's son. "Go," answered the birds, "and
+hide in the rushes on the island of the pool of sweet waters!"
+
+When the queen's messengers came to the tarn-stones, it was as though
+five thousand people had been feeding: they found crumbs enough to fill
+twelve baskets full, lying in the cave; but no king's son could they lay
+their hands on.
+
+The king's son was lying hidden among the rushes on the island of the
+great pool of sweet waters; and thick and fast came silver-scaled
+fishes, feeding him.
+
+It took the queen three days of hard gazing in her crystal, before she
+found how the fishes all swam to a point among the rushes of the island
+in the pool of sweet waters, and away again. Then she knew: and running
+to her messengers she cried: "He is among the rushes on the island in
+the pool of sweet waters; and all the fishes are feeding him!"
+
+The fishes said to the king's son: "The queen's eye is on you; up, and
+swim to shore, and away for your life! For if they come and find you
+here, when you wake to-morrow you will certainly be dead."
+
+"Where shall I go?" asked the king's son. "Wherever I go, she finds me."
+"Go to the old fox who gets his poultry from the palace, and ask him to
+hide you in his burrow!"
+
+When the queen's messengers came to the pool they found the fishes
+playing at _alibis_ all about in the water; but nothing of the king's
+son could they see.
+
+The king's son came to the fox, and the fox hid him in his burrow, and
+brought him butter and eggs from the royal dairy. This was better fare
+than the king's son had had since the beginning of his wanderings, and
+he thanked the fox warmly for his friendship. "On the contrary," said
+the fox, "I am under an obligation to you; for ever since you came to be
+my guest I have felt like an honest man." "If I live to be king," said
+the king's son, "you shall always have butter and eggs from the royal
+dairy, and be as honest as you like."
+
+The queen hugged her magic crystal for a whole week, but could make
+nothing out of it: for her crystal showed her nothing of the king's
+son's hiding-place, nor of the fox at his nightly thefts of butter and
+eggs from the royal dairy. But it so happened that this same fox was a
+sort of half-brother of the queen's; and so guilty did he feel with his
+brand-new good conscience that he quite left off going to see her. So in
+a little while the queen, with her suspicions and her magic crystal, had
+nosed out the young king's hiding-place.
+
+The fox said to the king's son: "The queen's eye is on you! Get out and
+run for your life, for if you stay here till to-morrow, you will wake up
+and find yourself a dead goose!"
+
+"But where else can I go to?" asked the king's son. "Is there any place
+left for me?" The fox laughed, and winked, and whispered a word; and all
+at once the king's son got up and went.
+
+The queen had said to her messengers, "Go and look in the fox's hole;
+and you shall find him!" But the messengers came and dug up the burrow,
+and found butter and eggs from the royal dairy, but of the king's son
+never a sign.
+
+The king's son came to the palace, and as he crept through the gardens
+he found there his little brother alone at play,--playing sadly because
+now he was all alone. Then the king's son stopped and said, "Little
+brother, do you so much wish to be king?" And taking off the crown, he
+put it upon his brother's head. Then he went on through underground ways
+and corridors, till he came to the palace dungeons.
+
+Now a dungeon is a hard thing to get out of, but it is easy enough to
+get into. He came to the deepest and darkest dungeon of all, and there
+he opened the door, and went in and hid himself.
+
+The queen's son came running to his mother, wearing the king's crown.
+"Oh, mother," he said, "I am frightened! while I was playing, my brother
+came looking all dead and white, and put this crown on my head. Take it
+off for me, it hurts!"
+
+When the queen saw the crown on her son's head, she was horribly afraid;
+for that it should have so come there was the most unlikely thing of
+all. She fetched her crystal ball, and looked in, asking where the
+king's son might be, and, for answer, the crystal became black as night.
+
+Then said the queen to herself, "He is dead at last!"
+
+But, now that the king's crown was on the wrong head, the air, and the
+water, and the dry land, over which God is lord, heard of it. And the
+trees said, "Until the king's son returns, we will not put forth bud or
+leaf!"
+
+And the birds said, "We will not sing in the land, or breed or build
+nests until the king's son returns!"
+
+And the fishes said, "We will not stay in the ponds or rivers to get
+caught, unless the king's son, to whom we belong, returns!"
+
+And the foxes said, "Unless the king's son returns, we will increase and
+multiply exceedingly and be like locusts in the land!"
+
+So all through that land the trees, though it was spring, stayed as if
+it were mid-winter; and all the fishes swam down to the sea; and all the
+birds flew over the sea, away into other countries; and all the foxes
+increased and multiplied, and became like locusts in the land.
+
+Now when the trees, and the birds, and the beasts, and the fishes led
+the way the good folk of the country discovered that the queen was a
+criminal. So, after the way of the flesh, they took the queen and her
+little son, and bound them, and threw them into the deepest and darkest
+dungeon they could find; and said they: "Until you tell us where the
+king's son is, there you stay and starve!"
+
+The king's son was playing all alone in his dungeon with the mice who
+brought him food from the palace larder, when the queen and her son were
+thrown down to him fast bound, as though he were as dangerous as a den
+of lions. At first he was terribly afraid when he found himself pursued
+into his last hiding-place; but presently he gathered from the queen's
+remarks that she was quite powerless to do him harm.
+
+"Oh, what a wicked woman I am!" she moaned; and began crying lamentably,
+as if she hoped to melt the stone walls which formed her prison.
+
+Presently her little son cried, "Mother, take off my brother's crown; it
+pricks me!" And the king's son sat in his corner, and cried to himself
+with grief over the harm that his step-mother's wickedness had brought
+about.
+
+"Mother," cried the queen's son again, "night and day since I have worn
+it, it pricks me; I cannot sleep!"
+
+But the queen's heart was still hard; not if she could help, would she
+yet take off from her son the crown.
+
+Hours went by, and the queen and her son grew hungry. "We shall be
+starved to death!" she cried. "Now I see what a wicked woman I am!"
+
+"Mother," cried the queen's son, "someone is putting food into my
+mouth!" "No one," said the queen, "is putting any into mine. Now I know
+what a wicked woman I am!"
+
+Presently the king's son came to the queen also, and began feeding her.
+"Someone is putting food into _my_ mouth, now!" cried the queen. "If it
+is poisoned I shall die in agony! I wish," she said, "I wish I knew your
+brother were not dead; if I have killed him what a wicked woman I am!"
+
+"Dear step-mother," said the king's son, "I am not dead, I am here."
+
+"Here?" cried the queen, shaking with fright. "Here? not dead! How long
+have you been here?"
+
+"Days, and days, and days," said the king's son, sadly.
+
+"Ah! if I had only known _that_!" cried the queen. "_Now_ I know what a
+wicked woman I am!"
+
+Just then, the trap-door in the roof of the dungeon opened, and a voice
+called down, "Tell us where is the king's son! If you do not tell us,
+you shall stay here and starve."
+
+"The king's son is here!" cried the queen.
+
+"A likely story!" answered the gaolers. "Do you think we are going to
+believe that?" And they shut-to the trap.
+
+The queen's son cried, "Dear brother, come and take back your crown, it
+pricks so!" But the king's son only undid the queen's bonds and his
+brother's. "Now," said he, "you are free: you can kill me now."
+
+"Oh!" cried the queen, "what a wicked woman I must be! Do you think I
+could do it now?" Then she cried, "O little son, bring your poor head to
+me, and I will take off the crown!" and she took off the crown and gave
+it back to the king's son. "When I am dead," she said, "remember, and be
+kind to him!"
+
+The king's son put the crown upon his own head.
+
+Suddenly, outside the palace, all the land broke into leaf; there was a
+rushing sound in the river of fishes swimming up from the sea, and all
+the air was loud and dark with flights of returning birds. Almost at the
+same moment the foxes began to disappear and diminish, and cease to be
+like locusts in the land.
+
+People came running to open the door of the deepest and darkest dungeon
+in the palace: "For either," they cried, "the queen is dead, or the
+king's son has been found!"
+
+"Where is the king's son, then?" they called out, as they threw wide the
+door. "He is here!" cried the king; and out he came, to the astonishment
+of all, wearing his crown, and leading his step-mother and half-brother
+by the hand.
+
+He looked at his step-mother, and she was quite white; as white as the
+mouse that had jumped upon the king's bed at midnight bidding him fly
+for his life. Not only her face, but her hair, her lips, and her very
+eyes were white and colourless, for she had gone blind from gazing too
+hard into her crystal ball, and hunting the king's son to death.
+
+So she remained blind to the end of her days; but the king was more good
+to her than gold, and as for his brother, never did half-brothers love
+each other better than these. Therefore they all lived very happily
+together, and after a long time, the queen learned to forget what a
+wicked woman she had been.
+
+
+
+
+ROCKING-HORSE LAND
+
+
+LITTLE Prince Freedling woke up with a jump, and sprang out of bed into
+the sunshine. He was five years old that morning, by all the clocks and
+calendars in the kingdom; and the day was going to be beautiful. Every
+golden minute was precious. He was dressed and out of his room before
+the attendants knew that he was awake.
+
+In the ante-chamber stood piles on piles of glittering presents; when he
+walked among them they came up to the measure of his waist. His fairy
+godmother had sent him a toy with the most humorous effect. It was
+labelled, "Break me and I shall turn into something else." So every time
+he broke it he got a new toy more beautiful than the last. It began by
+being a hoop, and from that it ran on, while the Prince broke it
+incessantly for the space of one hour, during which it became by turn--a
+top, a Noah's ark, a skipping-rope, a man-of-war, a box of bricks, a
+picture puzzle, a pair of stilts, a drum, a trumpet, a kaleidoscope, a
+steam-engine, and nine hundred and fifty other things exactly. Then he
+began to grow discontented, because it would never turn into the same
+thing again; and after having broken the man-of-war he wanted to get it
+back again. Also he wanted to see if the steam-engine would go inside
+the Noah's ark; but the toy would never be two things at the same time
+either. This was very unsatisfactory. He thought his fairy godmother
+ought to have sent him two toys, out of which he could make
+combinations.
+
+At last he broke it once more, and it turned into a kite; and while he
+was flying the kite he broke the string, and the kite went sailing away
+up into nasty blue sky, and was never heard of again.
+
+Then Prince Freedling sat down and howled at his fairy-godmother; what a
+dissembling lot fairy-godmothers were, to be sure! They were always
+setting traps to make their god-children unhappy. Nevertheless, when
+told to, he took up his pen and wrote her a nice little note, full of
+bad spelling and tarradiddles, to say what a happy birthday he was
+spending in breaking up the beautiful toy she had sent him.
+
+Then he went to look at the rest of the presents, and found it quite
+refreshing to break a few that did not send him giddy by turning into
+anything else.
+
+Suddenly his eyes became fixed with delight; alone, right at the end of
+the room, stood a great black rocking-horse. The saddle and bridle were
+hung with tiny gold bells and balls of coral; and the horse's tail and
+mane flowed till they almost touched the ground.
+
+The Prince scampered across the room, and threw his arms around the
+beautiful creature's neck. All its bells jangled as the head swayed
+gracefully down; and the prince kissed it between the eyes. Great eyes
+they were, the colour of fire, so wonderfully bright, it seemed they
+must be really alive, only they did not move, but gazed continually
+with a set stare at the tapestry-hung wall, on which were figures of
+armed knights riding to battle.
+
+So Prince Freedling mounted to the back of his rocking-horse; and all
+day long he rode and shouted to the figures of the armed knights,
+challenging them to fight, or leading them against the enemy.
+
+At length, when it came to be bedtime, weary of so much glory, he was
+lifted down from the saddle and carried away to bed.
+
+In his sleep Freedling still felt his black rocking-horse swinging to
+and fro under him, and heard the melodious chime of its bells, and, in
+the land of dreams, saw a great country open before him, full of the
+sound of the battle-cry and the hunting-horn calling him to strange
+perils and triumphs.
+
+In the middle of the night he grew softly awake, and his heart was full
+of love for his black rocking-horse. He crept gently out of bed: he
+would go and look at it where it was standing so grand and still in the
+next room, to make sure that it was all safe and not afraid of being by
+itself in the dark night. Parting the door-hangings he passed through
+into the wide hollow chamber beyond, all littered about with toys.
+
+The moon was shining in through the window, making a square cistern of
+light upon the floor. And then, all at once, he saw that the
+rocking-horse had moved from the place where he had left it! It had
+crossed the room, and was standing close to the window, with its head
+toward the night, as though watching the movement of the clouds and the
+trees swaying in the wind.
+
+The Prince could not understand how it had been moved so; he was a
+little bit afraid, and stealing timidly across, he took hold of the
+bridle to comfort himself with the jangle of its bells. As he came
+close, and looked up into the dark solemn face he saw that the eyes were
+full of tears, and reaching up felt one fall warm against his hand.
+
+"Why do you weep, my Beautiful?" said the Prince.
+
+The rocking-horse answered, "I weep because I am a prisoner, and not
+free. Open the window, Master, and let me go!"
+
+"But if I let you go I shall lose you," said the Prince. "Cannot you be
+happy here with me?"
+
+"Let me go," said the horse, "for my brothers call me out of
+Rocking-Horse Land; I hear my mare whinnying to her foals; and they all
+cry, seeking me through the ups and hollows of my native fastnesses!
+Sweet Master, let me go this night, and I will return to you when it is
+day!"
+
+Then Freedling said, "How shall I know that you will return: and what
+name shall I call you by?"
+
+And the rocking-horse answered, "My name is Rollonde. Search my mane
+till you find in it a white hair; draw it out and wind it upon one of
+your fingers; and so long as you have it so wound you are my master;
+and wherever I am I must return at your bidding."
+
+So the Prince drew down the rocking-horse's head, and searching the
+mane, he found the white hair, and wound it upon his finger and tied it.
+Then he kissed Rollonde between the eyes, saying, "Go, Rollonde, since I
+love you, and wish you to be happy; only return to me when it is day!"
+And so saying, he threw open the window to the stir of the night.
+
+Then the rocking-horse lifted his dark head and neighed aloud for joy,
+and swaying forward with a mighty circling motion rose full into the
+air, and sprang out into the free world before him.
+
+Freedling watched how with plunge and curve he went over the bowed
+trees; and again he neighed into the darkness of the night, then swifter
+than wind disappeared in the distance. And faintly from far away came a
+sound of the neighing of many horses answering him.
+
+Then the Prince closed the window and crept back to bed; and all night
+long he dreamed strange dreams of Rocking-Horse Land. There he saw
+smooth hills and valleys that rose and sank without a stone or a tree to
+disturb the steel-like polish of their surface, slippery as glass, and
+driven over by a strong wind; and over them, with a sound like the
+humming of bees, flew the rocking-horses. Up and down, up and down, with
+bright manes streaming like coloured fires, and feet motionless behind
+and before, went the swift pendulum of their flight. Their long bodies
+bowed and rose; their heads worked to give impetus to their going; they
+cried, neighing to each other over hill and valley, "Which of us shall
+be first? which of us shall be first?" After them the mares with their
+tall foals came spinning to watch, crying also among themselves, "Ah!
+which shall be first?"
+
+"Rollonde, Rollonde is first!" shouted the Prince, clapping his hands as
+they reached the goal; and at that, all at once, he woke and saw it was
+broad day. Then he ran and threw open the window, and holding out the
+finger that carried the white hair, cried, "Rollonde, Rollonde, come
+back, Rollonde!"
+
+Far away he heard an answering sound; and in another moment there came
+the great rocking-horse himself, dipping and dancing over the hills. He
+crossed the woods and cleared the palace-wall at a bound, and floating
+in through the window, dropped to rest at Prince Freedling's side,
+rocking gently to and fro as though panting from the strain of his long
+flight.
+
+"Now are you happy?" asked the Prince as he caressed him.
+
+"Ah! sweet Prince," said Rollonde, "ah, kind Master!" And then he said
+no more, but became the still stock staring rocking-horse of the day
+before, with fixed eyes and rigid limbs, which could do nothing but rock
+up and down with a jangling of sweet bells so long as the Prince rode
+him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+That night Freedling came again when all was still in the palace; and
+now as before Rollonde had moved from his place and was standing with
+his head against the window waiting to be let out. "Ah, dear Master,"
+he said, so soon as he saw the Prince coming, "let me go this night
+also, and surely I will return with day."
+
+So again the Prince opened the window, and watched him disappear, and
+heard from far away the neighing of the horses in Rocking-Horse Land
+calling to him. And in the morning with the white hair round his finger
+he called "Rollonde, Rollonde!" and Rollonde neighed and came back to
+him, dipping and dancing over the hills.
+
+Now this same thing happened every night; and every morning the horse
+kissed Freedling, saying, "Ah! dear Prince and kind Master," and became
+stock still once more.
+
+So a year went by, till one morning Freedling woke up to find it was his
+sixth birthday. And as six is to five, so were the presents he received
+on his sixth birthday for magnificence and multitude to the presents he
+had received the year before. His fairy godmother had sent him a bird, a
+real live bird; but when he pulled its tail it became a lizard, and when
+he pulled the lizard's tail it became a mouse, and when he pulled the
+mouse's tail it became a cat. Then he did very much want to see if the
+cat would eat the mouse, and not being able to have them both he got
+rather vexed with his fairy godmother. However, he pulled the cat's tail
+and the cat became a dog, and when he pulled the dog's the dog became a
+goat; and so it went on till he got to a cow. And he pulled the cow's
+tail and it became a camel, and he pulled the camel's tail and it became
+an elephant, and still not being contented, he pulled the elephant's
+tail and it became a guinea-pig. Now a guinea-pig has no tail to pull,
+so it remained a guinea-pig, while Prince Freedling sat down and howled
+at his fairy godmother.
+
+But the best of all his presents was the one given to him by the King
+his father. It was a most beautiful horse, for, said the King, "You are
+now old enough to learn to ride."
+
+So Freedling was put upon the horse's back, and from having ridden so
+long upon his rocking-horse he learned to ride perfectly in a single
+day, and was declared by all the courtiers to be the most perfect
+equestrian that was ever seen.
+
+Now these praises and the pleasure of riding a real horse so occupied
+his thoughts that that night he forgot all about Rollonde, and falling
+fast asleep dreamed of nothing but real horses and horsemen going to
+battle. And so it was the next night too.
+
+But the night after that, just as he was falling asleep, he heard
+someone sobbing by his bed, and a voice saying, "Ah! dear Prince and
+kind Master, let me go, for my heart breaks for a sight of my native
+land." And there stood his poor rocking-horse Rollonde, with tears
+falling out of his beautiful eyes on to the white coverlet.
+
+Then the Prince, full of shame at having forgotten his friend, sprang up
+and threw his arms round his neck saying, "Be of good cheer, Rollonde,
+for now surely I will let thee go!" and he ran to the window and opened
+it for the horse to go through. "Ah, dear Prince and kind Master!" said
+Rollonde. Then he lifted his head and neighed so that the whole palace
+shook, and swaying forward till his head almost touched the ground he
+sprang out into the night and away towards Rocking-Horse Land.
+
+Then Prince Freedling, standing by the window, thoughtfully unloosed the
+white hair from his finger, and let it float away into the darkness, out
+of sight of his eye or reach of his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Rollonde," he murmured softly, "brave Rollonde, my own good
+Rollonde! Go and be happy in your own land, since I, your Master, was
+forgetting to be kind to you." And far away he heard the neighing of
+horses in Rocking-Horse Land.
+
+Many years after, when Freedling had become King in his father's stead,
+the fifth birthday of the Prince his son came to be celebrated; and
+there on the morning of the day, among all the presents that covered the
+floor of the chamber, stood a beautiful foal rocking-horse, black, with
+deep-burning eyes.
+
+No one knew how it had come there, or whose present it was, till the
+King himself came to look at it. And when he saw it so like the old
+Rollonde he had loved as a boy, he smiled, and, stroking its dark mane,
+said softly in its ear, "Art thou, then, the son of Rollonde?" And the
+foal answered him, "Ah, dear Prince and kind Master!" but never a word
+more.
+
+Then the King took the little Prince his son, and told him the story of
+Rollonde as I have told it here; and at the end he went and searched in
+the foal's mane till he found one white hair, and, drawing it out, he
+wound it about the little Prince's finger, bidding him guard it well and
+be ever a kind master to Rollonde's son.
+
+So here is my story of Rollonde come to a good ending.
+
+
+
+
+JAPONEL
+
+
+THERE was once upon a time a young girl named Japonel, the daughter of a
+wood-cutter, and of all things that lived by the woodside, she was the
+most fair.
+
+Her hair in its net was like a snared sunbeam, and her face like a
+spring over which roses leaned down and birds hung fluttering to
+drink--such being the in-dwelling presence of her eyes and her laughing
+lips and her cheeks.
+
+Whenever she crossed the threshold of her home, the birds and the
+flowers began calling to her, "Look up, Japonel! Look down, Japonel!"
+for the sight of the sweet face they loved so much. The squirrel called
+over its bough, "Look up, Japonel!" and the rabbit from between the
+roots, "Japonel, look down!" And Japonel, as she went, looked up and
+looked down, and laughed, thinking what a sweet-sounding place the world
+was.
+
+Her mother, looking at her from day to day, became afraid: she said to
+the wood-cutter, "Our child is too fair; she will get no good of it."
+
+But her husband answered, "Good wife, why should it trouble you? What is
+there in these quiet parts that can harm her? Keep her only from the
+pond in the wood, lest the pond-witch see her and become envious."
+
+"Do not go near water, or you may fall in!" said her mother one day as
+she saw Japonel bending down to look at her face in a rain-puddle by
+the road.
+
+Japonel laughed softly. "O silly little mother, how can I fall into a
+puddle that is not large enough for my two feet to stand in?"
+
+But the mother thought to herself, when Japonel grows older and finds
+the pond in the wood, she will go there to look at her face, unless she
+has something better to see it in at home. So from the next pedlar who
+came that way she bought a little mirror and gave it to Japonel, that in
+it she might see her face with its spring-like beauty, and so have no
+cause to go near the pond in the wood. The lovely girl, who had never
+seen a mirror in her life, took the rounded glass in her hand and gazed
+for a long time without speaking, wondering more and more at her own
+loveliness. Then she went softly away with it into her own chamber, and
+wishing to find a name for a thing she loved so much, she called it,
+"Stream's eye," and hung it on the wall beside her bed.
+
+In the days that followed, the door of her chamber would be often shut,
+and her face seldom seen save of herself alone. And "Look up, Japonel!
+Look down, Japonel!" was a sound she no longer cared to hear as she went
+through the woods; for the memory of "Stream's eye" was like a dream
+that clung to her, and floated in soft ripples on her face.
+
+She grew tall like an aspen, and more fair, but pale. Her mother said,
+"Woe is me, for now I have made her vain through showing her her great
+beauty." And to Japonel herself she said, "Oh, my beautiful, my bright
+darling, though I have made thee vain, I pray thee to punish me not. Do
+not go near the pond in the wood to look in it, or an evil thing will
+happen to thee." And Japonel smiled dreamily amid half-thoughts, and
+kissing her mother, "Dear mother," she said, "does 'Stream's eye' tell
+me everything of my beauty, or am I in other eyes still fairer?" Then
+her mother answered sadly, "Nay, but I trust the open Eye of God finds
+in thee a better beauty than thy mirror can tell thee of."
+
+Japonel, when she heard that answer, went away till she came to the pond
+in the wood. It lay down in a deep hollow, and drank light out of a
+clear sky, which, through a circle of dark boughs, ever looked down on
+it. "Perhaps," she said to herself, "it is here that God will open His
+Eye and show me how much fairer I am than even 'Stream's eye' can tell
+me." But she thought once of her mother's words, and went by.
+
+Then she turned again, "It is only that my mother fears lest I become
+vain. What harm can come if I do look once? it will be in my way home."
+So she crept nearer and nearer to the pond, saying to herself, "To see
+myself once as fair as God sees me cannot be wrong. Surely that will not
+make me more vain." And when she came through the last trees, and stood
+near the brink, she saw before her a little old woman, dressed in green,
+kneeling by the water and looking in.
+
+"There at least," she said to herself, "is one who looks in without any
+harm happening to her. I wonder what it is she sees that she stays there
+so still." And coming a little nearer, "Good dame," called Japonel,
+"what is it you have found there, that you gaze at so hard?" And the
+old woman, without moving or looking up, answered, "My own face; but a
+hundred times younger and fairer, as it was in my youth."
+
+Then thought Japonel, "How should I look now, who am fair and in the
+full bloom of my youth? It is because my mother fears lest I shall
+become vain that she warned me." So she came quickly and knelt down by
+the old woman and looked in. And even as she caught sight of her face
+gazing up, pale and tremulous ("Quick, go away!" its lips seemed to be
+saying), the old woman slid down from the bank and caught hold of her
+reflection with green, weed-like arms, and drew it away into the pool's
+still depths below. Beneath Japonel's face lay nothing now but blank
+dark water, and far away in, a faint face gazed back beseeching, and its
+lips moved with an imprisoned prayer that might not make itself heard.
+Only three bubbles rose to the surface, and broke into three separate
+sighs like the shadow of her own name. Then the pond-witch stirred the
+mud, and all trace of that lost image went out, and Japonel was left
+alone.
+
+She rose, expecting to see nothing, to be blind; but the woods were
+there, night shadows were gathering to their tryst under the boughs, and
+brighter stars had begun blotting the semi-brightness of the sky. All
+the way home she went feebly, not yet resolved of the evil that had come
+upon her. She stole quietly to her own little room in the fading light,
+and took down "Stream's eye" from the wall. Then she fell forward upon
+the bed, for all the surface of her glass was grown blank: never could
+she hope to look upon her own face again.
+
+The next morning she hung her head low, for she feared all her beauty
+was flown from her, till she heard her father say, "Wife, each day it
+seems to me our Japonel grows more fair." And her mother answered,
+sighing, "She is too fair, I know."
+
+Then Japonel set out once more for the pond in the wood. As she went the
+birds and the flowers sang to her, "Look up, Japonel; look down,
+Japonel!" but Japonel went on, giving them no heed. She came to the
+water's side, and leaning over, saw far down in a tangle of green weeds
+a face that looked back to hers, faint and blurred by the shimmering
+movement of the water. Then, weeping, she wrung her hands and cried:
+
+          "Ah! sweet face of Japonel,
+           Beauty and grace of Japonel,
+           Image and eyes of Japonel,
+           'Come back!' sighs Japonel."
+
+And bubble by bubble a faint answer was returned that broke like a sob
+on the water's surface:
+
+          "I am the face of Japonel,
+           The beauty and grace of Japonel;
+           Here under a spell, Japonel,
+           I dwell, Japonel."
+
+All day Japonel cried so, and was so answered. Now and again, green
+weeds would come skimming to the surface, and seem to listen to her
+reproach, and then once more sink down to their bed in the pond's
+depths, and lie almost still, waving long slimy fingers through the mud.
+
+The next day Japonel came again, and cried as before:
+
+          "Ah! sweet face of Japonel,
+           Beauty and grace of Japonel,
+           Image and eyes of Japonel,
+           'Come back!' cries Japonel."
+
+And her shadow in the water made answer:
+
+          "I am the face of Japonel,
+           The beauty and grace of Japonel;
+           Here under a spell, Japonel,
+           I dwell, Japonel."
+
+Now as she sat and sorrowed she noticed that whenever a bird flew over
+the pond it dropped something out of its mouth into the water, and
+looking she saw millet-seeds lying everywhere among the weeds of its
+surface; one by one they were being sucked under by the pond-witch.
+
+Japonel stayed so long by the side of the pond, that on her way home it
+had fallen quite dark while she was still in the middle of the wood.
+Then all at once she heard a bird with loud voice cry out of the
+darkness, "Look up, Japonel!" The cry was so sudden and so strange,
+coming at that place and that hour, that all through her grief she heard
+it, and stopped to look up. Again in the darkness she heard the bird
+cry, "Why do you weep, Japonel?" Japonel said, "Because the pond-witch
+has carried away my beautiful reflection in the water, so that I can see
+my own face no more."
+
+Then the bird said, "Why have you not done as the birds do? She is
+greedy; so they throw in millet-seeds, and then she does not steal the
+reflection of their wings when they pass over." And Japonel answered,
+"Because I did not know that, therefore I am to-day the most miserable
+of things living." Then said the bird, "Come to-morrow, and you shall be
+the happiest."
+
+So the next day Japonel went and sat by the pond in the wood, waiting to
+be made the happiest, as the bird had promised her. All day long great
+flocks of birds went to and fro, and the pond became covered with seeds.
+Japonel looked; "Why, they are poppy-seeds!" she cried. (Now poppy-seeds
+when they are eaten make people sleep.) Just as the sun was setting all
+the birds began suddenly to cry in chorus, "Look down, Japonel! Japonel,
+look down!" And there, on the pond's surface, lay an old woman dressed
+in green, fast asleep, with all the folds of her dress and the wrinkles
+of her face full of poppy-seeds.
+
+Then Japonel ran fast to the pond's edge and looked down. Slowly from
+the depth rose the pale beautiful reflection of herself, untying itself
+from the thin green weeds, and drifting towards the bank. It looked up
+with tremulous greeting, half sadness, half pleasure, seeming so glad
+after that long separation to return to its sweet mistress. So as it
+came and settled below her own face in the water, Japonel stooped down
+over it and kissed it.
+
+Then she sprang back from the brink and ran home, fast, fast in the
+fading light. And there, when she looked in her mirror, was once more
+the beautiful face she loved, a little blue and wan from its long
+imprisonment under water. And so it ever remained, beautiful, but wan,
+to remind her of the sorrow that had come upon her when, loving this too
+well, she had not loved enough to listen to the cry of the birds: "Look
+up, Japonel!" and, "Japonel, look down!"
+
+
+
+
+GAMMELYN, THE DRESSMAKER
+
+
+THERE was once upon a time a King's daughter who was about to be given
+in marriage to a great prince; and when the wedding-day was yet a long
+way off, the whole court began to concern itself as to how the bride was
+to be dressed. What she should wear, and how she should wear it, was the
+question debated by the King and his Court day and night, almost without
+interruption. Whatever it was to be, it must be splendid, without peer.
+Must it be silk, or velvet, or satin; should it be enriched with
+brocade, or with gems, or sewn thick with pearls?
+
+But when they came to ask the Princess, she said, "I will have only a
+dress of beaten gold, light as gossamer, thin as bee's-wing, soft as
+swan's-down."
+
+Then the King, calling his chief goldsmith, told him to make for the
+Princess the dress of beaten gold. But the goldsmith knew no way how
+such a dress was to be made, and his answer to the King was, "Sire, the
+thing is not to be done."
+
+Then the King grew very angry, for he said, "What a Princess can find it
+in her head to wish, some man must find it in his wits to accomplish."
+So he put the chief goldsmith in prison to think about it, and summoning
+all the goldsmiths in the kingdom, told them of the Princess's wish,
+that a dress should be made for her of beaten gold. But every one of the
+goldsmiths went down on his knees to the King, saying, "Sire, the thing
+is not to be done." Thereupon the King clapped them all into prison,
+promising to cut off all their heads if in three weeks' time they had
+not put them together to some purpose and devised a plan for making such
+a dress as the Princess desired.
+
+Now just then Gammelyn was passing through the country, and when he
+heard of all this, he felt very sorry for the goldsmiths, who had done
+nothing wrong, but had told honest truth about themselves to the King.
+So he set his bright wits to work, and at last said, "I think I can save
+the goldsmiths their heads, for I have found a way of making such a
+dress as this fine Princess desires."
+
+Then he went to the King and said, "I have a way for making a dress of
+beaten gold."
+
+"But," said the King, "have a care, for if you fail I shall assuredly
+cut off your head."
+
+All the same Gammelyn took that risk willingly and set to work. And
+first he asked that the Princess would tell him what style of dress it
+should be; and the Princess said, "Beaten gold, light as gossamer, thin
+as bee's-wing, soft as swan's-down, and it must be made thus." So she
+showed him of what fashion sleeve, and bodice, and train should be. Then
+Gammelyn caused to be made (for he had a palace full of workers put
+under him) a most lovely dress, in the fashion the Princess had named,
+of white cambric closely woven; and the Princess came wondering at him,
+saying that it was to be only of beaten gold.
+
+"You wait a while!" said Gammelyn, for he had no liking for the
+Princess. Then he asked the King for gold out of his treasury; but the
+King supplied him instead with gold from the stores of the imprisoned
+goldsmiths. So he put it in a sack, and carried it to a mill, and said
+to the miller, "Grind me this sack full of gold into flour." At first
+the miller stared at him for a madman, but when he saw the letter in
+Gammelyn's hands which the King had written, and which said, "I'll cut
+off your head if you don't!" then he set to with a will, and ground the
+gold into fine golden flour. So Gammelyn shouldered his sack and jogged
+back to the palace. The next thing he did was to summon all the
+gold-beaters in the kingdom, which he did easily enough with the King's
+letter; for directly they saw the words "I'll cut off your head if you
+don't!" and the King's signature beneath, they came running as fast as
+their legs could carry them, till all the streets which led up to the
+palace were full of them.
+
+Then Gammelyn chose a hundred of the strongest, and took them into the
+chamber where the wedding-dress was in making. And the dress he took and
+spread out on iron tables, and, sprinkling the golden flour all over it,
+set the men to beat day and night for a whole week. And at the end of
+the week there was a splendid dress, that looked as if it were of pure
+gold only. But the Princess said, "My dress must be _all_ gold, and no
+part cambric--this will not do." "You wait!" said Gammelyn, "it is not
+finished yet."
+
+Then he made a fire of sweet spices and sandalwood, jasmine, and
+mignonette; and into the fire he put the wonderful dress.
+
+The Princess screamed with grief and rage; for she was in love with the
+dress, though she was so nice in holding him to the conditions of the
+decree. But Gammelyn persevered, and what happened was this: the fire
+burnt away all the threads of the cambric, but was not hot enough to
+melt the gold; and when all the cambric was burnt, then he drew out of
+the fire a dress of beaten gold, light as gossamer, thin as bee's-wing,
+soft as swan's-down, and fragrant as a wind when it blows through a
+Sultan's garden.
+
+So all the goldsmiths were set free from prison; and the King appointed
+Gammelyn his chief goldsmith.
+
+But when the Princess saw the dress, she was so beside herself with
+pride and pleasure that she must have also a dress made of pearl, light
+as gossamer, thin as bee's-wing, soft as swan's-down. And the King sent
+for all his jewellers, and told them that such a dress was to be made;
+but they all went down on their bended knees, crying with one voice,
+"Sire, the thing is not to be done." And all the good they got for that
+was that they were clapped into prison till a way for doing it should be
+found.
+
+Then the King said to Gammelyn, "Since my jewellers cannot make this
+dress, you must do it!" But Gammelyn said, "Sire, that is not in our
+bargain." And the only answer the King had to that was, "I'll cut off
+your head if you don't."
+
+Gammelyn sighed like a sea-shell; but determining to make the best of a
+bad business, he set to work.
+
+And, as before, he made a dress in the fashion the Princess chose, of
+the finest weaving. He made each part separate; the two sleeves
+separate, the body separate, the skirt and train separate. Then, at his
+desire, the King commanded that all the oysters which were dredged out
+of the sea should be brought to him. Out of these he selected the five
+finest oysters of all; each one was the size of a tea-tray. Then he put
+them into a large tank and inside each shell he put one part of the
+dress--the weaving of which was so fine that there was plenty of room
+for it, as well as for the oysters. And in course of time he drew out
+from each shell--from one the body, from one the skirt, from one the
+train, from one a sleeve, from another the other sleeve. Next he
+fastened each part together with thread, and put the whole dress back
+into the tank; and into the mouth of one oyster he put the joinery of
+body and skirt, and into the mouth of another the joinery of skirt and
+train, and into the mouth of two others the joinery of the two sleeves,
+and the fifth oyster he ate. So the oysters did their work, laying their
+soft inlay over the gown, just as they laid it over the inside of their
+shells; and after a time Gammelyn drew forth a dress bright and
+gleaming, and pure mother-o'-pearl. But "No," said the Princess, "it
+must be all pure pearl, with nothing of thread in it." But, "Wait a
+while!" said Gammelyn, "I have not finished yet."
+
+So by a decree of the King he caused to be gathered together all the
+moths in the kingdom--millions of moths; and he put them all into a bare
+iron room along with the dress, and sealed the doors and windows with
+red sealing-wax. The Princess wept and sighed for the dress: "It will be
+all eaten," said she. "Then I shall cut off his head," said the King.
+But for all that, Gammelyn persevered.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+And when he opened the door they found that every thread had been eaten
+away by the moths, while the mother-o'-pearl had been left uninjured. So
+the dress was a perfect pearl, light as gossamer, thin as bee's-wing,
+soft as swan's-down; and the King made Gammelyn his chief jeweller, and
+set all the other jewellers free.
+
+Then the Princess was so delighted that she wished to have one more
+dress also, made all of butterflies' wings. "That were easily done,"
+said Gammelyn, "but it were cruel to ask for such a dress to be made."
+
+Nevertheless the Princess would have it so, and _he_ should make it.
+"I'll cut off your head if you don't," said the King.
+
+Gammelyn bumbled like a bee; but all he said was, "Many million
+butterflies will be wanted for such a work: you must let me have again
+the two dresses--the pearl, and the gold--for butterflies love bright
+colours that gleam and shine; and with these alone can I gather them all
+to one place."
+
+So the Princess gave him the two dresses; and he went to the highest
+part of the palace, out on to the battlements of the great tower. There
+he faced towards the west, where lay a new moon, louting towards the
+setting sun; and he laid the two robes, one on either arm, spreading
+them abroad, till they looked like two wings--a gold and a pearl. And
+a beam of the sun came and kissed the gold wing, and a pale quivering
+thread of moonlight touched the pearl wing; and Gammelyn sang:
+
+          "Light of the moon,
+           Light of the sun,
+           Pearl of the sky,
+           Gold from on high,
+               Hearken to me!
+
+          "Light of the moon,
+           Pearl of the sea,
+           Gold of the land
+           Here in my hand,
+               I render to thee.
+
+          "Butterflies come!
+           Carry us home,
+           Gold of the gnome,
+               Pearl of the sea."
+
+And as he sang, out of the east came a soft muttering of wings and a
+deep moving mass like a bright storm-cloud. And out of the sun ran a
+long gold finger, and out of the moon a pale shivering finger of pearl,
+and touching the gold and the pearl, these became verily wings and not
+millinery. Then before the Princess could scream more than once, or the
+King say anything about cutting off heads, the bright cloud in the east
+became a myriad myriad of butterflies. And drawn by the falling flashing
+sun, and by the faint falling moon, and fanned by the million wings of
+his fellow-creatures, Gammelyn sprang out from the palace wall on the
+crest of the butterfly-wind, and flew away brighter and farther each
+moment; and followed by his myriad train of butterflies, he passed out
+of sight, and in that country was never heard of again.
+
+
+
+
+THE FEEDING OF THE EMIGRANTS
+
+
+OVER the sea went the birds, flying southward to their other home where
+the sun was. The rustle of their wings, high overhead, could be heard
+down on the water; and their soft, shrill twitterings, and the thirsty
+nibbling of their beaks; for the seas were hushed, and the winds hung
+away in cloud-land.
+
+Far away from any shore, and beginning to be weary, their eyes caught
+sight of a white form resting between sky and sea. Nearer they came,
+till it seemed to be a great white bird, brooding on the calmed water;
+and its wings were stretched high and wide, yet it stirred not. And the
+wings had in themselves no motion, but stood rigidly poised over their
+own reflection in the water.
+
+Then the birds came curiously, dropping from their straight course, to
+wonder at the white wings that went not on. And they came and settled
+about this great, bird-like thing, so still and so grand.
+
+On to the deck crept a small child, for the noise of the birds had come
+down to him in the hold. "There is nobody at home but me," he said; for
+he thought the birds must have come to call, and he wished to be polite.
+"They are all gone but me," he went on; "all gone. I am left alone."
+
+The birds, none of them understood him; but they put their heads on one
+side and looked down on him in a friendly way, seeming to consider.
+
+He ran down below and fetched up a pannikin of water and some biscuit.
+He set the water down, and breaking the biscuit sprinkled it over the
+white deck. Then he clapped his hands to see them all flutter and crowd
+round him, dipping their bright heads to the food and drink he gave
+them.
+
+They might not stay long, for the water-logged ship could not help them
+on the way they wished to go; and by sunset they must touch land again.
+Away they went, on a sudden, the whole crew of them, and the sound of
+their voices became faint in the bright sea-air.
+
+"I am left alone!" said the child.
+
+Many days ago, while he was asleep in a snug corner he had found for
+himself, the captain and crew had taken to the boats, leaving the great
+ship to its fate. And forgetting him because he was so small, or
+thinking that he was safe in some one of the other boats, the rough
+sailors had gone off without him, and he was left alone. So for a whole
+week he had stayed with the ship, like a whisper of its vanished life
+amid the blues of a deep calm. And the birds came to the ship only to
+desert it again quickly, because it stood so still upon the sea.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But that night the mermen came round the vessel's side, and sang; and
+the wind rose to their singing, and the sea grew rough. Yet the child
+slept with his head in dreams. The dreams came from the mermen's
+songs, and he held his breath, and his heart stayed burdened by the deep
+sweetness of what he saw.
+
+Dark and strange and cold the sea-valleys opened before him; blue
+sea-beasts ranged there, guarded by strong-finned shepherds, and fishes
+like birds darted to and fro, but made no sound. And that was what
+burdened his heart,--that for all the beauty he saw, there was no sound,
+no song of a single bird to comfort him.
+
+The mermen reached out their blue arms to him, and sang; on the top of
+the waves they sang, striving to make him forget the silence of the land
+below. They offered him the sea-life: why should he be drowned and die?
+
+And now over him in the dark night the great wings crashed, and beat
+abroad in the wind, and the ship made great way. And the mermen swam
+fast to be with her, and ceased from their own song, for the wind
+overhead sang loud in the rigging and the sails. But the child lifted
+his head in his sleep and smiled, for his soul was eased of the mermen's
+song, and it seemed to him that instead he heard birds singing in a
+far-off land, singing of a child whose loving hand had fed them, faint
+and weary, in their way over the wide ocean.
+
+In that far southern land the dawn had begun, and the birds, waking one
+by one, were singing their story of him to the soft-breathing tamarisk
+boughs. And none of them knew how they had been sent as a salvage crew
+to save the child's spirit from the spell of the sea-dream, and to
+carry it safely back to the land that loved him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But with the child's body the white wings had flown down into the
+wave-buried valleys, and to a cleft of the sea-hills to rest.
+
+
+
+
+WHITE BIRCH
+
+
+ONCE upon a time there lived in a wood a brother and sister who had been
+forgotten by all the world. But this thing did not greatly grieve their
+hearts, because they themselves were all the world to each other:
+meeting or parting, they never forgot that. Nobody remained to tell them
+who they were; but she was "Little Sister," and he was "Fair Brother,"
+and those were the only names they ever went by.
+
+In their little wattled hut they would have been perfectly happy but for
+one thing which now and then they remembered and grieved over. Fair
+Brother was lame--not a foot could he put to the ground, nor take one
+step into the outside world. But he lay quiet on his bed of leaves,
+while Little Sister went out and in, bringing him food and drink, and
+the scent of flowers, and tales of the joy of earth and of the songs of
+birds.
+
+One day she brought him a litter of withered birch-leaves to soften his
+bed and make it warmer for the approaching season of cold; and all the
+winter he lay on it, and sighed. Little Sister had never seen him so sad
+before.
+
+In the spring, when the songs of the pairing birds began, his sorrow
+only grew greater. "Let me go out, let me go out," he cried; "only a
+little way into the bright world before I die!" She kissed his feet, and
+took him up in her arms and carried him. But she could only go a very
+little way with her burden; presently she had to return and lay him
+down again on his bed of leaves.
+
+"Have I seen all the bright world?" he asked. "Is it such a little
+place?"
+
+To hide her sorrow from him, Little Sister ran out into the woods, and
+as she went, wondering how to comfort his grief, she could not help
+weeping.
+
+All at once at the foot of a tree she saw the figure of a woman seated.
+It was strange, for she had never before seen anybody else in the wood
+but themselves. The woman said to her, "Why is it that you weep so?"
+
+"The heart of Fair Brother is breaking," replied Little Sister. "It is
+because of that that I am weeping."
+
+"Why is his heart breaking?" inquired the other.
+
+"I do not know," answered Little Sister. "Ever since last autumn fell it
+has been so. Always, before, he has been happy; he has no reason not to
+be, only he is lame."
+
+She had come close to the seated figure; and looking, she saw a woman
+with a very white skin, in a robe and hood of deep grey. Grey eyes
+looked back at her with just a soft touch in them of the green that
+comes with the young leaves of spring.
+
+"You are beautiful," said Little Sister, drawing in her breath.
+
+"Yes, I am beautiful," answered the other. "Why is Fair Brother lame?
+Has he no feet?"
+
+"Oh, beautiful feet!" said Little Sister. "But they are like still
+water; they cannot run."
+
+"If you want him to run," said the other, "I can tell you what to do.
+What will you give me in exchange?"
+
+"Whatever you like to ask," answered Little Sister; "but I am poor."
+
+"You have beautiful hair," said the woman; "will you let that go?"
+
+Little Sister stooped down her head, and let the other cut off her hair.
+The wind went out of it with a sigh as it fell into the grey woman's
+lap. She hid it away under her robe, and said, "Listen, Little Sister,
+and I will tell you! To-night is the new moon. If you can hold your
+tongue till the moon is full, the feet of Fair Brother shall run like a
+stream from the hills, dancing from rock to rock."
+
+"Only tell me what I must do!" said Little Sister.
+
+"You see this birch-tree, with its silver skin?" said the woman. "Cut
+off two strips of it and weave them into shoes for Fair Brother. And
+when they are finished by the full moon, if you have not spoken, you
+have but to put them upon Fair Brother's feet, and they will outrun
+yours."
+
+So Little Sister, as the other had told her, cut off two strips from the
+bark of the birch-tree, and ran home as fast as she could to tell her
+brother of the happiness which, with only a little waiting, was in store
+for them.
+
+But as she came near home, over the low roof she saw the new moon
+hanging like a white feather in the air; and, closing her lips, she went
+in and kissed Fair Brother silently.
+
+He said, "Little Sister, loose out your hair over me, and let me feel
+the sweet airs; and tell me how the earth sounds, for my heart is sick
+with sorrow and longing." She took his hand and laid it upon her heart
+that he might feel its happy beating, but said no word. Then she sat
+down at his feet and began to work at the shoes. All the birch-bark she
+cut into long strips fit for weaving, doing everything as the grey woman
+had told her.
+
+Fair Brother fretted at her silence, and cried, calling her cruel; but
+she only kissed his feet, and went on working the faster. And the white
+birch shoes grew under her hands; and every night she watched and saw
+the moon growing round.
+
+Fair Brother said, "Little Sister, what have you done with your hair in
+which you used to fetch home the wind? And why do you never go and bring
+me flowers or sing me the song of the birds?" And Little Sister looked
+up and nodded, but never answered or moved from her task, for her
+fingers were slow, and the moon was quick in its growing.
+
+One night Fair Brother was lying asleep, and his head was filled with
+dreams of the outer world into which he longed to go. The full moon
+looked in through the open door, and Little Sister laughed in her heart
+as she slipped the birch shoes on to his feet. "Now run, dear feet," she
+whispered; "but do not outrun mine."
+
+Up in his sleep leapt Fair Brother, for the dream of the white birch had
+hold of him. A lady with a dark hood and grey eyes full of the laughter
+of leaves beckoned him. Out he ran into the moonlight, and Little Sister
+laughed as she ran with him.
+
+In a little while she called, "Do not outrun me, Fair Brother!" But he
+seemed not to hear her, for not a bit did he slacken the speed of his
+running.
+
+Presently she cried again, "Rest with me a while, Fair Brother! Do not
+outrun me!" But Fair Brother's feet were fleet after their long
+idleness, and they only ran the faster. "Ah, ah!" she cried, all out of
+breath. "Come back to me when you have done running, Fair Brother." And
+as he disappeared among the trees, she cried after him, "How will you
+know the way, since you were never here before? Do not get lost in the
+wood, Fair Brother!"
+
+She lay on the ground and listened, and could hear the white birch shoes
+carrying him away till all sound of them died.
+
+When, next morning, he had not returned, she searched all day through
+the wood, calling his name.
+
+"Where are you, Fair Brother? Where have you lost yourself?" she cried,
+but no voice answered her.
+
+For a while she comforted her heart, saying, "He has not run all these
+years--no wonder he is still running. When he is tired he will return."
+
+But days and weeks went by, and Fair Brother never came back to her.
+Every day she wandered searching for him, or sat at the door of the
+little wattled hut and cried.
+
+One day she cried so much that the ground became quite wet with her
+tears. That night was the night of the full moon, but weary with grief
+she lay down and slept soundly, though outside the woods were bright.
+
+In the middle of the night she started up, for she thought she heard
+somebody go by; and, surely, feet were running away in the distance. And
+when she looked out, there across the doorway was the print of the birch
+shoes on the ground she had made wet with her tears.
+
+"Alas, alas!" cried Little Sister. "What have I done that he comes to
+the very door of our home and passes by, though the moon shines in and
+shows it him?"
+
+After that she searched everywhere through the forest to discover the
+print of the birch shoes upon the ground. Here and there after rain she
+thought she could see traces, but never was she able to track them far.
+
+Once more came the night of the full moon, and once more in the middle
+of the night Little Sister started up and heard feet running away in the
+distance. She called, but no answer came back to her.
+
+So on the third full moon she waited, sitting in the door of the hut,
+and would not sleep.
+
+"If he has been twice," she said to herself, "he will come again, and I
+shall see him. Ah, Fair Brother, Fair Brother, I have given you feet;
+why have you so used me?"
+
+Presently she heard a sound of footsteps, and there came Fair Brother
+running towards her. She saw his face pale and ghostlike, yet he never
+looked at her, but ran past and on without stopping.
+
+"Fair Brother, Fair Brother, wait for me; do not outrun me!" cried
+Little Sister; and was up in haste to be after him.
+
+He ran fast, and would not stop; but she ran fast too, for her love
+would not let him go. Once she nearly had him by the hair, and once she
+caught him by the cloak; but in her hand it shredded and crumbled like a
+dry leaf; and still, though there was no breath left in her, she ran on.
+
+And now she began to wonder, for Fair Brother was running the way that
+she knew well--towards the tree from which she had cut the two strips of
+bark. Her feet were failing her; she knew that she could run no more.
+Just as they came together in sight of the birch-tree Little Sister
+stumbled and fell.
+
+She saw Fair Brother run on and strike with his hands and feet against
+the tree, and cry, "Oh, White Birch, White Birch, lift the latch up, or
+she will catch me!" And at once the tree opened its rind, and Fair
+Brother ran in.
+
+"So," said Little Sister, "you are there, are you, Brother? I know,
+then, what I have done to you."
+
+She went and laid her ear to the tree, and inside she could hear Fair
+Brother sobbing and crying. It sounded to her as if White Birch were
+beating him.
+
+"Well, well, Fair Brother, she shall not beat you for long!" said Little
+Sister.
+
+She went home and waited till the next full moon had come. Then, as soon
+as it was dark, she went along through the wood until she came to the
+place, and there she crept close to the white birch-tree and waited.
+
+Presently she heard Fair Brother's voice come faintly out of the heart
+of the tree: "White Birch, it is the full moon and the hour in which
+Little Sister gave life to my feet. For one hour give me leave to go,
+that I may run home and look at her while she sleeps. I will not stop or
+speak, and I promise you that I will return."
+
+Then she heard the voice of White Birch answer grudgingly: "It is her
+hour and I cannot hold you, therefore you may go. Only when you come
+again I will beat you."
+
+Then the tree opened a little way, and Fair Brother ran out. He ran so
+quickly in his eager haste that Little Sister had not time to catch him,
+and she did not dare to call aloud. "I must make sure," she said to
+herself, "before he comes back. To-night White Birch will have to let
+him go."
+
+So she gathered as many dry pieces of wood as she could find, and made
+them into a pile near at hand; and setting them alight, she soon had a
+brisk fire burning.
+
+Before long she heard the sound of feet in the brushwood, and there came
+Fair Brother, running as hard as he could go, with the breath sobbing in
+and out of his body.
+
+Little Sister sprang out to meet him, but as soon as he saw her he beat
+with his hands and feet against the tree, crying, "White Birch, White
+Birch, lift the latch up, or she will catch me!"
+
+But before the tree could open Little Sister had caught hold of the
+birch shoes, and pulled them off his feet, and running towards the fire
+she thrust them into the red heart of the embers.
+
+The white birch shivered from head to foot, and broke into lamentable
+shrieks. The witch thrust her head out of the tree, crying, "Don't,
+don't! You are burning my skin! Oh, cruel! how you are burning me!"
+
+"I have not burned you enough yet," cried Little Sister; and raking the
+burning sticks and faggots over the ground, she heaped them round the
+foot of the white birch-tree, whipping the flames to make them leap
+high.
+
+The witch drew in her head, but inside she could be heard screaming. As
+the flames licked the white bark she cried, "Oh, my skin! You are
+burning my skin. My beautiful white skin will be covered with nothing
+but blisters. Do you know that you are ruining my complexion?"
+
+But Little Sister said, "If I make you ugly you will not be able to show
+your face again to deceive the innocent, and to ruin hearts that were
+happy."
+
+So she piled on sticks and faggots till the outside of the birch-tree
+was all black and scarred and covered with blisters, the marks of which
+have remained to this day. And inside, the witch could be heard dancing
+time to the music of the flames, and crying because of her ruined
+complexion.
+
+Then Little Sister stooped and took up Fair Brother in her arms. "You
+cannot walk now," she whispered, "I have taken away your feet; so I will
+carry you."
+
+He was so starved and thin that he was not very heavy, and all the long
+way home Little Sister carried him in her arms. How happy they were,
+looking in each other's eyes by the clear light of the moon!
+
+"Can you ever be happy again in the old way?" asked Little Sister.
+"Shall you not want to run?"
+
+"No," answered Fair Brother; "I shall never wish to run again. And as
+for the rest"--he stroked her head softly--"why, I can feel that your
+hair is growing--it is ever so long, and I can see the wind lifting it.
+White Birch has no hair of her own, but she has some that she wears,
+just the same colour as yours."
+
+
+
+
+THE LUCK OF THE ROSES
+
+
+NOT far from a great town, in the midst of a well-wooded valley, lived a
+rose-gardener and his wife. All round the old home green sleepy hollows
+lay girdled by silver streams, long grasses bent softly in the wind, and
+the half fabulous murmur of woods filled the air.
+
+Up in their rose-garden, on the valley's side facing the sun, the
+gardener and his wife lived contentedly sharing toil and ease. They had
+been young, they were not yet old; and though they had to be frugal they
+did not call themselves poor. A strange fortune had belonged always to
+the plot of ground over which they laboured; whether because the soil
+was so rich, or the place so sheltered from cold, or the gardener so
+skilled in the craft, which had come down in his family from father to
+son, could not be known; but certainly it was true that his rose-trees
+gave forth better bloom and bore earlier and later through the season
+than any others that were to be found in those parts.
+
+The good couple accepted what came to them, simply and gladly, thanking
+God. Perhaps it was from the kindness of fortune, or perhaps because the
+sweet perfume of the roses had mixed itself in their blood, that her man
+and his wife were so sweet-tempered and gentle in their ways. The colour
+of the rose was in their faces, and the colour of the rose was in their
+hearts; to her man she was the most beautiful and dearest of
+sweethearts, to his wife he was the best and kindest of lovers.
+
+Every morning, before it was light, her man and his wife would go into
+the garden and gather all the roses that were ripe for sale; then with
+full baskets on their backs they would set out, and get to the market
+just as the level sunbeams from the east were striking all the vanes and
+spires of the city into gold. There they would dispose of their flowers
+to the florists and salesmen of the town, and after that trudge home
+again to hoe, and dig, and weed, and water, and prune, and plant for the
+rest of the day. No man ever saw them the one without the other, and the
+thought that such a thing might some day happen was the only fear and
+sorrow of their lives.
+
+That they had no children of their own was scarcely a sorrow to them.
+"It seems to me," said her man after they had been married for some
+years, "that God means that our roses are to be our children since He
+has made us love them so much. They will last when we are grown grey,
+and will support and comfort us in our old age."
+
+All the roses they had were red, and varied little in kind, yet her man
+and his wife had a name for each of them; to every tree they had given a
+name, until it almost seemed that the trees knew, and tried to answer
+when they heard the voices which spoke to them.
+
+"Jane Janet, and you ought to blossom more freely at your age!" his wife
+might say to one some evening as she went round and watered the flowers;
+and the next day, when the two came to their dark morning's gathering,
+Jane Janet would show ten or twelve great blooms under the light of the
+lantern, every one of them the birth of a single night.
+
+"Mary Maudlin," the gardener would say, as he washed the blight off a
+favourite rose, "to be sure, you are very beautiful, but did I not love
+you so, you were more trouble than all your sisters put together." And
+then all at once great dew-drops would come tumbling down out of Mary
+Maudlin's eyes at the tender words of his reproach. So day by day the
+companionable feet of the happy couple moved to and fro, always intent
+on the nurture and care of their children.
+
+In their garden they had bees too, who by strange art, unlike other
+bees, drew all their honey from the roses, and lived in a cone-thatched
+hive close to the porch; and that honey was famous through all the
+country-side, for its flavour was like no other honey made in the world.
+
+Sometimes his wife said to her man, "I think our garden is looked after
+for us by some good Spirit; perhaps it is the Saints after whom we have
+named our rose-children."
+
+Her man made answer, "It is rich in years, which, like an old wine, have
+made it gain in flavour; it has been with us from father to son for
+three hundred years, and that is a great while."
+
+"A full fairy's lifetime!" said his wife. "'Tis a pity we shall not hand
+it on, being childless."
+
+"When we two die," said her man, "the roses will make us a grave and
+watch over us." As he spoke a whole shower of petals fell from the
+trees.
+
+"Did no one pass, just then?" said his wife.
+
+Now one morning, soon after this, in the late season of roses, her man
+had gone before his wife into the garden, gathering for the market in
+the grey dusk before dawn; and wherever he went moths and beetles came
+flocking to the light of his lantern, beating against its horn shutters
+and crying to get in. Out of each rose, as the light fell on it, winged
+things sprang up into the darkness; but all the roses were bowed and
+heavy as if with grief. As he picked them from the stem great showers of
+dew fell out of them, making pools in the hollow of his palm.
+
+There was such a sound of tears that he stopped to listen; and, surely,
+from all round the garden came the "drip, drip" of falling dew. Yet the
+pathways under foot were all dry; there had been no rain and but little
+dew. Whence was it, then, that the roses so shook and sobbed? For under
+the stems, surely, there was something that sobbed; and suddenly the
+light of the lantern took hold of a beautiful small figure, about three
+feet high, dressed in old rose and green, that went languidly from
+flower to flower. She lifted up such tired hands to draw their heads
+down to hers; and to each one she kissed she made a weary little sound
+of farewell, her beautiful face broken up with grief; and now and then
+out of her lips ran soft chuckling laughter, as if she still meant to be
+glad, but could not.
+
+The gardener broke into tears to behold a sight so pitiful; and his wife
+had stolen out silently to his side, and was weeping too.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Drip, drip," went the roses: wherever she came and kissed, they all
+began weeping. The gardener and his wife knelt down and watched her; in
+and out, in and out, not a rose blossom did she miss. She came nearer
+and nearer, and at last was standing before them. She seemed hardly able
+to draw limb after limb, so weak was she; and her filmy garments hung
+heavy as chains.
+
+A little voice said in their ears, "Kiss me, I am dying!"
+
+They tasted her breath of rose.
+
+"Do not die!" they said simply.
+
+"I have lived three hundred years," she answered. "Now I must die. I am
+the Luck of the Roses, but I must leave them and die."
+
+"When must you die?" said her man and his wife.
+
+The little lady said: "Before the last roses are over; the chills of
+night take me, the first frost will kill me. Soon I must die. Now I must
+dwindle and dwindle, for little life is left to me, and only so can I
+keep warm. As life and heat grow less, so must I, till presently I am no
+more."
+
+She was a little thing already--not old, she did not seem old, but
+delicate as a snowflake, and so weary. She laid her head in the hand of
+the gardener's wife, and sobbed hard.
+
+"You dear people, who belong so much to me too, I have watched over
+you."
+
+"Let us watch over you!" said they. They lifted her like a
+feather-weight, and carried her into the house. There, in the
+ingle-nook, she sat and shivered, while they brought rose-leaves and
+piled round her; but every hour she grew less and less.
+
+Presently the sun shone full upon her from the doorway: its light went
+through her as through coloured glass; and her man and his wife saw,
+over the ingle behind her, shadows fluttering as of falling rose-petals:
+it was the dying rose of her life, falling without end.
+
+All day long she dwindled and grew more weak and frail. Before sunset
+she was smaller than a small child when it first comes into the world.
+They set honey before her to taste, but she was too weary to uncurl her
+tiny hands: they lay like two white petals in the green lap of her gown.
+The half-filled panniers of roses stood where they had been set down in
+the porch: the good couple had taken nothing to the market that day. The
+luck of the house lay dying, for all their care; they could but sit and
+watch.
+
+When the sun had set, she faded away fast: now she was as small as a
+young wren. The gardener's wife took her and held her for warmth in the
+hollow of her hand. Presently she seemed no more than a grasshopper: the
+tiny chirrup of her voice was heard, about the middle of the night,
+asking them to take her and lay her among the roses, in the heart of one
+of the red roses, that there she and death might meet sweetly at the
+last.
+
+They went together into the dark night, and felt their way among the
+roses; presently they quite lost her tiny form: she had slipped away
+into the heart of a Jane Janet rose.
+
+The gardener and his wife went back into the house and sat waiting: they
+did not know for what, but they were too sad at heart to think just then
+of sleep.
+
+Soon the first greys of morning began to steal over the world; pale
+shivers ran across the sky, and one bird chirped in its sleep among the
+trees.
+
+All at once there rang a soft sound of lamentation among the roses in
+the rose-garden; again and again, like the cry of many gentle wounded
+things in pain. The gardener and his wife went and opened the door: they
+had to tell the bees of the fairy's death. They looked out under the
+twilight, into the garden they loved. "Drip," "drip," "drip" came the
+sound of steady weeping under the leaves. Peering out through the
+shadows they saw all the rose-trees rocking softly for grief.
+
+"Snow?" said his wife to her man.
+
+But it was not snow.
+
+Under the dawn all the roses in the garden had turned white; for they
+knew that the fairy was dead.
+
+The gardener and his wife woke the bees, and told them of the fairy's
+death; then they looked in each other's faces, and saw that they, too,
+had become white and grey.
+
+With gentle eyes the old couple took hands, and went down into the
+garden to gather white roses for the market.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE DOE
+
+
+ONE day, as the king's huntsman was riding in the forest, he came to a
+small pool. Fallen leaves covering its surface had given it the colour
+of blood, and knee-deep in their midst stood a milk-white doe drinking.
+
+The beauty of the doe set fire to the huntsman's soul; he took an arrow
+and aimed well at the wild heart of the creature. But as he was loosing
+the string the branch of a tree overhanging the pool struck him across
+the face, and caught hold of him by the hair; and arrow and doe vanished
+away together into the depths of the forest.
+
+Never until now, since he entered the king's service, had the huntsman
+missed his aim. The thought of the white doe living after he had willed
+its death inflamed him with rage; he could not rest till he had brought
+hounds to the trail, determined to follow until it had surrendered to
+him its life.
+
+All day, while he hunted, the woods stayed breathless, as if to watch;
+not a blade moved, not a leaf fell. About noon a red deer crossed his
+path; but he paid no heed, keeping his hounds only to the white doe's
+trail.
+
+At sunset a fallow deer came to disturb the scent, and through the
+twilight, as it deepened, a grey wolf ran in and out of the underwood.
+When night came down, his hounds fled from his call, following through
+tangled thickets a huge black boar with crescent tusks. So he found
+himself alone, with his horse so weary that it could scarcely move.
+
+But still, though the moon was slow in its rising, the fever of the
+chase burned in the huntsman's veins, and caused him to press on. For
+now he found himself at the rocky entrance of a ravine whence no way
+led; and the white doe being still before him, he made sure that he
+would get her at last. So when his horse fell, too tired to rise again,
+he dismounted and forced his way on; and soon he saw before him the
+white doe, labouring up an ascent of sharp crags, while closer and
+higher the rocks rose and narrowed on every side. Presently she had
+leapt high upon a boulder that shook and swayed as her feet rested, and
+ahead the wall of rocks had joined so that there was nowhere farther
+that she might go.
+
+Then the huntsman notched an arrow, and drew with full strength, and let
+it go. Fast and straight it went, and the wind screamed in the red
+feathers as they flew; but faster the doe overleapt his aim, and,
+spurning the stone beneath, down the rough-bouldered gully sent it
+thundering, shivering to fragments as it fell. Scarcely might the
+huntsman escape death as the great mass swept past: but when the danger
+was over he looked ahead, and saw plainly, where the stone had once
+stood, a narrow opening in the rock, and a clear gleam of moonlight
+beyond.
+
+That way he went, and passing through, came upon a green field, as full
+of flowers as a garden, duskily shining now, and with dark shadows in
+all its folds. Round it in a great circle the rocks made a high wall, so
+high that along their crest forest-trees as they clung to look over
+seemed but as low-growing thickets against the sky.
+
+The huntsman's feet stumbled in shadow and trod through thick grass into
+a quick-flowing streamlet that ran through the narrow way by which he
+had entered. He threw himself down into its cool bed, and drank till he
+could drink no more. When he rose he saw, a little way off, a small
+dwelling-house of rough stone, moss-covered and cosy, with a roof of
+wattles which had taken root and pushed small shoots and clusters of
+grey leaves through their weaving. Nature, and not man, seemed there to
+have been building herself an abode.
+
+Before the doorway ran the stream, a track of white mist showing where
+it wound over the meadow; and by its edge a beautiful maiden sat, and
+was washing her milk-white feet and arms in the wrinkling eddies.
+
+To the huntsman she became all at once the most beautiful thing that the
+world contained; all the spirit of the chase seemed to be in her blood,
+and each little movement of her feet made his heart jump for joy. "I
+have looked for you all my life!" thought he, as he halted and gazed,
+not daring to speak lest the lovely vision should vanish, and the memory
+of it mock him for ever.
+
+The beautiful maiden looked up from her washing. "Why have you come
+here?" said she.
+
+The huntsman answered her as he believed to be the truth, "I have come
+because I love you!"
+
+"No," she said, "you came because you wanted to kill the white doe. If
+you wish to kill her, it is not likely that you can love me."
+
+"I do not wish to kill the white doe!" cried the huntsman; "I had not
+seen you when I wished that. If you do not believe that I love you, take
+my bow and shoot me to the heart; for I will never go away from you
+now."
+
+At his word she took one of the arrows, looking curiously at the red
+feathers, and to test the sharp point she pressed it against her breast.
+"Have a care!" cried the hunter, snatching it back. He drew his breath
+sharply and stared. "It is strange," he declared; "a moment ago I almost
+thought that I saw the white doe."
+
+"If you stay here to-night," said the maiden, "about midnight you will
+see the white doe go by. Take this arrow, and have your bow ready, and
+watch! And if to-morrow, when I return, the arrow is still unused in
+your hand, I will believe you when you say that you love me. And you
+have only to ask, and I will do all that you desire."
+
+Then she gave the huntsman food and drink and a bed of ferns upon which
+to rest. "Sleep or wake," said she as she parted from him; "if truly you
+have no wish to kill the white doe, why should you wake? Sleep!"
+
+"I do not wish to kill the white doe," said the huntsman. Yet he could
+not sleep: the memory of the one wild creature which had escaped him
+stung his blood. He looked at the arrow which he held ready, and grew
+thirsty at the sight of it. "If I see, I must shoot!" cried his hunter's
+heart. "If I see, I must not shoot!" cried his soul, smitten with love
+for the beautiful maiden, and remembering her word. "Yet, if I see, I
+know I must shoot--so shall I lose all!" he cried as midnight
+approached, and the fever of long waiting remained unassuaged.
+
+Then with a sudden will he drew out his hunting-knife, and scored the
+palms of his two hands so deeply that he could no longer hold his bow or
+draw the arrow upon the string. "Oh, fair one, I have kept my word to
+you!" he cried as midnight came. "The bow and the arrow are both ready."
+
+Looking forth from the threshold by which he lay, he saw pale moonlight
+and mist making a white haze together on the outer air. The white doe
+ran by, a body of silver; like quicksilver she ran. And the huntsman,
+the passion to slay rousing his blood, caught up arrow and bow, and
+tried in vain with his maimed hands to notch the shaft upon the string.
+
+The beautiful creature leapt lightly by, between the curtains of
+moonbeam and mist; and as she went she sprang this way and that across
+the narrow streamlet, till the pale shadows hid her altogether from his
+sight. "Ah! ah!" cried the huntsman, "I would have given all my life to
+be able to shoot then! I am the most miserable man alive; but to-morrow
+I will be the happiest. What a thing is love, that it has known how to
+conquer in me even my hunter's blood!"
+
+In the morning the beautiful maiden returned; she came sadly. "I gave
+you my word," said she: "here I am. If you have the arrow still with you
+as it was last night, I will be your wife, because you have done what
+never huntsman before was able to do--not to shoot at the white doe when
+it went by."
+
+The huntsman showed her the unused arrow; her beauty made him altogether
+happy. He caught her in his arms, and kissed her till the sun grew high.
+Then she brought food and set it before him; and taking his hand, "I am
+your wife," said she, "and with all my heart my will is to serve you
+faithfully. Only, if you value your happiness, do not shoot ever at the
+white doe." Then she saw that there was blood on his hand, and her face
+grew troubled. She saw how the other hand also was wounded. "How came
+this?" she asked; "dear husband, you were not so hurt yesterday."
+
+And the huntsman answered, "I did it for fear lest in the night I should
+fail, and shoot at the white doe when it came."
+
+Hearing that, his wife trembled and grew white. "You have tricked us
+both," she said, "and have not truly mastered your desire. Now, if you
+do not promise me on your life and your soul, or whatever is dearer,
+never to shoot at a white doe, sorrow will surely come of it. Promise
+me, and you shall certainly be happy!"
+
+So the huntsman promised faithfully, saying, "On your life, which is
+dearer to me than my own, I give you my word to keep that it shall be
+so." Then she kissed him, and bound up his wounds with healing herbs;
+and to look at her all that day, and for many days after, was better to
+him than all the hunting the king's forest could provide.
+
+For a whole year they lived together in perfect happiness, and two
+children came to bless their union--a boy and a girl born at the same
+hour. When they were but a month old they could run; and to see them
+leaping and playing before the door of their home made the huntsman's
+heart jump for joy. "They are forest-born, and they come of a hunter's
+blood; that is why they run so early, and have such limbs," said he.
+
+"Yes," answered his wife, "that is partly why. When they grow older they
+will run so fast--do not mistake them for deer if ever you go hunting."
+
+No sooner had she said the word than the memory of it, which had slept
+for a whole year, stirred his blood. The scent of the forest blew up
+through the rocky ravine, which he had never repassed since the day when
+he entered, and he laid his hands thoughtfully on the weapons he no
+longer used.
+
+Such restlessness took hold of him all that day that at night he slept
+ill, and, waking, found himself alone with no wife at his side. Gazing
+about the room, he saw that the cradle also was empty. "Why," he
+wondered, "have they gone out together in the middle of the night?"
+
+Yet he gave it little more thought, and turning over, fell into a
+troubled sleep, and dreamed of hunting and of the white doe that he had
+seen a year before stooping to drink among the red leaves that covered
+the forest pool.
+
+In the morning his wife was by his side, and the little ones lay asleep
+upon their crib. "Where were you," he asked, "last night? I woke, and
+you were not here."
+
+His wife looked at him tenderly, and sighed. "You should shut your eyes
+better," said she. "I went out to see the white doe, and the little ones
+came also. Once a year I see her; it is a thing I must not miss."
+
+The beauty of the white doe was like strong drink to his memory: the
+beautiful limbs that had leapt so fast and escaped--they alone, of all
+the wild life in the world, had conquered him. "Ah!" he cried, "let me
+see her, too; let her come tame to my hand, and I will not hurt her!"
+
+His wife answered: "The heart of the white doe is too wild a thing; she
+cannot come tame to the hand of any hunter under heaven. Sleep again,
+dear husband, and wake well! For a whole year you have been sufficiently
+happy; the white doe would only wound you again in your two hands."
+
+When his wife was not by, the hunter took the two children upon his
+knee, and said, "Tell me, what was the white doe like? what did she do?
+and what way did she go?"
+
+The children sprang off his knee, and leapt to and fro over the stream.
+"She was like this," they cried, "and she did this, and this was the
+way she went!" At that the hunter drew his hand over his brow. "Ah," he
+said, "I seemed then almost to see the white doe."
+
+Little peace had he from that day. Whenever his wife was not there he
+would call the little ones to him, and cry, "Show me the white doe and
+what she did." And the children would leap and spring this way and that
+over the little stream before the door, crying, "She was like this, and
+she did this, and this was the way she went!"
+
+The huntsman loved his wife and children with a deep affection, yet he
+began to have a dread that there was something hidden from his eyes
+which he wished yet feared to know. "Tell me," he cried one day, half in
+wrath, when the fever of the white doe burned more than ever in his
+blood, "tell me where the white doe lives, and why she comes, and when
+next. For this time I must see her, or I shall die of the longing that
+has hold of me!" Then, when his wife would give no answer, he seized his
+bow and arrows and rushed out into the forest, which for a whole year
+had not known him, slaying all the red deer he could find.
+
+Many he slew in his passion, but he brought none of them home, for
+before the end a strange discovery came to him, and he stood amazed,
+dropping the haunch which he had cut from his last victim. "It is a
+whole year," he said to himself, "that I have not tasted meat; I, a
+hunter, who love only the meat that I kill!"
+
+Returning home late, he found his wife troubling her heart over his long
+absence. "Where have you been?" she asked him, and the question inflamed
+him into a fresh passion.
+
+"I have been out hunting for the white doe," he cried; "and she carries
+a spot in her side where some day my arrow must enter. If I do not find
+her I shall die!"
+
+His wife looked at him long and sorrowfully; then she said: "On your
+life and soul be it, and on mine also, that your anger makes me tell
+what I would have kept hidden. It is to-night that she comes. Now it
+remains for you to remember your word once given to me!"
+
+"Give it back to me!" he cried; "it is my fate to finish the quest of
+the white doe."
+
+"If I give it," said she, "your happiness goes with it, and mine, and
+that of our children."
+
+"Give it back to me!" he said again; "I cannot live unless I may master
+the white doe! If she will come tame to my hand, no harm shall happen to
+her."
+
+And when she denied him again, he gave her his bow and arrows, and bade
+her shoot him to the heart, since without his word rendered back to him
+he could not live.
+
+Then his wife took both his hands and kissed them tenderly, and with
+loud weeping quickly set him free of his promise. "As well," said she,
+"ask the hunter to go bound to the lion's den as the white doe to come
+tame into your keeping; though she loved you with all her heart, you
+could not look at her and not be her enemy." She gazed on him with full
+affection, and sighed deeply. "Lie down for a little," she said, "and
+rest; it is not till midnight that she comes. When she comes I will wake
+you."
+
+She took his head in her hands and set it upon her knee, making him lie
+down. "If she will come and stand tame to my hand," he said again, "then
+I will do her no harm."
+
+After a while he fell asleep; and, dreaming of the white doe, started
+awake to find it was already midnight, and the white doe standing there
+before him. But as soon as his eyes lighted on her they kindled with
+such fierce ardour that she trembled and sprang away out of the door and
+across the stream. "Ah, ah, white doe, white doe!" cried the wind in the
+feathers of the shaft that flew after her.
+
+Just at her leaping of the stream the arrow touched her; and all her
+body seemed to become a mist that dissolved and floated away, broken
+into thin fragments over the fast-flowing stream.
+
+By the hunter's side his wife lay dead, with an arrow struck into her
+heart. The door of the house was shut; it seemed to be only an evil
+dream from which he had suddenly awakened. But the arrow gave real
+substance to his hand: when he drew it out a few true drops of blood
+flowed after. Suddenly the hunter knew all he had done. "Oh, white doe,
+white doe!" he cried, and fell down with his face to hers.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+At the first light of dawn he covered her with dry ferns, that the
+children might not see how she lay there dead. "Run out," he cried to
+them, "run out and play! Play as the white doe used to do!" And the
+children ran out and leapt this way and that across the stream, crying,
+"She was like this, and she did this, and this was the way she went!"
+
+So while they played along the banks of the stream, the hunter took up
+his beautiful dead wife and buried her. And to the children he said,
+"Your mother has gone away; when the white doe comes she will return
+also."
+
+"She was like this," they cried, laughing and playing, "and she did
+this, and this was the way she went!" And all the time as they played he
+seemed to see the white doe leaping before him in the sunlight.
+
+That night the hunter lay sleepless on his bed, wishing for the world to
+end; but in the crib by his side the two children lay in a sound
+slumber. Then he saw plainly in the moonlight, the white doe with a red
+mark in her side, standing still by the doorway. Soon she went to where
+the young ones were lying, and, as she touched the coverlet softly with
+her right fore-foot, all at once two young fawns rose up from the ground
+and sprang away into the open, following where the white doe beckoned
+them.
+
+Nor did they ever return. For the rest of his life the huntsman stayed
+where they left him, a sorrowful and lonely man. In the grave where lay
+the woman's form he had slain he buried his bow and arrows far from the
+sight of the sun or the reach of his own hand; and coming to the place
+night by night, he would watch the mists and the moonrise, and cry,
+"White doe, white doe, will you not some day forgive me?" and did not
+know that she had forgiven him then when, before she died, she kissed
+his two hands and made him sleep for the last time with his head on her
+knee.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOON-STROKE
+
+
+IN the hollow heart of an old tree a Jackdaw and his wife had made
+themselves a nest. As soon as the mother of his eggs had finished
+laying, she sat waiting patiently for something to come of it. One by
+one five mouths poked out of the shells, demanding to be fed; so for
+weeks the happy couple had to be continually in two places at once
+searching for food to satisfy them.
+
+Presently the wings of the young ones grew strong; they could begin to
+fly about; and the parents found time for a return to pleasuring and
+curiosity-hunting. They began gathering in a wise assortment of broken
+glass and chips of platter to grace the corners of their dwelling. All
+but the youngest Jackdaw were enchanted with their unutterable beauty
+and value; they were never tired of quarrelling over the possession and
+arrangement of them.
+
+"But what are they for?" asked the youngest, a perverse bird who kept
+himself apart from the rest, and took no share in their daily
+squabblings.
+
+The mother-bird said: "They are beautiful, and what God intended for us:
+therefore they must be true. We may not see the use of them yet, but no
+doubt some day they will come true."
+
+The little Jackdaw said: "Their corners scratch me when I want to go to
+sleep; they are far worse than crumbs in the bed. All the other birds do
+without them--why should not we?"
+
+"That is what distinguishes us from the other birds!" replied the
+Janedaw, and thanked her stars that it was so.
+
+"I wish we could sing!" sighed the littlest young Jackdaw.
+
+"Babble, babble!" replied his mother angrily.
+
+And then, as it was dinner-time, he forgot his grief, as they all said
+grace and fell-to.
+
+One evening the old Jackdaw came home very late, carrying something that
+burned bright and green, like an evening star; all the nest shone where
+he set it down.
+
+"What do you think of that for a discovery?" he said to the Janedaw.
+
+"Think?" she said; "I can't. Some of it looks good to eat; but that
+fire-patch at the end would burn one's inside out."
+
+Presently the Jackdaw family settled itself down to sleep; only the
+youngest one sat up and watched. Now he had seen something beautiful.
+Was it going to come true? Its light was like the song of the
+nightingale in the leaves overhead: it glowed, and throbbed, and grew
+strong, flooding the whole place where it lay.
+
+Soon, in the silence, he heard a little wail of grief: "Why have they
+carried me away here," sighed the glow-worm, "out of the tender grass
+that loves the ground?"
+
+The littlest Jackdaw listened with all his heart. Now something at last
+was going to become true, without scratching his legs and making him
+feel as though crumbs were in his bed.
+
+A little winged thing came flying down to the green light, and two
+voices began crying together--the glow-worm and its mate.
+
+"They have carried you away?"
+
+"They have carried me away; up here I shall die!"
+
+"I am too weak to lift you," said the one with wings; "you will stay
+here, and you will die!" Then they cried yet more.
+
+"It seems to me," thought the Jackdaw, "that as soon as the beautiful
+becomes true, God does not intend it to be for us." He got up softly
+from among his brothers. "I will carry you down," he said. And without
+more ado, he picked it up and carried it down out of the nest, and laid
+it in the long grass at the foot of the tree.
+
+Overhead the nightingale sang, and the full moon shone; its rays struck
+down on the little Jackdaw's head.
+
+For a bird that is not a nightingale to wake up and find its head
+unprotected under the rays of a full moon is serious: there and then he
+became moon-struck. He went back into bed; but he was no longer the same
+little Jackdaw. "Oh, I wish I could sing!" he thought; and not for hours
+could he get to sleep.
+
+In the morning, when the family woke up, the beautiful and the true was
+gone. The father Jackdaw thought he must have swallowed it in his sleep.
+
+"If you did," said his wife, "there'll be a smell of burnt feathers
+before long!"
+
+But the littlest Jackdaw said, "It came true, and went away, because it
+was never intended for us."
+
+Now some days after this the old Jackdaw again came carrying something
+that shone like an evening star--a little spike of gold with a burning
+emerald set in the end of it. "And what do you think of that?" said he
+to his wife.
+
+"I daren't come near it," she answered, "for fear it should burn me!"
+
+That night the little Jackdaw lay awake, while all the others slept,
+waiting to hear the green stone break out into sorrow, and to see if its
+winged mate would come seeking it. But after hours had gone, and nothing
+stirred or spoke, he slipped softly out of the nest, and went down to
+search for the poor little winged mate who must surely be about
+somewhere.
+
+And now, truly, among the grasses and flowers he heard something sobbing
+and sighing; a little winged thing darted into sight and out again,
+searching the ground like a dragon-fly at quest. And all the time, amid
+the darting and humming of its wings, came sobbing and wringing of
+hands.
+
+The young Jackdaw called: "Little wings, what have you lost? Is it not a
+spike with a green light at the end of it?"
+
+"My wand, my wand!" cried the fairy, beside herself with grief. "Just
+about sunset I was asleep in an empty wren's nest, and when I woke up my
+wand was gone!"
+
+Then the little Jackdaw, being moon-struck, and not knowing the value of
+things, flew up to the nest and brought back the fairy her wand.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "you have saved my life!" And she thanked the Jackdaw
+till he grew quite modest and shy.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"What is it for? What can you do with it?" he asked.
+
+"With this," she answered, "I can make anything beautiful come true! I
+can give you whatever you ask; you have but to ask, and you shall have."
+
+Then the little Jackdaw, being moon-struck, and not knowing the value of
+things, said, "Oh, if I could only sing like a nightingale!"
+
+"You can!" said the fairy, waving her wand but once; and immediately
+something like a melodious sneeze flew into his head and set it shaking.
+
+"Chiou! chiou! True-true-true-true! Jug! jug! Oh, beautiful! beautiful!"
+His beak went dabbling in the sweet sound, rippling it this way and
+that, spraying it abroad out of his blissful heart as a jewel throws out
+its fires.
+
+The fairy was gone; but the little Jackdaw sprang up into the high elm,
+and sang on endlessly through the whole night.
+
+At dawn he stopped, and looking down, there he saw the family getting
+ready for breakfast, and wondering what had become of him.
+
+Just as they were saying grace he flew in, his little heart beating with
+joy over his new-found treasure. What a jewel of a voice he had: better
+than all the pieces of glass and chips of platter lying down there in
+the nest! As soon as the parent-birds had finished grace, he lifted his
+voice and thanked God that the thing he had wished for had become true.
+
+None of them understood what he said, but they paid him plenty of
+attention. All his brothers and sisters put up their heads and giggled,
+as the young do when one of their number misbehaves.
+
+"Don't make that noise!" said his mother; "it's not decent!"
+
+"It's low!" said the father-bird.
+
+The littlest young Jackdaw was overwhelmed with astonishment. When he
+tried to explain, his unseemly melodies led to his immediate expulsion
+from the family circle. Such noises, he was told, could only be made in
+private; when he had quite got over them he might come back,--but not
+until.
+
+He never got over them; so he never came back. For a few days he hid
+himself in different trees of the garden, and sang the praises of
+sorrow; but his family, though they comprehended him not, recognised his
+note, and came searching him with beak and claw, and drove him out so as
+not to have him near them committing such scandalous noises to the ears
+of the public.
+
+"He lies in his throat!" said the old Jackdaw. "Everything he says he
+garbles. If he is our son he must have been hatched on the wrong side of
+the nest!"
+
+After that, wherever he went, all the birds jeered at and persecuted
+him. Even the nightingales would not listen to his brotherly voice. They
+made fun of his black coat, and called him a Nonconformist without a
+conscience. "All this has come about," thought he, "because God never
+meant anything beautiful to come true."
+
+One day a man who saw him and heard him singing, caught him, and took
+him round the world in a cage for show. The value of him was
+discovered. Great crowds came to see the little Jackdaw, and to hear him
+sing. He was described now as the "Amphabulous Philomel, or the
+Mongrel-Minstrel"; but it gave him no joy.
+
+Before long he had become what we call tame--that is to say, his wings
+had been clipped; he was allowed out of his cage, because he could no
+longer fly away, and he sang when he was told, because he was whipped if
+he did not.
+
+One day there was a great crowd round the travelling booth where he was
+on view: the showman had a new wonder which he was about to show to the
+people. He took the little Jackdaw out of his cage, and set him to perch
+upon his shoulder, while he busied himself over something which he was
+taking carefully out of ever so many boxes and coverings.
+
+The Jackdaw's sad eye became attracted by a splendid scarf-pin that the
+showman wore--a gold pin set with a tiny emerald that burned like fire.
+The bird thought, "Now if only the beautiful could become true!"
+
+And now the showman began holding up a small glass bottle for the crowd
+to stare into. The people were pushing this way and that to see what
+might be there.
+
+At the bottom sat the little fairy, without her wand, weeping and
+beating her hands on the glass.
+
+The showman was so proud he grew red in the face, and ran shouting up
+and down the plank, shaking and turning the bottle upside down now and
+then, so as to make the cabined fairy use her wings, and buzz like a fly
+against the glass.
+
+The Jackdaw waggled unsteadily at his perch on the man's shoulder. "Look
+at him!" laughed someone in the crowd, "he's going to steal his master's
+scarf-pin."
+
+"Ho, ho, ho!" shouted the showman. "See this bird now! See the
+marvellous mongrel nature of the beast! Who tells me he's only a
+nightingale painted black?"
+
+The people laughed the more at that, for there was a fellow in the crowd
+looking sheepish. The Jackdaw had drawn out the scarf-pin, and held it
+gravely in its beak, looking sideways with cunning eyes. He was wishing
+hard. All the crowd laughed again.
+
+Suddenly the showman's hand gave a jerk, the bottle slipped from his
+hold and fell, shivering itself upon the ground.
+
+There was a buzz of wings--the fairy had escaped.
+
+"The beautiful is coming true," thought the Jackdaw, as he yielded to
+the fairy her wand, and found, suddenly, that his wings were not clipped
+after all.
+
+"What more can I do for you?" asked the fairy, as they flew away
+together. "You gave me back my wand; I have given you back your wings."
+
+"I will not ask anything," said the little Jackdaw; "what God intends
+will come true."
+
+"Let me take you up to the moon," said the fairy. "All the Jackdaws up
+there sing like nightingales."
+
+"Why is that?" asked the little Jackdaw.
+
+"Because they are all moon-struck," she answered.
+
+"And what is it to be moon-struck?" he asked.
+
+"Surely you should know, if anyone!" laughed the fairy. "To see things
+beautifully, and not as they are. On the moon you will be able to do
+that without any difficulty."
+
+"Ah," said the little Jackdaw, "now I know at last that the beautiful is
+going to come true!"
+
+
+
+
+THE GENTLE COCKATRICE
+
+
+FAR above the terraces of vine, where the goat pastures ended and the
+rocks began, the eye could take a clear view over the whole plain. From
+that point the world below spread itself out like a green map, and the
+only walls one could see were the white flanks and tower of the
+cathedral rising up from the grey roofs of the city; as for the streets,
+they seemed to be but narrow foot-tracks on which people appeared like
+ants walking.
+
+This was the view of the town which Beppo, the son of the common
+hangman, loved best. It was little pleasure to him to be down there,
+where all the other lads drove him from their play: for the hangman had
+had too much to do with the fathers and brothers of some of them, and
+his son was not popular. When there was a hanging they would rush off to
+the public square to see it; afterwards they made it their sport to play
+at hanging Beppo, if by chance they could catch him; and that play had a
+way at times of coming uncomfortably near to reality.
+
+Beppo did not himself go to the square when his father's trade was on;
+the near view did not please him. Perched on the rocky hillside, he
+would look down upon a gathering of black specks, where two others stood
+detached upon a space in their midst, and would know that there his
+father was hanging a man.
+
+Sometimes it was more than one, and that made Beppo afraid. For he knew
+that for every man that he hanged his father took a dram to give him
+courage for the work; and if there were several poor fellows to be cast
+off from life, the hangman was not pleasant company afterwards for those
+very near and dear to him.
+
+It happened one day that the hangman was to give the rope to five
+fellows, the most popular and devil-may-care rakes and roysterers in the
+whole town. Beppo was up very early that morning, and at the first
+streak of light had dropped himself over the wall into the town ditch,
+and was away for the open country and the free air of the hills; for he
+knew that neither at home nor in the streets would life be worth living
+for a week after, because of all the vengeances that would fall on him.
+
+Therefore he had taken from the home larder a loaf of bread and a clump
+of dried figs; and with these hoped to stand the siege of a week's
+solitude rather than fall in with the hard dealings of his own kind. He
+knew a cave, above where the goats found pasture, out of which a little
+red, rusty water trickled; there he thought to make himself a castle and
+dream dreams, and was sure he would be happy enough, if only he did not
+grow afraid.
+
+Beppo had discovered the cave one day from seeing a goat push out
+through a thicket of creepers on the side of the hill; and, hidden under
+their leaves, he had found it a wonderful, cool refuge from the heat of
+summer noons. Now, as he entered, the place struck very cold; for it was
+early spring, and the earth was not yet warmed through with the sun. So
+he set himself to gather dead grass, and briers, and tufts of goat's
+hair and from farther down the hillside the wood of a ruined
+goat-paddock, till he had a great store of fuel at hand. He worked all
+day like a squirrel for its winter hoard; and as his pile mounted he
+grew less and less afraid of the cave where he meant to live.
+
+Seeing so large a heap of stuff ready for the feeding of his fire, he
+began to rise to great heights in his own imagination. First he had been
+a poor outlaw, a mere sheep-stealer hiding from men's clutches; then he
+became a robber-chief; and at last he was no less than the king of the
+mountains.
+
+"This mountain is all caves," he said to himself, "and all the caves are
+full of gold; and I am the king to whom it all belongs."
+
+In the evening Beppo lighted his fire, in the far back of his cave,
+where its light would not be seen, and sat down by its warmth to eat
+dried figs and bread and drink brackish water. To-morrow he meant to
+catch a kid and roast it and eat it. Why should he ever go home again?
+Kid was good--he did not get that to eat when he was at home; and now in
+the streets the boys must be looking for him to play at their cruel game
+of hanging. Why should he go back at all?
+
+The fire licked its way up the long walls of the cavern; slowly the
+warmth crept round on all sides. The rock where Beppo laid his hand was
+no longer damp and cold; he made himself a bed of the dried litter in a
+niche close to the fire, laid his head on a smooth knob of stone, and
+slept. But even in his sleep he remembered his fire, dreading to awake
+and find himself in darkness. Every time the warmth of it diminished he
+raised himself and put on more fuel.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the morning--for faint blue edges of light marking the ridged throat
+of the cavern told that outside the day had begun--he woke fully, and
+the fire still burned. As he lay, his pillow of rock felt warm and
+almost soft; and, strangely enough, through it there went a beating
+sound as of blood. This must be his own brain that he heard; but he
+lifted his head, and where he laid his hand could feel a slow movement
+of life going on under it. Then he stared hard at the overhanging rock,
+and surely it heaved softly up and down, like some great thing breathing
+slowly in its sleep.
+
+Yet he could make out no shape at all till, having run to the other side
+of the cave, he turned to see the whole face of the rock which seemed to
+be taking on life. Then he realised very gradually what looked to be the
+throat and jaws of a great monster lying along the ground, while all the
+rest passed away into shadow or lay buried under masses of rock, which
+closed round it like a mould. Below the nether-jaw bone the flames
+licked and caressed the throat; and the tough, mud-coloured hide ruffled
+and smoothed again as if grateful for the heat that tickled its way in.
+
+Very slowly indeed the great Cockatrice, which had lain buried for
+thousands of years, out of reach of the light or heat of the sun, was
+coming round again to life. That was Beppo's own doing, and for some
+very curious reason he was not afraid.
+
+His heart was uplifted. "This is my cave," thought he, "so this must be
+my Cockatrice! Now I will ride out on him and conquer the world. I shall
+be really a king then!"
+
+He guessed that it must have been the warmth which had waked the
+Cockatrice, so he made fires all down the side of the cave; wherever the
+great flank of the Cockatrice seemed to show, there he lighted a fire to
+put heat into the slumbering body of the beast.
+
+"Warm up, old fellow," he cried; "thaw out, I tell you! I want you to
+talk to me."
+
+Presently the mouth of the Cockatrice unsealed itself, and began to
+babble of green fields. "Hay--I want hay!" said the Cockatrice; "or
+grass. Does the world contain any grass?"
+
+Beppo went out, and presently returned with an armful. Very slowly the
+Cockatrice began munching the fresh fodder, and Beppo, intent on feeding
+him back to life, ran to and fro between the hillside and the cavern
+till he was exhausted and could go no more. He sat down and watched the
+Cockatrice finish his meal.
+
+Presently, when the monster found that his fodder was at an end, he
+puckered a great lid, and far up aloft in the wall of the cave flashed
+out a green eye.
+
+If all the emeralds in the world were gathered together, they might
+shine like that; if all the glow-worms came up out of the fields and put
+their tails together, they might make as great an orb of fire. All the
+cave looked as green as grass when the eye of the Cockatrice lighted on
+it; and Beppo, seeing so mighty an optic turning its rays on him, felt
+all at once shrivelled and small, and very weak at the knees.
+
+"Oh, Cockatrice," he said, in a monstrous sad voice, "I hope I haven't
+hurt you!"
+
+"On the contrary," said the Cockatrice, "you have done me much good.
+What are you going to do with me now?"
+
+"_I_ do with _you_?" cried Beppo, astonished at so wild a possibility
+offering to come true. "I would like to get you out, of course--but can
+I?"
+
+"I would like that dearly also!" said the Cockatrice.
+
+"But how can I?" inquired Beppo.
+
+"Keep me warm and feed me," returned the monster. "Presently I shall be
+able to find out where my tail is. When I can move that I shall be able
+to get out."
+
+Beppo undertook whatever the Cockatrice told him--it was so grand to
+have a Cockatrice of his own. But it was a hard life, stoking up fires
+day and night, and bringing the Cockatrice the fodder necessary to
+replenish his drowsy being. When Beppo was quite tired out he would come
+and lay his head against the monster's snout: and the Cockatrice would
+open a benevolent eye and look at him affectionately.
+
+"Dear Cockatrice," said the boy one day, "tell me about yourself, and
+how you lived and what the world was like when you were free!"
+
+"Do you see any green in my eye?" said the Cockatrice.
+
+"I do, indeed!" said Beppo. "I never saw anything so green in all the
+world."
+
+"That's all right, then!" said the Cockatrice. "Climb up and look in,
+and you will see what the world was like when I was young."
+
+So Beppo climbed and scrambled, and slipped and clung, till he found
+himself on the margin of a wonderful green lake, which was but the
+opening into the whole eye of the Cockatrice.
+
+And as soon as Beppo looked, he had lost his heart for ever to the world
+he saw there. It was there, quite real before him: a whole world full of
+living and moving things--the world before the trouble of man came to
+it.
+
+"I see green hills, and fields, and rocks, and trees," cried Beppo, "and
+among them a lot of little Cockatrices are playing!"
+
+"They were my brothers and sisters; I remember them," said the
+Cockatrice. "I have them all in my mind's eye. Call them--perhaps they
+will come and talk to you; you will find them very nice and friendly."
+
+"They are too far off," said Beppo, "they cannot hear me."
+
+"Ah, yes," murmured the Cockatrice, "memory is a wonderful thing!"
+
+When Beppo came down again he was quite giddy, and lost in wonder and
+joy over the beautiful green world the Cockatrice had shown him. "I like
+that better than this!" said he.
+
+"So do I," said the Cockatrice. "But perhaps, when my tail gets free, I
+shall feel better."
+
+One morning he said to Beppo: "I do really begin to feel my tail. It is
+somewhere away down the hill yonder. Go and look out for me, and tell me
+if you can see it moving."
+
+So Beppo went to the mouth of the cave, and looked out towards the city,
+over all the rocks and ridges and goat-pastures and slopes of vine that
+lay between.
+
+Suddenly, as he looked, the steeple of the cathedral tottered, and down
+fell its weathercock and two of its pinnacles, and half the chimneys of
+the town snapped off their tops. All that distance away Beppo could hear
+the terrified screams of the inhabitants as they ran out of their houses
+in terror.
+
+"I've done it!" cried the Cockatrice, from within the cave.
+
+"But you mustn't do that!" exclaimed Beppo in horror.
+
+"Mustn't do what?" inquired the Cockatrice.
+
+"You mustn't wag your tail! You don't know what you are doing!"
+
+"Oh, master!" wailed the Cockatrice; "mayn't I? For the first time this
+thousand years I have felt young again."
+
+Beppo was pale and trembling with agitation over the fearful effects of
+that first tail-wagging. "You mustn't feel young!" said he.
+
+"Why not?" asked the Cockatrice, with a piteous wail.
+
+"There isn't room in the world for a Cockatrice to feel young nowadays,"
+answered Beppo gravely.
+
+"But, dear little master and benefactor," cried the Cockatrice, "what
+did you wake me up for?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Beppo, terribly perplexed. "I wouldn't have done
+it had I known where your tail was."
+
+"Where is it?" inquired the Cockatrice, with great interest.
+
+"It's right underneath the city where I mean to be king," said Beppo;
+"and if you move it the city will come down; and then I shall have
+nothing to be king of."
+
+"Very well," said the Cockatrice sadly; "I will wait!"
+
+"Wait for what?" thought Beppo. "Waiting won't do any good." And he
+began to think what he must do. "You lie quite still!" said he to the
+Cockatrice. "Go to sleep, and I will still look after you."
+
+"Oh, little master," said the Cockatrice, "but it is difficult to go to
+sleep when the delicious trouble of spring is in one's tail! How long
+does this city of yours mean to stay there? I am so alive that I find it
+hard to shut an eye!"
+
+"I will let the fires that keep you warm go down for a bit," said Beppo,
+"and you mustn't eat so much grass; then you will feel better, and your
+tail will be less of an anxiety."
+
+And presently, when Beppo had let the fires which warmed him get low,
+and had let time go by without bringing him any fresh fodder, the
+Cockatrice dozed off into an uneasy, prehistoric slumber.
+
+Then Beppo, weeping bitterly over his treachery to the poor beast which
+had trusted him, raked open the fires and stamped out the embers; and,
+leaving the poor Cockatrice to get cold, ran down the hill as fast as he
+could to the city he had saved--the city of which he meant to be king.
+
+He had been away a good many days, but the boys in the street were still
+on the watch for him. He told them how he had saved the city from the
+earthquake; and they beat him from the city gate to his father's door.
+He told his own father how he had saved the city; and his father beat
+him from his own door to the city gate. Nobody believed him.
+
+He lay outside the town walls till it was dark, all smarting with his
+aches and pains; then, when nobody could see him, he got up and very
+miserably made his way back to the cave on the hill. And all the way he
+said to himself, "Shall I put fire under the Cockatrice once more, and
+make him shake the town into ruins? Would not that be fine?"
+
+Inside, the cave was quite still and cold, and when he laid his hand on
+the Cockatrice he could not feel any stir or warmth in its bones. Yet
+when he called, the Cockatrice just opened a slit of his green eye and
+looked at him with trust and affection.
+
+"Dear Cockatrice," cried Beppo, "forgive me for all the wrong I have
+done you!" And as he clambered his way towards the green light, a great
+tear rolled from under the heavy lid and flowed past him like a
+cataract.
+
+"Dear Cockatrice," cried Beppo again when he stood on the margin of the
+green lake, "take me to sleep with you in the land where the Cockatrices
+are at play, and keep quite still with your tail!"
+
+Slowly and painfully the Cockatrice opened his eye enough to let Beppo
+slip through; and Beppo saw the green world with its playful cockatrices
+waiting to welcome him. Then the great eyelid shut down fast, and the
+waking days of the Cockatrice were over. And Beppo's native town lay
+safe, because he had learned from the Cockatrice to be patient and
+gentle, and had gone to be king of a green world where everything was
+harmless.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREEN BIRD
+
+
+THERE was once a Prince whose palace lay in the midst of a wonderful
+garden. From gate to gate was a day's journey, where spring, summer, and
+autumn stayed captive; for warm streams flowed, bordering its ways,
+through marble conduits, and warm winds, driven by brazen fans, blew
+over it out of great furnaces that were kept alive through the cold of
+winter. And day by day, when no sun shone in heaven, a ball of golden
+fire rose from the palace roof and passed down to the west, sustained
+invisibly in mid-air, and giving light and warmth to the flowers below.
+And after it by night went a lamp of silver flame, that changed its
+quarters as the moon changes hers in heaven, and threw a silver light
+over the lawns and the flowered avenues.
+
+All these things were that the Prince might have delight and beauty ever
+around him. To his eyes summer was perpetual, without end, and nothing
+died save to give out new life on the morrow. So through many morrows he
+lived, and trod the beautiful soft ways devised for him by cunning
+hands, and did not know that there was winter, or cold, or hunger to be
+borne in the world, for he never crossed the threshold of his enchanted
+garden, but stayed lapped in the luxury of its bright colours and soft
+airs.
+
+One day he was standing by a bed of large white bell-lilies. Their great
+bowls were full of water, and inside among the yellow stamens gold fish
+went darting to and fro. While he watched he saw, mirrored in the water,
+the breast of a green bird flying towards the trees of the garden.
+
+It had come from a far country surely, for its shape and colour were
+strange to him; and the most curious thing of all was that it carried
+its nest in its beak.
+
+Its flight came keen as a sword's edge through those bowery spaces, till
+its wings closed with a shock that sent the golden fruit tumbling from
+the branches where it had lodged: and through the whole garden went a
+crashing sound as of soft thunder.
+
+The Prince waited long, hoping to hear the bird sing, but it hid itself
+silently among the thickest of the leaves, and never moved or uttered a
+sound. He went back to the palace a little sorry not to have heard the
+green bird sing; "But, at least," he said to himself, "I shall hear it
+to-morrow."
+
+That night he dreamed that something came and tapped at his heart; and
+that his heart tapped back saying, "Go away, for if I let you in there
+will be sorrow!"
+
+In the morning on the window-sill he saw a green feather lying; but as
+he opened the window a puff of wind lifted it, and carried it high up
+into the air and out of sight.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+All that day the Prince saw nothing of the Green Bird, nor heard a note
+of its singing. "Strange," thought he to himself, "I have never heard
+its song; yet I know quite well somehow that it sings most beautifully."
+At dusk, when the lilies began to close their globes around the gold
+fish and the yellow stamens, he went back to the palace, and before long
+to bed, and slept.
+
+Once more he heard in dreams someone come tapping at his heart, and this
+time his heart said, "Who is there?" Then a voice answered back, "The
+Green Bird"; but his heart said, "Go away, for if I let you in there
+will be sorrow!"
+
+Now it had been foretold of the Prince at his birth that if he ever knew
+sorrow, his wealth, and his estate, and his power would all go from him.
+Therefore from his childhood he had been shut up in a beautiful palace
+with miles and miles of enchanted gardens, so that sorrow might not get
+near him; and it was said that if ever sorrow came to him the palace and
+the enchanted gardens would suddenly fall into ruin and disappear, and
+he would be left standing alone to beg his way through the world.
+Therefore it was for this that his heart said in his dream, "Go away,
+for if I let you in there will be sorrow!"
+
+In the morning a green feather lay on the window-sill; but as he opened
+the window the wind took it up and carried it away.
+
+So the next night, as soon as his attendants were gone, the Prince got
+up softly and opening the window called "Green Bird!"
+
+Then all at once he felt something warm against his heart, and suddenly
+his heart began to ache: and there was the green bird with its wings
+spread gently about him, keeping time ever so softly to the beating of
+his heart.
+
+Then the Prince said, "Beautiful Green Bird, what have you brought me?"
+and the Green Bird answered, "I have brought you dreams out of a
+far-off country of things you never saw; if you will come and sleep in
+my nest you shall dream them."
+
+So the Prince went out by the window and along the balcony, and so away
+into the garden and up into the heart of the great tree where the Green
+Bird had its nest. There he lay down, and the Green Bird spread its
+wings over him, and he fell fast asleep.
+
+Now as he slept he dreamed that the Green Bird put in his hand three
+grains of seed saying, "Take these and keep them till you come to the
+right place to sow them in. And so soon as one is sown, go on till you
+come to the place where the next must be sown, following the signs which
+I shall tell you of. Now the first you must not sow till you find
+yourself in a white country, where the trees and the grass are white."
+(And the Prince said in his heart, "Where can I find that?") "And the
+second one you must not sow till you see a thing like a tortoise put out
+a small white hand." ("And where," said the Prince, "can I meet with
+that wonder?") "And when you have seen the second sprout up through the
+ground, go on till you come again to a land you had lost and the place
+where you first knew sorrow." ("And what is sorrow?" said the Prince to
+his heart.) "Then when you have sown the third seed and watched it
+sprout you will know perfect happiness, and will be able to hear the
+song which I sing."
+
+Then the Green Bird lifted its wings and flew away through the night;
+and out of the darkness came three notes that filled the Prince with
+wonderful delight.
+
+But afterwards, when they ceased, came sorrow.
+
+Now, when the Prince woke he was in his own bed; and he rose much
+puzzled by the dream which had seemed so true. Then there came to him
+one of his pages who said, "There was a strange bird flying over the
+palace about dawn, and a watchman on the high tower shot it; so I have
+brought it for you to see." And as he spoke, the page showed him the
+Green Bird lying dead between his hands.
+
+The Prince took it without a word, and kissed it before them all,
+afterwards burying it where the white lilies full of gold fishes grew,
+wherein he had first seen the image of its green breast fly. And as he
+stood sorrowing, the garden faded before his eyes, and a cold wind blew;
+and the palace which had its foundations on happiness crumbled away into
+ruin; and heaven came down kissing the earth and making it white.
+
+He opened his hand and found in it three grains of seed, and then he
+knew that some of his dream was really coming to pass. For he saw the
+whole world was turning white before his eyes, all the trees and the
+grass; therefore he sowed the first grain of seed over the little grave
+that he had made, and set out over hill and dale to fulfil the dream
+that the Green Bird had given him. "But the Green Bird I shall see no
+more!" he said, and wept.
+
+For a year he went on through a waste and desolate country, meeting no
+man, nor discovering any sign. Till one day as he was coming down a
+mountain he saw at the bottom a hut with a round roof like a great
+tortoise; and when he got quite near, out of the door came a small white
+hand, palm upward, feeling to know if it rained. All at once he
+remembered the word of the Green Bird, and as he dropped the second seed
+into the ground it seemed to him that he heard again the three notes of
+its song.
+
+A young girl looked out of the hut; "What do you want?" she said when
+she saw the Prince. He saw her eyes, how blue and smiling they were, and
+it seemed as if he had dreamed of them once. "Let me stay here for a
+little," he said, "and rest." "If you will rest one day and work the
+next, you may," she answered. So he rested that day, and the next he
+worked at her bidding in a small patch of ground that was before the
+hut.
+
+When the day was over and he had returned to the hut for the night, he
+looked again at the young girl, and seeing how beautiful she was, said,
+"Why are you here all alone, with no one to protect you?" And she
+answered, "I have come from my own country, which is very far away, in
+search of a beautiful Green Bird which while it was mine I loved
+greatly, and which one day flew away promising to return. When you came,
+something made me think the bird was with you, but perhaps to-morrow it
+will return." At that the Prince sighed in his heart, for he knew that
+the bird was dead. Then also she told him how in her own country she had
+been a Princess; so now she from whom the Green Bird had flown, and he
+to whom it had come, were living there together like beggars in a hut.
+
+For a whole year he toiled and waited, hoping for the second seed to
+sprout; and at last one day, just where he had planted it, he saw a
+little spring rising out of the ground. When the Princess saw it, she
+clapped her hands, "Oh," she cried, "it is the sign I have waited for!
+If we follow it, it will take us to the Green Bird." But the Prince
+sighed, for in his heart he knew that the Green Bird was dead.
+
+Yet he let her take his hand, and they two went on following the course
+of the spring till they came to a wild desolate place full of ruins; and
+as soon as they came to it the spring disappeared into the ground.
+
+Then the Prince began to look about him, and saw that he was standing
+once more in the land that he had lost, above the very spot in the
+enchanted garden where he had buried the Green Bird and sorrowed over
+it. Then he stooped down, and set the last grain of seed into the
+ground; and as he did so, surely from below the soil came the three
+sweet notes of a song! Then all at once the earth opened and out of it
+grew a tree, tall and green and waving, and out of the midst of the tree
+flew the Green Bird with its nest in its beak.
+
+The sun was setting; in the east rose a full red moon: grey mists
+climbed out of the grass. The Bird sang and sang and sang; every note
+had the splendour of palace-walls and towers, and gardens, and falling
+fountains. The Princess ran fast and let herself be caught in the
+Prince's arms while she listened.
+
+Many times they hung together and kissed, and all the time the Bird sang
+on.
+
+"I see the palace walls grow," said the Princess. "They are high as the
+hills, and the garden covers the valleys: and the sun and the moon
+lighten it." And, in truth, round them a new palace had grown, and the
+Green Bird was building his nest in the roof.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO KILLED THE CUCKOO
+
+
+ONCE upon a time there was a man who lived in a small house with a large
+garden. He made his living by gardening, while his wife looked after the
+house. They were better off than most of their neighbours, but they were
+an envious couple who looked sourly over the hedge at all who passed by,
+and took no man's advice about anything.
+
+At the end of the garden stood a large pear-tree: and one day the man
+was working in the shade beneath it, when a cuckoo came and perched
+itself on the topmost branch, crying "Cuckoo, cuckoo!"
+
+The man looked up with a frown on his face, and cried, "Get out of my
+tree, you noisy thing!" But the cuckoo only sat and stared at the
+landscape, going up and down on its two notes like a musical see-saw.
+
+The man stooped down, and took up a clod of earth and cast it at the
+cuckoo, which immediately flew away.
+
+A neighbour who was passing at the time saw him, and said, "It's
+ill-luck to drive away cuckoos: you would be better not to do it again."
+"Do it again?" cried the man. "If it comes into my tree again I'll kill
+it!" "Nobody dares kill a cuckoo;" replied the neighbour, "it's against
+Providence." "I'll not only kill it, if it returns," exclaimed the man
+in a fury, "but I'll eat it too!" "No, no," cried his neighbour, "you
+will think better of it. Even the parson daren't kill a cuckoo." "Wait
+and see if I don't better the parson, then!" growled the man, as he
+turned to go on with his work; "just wait and see!"
+
+All the day he heard the cuckoo crying about in the field, now here, now
+there, but always somewhere close at hand. It seemed to be making a mock
+of him, for it always kept within sound, but never returned to the tree.
+When he left off work for the day, he went into the house and grumbled
+to his wife about that everlasting cuckoo. "Did you see what a big one
+it was?" said his wife. "I saw it as it sat in our tree this morning."
+"It will make all the bigger pie then," said the man, "if it comes
+again."
+
+The next morning he had hardly begun to work, when the bird came and
+settled on the pear-tree over his head, and shouted "Cuckoo!"
+
+Then the man took up a great stone, which he had by him ready, and aimed
+with all his might; his aim was so true, that the stone hit the bird on
+the side of the head, so that it fell down out of the tree into the
+grass in front of his feet.
+
+"Wife," he shouted, "I've killed the cuckoo! Come and carry it in, and
+cook it for my dinner." "Oh, what a great fat one!" cried his wife, as
+she ran and picked it up by the neck; "and heavy! It feels as heavy as a
+turkey!"
+
+She laid it in her apron, and went and sat in the doorway, and began
+plucking it, while her husband went on with his work. Presently she
+called to him, "Just look here at all these feathers! I never saw
+anything like it; there are enough to stuff a feather-bed!" He looked
+round, and saw the ground all covered with a great heap of feathers that
+had been plucked from the bird: enough, as she said, for a feather-bed.
+
+"This is a new discovery," cried he, "that a cuckoo holds so many
+feathers. We can make our fortunes in this way, wife--I going about
+killing cuckoos, and you plucking them into feather-beds."
+
+Then his wife carried the cuckoo indoors, and set it down to roast. But
+directly the spit began to turn, the cat jumped up from before the front
+of the fire, and ran away screaming.
+
+The smell of the roast came out to the man as he worked in his garden.
+"How good it smells!" said he. "Don't _you_ touch it, wife! You mustn't
+have a bit!" "I don't care if I don't," she replied: for she had watched
+it as it went turning on the spit; and up and down, up and down, it kept
+moving its wings!
+
+When dinner-time came the man sat down, and his wife dished up the bird,
+and set it upon the table before him. He ate it so greedily that he ate
+it all--the bones, and the back, and the head, and the wings, and the
+legs down to the last claw.
+
+Then he pushed back his plate, and cried, "So there's an end of him!"
+But just as he was about saying that, a voice from inside of him called,
+"Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!"
+
+"Oh my heart and liver!" cried the man. "What's that!"
+
+Then his wife began laughing and jiggering at him. "It's because you
+were so greedy. If you had given me half of that cuckoo this wouldn't
+have happened. Now you see you are paid."
+
+"Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!" cried the voice again from within.
+
+"What have I done to myself?" cried the man, in an agony of terror.
+"What a poisonous noise to come from a man's belly! I shall die of it, I
+know I shall!"
+
+His wife only said, "See, then, what comes of being greedy."
+
+He got up on to his feet, and looked down at his empty plate: there was
+not a scrap left on it. Then he put his hands to his sides, and
+shrieked, "I feel as if a windmill were turning round inside me! And I'm
+so light! Wife, hold me down--I'm going off my feet!" And as he spoke,
+he swung sideway, and began rising with a wobbling motion into the air.
+His wife caught him by the head, while his feet swung like the pendulum
+of a clock, and all the time a voice inside him kept calling, "Cuckoo!
+cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!"
+
+Presently it seemed to the unfortunate man as if the windmill had
+stopped, and he was able to strike the ground with his feet once more.
+"Oh, blessed Mother Earth!" he cried, and began rubbing it up and down
+with his feet, and caressing it as if it had been a pet animal. But his
+face had grown very white.
+
+"Put me to bed," he said to his wife; and she put him to bed on the top
+of the great feather-mattress which she had made only that morning from
+the cuckoo-pluckings.
+
+The cuckoo kept him awake far into the night, and his wife herself could
+get no sleep; but towards morning he dozed off into a disturbed sort of
+slumber, and began to dream.
+
+He felt his eyes turning inwards, so that he could see into the middle
+of his body. And there sat the cuckoo, like an unpleasant nestling, with
+great red eyes staring at him, and the wound on its head burning a blue
+flame. It seemed to grow and grow and grow, dislocating his bones, and
+thrusting aside his heart to make room for itself. Its wings seemed to
+be sawing out his ribs, and its head was pushed far up into his throat,
+where with its angry beak it seemed reaching to peck out his eyes. "I
+will torment you for ever," said the bird. "You shall have no peace
+until you let me go. I am the King of the Cuckoos; I will give you no
+rest. You will be surprised at what I can do to you; even in your
+despair you will be surprised." Then it drew down its head and pecked
+his heart, so that he woke in great pain. And as his eyes turned
+outwards he saw that it was morning.
+
+"Wife," he said, before going out, "I feel as though, if I went out, I
+might be carried away, like a worm in a bird's beak. Fasten a chain
+round me, and drive it with a stake into the ground, and let me see if
+so I be able to work safely in my garden."
+
+So his wife did as he told her; but whenever he caught hold of a spade
+the bird lifted him off his feet, so that he could not drive it into the
+ground. He wrung his hands and wailed, "Alas, alas! now my occupation is
+gone, and my wife and I shall become beggars!"
+
+The villagers came and looked over the hedge, wagging their heads. "Ah,
+you are the man who killed the cuckoo yesterday! and already you are
+come to this!"
+
+Every day things got worse and worse. His wife used to have to hold him
+down and feed him with a spoon, for if he took up a knife to eat with,
+the bird hurled him upon it so violently as to put him in danger of his
+life. Also it kept him ceaselessly awake with its cry, so that he was
+worn to a shadow.
+
+One day in the end of the month of June he heard a change come in its
+horrible singing; instead of crying "Cuckoo" as before, it now broke its
+note as is the cuckoo's habit to do before it goes abroad for the
+winter, and cried "Cuck-cuck-Cuckoo, cuck-cuck-Cuckoo!" Some sort of a
+hope came into the man's heart at that. "Presently it will be winter,"
+he thought to himself, "and the cuckoo must die then, even if I have to
+eat ice and snow to make him! if only I do not die first," he added, and
+groaned, for he was now indeed but a shadow.
+
+Soon after this the cuckoo left off its crying altogether. "Is he dead
+already?" thought the man. All the other cuckoos had gone out of the
+country: he grew quite happy with this new idea and began to put on
+flesh.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But one night, at the dead of night, the cuckoo felt a longing to be in
+lands oversea come into its wings. The man woke with a loud cry, and
+found himself sailing along through the air with only the stars
+overhead, and the feeling of a great windmill inside him. And the cuckoo
+was crying with a new note into the darkness: the cry it makes in far
+lands oversea which is never heard in this country at all: a cry so
+strange and terrible and wonderful that we have no word that will give
+the sound of it. This man heard it, and at the sound his hair went quite
+white with fright.
+
+When his wife woke up in the morning, her husband was nowhere to be
+seen. "So!" she said to herself, "the cuckoo has picked him up and
+thrown him away somewhere; and I suppose he is dead. Well, he was an
+uncomfortable husband to have; and it all came of being greedy."
+
+She drew down the front blinds, and dressed herself in widow's mourning
+all through the winter; and the next spring told another man he might
+marry her if he liked. The other man happened to like the idea well
+enough, for there was a house and a nice garden for anyone who would
+have her. So the first fine day they went off to the Parson and got
+married.
+
+It was a very fine day, and well on in spring: and just as they were
+coming back from the church they heard the note of a cuckoo.
+
+The widow-bride felt a cold shiver go down her marrow. "It does make one
+feel queer," she said; "that sound gave me quite a turn." "Hullo! look
+at him up there!" cried the man. She stared up, and there was her
+husband sailing through the air, looking more of a shadow than ever, and
+very miserable with the voice of the cuckoo calling across the land from
+the inside of him.
+
+The cuckoo deposited him at his own doorstep in front of the bridal
+couple.
+
+"O you miserable scare-crow!" said his wife, "whatever brought you
+back?" The unhappy man pointed below the surface, and the shut-up cuckoo
+spoke for him.
+
+"And here I find you marrying yourself to another!" cried her returned
+spouse: but the other man had shrunk away in disgust and disappeared, so
+there was no more trouble with him.
+
+But the old trouble was as bad as ever, the cuckoo was just as
+industrious in his cuckooings, and just as untimely: and the man went on
+wearing himself to a shadow with vexation and grief.
+
+So all the summer went by, till again the cuckoo was heard to break its
+note into a double sound. But this time, no glimmer of hope came to the
+man's mind. "Tie me fast to the bed," he said sorrowfully to his wife,
+"and keep me there, lest this demon of a bird carry me away again as he
+did last year; a thing which I could never survive a second time. Nay,
+give me a sheath-knife to keep always with me, for if he carry me away
+again I am resolved that he or I shall die."
+
+So his wife gave him the sheath-knife, and by-and-by the bird became
+very quiet, so that they almost hoped he was dead from old age.
+
+But one night, at the dead of night, into the birds wings came the
+longing to be once more in lands oversea. He stretched out his wings,
+and the man woke with a loud cry. And behold, there were he and his
+wife, sailing along under the stars tied into the feather-bed together,
+all complete and compact; and inside him was the feeling of a great
+windmill going round and round and round.
+
+Then in despair he drew out his sheath-knife and cut himself open like
+a haggis. And on a sudden out flew the cuckoo, all plucked and bald and
+ready to roast. At the very same moment the bed-ticking burst, and away
+went the cuckoo with his feathers trailing after him, uttering through
+the darkness that strange terrible cry of the lands oversea.
+
+But the man and his wife and the empty bed-ticking, they fell and they
+fell and they fell right down, till they got to the bottom of the deep
+blue sea; and there was an end of them.
+
+
+
+
+A CHINESE FAIRY TALE
+
+
+TIKI-PU was a small grub of a thing; but he had a true love of Art deep
+down in his soul. There it hung mewing and complaining, struggling to
+work its way out through the raw exterior that bound it.
+
+Tiki-pu's master professed to be an artist: he had apprentices and
+students, who came daily to work under him, and a large studio littered
+about with the performances of himself and his pupils. On the walls hung
+also a few real works by the older men, all long since dead.
+
+This studio Tiki-pu swept; for those who worked in it he ground colours,
+washed brushes, and ran errands, bringing them their dog chops and
+bird's nest soup from the nearest eating-house whenever they were too
+busy to go out to it themselves. He himself had to feed mainly on the
+breadcrumbs which the students screwed into pellets for their drawings
+and then threw about upon the floor. It was on the floor, also, that he
+had to sleep at night.
+
+Tiki-pu looked after the blinds, and mended the paper window-panes,
+which were often broken when the apprentices threw their brushes and
+mahl-sticks at him. Also he strained rice-paper over the
+linen-stretchers, ready for the painters to work on; and for a treat,
+now and then, a lazy one would allow him to mix a colour for him. Then
+it was that Tiki-pu's soul came down into his finger-tips, and his heart
+beat so that he gasped for joy. Oh, the yellows and the greens, and the
+lakes and the cobalts, and the purples which sprang from the blending of
+them! Sometimes it was all he could do to keep himself from crying out.
+
+Tiki-pu, while he squatted and ground at the colour-powders, would
+listen to his master lecturing to the students. He knew by heart the
+names of all the painters and their schools, and the name of the great
+leader of them all who had lived and passed from their midst more than
+three hundred years ago; he knew that too, a name like the sound of the
+wind, Wio-wani: the big picture at the end of the studio was by him.
+
+That picture! To Tiki-pu it seemed worth all the rest of the world put
+together. He knew, too, the story which was told of it, making it as
+holy to his eyes as the tombs of his own ancestors. The apprentices
+joked over it, calling it "Wio-wani's back-door," "Wio-wani's
+night-cap," and many other nicknames; but Tiki-pu was quite sure, since
+the picture was so beautiful, that the story must be true.
+
+Wio-wani, at the end of a long life, had painted it; a garden full of
+trees and sunlight, with high-standing flowers and green paths, and in
+their midst a palace. "The place where I would like to rest," said
+Wio-wani, when it was finished.
+
+So beautiful was it then, that the Emperor himself had come to see it;
+and gazing enviously at those peaceful walks, and the palace nestling
+among the trees, had sighed and owned that he too would be glad of such
+a resting-place. Then Wio-wani stepped into the picture, and walked away
+along a path till he came, looking quite small and far-off, to a low
+door in the palace wall. Opening it, he turned and beckoned to the
+Emperor; but the Emperor did not follow; so Wio-wani went in by himself,
+and shut the door between himself and the world for ever.
+
+That happened three hundred years ago; but for Tiki-pu the story was as
+fresh and true as if it had happened yesterday. When he was left to
+himself in the studio, all alone and locked up for the night, Tiki-pu
+used to go and stare at the picture till it was too dark to see, and at
+the little palace with the door in its wall by which Wio-wani had
+disappeared out of life. Then his soul would go down into his
+finger-tips, and he would knock softly and fearfully at the beautifully
+painted door, saying, "Wio-wani, are you there?"
+
+Little by little in the long-thinking nights, and the slow early
+mornings when light began to creep back through the papered windows of
+the studio, Tiki-pu's soul became too much for him. He who could strain
+paper, and grind colours, and wash brushes, had everything within reach
+for becoming an artist, if it was the will of Fate that he should be
+one.
+
+He began timidly at first, but in a little while he grew bold. With the
+first wash of light he was up from his couch on the hard floor and was
+daubing his soul out on scraps, and odds-and-ends, and stolen pieces of
+rice-paper.
+
+Before long the short spell of daylight which lay between dawn and the
+arrival of the apprentices to their work did not suffice him. It took
+him so long to hide all traces of his doings, to wash out the brushes,
+and rinse clean the paint-pots he had used, and on the top of that to
+get the studio swept and dusted, that there was hardly time left him in
+which to indulge the itching of his fingers.
+
+Driven by necessity, he became a pilferer of candle-ends, picking them
+from their sockets in the lanterns which the students carried on dark
+nights. Now and then one of these would remember that, when last used,
+his lantern had had a candle in it, and would accuse Tiki-pu of having
+stolen it. "It is true," he would confess; "I was hungry--I have eaten
+it." The lie was so probable, he was believed easily, and was well
+beaten accordingly. Down in the ragged linings of his coat Tiki-pu could
+hear the candle-ends rattling as the buffeting and chastisement fell
+upon him, and often he trembled lest his hoard should be discovered. But
+the truth of the matter never leaked out; and at night, as soon as he
+guessed that all the world outside was in bed, Tiki-pu would mount one
+of his candles on a wooden stand and paint by the light of it, blinding
+himself over his task, till the dawn came and gave him a better and
+cheaper light to work by.
+
+Tiki-pu quite hugged himself over the results; he believed he was doing
+very well. "If only Wio-wani were here to teach me," thought he, "I
+would be in the way to becoming a great painter!"
+
+The resolution came to him one night that Wio-wani _should_ teach him.
+So he took a large piece of rice-paper and strained it, and sitting down
+opposite "Wio-wani's back-door," began painting. He had never set
+himself so big a task as this; by the dim stumbling light of his candle
+he strained his eyes nearly blind over the difficulties of it; and at
+last was almost driven to despair. How the trees stood row behind row,
+with air and sunlight between, and how the path went in and out, winding
+its way up to the little door in the palace-wall were mysteries he could
+not fathom. He peered and peered and dropped tears into his paint-pots;
+but the secret of the mystery of such painting was far beyond him.
+
+The door in the palace-wall opened; out came a little old man and began
+walking down the pathway towards him.
+
+The soul of Tiki-pu gave a sharp leap in his grubby little body. "That
+must be Wio-wani himself and no other!" cried his soul.
+
+Tiki-pu pulled off his cap and threw himself down on the floor with
+reverent grovellings. When he dared to look up again Wio-wani stood over
+him big and fine; just within the edge of his canvas he stood and
+reached out a hand.
+
+"Come along with me, Tiki-pu!" said the great one. "If you want to know
+how to paint I will teach you."
+
+"Oh, Wio-wani, were you there all the while?" cried Tiki-pu
+ecstatically, leaping up and clutching with his smeary little puds the
+hand which the old man extended to him.
+
+"I was there," said Wio-wani, "looking at you out of my little window.
+Come along in!"
+
+Tiki-pu took a heave and swung himself into the picture, and fairly
+capered when he found his feet among the flowers of Wio-wani's beautiful
+garden. Wio-wani had turned, and was ambling gently back to the door of
+his palace, beckoning to the small one to follow him; and there stood
+Tiki-pu, opening his mouth like a fish to all the wonders that
+surrounded him. "Celestiality, may I speak?" he said suddenly.
+
+"Speak," replied Wio-wani; "what is it?"
+
+"The Emperor, was he not the very flower of fools not to follow when you
+told him?"
+
+"I cannot say," answered Wio-wani, "but he certainly was no artist."
+
+Then he opened the door, that door which he had so beautifully painted,
+and led Tiki-pu in. And outside the little candle-end sat and guttered
+by itself, till the wick fell overboard, and the flame kicked itself
+out, leaving the studio in darkness and solitude to wait for the
+growings of another dawn.
+
+It was full day before Tiki-pu reappeared; he came running down the
+green path in great haste, jumped out of the frame on to the studio
+floor, and began tidying up his own messes of the night, and the
+apprentices' of the previous day. Only just in time did he have things
+ready by the hour when his master and the others returned to their work.
+
+All that day they kept scratching their left ears, and could not think
+why; but Tiki-pu knew, for he was saying over to himself all the things
+that Wio-wani, the great painter, had been saying about them and their
+precious productions. And as he ground their colours for them and washed
+their brushes, and filled his famished little body with the breadcrumbs
+they threw away, little they guessed from what an immeasurable distance
+he looked down upon them all, and had Wio-wani's word for it tickling
+his right ear all the day long.
+
+Now before long Tiki-pu's master noticed a change in him; and though he
+bullied him, and thrashed him, and did all that a careful master should
+do, he could not get the change out of him. So in a short while he grew
+suspicious. "What is the boy up to?" he wondered. "I have my eye on him
+all day: it must be at night that he gets into mischief."
+
+It did not take Tiki-pu's master a night's watching to find that
+something surreptitious was certainly going on. When it was dark he took
+up his post outside the studio, to see whether by any chance Tiki-pu had
+some way of getting out; and before long he saw a faint light showing
+through the window. So he came and thrust his finger softly through one
+of the panes, and put his eye to the hole.
+
+There inside was a candle burning on a stand, and Tiki-pu squatting with
+paint-pots and brush in front of Wio-wani's last masterpiece.
+
+"What fine piece of burglary is this?" thought he; "what serpent have I
+been harbouring in my bosom? Is this beast of a grub of a boy thinking
+to make himself a painter and cut me out of my reputation and
+prosperity?" For even at that distance he could perceive plainly that
+the work of this boy went head and shoulders beyond his, or that of any
+painter then living.
+
+Presently Wio-wani opened his door and came down the path, as was his
+habit now each night, to call Tiki-pu to his lesson. He advanced to the
+front of his picture and beckoned for Tiki-pu to come in with him; and
+Tiki-pu's master grew clammy at the knees as he beheld Tiki-pu catch
+hold of Wio-wani's hand and jump into the picture, and skip up the
+green path by Wio-wani's side, and in through the little door that
+Wio-wani had painted so beautifully in the end wall of his palace!
+
+For a time Tiki-pu's master stood glued to the spot with grief and
+horror. "Oh, you deadly little underling! Oh, you poisonous little
+caretaker, you parasite, you vampire, you fly in amber!" cried he, "is
+that where you get your training? Is it there that you dare to go
+trespassing; into a picture that I purchased for my own pleasure and
+profit, and not at all for yours? Very soon we will see whom it really
+belongs to!"
+
+He ripped out the paper of the largest window-pane and pushed his way
+through into the studio. Then in great haste he took up paint-pot and
+brush, and sacrilegiously set himself to work upon Wio-wani's last
+masterpiece. In the place of the doorway by which Tiki-pu had entered he
+painted a solid brick wall; twice over he painted it, making it two
+bricks thick; brick by brick he painted it, and mortared every brick to
+its place. And when he had quite finished he laughed, and called
+"Good-night, Tiki-pu!" and went home to be quite happy.
+
+The next day all the apprentices were wondering what had become of
+Tiki-pu; but as the master himself said nothing, and as another boy came
+to act as colour-grinder and brush-washer to the establishment, they
+very soon forgot all about him.
+
+In the studio the master used to sit at work with his students all about
+him, and a mind full of ease and contentment. Now and then he would
+throw a glance across to the bricked-up doorway of Wio-wani's palace,
+and laugh to himself, thinking how well he had served out Tiki-pu for
+his treachery and presumption.
+
+One day--it was five years after the disappearance of Tiki-pu--he was
+giving his apprentices a lecture on the glories and the beauties and the
+wonders of Wio-wani's painting--how nothing for colour could excel, or
+for mystery could equal it. To add point to his eloquence, he stood
+waving his hands before Wio-wani's last masterpiece, and all his
+students and apprentices sat round him and looked.
+
+Suddenly he stopped at mid-word, and broke off in the full flight of his
+eloquence, as he saw something like a hand come and take down the top
+brick from the face of paint which he had laid over the little door in
+the palace-wall which Wio-wani had so beautifully painted. In another
+moment there was no doubt about it; brick by brick the wall was being
+pulled down, in spite of its double thickness.
+
+The lecturer was altogether too dumbfounded and terrified to utter a
+word. He and all his apprentices stood round and stared while the
+demolition of the wall proceeded. Before long he recognised Wio-wani
+with his flowing white beard; it was his handiwork, this pulling down of
+the wall! He still had a brick in his hand when he stepped through the
+opening that he had made, and close after him stepped Tiki-pu!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Tiki-pu was grown tall and strong--he was even handsome; but for all
+that his old master recognised him, and saw with an envious foreboding
+that under his arms he carried many rolls and stretchers and portfolios,
+and other belongings of his craft. Clearly Tiki-pu was coming back
+into the world, and was going to be a great painter.
+
+Down the garden path came Wio-wani, and Tiki-pu walked after him;
+Tiki-pu was so tall that his head stood well over Wio-wani's
+shoulders--old man and young man together made a handsome pair.
+
+How big Wio-wani grew as he walked down the avenues of his garden and
+into the foreground of his picture! and how big the brick in his hand!
+and ah, how angry he seemed!
+
+Wio-wani came right down to the edge of the picture-frame and held up
+the brick. "What did you do that for?" he asked.
+
+"I ... didn't!" Tiki-pu's old master was beginning to reply; and the lie
+was still rolling on his tongue when the weight of the brick-bat, hurled
+by the stout arm of Wio-wani, felled him. After that he never spoke
+again. That brick-bat, which he himself had reared, became his own
+tombstone.
+
+Just inside the picture-frame stood Tiki-pu, kissing the wonderful hands
+of Wio-wani, which had taught him all their skill. "Good-bye, Tiki-pu!"
+said Wio-wani, embracing him tenderly. "Now I am sending my second self
+into the world. When you are tired and want rest come back to me: old
+Wio-wani will take you in."
+
+Tiki-pu was sobbing and the tears were running down his cheeks as he
+stepped out of Wio-wani's wonderfully painted garden and stood once more
+upon earth. Turning, he saw the old man walking away along the path
+towards the little door under the palace-wall. At the door Wio-wani
+turned back and waved his hand for the last time. Tiki-pu still stood
+watching him. Then the door opened and shut, and Wio-wani was gone.
+Softly as a flower the picture seemed to have folded its leaves over
+him.
+
+Tiki-pu leaned a wet face against the picture and kissed the door in the
+palace-wall which Wio-wani had painted so beautifully. "O Wio-wani, dear
+master," he cried, "are you there?"
+
+He waited, and called again, but no voice answered him.
+
+
+
+
+HAPPY RETURNS
+
+
+BY the side of a great river, whose stream formed the boundary to two
+countries, lived an old ferryman and his wife. All the day, while she
+minded the house, he sat in his boat by the ferry, waiting to carry
+travellers across; or, when no travellers came, and he had his boat
+free, he would cast drag-nets along the bed of the river for fish. But
+for the food which he was able thus to procure at times, he and his wife
+might well have starved, for travellers were often few and far between,
+and often they grudged him the few pence he asked for ferrying them; and
+now he had grown so old and feeble that when the river was in flood he
+could scarcely ferry the boat across; and continually he feared lest a
+younger and stronger man should come and take his place, and the bread
+from his mouth.
+
+But he had trust in Providence. "Will not God," he said, "who has given
+us no happiness in this life, save in each other's help and
+companionship, allow us to end our days in peace?"
+
+And his wife answered, "Yes, surely, if we trust Him enough He will."
+
+One morning, it being the first day of the year, the ferryman going down
+to his boat, found that during the night it had been loosed from its
+moorings and taken across the river, where it now lay fastened to the
+further bank.
+
+"Wife," said he "I can remember this same thing happening a year ago,
+and the year before also. Who is this traveller who comes once a year,
+like a thief in the night, and crosses without asking me to ferry him
+over?"
+
+"Perhaps it is the good folk," said his wife. "Go over and see if they
+have left no coin behind them in the boat."
+
+The old man got on to a log and poled himself across, and found, down in
+the keel of the boat, the mark of a man's bare foot driven deep into the
+wood; but there was no coin or other trace to show who it might be.
+
+Time went on; the old ferryman was all bowed down with age, and his body
+was racked with pains. So slow was he now in making the passage of the
+stream, that all travellers who knew those parts took a road higher up
+the bank, where a stronger ferryman plied.
+
+Winter came; and hunger and want pressed hard at the old man's door. One
+day while he drew his net along the stream, he felt the shock of a great
+fish striking against the meshes down below, and presently, as the net
+came in, he saw a shape like living silver, leaping and darting to and
+fro to find some way of escape. Up to the bank he landed it, a great
+gasping fish.
+
+When he was about to kill it, he saw, to his astonishment, tears running
+out of its eyes, that gazed at him and seemed to reproach him for his
+cruelty. As he drew back, the Fish said: "Why should you kill me, who
+wish to live?"
+
+The old man, altogether bewildered at hearing himself thus addressed,
+answered: "Since I and my wife are hungry, and God gave you to be
+eaten, I have good reason for killing you."
+
+"I could give you something worth far more than a meal," said the Fish,
+"if you would spare my life."
+
+"We are old," said the ferryman, "and want only to end our days in
+peace. To-day we are hungry; what can be more good for us than a meal
+which will give us strength for the morrow, which is the new year?"
+
+The Fish said: "To-night someone will come and unfasten your boat, and
+ferry himself over, and you know nothing of it till the morning, when
+you see the craft moored out yonder by the further bank."
+
+The old man remembered how the thing had happened in previous years,
+directly the Fish spoke. "Ah, you know that then! How is it?" he asked.
+
+"When you go back to your hut at night to sleep, I am here in the
+water," said the Fish. "I see what goes on."
+
+"What goes on, then?" asked the old man, very curious to know who the
+strange traveller might be.
+
+"Ah," said the Fish, "if you could only catch him in your boat, he could
+give you something you might wish for! I tell you this: do you and your
+wife keep watch in the boat all night, and when he comes, and you have
+ferried him into mid-stream, where he cannot escape, then throw your net
+over him and hold him till he pays you for all your ferryings."
+
+"How shall he pay me? All my ferryings of a lifetime!"
+
+"Make him take you to the land of Returning Time. There, at least, you
+can end your days in peace."
+
+The old man said: "You have told me a strange thing; and since I mean to
+act on it, I suppose I must let you go. If you have deceived me, I trust
+you may yet die a cruel death."
+
+The Fish answered: "Do as I tell you, and you shall die a happy one."
+And, saying this he slipped down into the water and disappeared.
+
+The ferryman went back to his wife supperless, and said to her: "Wife,
+bring a net, and come down into the boat!" And he told her the story of
+the Fish and of the yearly traveller.
+
+They sat long together under the dark bank, looking out over the quiet
+and cold moonlit waters, till the midnight hour. The air was chill, and
+to keep themselves warm they covered themselves over with the net and
+lay down in the bottom of the boat. It was the very hour when the old
+year dies and the new year is born.
+
+Before they well knew that they had been asleep, they started to feel
+the rocking of the boat, and found themselves out upon the broad waters
+of the river. And there in the fore-part of the boat, clear and
+sparkling in the moonlight, stood a naked man of shining silver. He was
+bending upon the pole of the boat, and his long hair fell over it right
+down into the water.
+
+The old couple rose up quietly, and unwinding themselves from the net,
+threw it over the Silver Man, over his head and hands and feet, and
+dragged him down into the bottom of the boat.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The old man caught the ferry pole, and heaved the boat still into the
+middle of the stream. As he did so a gentle shock came to the heart of
+each; feebly it fluttered and sank low. "Oh, wife!" sighed the old man,
+and reached out his hand for hers.
+
+The Silver Man lay still in the folds of the net, and looked at them
+with a wise and quiet gaze. "What would you have of me?" he said, and
+his voice was far off and low.
+
+They said, "Bring us into the land of Returning Time."
+
+The Silver Man said: "Only once can you go there, and once return."
+
+They both answered "We wish once to go there, and once return."
+
+So he promised them that they should have the whole of their request;
+and they unloosed him from the net, and landed altogether on the further
+bank.
+
+Up the hill they went, following the track of the Silver Man. Presently
+they reached its crest; and there before them lay all the howling winter
+of the world.
+
+The Silver Man turned his face and looked back; and looking back it
+became all young, and ruddy, and bright. The ferryman and his wife gazed
+at him, both speechless at the wonderful change. He took their hands,
+making them turn the way by which they had come; below their feet was a
+deep black gulf, and beyond and away lay nothing but a dark starless
+hollow of air.
+
+"Now," said their guide, "you have but to step forward one step, and you
+shall be in the land of Returning Time."
+
+They loosed hold of his hands, joined clasp, husband with wife, and at
+one step upon what seemed gulf beneath their feet, found themselves in a
+green and flowery land. There were perfumed valleys and grassy hills,
+whose crops stretched down before the breeze; thick fleecy clouds
+crossed their tops, and overhead amid a blue air rang the shrill
+trilling of birds. Behind lay, fading mistily as a dream, the bare world
+they had left; and fast on his forward road, growing small to them from
+a distance, went the Silver Man, a shining point on the horizon.
+
+The ferryman and his wife looked, and saw youth in each other's faces
+beginning to peep out through the furrows of age; each step they took
+made them grow younger and stronger; years fell from them like worn-out
+rags as they went down into the valleys of the land of Returning Time.
+
+How fast Time returned! Each step made the change of a day, and every
+mile brought them five years back towards youth. When they came down to
+the streams that ran in the bed of each valley, the ferryman and his
+wife felt their prime return to them. He saw the gold come back into her
+locks, and she the brown into his. Their lips became open to laughter
+and song. "Oh, how good," they cried, "to have lived all our lives poor,
+to come at last to this!"
+
+They drank water out of the streams, and tasted the fruit from the trees
+that grew over them; till presently, being tired for mere joy, they lay
+down in the grass to rest. They slept hand within hand and cheek against
+cheek, and, when they woke, found themselves quite young again, just at
+the age when they were first married in the years gone by.
+
+The ferryman started up and felt the desire of life strong in his blood.
+"Come!" he said to his wife, "or we shall become too young with
+lingering here. Now we have regained our youth, let us go back into the
+world once more!"
+
+His wife hung upon his hand, "Are we not happy enough," she asked, "as
+it is? Why should we return?"
+
+"But," he cried, "we shall grow too young; now we have youth and life at
+its best let us return! Time goes too fast with us; we are in danger of
+it carrying us away."
+
+She said no further word, but followed up towards the way by which they
+had entered. And yet, in spite of her wish to remain, as she went her
+young blood frisked. Presently coming to the top of a hill, they set off
+running and racing; at the bottom they looked at each other, and saw
+themselves boy and girl once more.
+
+"We have stayed here too long!" said the ferryman, and pressed on.
+
+"Oh, the birds," sighed she, "and the flowers, and the grassy hills to
+run on, we are leaving behind!" But still the boy had the wish for a
+man's life again, and urged her on; and still with every step they grew
+younger and younger. At length, two small children, they came to the
+border of that enchanted land, and saw beyond the world bleak and wintry
+and without leaf. Only a further step was wanted to bring them face to
+face once more with the hard battle of life.
+
+Tears rose in the child-wife's eyes: "If we go," she said, "we can never
+return!" Her husband looked long at her wistful face; he, too, was more
+of a child now, and was forgetting his wish to be a man again.
+
+He took hold of her hand and turned round with her, and together they
+faced once more the flowery orchards, and the happy watered valleys.
+
+Away down there light streams tinkled, and birds called. Downwards they
+went, slowly at first, then with dancing feet, as with shoutings and
+laughter they ran.
+
+Down into the level fields they ran; their running was turned to a
+toddling; their toddling to a tumbling; their tumbling to a slow crawl
+upon hands and feet among the high grass and flowers; till at last they
+were lying side by side, curled up into a cuddly ball, chuckling and
+dimpling and crowing to the insects and birds that passed over them.
+
+Then they heard the sweet laughter of Father Time; and over the hill he
+came, young, ruddy, and shining, and gathered them up sound asleep on
+the old boat by the ferry.
+
+
+  _Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,
+  London and Aylesbury._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 35, "ful" changed to "full" (struck him full)
+
+Page 61, "you" changed to "your" (laid your moon-children)
+
+Page 83, "thing sat" changed to "things at (two things at the)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Moonshine & Clover, by Laurence Housman
+
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