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Title: The windfairies, and other tales

Author: Mary De Morgan

Illustrator: Olive J. Cockerell

Release date: January 24, 2023 [eBook #69875]
                Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Seeley & Co

Credits: Brian Wilsden, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WINDFAIRIES, AND OTHER TALES ***

Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.




[Illustration: “Indeed,” said the Duke, “I should not have thought you
so very pretty.”

  [_Vain Kesta_, _p._ 43.]




  THE WINDFAIRIES
  _AND OTHER TALES_

  BY
  MARY DE MORGAN
  AUTHOR OF “ON A PINCUSHION,” “THE NECKLACE OF PRINCESS FIORIMONDE.”

  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  OLIVE COCKERELL

  LONDON
  SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED
  38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET
  1900




[Illustration:

  TO ANGELA
  DENNIS
  AND CLARE
  THESE LITTLE TALES
  ARE DEDICATED
  BY THEIR WRITER]




CONTENTS


                               PAGE

  THE WINDFAIRIES                 1

  VAIN KESTA                     35

  THE POOL AND THE TREE          52

  NANINA’S SHEEP                 65

  THE GIPSY’S CUP                81

  THE STORY OF A CAT            128

  DUMB OTHMAR                   147

  THE RAIN MAIDEN               192

  THE PLOUGHMAN AND THE GNOME   209




[Illustration:

  THE WIND
  FAIRIES]


THERE was once a windmill which stood on the downs by the sea, far
from any town or village, and in which the miller lived alone with his
little daughter. His wife had died when the little girl, whose name was
Lucilla, was a baby, and so the miller lived by himself with his child,
of whom he was very proud. As her father was busy with his work, and
as little Lucilla had no other children to play with, she was alone
nearly all day, and had to amuse herself as best she could, and one
of her greatest pleasures was to sit and watch the great sails of the
windmill figures like them, and they held each other by the hand, and
were dancing and springing from the ground as lightly as if they had
been made of feather-down.

“Come, sisters, come,” cried the one nearest Lucilla. “See, here is a
little human child out here alone at twelve o’clock at night. Come and
let us play with her.”

“Who are you?” asked Lucilla; “my name is Lucilla, and I live in the
mill with my father.”

“We are windfairies,” said the first grey figure.

“Windfairies!” said Lucilla, “what are they?”

“We blow the winds and sweep the earth. When there are many of us
together we make a great hurricane, and human beings are frightened. We
it is who turn your mill wheel for you, and make all the little waves
on the sea. See, if you will come with us we will take you for a ride
on one of the sails of your mill. That is, if you will be brave, and
not cry.”

“I will not cry one bit,” said Lucilla, and she sprang up, and held out
her arms.

At once she was lifted up, and felt herself going higher and higher,
till she rested on one of the great windmill sails, and, with the
little grey elves beside her, was sweeping through the air, clinging to
the sail.

“She is quite good,” whispered one, as she held Lucilla in her tiny
white arms. “I really think we might teach her to dance, for she has
not cried at all.”

“No, she would surely tell some one if we did,” said another. “Little
human child, would you like us to teach you how to dance as we dance?”

“Yes, yes,” cried Lucilla; and now they were sweeping down near the
ground, and the fairies slid off the sail with Lucilla in their arms,
and let her slide gently to earth. “Teach me to dance, I beg. I will
never tell anybody.”

“Ah, but that is what all mortals say,” whispered one who had not
spoken yet, “no mortal can keep a secret. Never yet was one known who
could be silent.”

“Try me,” cried Lucilla again, “I will never tell. Indeed I will not,”
and she looked entreatingly from one to another of the elves.

“But if you did,” said they, “if you broke your promise to us when
once you had made it, we should punish you severely.”

“But I promise faithfully,” repeated Lucilla, “I will never tell any
one.”

“Well then, you may try,” they said. “Only remember, if you break
your word to us, and tell any mortal who it was that taught you how
to dance, you will never dance again, for your feet will become heavy
as lead, and not only that, but some great misfortune will overtake
whatever you love best in this world. But if you keep faith with us,
then the windfairies will never forget you, but will come to your help
in your direst hour of need.”

“Teach me, teach me,” cried Lucilla; “indeed I will never, never tell,
and I long to dance as you do.”

“Come then,” they said, and some came behind her, and some went in
front of her, and some took her arms and some her feet, and all at
once Lucilla felt as if she were made of feather-down. She swayed up
and down as lightly as they, and it seemed to her quite easy. Never
had she been so happy, and she would gladly have danced for hours, but
suddenly, just as the sun was beginning to show a red light in the
sky, she heard her father’s horse galloping over the downs, and in an
instant the windfairies had vanished.

When the miller came up to her, he was angry with her for being out on
the grass instead of warm in bed, but Lucilla dared not tell him what
had kept her, or say that she had been playing with windfairies.

Years passed, and Lucilla never saw the windfairies again, though she
watched for them every night. She grew up to be a beautiful young
woman, and her father was very proud of her. She was as tall and as
lithe as a willow wand, and when she ran or danced it seemed as if she
were as light as a feather blown in the wind. There were few people
to see her, or tell her she was beautiful, for save the fisher folk
who lived in little cottages on the beach, scarce anybody came to the
downs. But all who saw her admired her beauty, and most of all her
wonderful dancing. Sometimes she would go out on the downs, and dance
and run there by herself, and her father would look at her and say:
“Heaven help the maid! I don’t know whom she has learned it from, but
I have never seen a dancer who can come nigh her.” Then sometimes she
would go down to the sea-shore, and this she loved to do best of all,
and there she would dance with the waves, and move with them as they
slid up to her feet and drew back, and to those who watched, it seemed
as if she and they were one together.

The time came when her father wished her to be married, and among the
young fishermen and the country folk who came to the mill from the
farms across the country, she had suitors enough, but always she said
when a young man came to woo her, “First let me see how you can dance,
for as dancing is the thing I love best in the world, it would be a
pity that I and my husband should not be able to dance together,” and
as none of them could dance as she did, she sent them all away, saying
she would wait for a husband till she could find a man who could dance
to her liking.

But one day there was a great storm, and a big ship was blown on to
the shore close to the mill, and among the sailors was a young fellow
with black curly hair and bright eyes and white teeth, and when he saw
Lucilla, he said to himself, “I will wed that girl and take her home
for my wife.” So one day as they sat on the downs together he begged
her to marry him, and go back with him to his own land; he said he
would give up going to sea, and would live with her in a little cottage
and make their bread by fishing. Then Lucilla said, as she had said
to all her other suitors, “First let me see how you can dance, for I
will never marry any man who cannot dance with me.” The sailor swore he
could dance as well as any man in the world, for all sailors can dance,
he said, and they began to dance together on the downs. The sailor
danced well and merrily, but Lucilla danced faster, and seemed as if
she were made of feather-down; and then the sailor, seeing that his
dancing was as nothing to hers, caught her by the waist, and held her
still, crying, “My sweetheart, I cannot dance as you can, but my arms
are strong enough to hold you still and keep you from dancing with any
man but me.”

So Lucilla married the sailor, and went with him to live in his little
cottage by the sea, many miles away from the mill, and as her father
was growing old and no longer cared to work, he went with her too.

For some time the sailor and Lucilla lived together very happily, and
they had two little children, and her husband fished and sold his fish,
and often still, Lucilla would go down to the waves and dance with them
as she had done in her old home. She tried to teach her little children
to dance as she did, but they could not learn because the windfairies
had never touched them. But one winter her husband’s boat was dashed to
pieces, and the sea froze so that all the fish died, and they became so
poor that they could barely get enough to eat. Then it chanced that a
big ship came to the village where they lived, and the captain wanted
men for a long journey, and her husband told Lucilla that he had best
go with him, and then he would have enough money to buy another boat,
and then next year they must hope for better luck. So Lucilla was left
alone in the cottage with her father and her two little children, and
she felt very lonely and sad without her husband, and often she thought
of the mill and the windfairies, and when the wind blew, she would go
down to the water’s edge and hold out her arms and pray them to take
care of her husband’s ship, and bring it safe home again.

“Oh, kind windfairies,” she cried, “see, I have kept faith with you, so
do you now keep faith with me, and do me no hurt.” And often she would
dance by the edge of the waves, as she used to do in her old home, and
think that the windfairies were dancing with her, and holding up her
steps.

Now it chanced that one day, as Lucilla was dancing on the shore, there
rode by two horsemen, and they stopped and watched her as she danced,
with the waves coming close to her feet. Then they got down from their
horses, and asked who she was, and where she had learned such dancing.
She told them she was only the wife of a poor fisherman, but she had
danced for long years, since she was a little child, when she had lived
in a windmill, on the downs far away. They rode away, but next day they
came again, and brought others with them, and begged Lucilla that she
would go down to the water’s edge and dance with the waves as she had
done yesterday. So she ran down the beach, and danced in time to the
sea as it moved, and the strangers all applauded, and said to each
other, “It is wonderful, it is marvellous.”

They then told her that they came from a country where the King loved
nothing so much as beautiful dancing, and that he would give great sums
of money to any one who danced well, and if she would go back with them
to his court, and dance before the King, she should have a sack of gold
to take home with her, and this would make her a rich woman, and her
husband would never have need to work any more.

At first she refused, and said her husband was away, and would not
know where she was gone, and she did not like to leave her two little
children; but still the courtiers persuaded her, and said it would not
be for long, and her father persuaded her too, since he said it would
make them all rich if she brought home a sack of gold. So at last
Lucilla agreed that she would go back with them to the King’s court
and dance there, but she made them promise that before the spring came
they would send her back to her own little cottage. On hearing this,
the strangers were much delighted, and bid Lucilla make ready to start
at once, and that night she said good-bye to her little ones, and
left them, to go with the travellers. Her eyes were red with crying at
leaving her home, and before she started, she went out alone on to the
cliffs, and stretched out her arms, and called to the windfairies to go
with her and help her, for she feared what she was going to do, and she
begged them to be true to her, as she had been true to them.

They sailed for many days, till at last they came to a country of which
Lucilla had never even heard, and to a big town, which seemed to her
as if it must hold all the people in the world, so crowded was it, and
above the town on the hill, they pointed out to her a royal palace, and
told her it was where the King dwelt, and there she would have to dance
ere the week was out.

“And it is most lucky we saw you just now,” said they, “for the King is
just going to be married, and in a few days the Princess will arrive,
and there will be festivities and rejoicing for days, and at some of
these you will appear before their Majesties, and be sure you dance
your very best.”

Then Lucilla went with them into a great hall close to the palace,
where musicians were playing on every kind of instrument, and here the
courtiers bid her dance on a platform at one end of the hall, in time
to the music; and when they had seen it, the musicians one and all lay
down their instruments, and rose together, clapping and applauding, and
all declared that it was the greatest of luck that the travellers had
met with Lucilla, and that it would delight the King more than anything
they had prepared for him.

By and by the Princess who was to marry the King arrived, and the
wedding was celebrated with much magnificence, and after the wedding
there was a feast, and in the evening there was to be singing and
dancing, and all sorts of play for the royal couple and the court to
see, and then Lucilla was to dance. The courtier who brought her wished
her to be dressed in the most gorgeous dress, with gold and jewels, but
she pleaded that she might wear a light grey gown like the windfairies,
because she remembered how they looked when they danced on the downs.

When the evening came when she was to dance before the King, she threw
wide her window and held out her arms, and cried out, “Now help me,
dear windfairies, as you have done before; keep faith with me, as I
have kept faith with you.” But in truth she could scarce keep from
crying with thoughts of her husband at sea, and her little ones at the
cottage at home.

The hall was brilliantly lighted, and in the middle on the throne sat
the King and the young Queen. The musicians began to play, and then
Lucilla stepped forth on the platform and began to dance. She felt as
light as the sea foam, and when she swayed and curved to the sound of
the music, it seemed to her as if she heard only the swish of the waves
as they beat upon the shore, and the murmur of the wind as it played
with the water, and she thought of her husband out at sea, with the
wind blowing his ship along, and of her little babies living in the
cottage on the beach.

When she stopped, there was such a noise of applauding and cheering in
the hall, as had never been heard there before, and the King sent for
her, and asked her where she came from, and who had taught her such
wonderful steps, but she only answered that she was the daughter of a
poor miller, who lived in a windmill, and she thought she must have
learnt to dance from watching the windmill’s sails go round. Every
night the King would have her dance again and again, as he never tired
of watching her, and every night Lucilla said to herself, “Now another
night is gone, and I am one day nearer to their taking me back to my
own home and my children, with a bag of gold to give to my husband when
he comes back from sea.”

The new Queen was a handsome woman, but she was very jealous, and it
made her angry that the King should admire the new dancer’s dancing so
much, and she thought she would like to be able to dance like her. So
one evening when no one was watching her, she put on a big cloak that
covered her all over, and asked her way to where the dancer lived.
Lucilla sat alone in the little house that they had given her to live
in, and the Queen came in behind her, and took off her cloak, and
bade her be silent and not say her name, for fear some one should be
listening and know that she was there.

“Now,” she said, “I have come to you that you may tell me, though no
one else knows it, who taught you to dance, that I may go and learn
from them also to dance like you; for in the home that I come from, I
was said to be the most graceful woman in the land and the best dancer,
so that there is no dancing that I cannot learn.”

Lucilla trembled, but she answered:

“Your Majesty, I lived in a little windmill by the sea when I was a
child, far from teachers or dancers, but I watched the windmill sails
go round, morn, noon, and night; and perhaps it is that that taught me
to dance as I do now. And if your Majesty wishes to learn to do what
I do, I will gladly teach you all I know, and doubtless you will soon
learn to dance far better than I.”

Upon this the Queen was delighted, and flung aside her cloak, and stood
opposite to Lucilla, and begged her to begin to teach her at once, that
she might learn as soon as possible. All that evening they danced, but
when the Queen thought she looked just as Lucilla did, she appeared to
be quite awkward and heavy beside her, and was dancing just as other
mortals might. When she went away she was very much pleased, and said
that she would come twice more to learn from her, and then she was
sure that she would be perfect. In her heart Lucilla was very much
frightened, because she knew that the Queen did not dance as she did,
and never could. However, the next night she came again, and the next
again, and then there was to be a grand court ball; and at this the
Queen thought she would first show her husband how she could dance.
The King himself was fond of dancing, and danced well, although not
half so well as Lucilla’s husband the sailor; and the Queen thought
how delighted he would be when he saw what a graceful wife he had got.
As the ball began, all the fine people were saying to each other, it
really seemed silly to dance after they had seen the wonderful new
dancer, but the Queen smiled and thought to herself, “Now they will see
that I can do quite as well as she.” When her turn came she tripped
lightly forward and danced as best she could, and thought it was just
like Lucilla, and the courtiers said among each other, “Our new Queen
dances well,” but no one thought of saying that it was like Lucilla’s
dancing, and the King said nothing at all on the matter; therefore the
Queen felt herself growing hot and angry, and she turned red and white
by turns.

“That lying wench has been tricking me,” she said to herself, “and
she has not taught me right at all; but I will punish her for her
deception, and soon she shall know what it is to deceive a Queen.”

So the next day she went to her husband and said, “Husband, I have
thought much of the new wonderful dancer whom we all admire so much,
and truly I have never seen any one on earth who could dance as she
can; but now I think we should do well before she goes back to her own
home to know who has taught her her marvellous art, so that we may have
our court dancers taught, that they may be there to please us when she
is gone, for really there is nothing on earth that cannot be learnt if
it is taught in the right way.”

The King agreed, and they sent for Lucilla, and the King asked her to
tell him where she had learnt her dancing, that they might summon the
same teachers to teach their court dancers. But Lucilla answered as
before—she did not know—she thought she must have learnt dancing from
watching the windmill sails going round. At this the King became angry,
and said, “That is nonsense, no one could learn dancing from looking
at windmill sails, neither was it possible that she, a poor miller’s
daughter, could have learnt such dancing by nature;” then he threatened
her, that if she would not tell him the truth he should be obliged to
punish her, and he said she should have a day to think of it in, but at
the end of the next day, he should expect her to tell him everything he
wanted to know quite plainly.

When she was gone away the King said to the Queen, “Wife, if this
dancer persists in her silence, and will not tell us how she has
learnt, there is another thing which we must do. We must keep her here
to dance for us as much as we choose, and not let her return at all to
the home from which she came.”

The Queen was silent for a little, but she felt very jealous at the
thought of the dancer remaining at the court, so she nodded her head
and said, “Yes, but I think she ought to tell us more about it; for
myself, I begin to think that it is witchcraft, and perhaps she has
been taught by the Evil One, and then we shouldn’t like her to remain
here and dance to us however beautiful it be, for who knows what ill
luck it might not bring upon us?” Upon this the King looked grave, and
said he did not believe much in ill luck or good luck, but he should be
loth to lose the dancer, so they had better settle to keep her if she
declined to tell them how the other dancers were to be taught.

Meantime Lucilla went back to her little house, and wept bitterly.
“Would that I had never left my babes and my home,” she cried, “for I
cannot break my word to the windfairies, and if I did they might do
some terrible harm to my little ones or to my husband at sea; yet if I
refuse to tell them they will most likely put me into prison, and there
I shall remain for my life, and my husband and children will never
know what has become of me.” And she knelt down before the windows and
lifted her arms and cried out, “Oh, dear windfairies, I have not broken
faith with you, so don’t break faith with me, and come to my help and
save me in my trouble.”

Next evening Lucilla went again before the King, and he said to her,
“Well, now will you tell us what we asked you last night, so that we
may send for your teachers, and have others taught to dance as you do?”

“My gracious liege,” answered Lucilla, “I can tell you nothing that I
have not told you before. Since I was a child I have danced as I dance
now, and I watched the sails of my father’s windmill, and I danced in
time to the waves, and perhaps that is what taught me to keep time and
step so well. I was dancing by the sea-shore when the travellers who
brought me here found me, and they promised me a bag of gold to take
home to my husband if I would come and dance at your Majesty’s court;
and now you have seen me dance, and I have done all I can do, so I
entreat you to give me the bag of gold, and let me go home again.”

The King was silent, but the Queen was still more angry, and in her
heart was determined that Lucilla should never return to her home until
she had found out about her dancing. So when they were alone she said
to her husband, “It is now quite clear, it is by witchcraft that this
woman has learned, and we should do very wrong if we let her go till
she has confessed all.” So again they sent for Lucilla and ordered her
to confess, and again she wept and declared that she could tell no
more. Then the King said, “Well, let us give the woman her bag of gold
and let her go,” but the Queen stopped him, and said, “No indeed, let
us first try shutting her up in prison for a bit, and see if that won’t
open her lips.”

At first the King refused, for he said that Lucilla had done no wrong,
but the Queen insisted that she was deceiving them, and that her
dancing must be witchcraft, and at last the King began to listen to
her. Also he was very angry with Lucilla for wanting to go home, and
much disappointed to think he should see her dancing no more; so he
consented, and said that either she must tell him how it was she came
to be able to dance better than anybody else in this world, and who
taught her, or else they should think her dancing witchcraft, and she
must go to prison and wait her punishment.

Poor Lucilla wept most bitterly. “Alas!” cried she to herself, “woe is
me, for I dare not break faith with the windfairies, and yet if I do
not, I shall never see my husband or my babies again, for I fear lest
they may put me to death here.”

However, she continued to be silent, and the King ordered her to be
put into prison until she should speak out and tell them the truth;
and the guards came and led her away to prison, and locked her into a
dark cell. It was dreary and cold, and the walls were so thick that
she could not hear any of the noises from without, and there was only
one little window, which was too high up for her to see through. Here
she lay and lamented, and almost wished she could die at once, for she
believed that they would burn her, or drown her, and bitterly did she
grieve that she had left her home and her children.

Every day the King sent down to ask if she had changed her mind, but
every day she answered that she had nothing to say. One evening she sat
in her dark cell alone, grieving as usual, when the prison door opened,
and there entered a woman wrapped in a cloak and with her face hidden
by a mask. When she took off the mask Lucilla saw it was the Queen, and
she sprang up hoping that she had come to tell her that she was to be
released, but the Queen said, “Now I have come to you alone that you
may tell me the truth. Who taught you to dance, and where can I learn
to do what you do? If you will tell me I will ask the King to forgive
you, and you shall have your bag of gold, and go when you like.”

Then poor Lucilla began to cry afresh, and said, “My gracious lady,
I can tell you one thing that I have not yet told to any one, that
is, that I did learn my dancing, but who told me, or how it was, is a
secret that I swore I would never tell to any one. And now I implore
your Royal Highness to let me go back to my fisherman husband, and my
babies. Alack! alack! it was an evil hour for me when I left my home.”

Upon this the Queen became furious, but she hid her anger, and first
she tried to coax Lucilla to confess all, then she threatened her
with the King’s wrath, and then, as Lucilla still wept and said that
she could not break her promise, she started up in a rage, and said,
“Indeed, it is of little use, however much you love your husband and
your children, for you will never see them again. The King has settled
that you shall be killed this very week, so now you know what you have
gained by your wicked obstinacy.”

So the Queen returned to the King, and told him that the dancer had
confessed that she had learned her dancing, but she would not say from
whom, therefore it must be from the Evil One, and therefore there was
nothing for it but that she should be killed. So they settled that
first they would try to drown Lucilla, and if she were a witch she
would not sink, and the King gave orders that she should be taken out
to sea next day and thrown overboard, and also that she should have
heavy weights tied to her feet, and her arms should be bound to her
sides.

Next morning the guards fetched her, and they bound her arms to her
sides, and tied heavy weights to her feet, and they took her down and
placed her in a boat on the sea-shore, and they rowed her out to sea,
and all along the beach stood crowds of people, shouting and jeering,
and calling out, “She is a witch! she is a witch! the King has done
well to have her killed.”

“Alas! alas!” cried Lucilla, “what have I done to deserve this? surely
I have done no wrong to be so cruelly treated. Dear windfairies, come
to my help, for in truth now is the time of my direst need, and if you
desert me I am lost; but I pray you keep faith with me, as I have
kept faith with you.” Then, when they had rowed the boat out a little
way, the guards seized her, and threw her into the water, and the salt
waves splashed over her face and through her hair; but in spite of the
heavy weights on her feet she never sank, but felt as light as when she
danced with the waves on the sea-shore by her home, and she knew that
the windfairies held her up; and the waves rocked her gently, and drew
her in towards the land, and laid her on the sand, and all the crowd
yelled with rage.

When they found that Lucilla could not be drowned both the King and
Queen were very angry, and said that now it was quite clear that she
was a witch, and that she must be burnt, so they must take her back to
prison, and arrange for her to be burnt in the market-place. So Lucilla
was again taken back to her little dark cell, and she kneeled on the
ground and looked up to the window, and murmured, “Thank you, dear
windfairies, you have kept faith with me, as I have kept faith with
you.”

[Illustration]

Then again the guards came, and took her by the arms and led her to
the market-place, and here she saw a great pile of wood made, whereon
she was to be laid, and already men were busy setting fire to it.
But as Lucilla and the guards came to the spot, there arose a little
breeze, and it blew on to the faces of the crowd who went to see her
burnt. The men who were trying to light the pile of wood, said they
could not make it catch for the wind; when at last it did catch fire,
the flames would not rise in the air, but were blown along the ground.
Still they brought Lucilla up to the pile, and placed her upon it, and
then the flames divided on each side, and were blown away from her all
round, so she sat in the midst quite unhurt.

At this the people all cried out, “Now we know that she really is a
witch, since she will not drown and the fire will not burn her,” and
they ran to tell the King and the Queen that the dancing woman did not
mind the fire, but sat in the midst of it unhurt. On hearing this the
King and Queen came down to the market-place together, and saw Lucilla
sitting on the pile of wood, and the flames blown away from her on all
sides, and causing a great hubbub; so they told the guards to take her
back to prison and keep her there, till they could arrange for her to
be beheaded. And again Lucilla bent her head, and said, “Now I know,
dear windfairies, that you will never desert me, and I have nothing to
fear, for while I keep faith with you, you will keep faith with me.”

By now it was getting late in the day, and the King commanded that
Lucilla should not be executed till next day, and that the scaffold
should be erected in the market-place, on which the block should be
put, so that all the crowd might see, and both he and the Queen would
be there. But in order to give her one last chance that every one might
see how fair they were, the King offered that if she would confess,
even when she was upon the scaffold, who had taught her to dance, she
should be allowed to return whence she came, and take her bag of gold
with her, and therefore the bag of gold was placed on the scaffold so
that all the people might see, and the bag was so large that Lucilla
could scarcely lift it.

That evening Lucilla felt no fear, and she would have slept calmly in
her cell, but the wind was beginning to blow in all directions, and all
round she heard it roaring, and the trees were bending and breaking
in the gale. When the morning came, the King and Queen said to each
other, “This is the morning when they should execute the dancer, but
it will be hard to get her on to the scaffold with a gale like this
blowing.” However, the guards came to Lucilla’s cell, and took her out
as before, and led her towards the market-place, though they had much
ado to get along, for the wind blew so hard that they could scarce keep
upright in it. All along the coast the little boats were being blown in
to shore, and there were big ships, which had been driven in, to take
refuge from the storm. But Lucilla felt no fear, only she looked up to
the wind, and in her heart she said, “Now, dear windfairies, help me
for the last time, and keep faith with me, as I have kept faith with
you.”

Near the shore came a big ship with shining white sails, riding over
the crested waves, and although all the other boats seemed troubled by
the wind, and some were dismasted and others were wrecked, this boat
seemed no way hurt by it, and the people who saw it called out, “What
a gallant ship it was, and how brave the captain must be, who knew
so well how to manage wind and water.” But when they knew that the
time had come for Lucilla to be beheaded, the people did not trouble
further about the boats, and in spite of the gale they flocked to the
market-place, and crowded round the scaffold on which was the block.

Then the guards and Lucilla mounted the scaffold, and Lucilla began to
fear that at last the windfairies had forsaken her, and she wept and
held out her arms, and cried out, “Oh, dear windfairies, indeed I have
kept my faith with you, surely, surely you will keep yours with me.”
In spite of the terrible gale, the King and the Queen came down to the
market-place, though they could scarce see or hear for the wind, though
all the time the sun was shining and the sky was blue. Then the guards
bid Lucilla kneel down and place her head upon the block, and the bag
of gold was beside her, and they said, “This is your last chance, speak
now and confess the truth to the King, and here is your gold, and you
shall go.” And Lucilla answered as before, “I have spoken the truth,
and there is no more that I can tell, since I have sworn never to say
from whom I learnt my dancing.”

Then the executioner lifted the axe in the air, but before it fell,
there came a sudden roar of wind, and the axe was swept from his hand,
and the houses in the market-place tottered and fell, and high up
on the hill the palace was a mass of ruins. Only Lucilla knelt upon
the scaffold unhurt, for the King and the Queen and all the people
were blown right and left, amidst the ruins of the houses, and no one
thought of anything save how they could save themselves.

Then Lucilla lifted her head and looked out to sea, and saw the big
ship coming in, and she heard the sailors cry, “Heyday, these poor folk
are in a sad plight, we had better go and help them,” and they all
trooped up into the market-place, and the wind troubled them no more
than it had troubled their ship. But when Lucilla looked at them, the
first whom she saw was her husband, and she gave a great cry, and held
out her arms, and called out, “Now, dear windfairies, do I indeed know
that you have kept faith with me, and saved me in my direst hour of
need.”

Then she told her husband all that had happened, and showed him the
bag of gold, and prayed him take her back to her little cottage and
her babies by the sea; and she knew that it was the windfairies that
had brought her husband to her, for he told her that whatever way they
steered the ship it would only take one course, and the wind had blown
it without their guidance straight to the town where she was to be
killed.

So Lucilla and her husband took the bag of gold, and went back to the
little cottage by the sea-shore, and her father and her babies, and the
King and the Queen and all the rest of the people were left to build up
their town as best they could, and Lucilla never saw nor heard of them
any more, but lived happily with her husband for the rest of her life.




[Illustration: VAIN KESTA]


ONCE upon a time there lived a young girl called Kesta who was the
dairy-maid at a large farm. She milked the cows and made the cheese and
butter, and sometimes took them into the town to sell for her master.

On the farm worked a man named Adam. He drove in the cows for Kesta to
milk and watched her milking them. As she was a comely-looking girl and
did her work well, he thought she would make him a good wife; so one
day he said, “Kesta, how would you like to marry me? and then we can
save our money and some day buy a farm for ourselves, and I should be
a farmer and you should be the farmer’s wife, and have servants to wait
on you.”

“That I should like very much,” said Kesta, “but I can’t say yes, at
once. To-morrow I am going to town with my cheeses, when I come back I
will give you an answer.”

At night Kesta looked into her glass and said, “I wonder why Adam
wishes to marry me? but as he does, most likely some better man would
like to do so; it would be folly to marry him till I see if I can’t do
better. I must look about me when I go to town to-morrow, and see who I
can meet.”

In the morning she dressed herself with great care in her best clothes,
and set out for the town with the cheeses in a basket under her arm.
When she had got a little way she passed a mill, and the miller all
white with flour stood in the yard directing his men. He was an oldish
man, and his wife was recently dead, and Kesta thought as she drew
near, it would be a better thing to marry him than to marry poor Adam,
so she said, “Good-day, would you kindly let me rest a little?”

“Certainly, my girl,” said the miller, “you seem to be out of breath?”

“And well I may be,” said Kesta, “such a run as I have had. I’ve come
from the farm yonder, and it was as much as I could do to get away, for
the farmer’s man was very angry because I would not marry him, and of
course I am too good for him, a pretty girl like me.”

“Are you really a pretty girl?” said the miller; “let me see, perhaps
you are. Well, if you are too good for the farmer’s man perhaps
you would suit me. How would you like to marry me, and live in the
mill-house yonder?”

“I think I should like it well,” said Kesta, “but I have some business
in the town, and must go there first, so I’ll stop here and tell you as
I come back.” So she said good-bye, and went on her way feeling very
merry.

“It would be much better to marry the miller than to marry Adam, but
who knows if I may not do better than either, so I must not be in any
hurry.” So she walked on, and near to the town she met a man on a white
horse, and saw it was the bailiff of the great Duke at the Palace. “Who
knows but that he may want a wife?” she said to herself, “I can but
try.” So she sat down by the road-side and called out, “Ah me, what a
thing it is to be a poor girl who has to run away from all the men she
meets!”

“Why,” cried the bailiff, stopping his horse. “Why have you to run? who
tries to hurt you?”

“No one tries to hurt me,” said Kesta, “but I have to run from men who
want to marry me, because I am so pretty. At first it was a man at our
farm, and now it is the miller, who would not let me pass his door
unless I promised to come back and marry him, but I am far too good for
such as he.”

“Is this really so?” cried the bailiff, who hated the miller; “did the
miller really want to marry you? If you’re too good to marry him, it
may be you would suit me.”

“Indeed,” said Kesta, “I think that might do well, for I should live
in a nice house and have plenty of servants. But I have to go into the
town on business, and you’re sure to be somewhere about here, and when
I come back we will arrange it.” So she set off, leaving the bailiff
chuckling at the thought of how angry the miller would be if he married
Kesta.

On went Kesta in high good-humour. “Now am I indeed doing well,” said
she; “how clever I was not to marry Adam before I came to town.”
Presently she reached the town, and in the high street she passed the
bank, and the banker himself stood in the doorway. He was fat and ugly
and old, but his hands were covered with rings, and Kesta knew his
pockets were full of gold. Kesta said, “It would be a fine thing to
marry him, and I could hold up my head with any one. I think I’ll speak
to him, as it would be folly to pass him without trying.” So she gave a
loud sigh and said, “Alack a day, how hard is my lot!”

“Why, what is wrong, my pretty lass?” said the banker.

“Pretty you may well say,” answered Kesta. “Would I were not so, for
thence come all my troubles.”

“And what are they?” asked the banker.

“Only wherever I go, I have no peace, for all the men want to marry me.
First it is the farmer, then the miller, and lastly the duke’s bailiff,
who would scarcely let me pass on the road till I had promised him; and
of course it is impossible, and I am much too pretty for any of them.”

“Is this really true?” cried the banker; “if so, there must be
something very superior about you. Perhaps you would be good enough for
me. How would you like to be my wife, and ride in a fine carriage, and
wear silk gowns all day?”

“Nay, that would be much more fitting,” cried Kesta, “and from the
first I thought you would be much more suitable to be my husband than
any of the others I have met; but I must go down the town first, so I
will come in here on my way back.” So she went on till she came to a
great square in front of the barracks where the soldiers were drilling,
with their helmets and swords glittering in the sun, and at their head
rode the General of the army. His voice was hoarse with shouting at his
men, and he swore dreadfully, but he was covered with gold, and looked
very grand. “Now supposing he has no wife,” thought Kesta, “it would be
a really fine thing to marry him: I can but try.” So she waited till
the soldiers were marching into the barracks, and then, when he was
riding away, she went so close under the horse’s feet that he shouted
to her in case she should be run over. “Alas! what a life is mine,” she
cried very loud that he might hear, “hunted here and there till I don’t
know where I go!”

“Why, who hunts you?” cried the General angrily; “what nonsense you
talk, my good girl.”

“How dare you say I talk nonsense,” cried Kesta, “when it is as much as
I can do to get through your town for the men who want me to stop and
marry them!”

“And why do they want you to marry them?” asked the General.

“Because I’m so pretty, of course,” said Kesta promptly, and she took
off her hat and looked up at the General.

“I don’t think you are so pretty,” he said.

“But I am,” cried Kesta angrily, “and it’s only stupid people who don’t
see it. Go and ask the men in the town. First it was a man at the farm,
then the miller, then the duke’s bailiff, then the banker—they all
wanted to marry me, and I am much too good for any of them!”

“If this is all true,” said the General, “of course you must be
exceedingly pretty, and as you say you are much too good for them,
perhaps you might suit me. How would you like that?”

“That might be better,” said Kesta, “and as you wish it very much I
will agree, and I hope you will try to make me a good husband; but I am
obliged to go a little further on important business, and I will meet
you here on my way back,” and on she went laughing to herself. “Indeed
I am fortunate,” thought she; “and as they all seem willing to marry
me why should I not try higher, and see what the Duke himself would
say? There is nothing like being practical, and it would be downright
silly not to speak to the Duke now I am here.” By this time she had
come to the Duke’s palace, so she stopped a servant who was coming out
and asked if he were at home, for she said, “I have special business
with him.” “He is sitting by the stream in the garden, where he sits
fishing all day, and you can go and speak to him if you choose,” said
the servant. So Kesta went through the courtyard into the garden, and
straight on to where the Duke sat beside the stream with a long rod in
his hand fishing. He was dressed all in green, and seemed to be half
asleep, and Kesta came quite near him before he saw her. Then she
said, “Ah, pity me, your Grace, and listen to my sad story.”

“Good gracious! who are you?—don’t you know I am the Duke?” said he.

“And that is why I have come to you to ask you to protect me from all
the men who pursue me,” said Kesta.

“Why do they pursue you?” asked the Duke.

“Because I am so pretty,” replied Kesta. “They all want to marry me:
first the man at the farm, then the miller I met on the road, then your
bailiff, then the banker, then the General of your army, and he would
only let me go when I promised to go back to him.”

“The General!” said the Duke. “Is this true? does he really want to
marry you?”

“Of course he does,” said Kesta; “if you doubt what I say you had
better send to the town and ask.”

“Indeed,” said the Duke, “I should not have thought you so very pretty,
but if what you say is true you must be. I’m not sure if it would not
suit me to marry you myself; but mind, I shall be exceedingly angry if
I find you have not told me the truth, and they did not want to marry
you. Of course you would be delighted to marry me and be the Duchess?”

“Aye, that I should,” cried Kesta, and she grinned with delight.

Then the Duke took from his side a horn and blew it loudly. There came
from the palace four pages, dressed in blue and gold, who stood in a
row to receive his orders. “See,” cried the Duke, “I am going to marry
this lady, who everybody thinks is very beautiful, so see that you
treat her with respect; and go to the palace and bid them to prepare a
feast and fitting clothes for the bride, and tell the chaplain to be
ready, for I mean to marry her at once.”

“And now,” he said to Kesta, when all his pages had returned to the
palace, “come and sit by me and watch me fish till all is ready.”

So Kesta sat by his side and watched him fishing with his long rod, but
after a time she grew tired of being silent, and said, “What have you
caught?”

“Nothing yet,” said the Duke.

“Then why do you go on?” asked she.

“Because I’m sure to catch something soon, and it’s amusing. Wouldn’t
you like to hold the rod a little?”

“Yes, very much,” answered Kesta, who was afraid of offending him. So
she put out her hand to take the rod, and as she did so the basket fell
from her arm and the cheeses rolled out.

“What are those round balls?” asked the Duke, “and what an odd smell
they have.”

“They are my cheeses,” cried Kesta; “I made them yesterday, and was
taking them to sell, when——”

“Good gracious, you made them!” cried the Duke with a scream. “Then
you must be a common dairy-maid, and your hands are quite rough.
How terrible! And I was just going to marry you. How dare you think
yourself good enough to marry me!” and he sprang to his feet in a
towering passion, and seizing his horn blew it so loudly that the four
pages ran up in great alarm. “Hunt her away,” cried the Duke, “she is
an impostor—a common farm wench and makes cheeses. She thought herself
good enough to be the Duchess!”

Away flew Kesta, with the pages after her hooting and shouting, “Down
with the impertinent hussy who wanted to marry the Duke, a common
dairy-maid who makes cheeses.”

On rushed Kesta till she came to the General’s house, and at his window
he sat in his fine uniform. He sat waiting for her, but when he saw the
pages behind her he called, “Hey-dey, what is all this fuss about?”

“It is nothing,” said Kesta. “See, I have come back to marry you as I
promised.”

But here the pages shouted, “Away with the impertinent dairy-maid, who
thought herself good enough to marry the Duke.”

“And wouldn’t the Duke marry her?” asked the General.

“Of course not; she is nothing but a farm wench,” cried the pages, “and
she is to be chased from the town for her impertinence.”

“And so she shall,” cried the General; “she thought she was fit for me
too—it is disgraceful!” and he cried to some soldiers who stood by his
door, “Here, my men, help to chase this good-for-nothing hussy out of
the town.”

But before he had finished Kesta was running down the street with all
her might to the banker’s. At last she came to the banker’s big square
house standing beside the bank, and on the steps was the banker himself
in his shiny black clothes with gold rings on his hands.

“Here I am,” cried Kesta; “and let me in quickly, for I am out of
breath with running.”

“Why have you hurried so?” cried the banker, and as he spoke the pages
and the soldiers came round the corner, “and what is all this shouting
for?”

“Nay, how should I know?” cried Kesta, running into the house.

But up came her pursuers, crying, “Away with her! down with her!”

“Who is it you are calling after?” asked the banker.

“That wench in the yellow dress who has gone into your house.”

“Why, what has she done?” he asked.

“Why, she thought herself good enough to marry the Duke and the
General, and she is to be hooted out of the town for her impudence!”

“But didn’t the General want to marry her?” asked the banker.

“Our General!” cried the soldiers angrily; “why, she’s only a
dairy-maid, and not fit for him.”

“Then I’m sure she can’t be good enough for me, for I’m quite as good
as he,” said the banker, and he ran into the house in a great rage,
crying, “Begone, you impertinent jade! how dare you think yourself good
enough for me to marry!” It chanced at this moment that the clerks were
coming out of the bank next door, and when he saw them he cried, “Here,
my good fellows, help to chase this minx from the town; she wishes to
be my wife, when she is nothing but a common dairy-maid.” On this the
clerks burst out laughing, and one and all ran after Kesta, who ran
with all her might and main.

“It’s too hard,” sobbed she; “what have I done to be treated like
this?” But run as fast as she might she could not reach the bailiff’s
house before them, and the pages, soldiers, and clerks were all close
to her, shouting and laughing.

“Why, what’s the matter?” cried the bailiff, “and why are you shouting
at this poor maid?”

“Why,” said they, “she wanted to marry first the Duke, and the General,
and the banker, and of course they would not have her, because she is
only a common dairy wench.”

“What impertinence!” cried the bailiff; “and, now I come to think of
it, she asked to marry me too; indeed she merits punishment for such
behaviour,” and seeing some of his farm people close at hand, he bid
them run after Kesta and drive her out of the town. But this time she
had started first, and had got on to the mill before they could reach
her, and she ran into the garden where the miller was. “Well, I’m glad
to see you back,” said he, “but how hard you have run.”

“I was in such a hurry to get back. Now let’s go into the house,” she
said.

“Come along,” said the miller; “but what are all those people shouting
for?”

“’Tis only the farmers bringing home pigs from the market,” said Kesta,
but she felt frightened, for she heard the people calling after her.

“Pigs don’t make a noise like that,” said the miller, “I will go and
see what it is about.” And when he heard that they were all shouting
at Kesta, he flew into a violent rage and cried, “If she wasn’t good
enough for the bailiff I’m sure she’s not fit for me,” and he called
to some of his men who were working at the mill, “See there, my men,
do you see that girl? throw some flour at her, for she is an impudent
hussy, and asked me to marry her.”

Away flew Kesta again, and after her came all the crowd in a long line.
“How unfortunate I am,” she sobbed; “but anyhow I can go back to Adam;
he’s sure to be glad to have me,” and on she sped, and at last she came
to the farm and ran in, calling to Adam.

“Is that you, Kesta?” cried Adam, coming to meet her, and kissing her.
“I’m glad to see you, but why are you so hot?”

“It is the sun, it was so strong,” said Kesta.

“Then sit down and grow cool,” said Adam. “But I wonder what all that
shouting outside can be?”

“It is only people making holiday,” cried Kesta. But for all she could
say Adam went out to ask the people what they wanted at the farm?

“We want nothing at the farm,” they cried, “but we followed that
impudent wench dressed in yellow.”

“Why, what has she done?” asked Adam.

“Done!” they cried. “Why, she came up to the town and asked to marry
the miller, and the banker, and the bailiff, and the General, and even
the Duke himself, so she deserves to be punished for her presumption.”

Then Adam looked very grave, and went back to the farm and said,
“Indeed, Kesta, I cannot marry you now, since you’ve been to the town
and tried to get a finer husband than me,” and he went back to his
work, and left Kesta sitting all alone; and there she sat and cried
by herself, and did not get any husband after all, because she was so
false and vain.




[Illustration: THE POOL & THE TREE]


ONCE there was a tree standing in the middle of a vast wilderness, and
beneath the shade of its branches was a little pool, over which they
bent. The pool looked up at the tree and the tree looked down at the
pool, and the two loved each other better than anything else on earth.
And neither of them thought of anything else but each other, or cared
who came and went in the world around them.

“But for you and the shade you give me I should have been dried up by
the sun long ago,” said the pool.

“And if it were not for you and your shining face, I should never have
seen myself, or have known what my boughs and blossoms were like,”
answered the tree.

Every year when the leaves and flowers had died away from the branches
of the tree, and the cold winter came, the little pool froze over and
remained hard and silent till the spring; but directly the sun’s rays
thawed it, it again sparkled and danced as the wind blew upon it,
and it began to watch its beloved friend, to see the buds and leaves
reappear, and together they counted the leaves and blossoms as they
came forth.

One day there rode over the moorland a couple of travellers in search
of rare plants and flowers. At first they did not look at the tree, but
as they were hot and tired they got off their horses, and sat under the
shade of the boughs, and talked of what they had been doing. “We have
not found much,” said one gloomily; “it seemed scarcely worth while to
come so far for so little.”

“One may hunt for many years before one finds anything very rare,”
answered the elder traveller. “Well, we have not done, and who knows
but what we may yet have some luck?” As he spoke he picked up one of
the fallen leaves of the tree which lay beside him, and at once he
sprang to his feet, and pulled down one of the branches to examine it.
Then he called to his comrade to get up, and he also closely examined
the leaves and blossoms, and they talked together eagerly, and at
length declared that this was the best thing they had found in all
their travels. But neither the pool nor the tree heeded them, for the
pool lay looking lovingly up to the tree, and the tree gazed down at
the clear water of the pool, and they wanted nothing more, and by and
by the travellers mounted their horses and rode away.

The summer passed and the cold winds of autumn blew.

“Soon your leaves will drop and you will fall asleep for the winter,
and we must bid each other good-bye,” said the pool.

“And you too when the frost comes will be numbed to ice,” answered the
tree; “but never mind, the spring will follow, and the sun will wake us
both.”

But long before the winter had set in, ere yet the last leaf had
fallen, there came across the prairie a number of men riding on horses
and mules, bringing with them a long waggon. They rode straight to the
tree, and foremost among them were the two travellers who had been
there before.

“Why do they come? What do they want?” cried the pool uneasily; but
the tree feared nothing. The men had spades and pickaxes, and began to
dig a deep ditch all round the tree’s roots, and then they dug beneath
them, and at last both the pool and the tree saw that they were going
to dig it up.

“What are you doing? Why are you trying to wrench up my roots and to
move me?” cried the tree; “don’t you know that I shall die if you drag
me from my pool which has fed and loved me all my life?” And the pool
said, “Oh, what can they want? Why do they take you? The sun will come
and dry me up without your shade, and I never, never shall see you
again.” But the men heard nothing, and continued to dig at the root of
the tree till they had loosened all the earth round it, and then they
lifted it and wrapped big cloths round it and put it on their waggon
and drove away with it.

Then for the first time the pool looked straight up at the sky without
seeing the delicate tracery made by the leaves and twigs against the
blue, and it called out to all things near it: “My tree, my tree, where
have they taken my tree? When the hot sun comes it will dry me up, if
it shines down on me without the shade of my tree.” And so loudly it
mourned and lamented that the birds flying past heard it, and at last
a swallow paused on the wing, and hovering near its surface, asked why
it grieved so bitterly. “They have taken my tree,” cried the pool, “and
I don’t know where it is; I cannot move or look to right or left, so I
shall never see it again.”

“Ask the moon,” said the swallow. “The moon sees everywhere, and she
will tell you. I am flying away to warmer countries, for the winter
will soon be here. Good-bye, poor pool.”

At night, when the moon rose, and the pool looked up and saw its
beautiful white face, it remembered the swallow’s words, and called out
to ask its aid.

“Find me my tree,” it prayed; “you shone through its branches and know
it well, and you can see all over the world; look for my tree, and tell
me where they have taken it. Perhaps they have torn it in pieces or
burnt it up.”

“Nay,” cried the moon, “they have done neither, for I saw it a few
hours ago when I shone near it. They have taken it many miles away and
it is planted in a big garden, but it has not taken root in the earth,
and its foliage is fading. The men who took it prize it heartily, and
strangers come from far and near to look at it, because they say it is
so rare, and there are only one or two like it in the world.”

On hearing this the pool felt itself swell with pride that the tree
should be so much admired; but then it cried in anguish, “And I shall
never see it again, for I can never move from here.”

“That is nonsense,” cried a little cloud that was sailing near; “I was
once in the earth like you. To-morrow, if the sun shines brightly, he
will draw you up into the sky, and you can sail along till you find
your tree.”

“Is that true?” cried the pool, and all that night it rested in peace
waiting for the sun to rise. Next day there were no clouds, and when
the pool saw the sun shining it cried, “Draw me up into the sky, dear
Sun, that I may be a little cloud and sail all the world over, till I
can find my beloved tree.”

When the sun heard it, he threw down hundreds of tiny golden threads
which dropped over the pool, and slowly and gradually it began to
change and grow thinner and lighter, and to rise through the air, till
at last it had quite left the earth, and where it had lain before,
there was nothing but a dry hole, but the pool itself was transformed
into a tiny cloud, and was sailing above in the blue sky in the
sunshine. There were many other little clouds in the sky, but our
little cloud kept apart from them all. It could see far and near over a
great space of country, but nowhere could it espy the tree, and again
it turned to the sun for help. “Can you see?” it cried. “You who see
everywhere, where is my tree?”

“You can’t see it yet,” answered the sun, “for it is away on the other
side of the world, but presently the wind will begin to blow and it
will blow you till you find it.”

Then the wind arose, and the cloud sailed along swiftly, looking
everywhere as it went for the tree. It could have had a merry time if
it had not longed so for its friend. Everywhere was the golden sunlight
shining through the bright blue sky, and the other clouds tumbled and
danced in the wind and laughed for joy.

“Why do you not come and dance with us?” they cried; “why do you sail
on so rapidly?”

“I cannot stay, I am seeking a lost friend,” answered the cloud, and
it scudded past them, leaving them to roll over and over, and tumble
about, and change their shapes, and divide and separate, and play a
thousand pranks.

For many hundred miles the wind blew the little cloud, then it said,
“Now I am tired and shall take you no further, but soon the west wind
will come and it will take you on; good-bye.” And at once the wind
stopped blowing and dropped to rest on the earth; and the cloud stood
still in the sky and looked all around.

“I shall never find it,” it sighed. “It will be dead before I come.”

Presently the sun went down and the moon rose, then the west wind began
to blow gently and moved the cloud slowly along.

“Which way should I go, where is it?” entreated the cloud.

“I know; I will take you straight to it,” said the west wind. “The
north wind has told me. I blew by the tree to-day; it was drooping, but
when I told it that you had risen to the sky and were seeking it, it
revived and tried to lift its branches. They have planted it in a great
garden, and there are railings round it and no one may touch it; and
there is one gardener who has nothing to do but to attend to it, and
people come from far and near to look at it because it is so rare, and
they have only found one or two others like it, but it longs to be back
in the desert, stooping over you and seeing its face in your water.”

“Make haste, then,” cried the cloud, “lest before I reach it I fall to
pieces with joy at the thought of seeing it.”

“How foolish you are!” said the wind. “Why should you give yourself up
for a tree? You might dance about in the sky for long yet, and then you
might drop into the sea and mix with the waves and rise again with them
to the sky, but if you fall about the tree you will go straight into
the dark earth, and perhaps you will always remain there, for at the
roots of the tree they have made a deep hole and the sun cannot draw
you up through the earth under the branches.”

[Illustration: “Have you come at last?” the cried; “then we need never
be parted again.”]

“Then that will be what I long for,” cried the cloud. “For then I can
lie in the dark where no one may see me, but I shall be close to my
tree, and I can touch its roots and feed them, and when the raindrops
fall from its branches they will run down to me and tell me how they
look.”

“You are foolish,” said the wind again; “but you shall have what you
want.”

The wind blew the cloud low down near the earth till it found itself
over a big garden, in which there were all sorts of trees and shrubs,
and such soft green grass as the cloud had never seen before. And there
in the middle of the grass, in a bed of earth to itself, with a railing
round it so that no one could injure it, was the tree which the cloud
had come so far to seek. Its leaves were falling off, its branches were
drooping, and its buds dropped before they opened, and the poor tree
looked as if it were dying.

“There is my tree, my tree!” called the cloud. “Blow me down, dear
wind, so that I may fall upon it.”

The wind blew the cloud lower and lower, till it almost touched the top
branches of the tree. Then it broke and fell in a shower, and crept
down through the earth to its roots, and when it felt its drops the
tree lifted up its leaves and rejoiced, for it knew that the pool it
had loved so had followed it.

“Have you come at last?” it cried. “Then we need never be parted again.”

In the morning when the gardeners came they found the tree looking
quite fresh and well, and its leaves quite green and crisp. “The cool
wind last night revived it,” they said, “and it looks as if it had
rained too in the night, for round here the earth is quite damp.” But
they did not know that under the earth at the tree’s roots lay the
pool, and that that was what had saved the tree.

And there it lies to this day, hidden away in the darkness where no
one can see it, but the tree feels it with its roots, and blooms in
splendour, and people come from far and near to admire it.




[Illustration: NANINA’S SHEEP]

ONCE there lived a young girl called Nanina, who kept sheep for an old
farmer. One day he said to her, “Nanina, I’m going away to buy pigs
at a market far off, and I shall be away one whole month, so be sure
and take good care of the flock, and remember, there are six sheep
and eight lambs, and I must find them safe when I return. And mind,
Nanina, that whatever you do, you don’t go near the old palace on the
other side of the hill, for it is filled with wicked fairies who might
do you an ill turn.” Nanina promised, and her master started.

The first day all went well, and she drove the flock in safely at
night; but the next day she found it dull sitting on the hillside
watching the lambs at play, and wondered why her master had told her
always to keep on that side, and away from the old palace on the other.

“If it is filled with fairies,” quoth she, “it won’t hurt me just to
look at it; I should like to see a fairy.” So she drove her flock to
the other side of the hill, and sat looking at the old palace that was
half in ruins, but was said to be lit up quite brightly every night
after it was dark.

“I wonder if it really is lit up,” said Nanina, “I should like to see.”
So she waited on that side of the hill till the sun went down, and
then she saw a bright light appearing in one of the palace windows.
As she stood and watched, the front door opened, and out there came a
shepherd boy followed by a flock of black goats. Nanina stared at him,
for she had never seen any one so beautiful before. He was dressed in
glittering green, and wore a soft brown hat trimmed with leaves under
which his curls hung down. In one hand he held a crook and in the
other a pipe, and as he drew near, he began to play the pipe and dance
merrily, while the goats behind him skipped and danced too. Nanina had
never seen such goats; they were jet black, with locks curling and
thick and soft as silk. As she listened open-mouthed to the music of
the pipe, she heard it speak words in its playing:—

  “When the young birds sing,
  And the young plants spring,
  Then dance we so merrily together, oh.”

The shepherd boy danced lightly to where she stood, and louder and
louder sounded the pipe, and still it said—

  “When the young birds sing,
  And the young plants spring,
  Then dance we so merrily together, oh.”

Nanina gaped to see the goats dance and spring in time to the music,
and so cheering it was, that she felt her own feet beginning to move
with it. The shepherd made her a low bow and offered her his hand,
and she placed hers in it, and off they started together. Nanina’s
feet felt as light as if they had been made of cork, and she laughed
with glee as she bounded on; and as she danced with the shepherd, so
her flock began to move too, and thus they went, followed by the black
goats and sheep all skipping merrily. “If my flock follow me there can
be no harm,” thought Nanina, and on they kept in time to the wonderful
tune—

  “When the young birds sing,
  And the young plants spring,
  Then dance we so merrily together, oh.”

Whither they went she knew not, she thought of nothing but the joy of
dancing to the wonderful music; but suddenly, just ere sunrise, the
shepherd stopped, and dropped her hand and gave one long slow note on
the pipe, at which the goats gathered round him, and before she knew
where they were going, they had disappeared into the palace. Then she
was in a terrible fright, for she saw the sun beginning to rise, and
found the whole night had passed, when she thought she had only been
ten minutes. She counted her sheep, and, alas! there was one lamb
missing.

[Illustration]

She sought everywhere for it, but no trace of it was to be seen. Then
she drove all the others back to the farm and watched them, falling
half asleep, for she was weary with the dancing. But when evening
came, and she had slept some time, she said to herself, “Surely the
best plan would be to go back to the old palace, and see if I can see
the shepherd and the black goats again.” So just about sunset she
returned to the palace, and again the door opened, and the beautiful
shepherd boy came out with the black goats following. But when he began
to play on his pipe, and the goats to dance, Nanina forgot all about
the lost lamb and danced with him as before. Again they danced till
morning, and then he left her suddenly, and she found that another lamb
had disappeared. Then she wept and lamented, and declared that the next
night she would only watch the shepherd and nothing would make her
dance; and again the next night the same thing happened; when once she
heard the pipe, Nanina could not keep still, and another lamb was lost.
This went on to the end of a fortnight, when there was only one of the
flock left. Then she was terribly frightened, for her master would soon
return, and she did not know what she should say to him. But still she
went back and sat by the old palace, and when the shepherd came out,
and she heard the music, she could not refrain from dancing, and in
the morning the last lamb had gone!

[Illustration]

All the day Nanina wandered about and cried, but no sheep were to be
found. At last, when she was quite weary, she sat down beneath a beech
tree near the palace, and leaned her head against its trunk sobbing.
Then she saw that someone had torn down the lowest branches of the
tree and they were hanging down broken. She raised them and tied them
up, so that they would grow together, and as she did so she heard a
shadowy voice whisper, “Thank you, Nanina; Nanina, don’t dance.” She
looked about but there was nobody there, and again she heard a whisper,
“Nanina, don’t dance.” The voice came from the beech tree, and among
the leaves she saw a small twisted face looking at her. “Thank you,
Nanina, for saving my bough,” said the tree, “and if you mind me, you
shall get all your sheep back again.”

“My sheep,” cried Nanina. “Only tell me, and I will do anything.”

“Then you must not dance. Every time you refuse to dance with the
fairy, one of your flock will be returned.”

“But how can I refuse to dance?” cried Nanina, “for as I hear the
pipe beginning, my feet begin to move of themselves, it is no use my
trying,” and she cried aloud.

“Bury your feet in the earth like my roots,” whispered back the voice.
“Dig a hole deep down, and I will hold your feet so that you shall not
move them, only you must bear the pain, and not mind if you walk lame
afterwards, for I shall hold them very tight, and it will hurt you.”

[Illustration]

“Hurt me as you please,” cried Nanina, “and I shan’t mind. If only I
can get back my sheep I will bear any pain.” So she knelt beneath the
tree, and dug a deep hole in the ground among its roots, and then she
placed her feet among the loose earth, and she felt something moving
near them which tightened around and drew them far down into the
ground, and held them as if they were bound with cords. She saw the
lights in the windows of the palace, and the door opened. “Hold me,
hold me fast,” she cried, “for when I hear the music I shall begin to
dance.” The tree said nothing, but she felt its roots tightening so
that she could not move. The door of the palace opened as before, and
the beautiful shepherd, followed by his goats and her sheep, came out,
and she heard once more the sound of the wonderful pipe, and he danced
straight up to the tree beneath which she stood, and held out his hand
to her. Nanina felt as if her feet were beginning to move under the
earth, but the roots of the tree held them so firmly that she could not
stir one inch. Still the shepherd danced before her, and as she saw
him springing in front, with the flocks behind him following him, she
grew quite wild to dance, and tried her hardest to break her feet free
from the roots which held them, but in vain, though she almost screamed
with the pain they cost her. For hours the shepherd danced in front
of her, till, as before, the pipe sounded forth one long note, and he
disappeared, but this time not all the flock went with him, for beside
her was left one of her own little lambs, and when she saw it she
cried for joy. She felt the roots releasing their hold of her feet,
and she drew them out of the earth, and they were all blue and bruised
where they had been held. She drove home the lamb and fastened it into
the sheep-pen, but her feet were so stiff and swelled that she limped
as she walked. Next night she went back to the beech tree, and again
slipped her feet into its roots, and felt them twist around them; but
this time the poor feet were so sore that she cried when they touched
them. Again the fairy appeared, and again she heard the pipe, and her
longing to dance was worse than ever, but the roots clutched her and
would not let her stir. When the pipe ceased and the fairy disappeared,
another of her lambs was left with her, and she drove it home as she
had done the first, but she had to go very slowly on account of her
crushed feet.

The same thing happened the next night and the next, till all the flock
had returned save one, and Nanina’s feet were so bad that she could
scarcely hobble, for they were crushed and bleeding, and she wondered
whether she would walk lame all the days of her life.

On the last evening she limped down to the tree almost crying with
pain. When she sat down by its trunk she heard the soft sighing voice
saying, “Never mind, Nanina; to-night is the last, and though it will
hurt you the most, it will soon be past.” So she slipped her feet into
the earth once more, though she shrank as they touched it, and directly
the sun had set, the lights appeared in the palace windows, and out
came the shepherd with all his black goats and her one white sheep
following him. He looked more beautiful than ever, for he had a crown
set with jewels, and was dressed in scarlet and gold, but when the pipe
began to play it was not merry dance-music it made, but long sad notes,
like a funeral march; yet Nanina’s feet would have moved in spite of
herself, and she would have marched in time to them, had not the roots
tightened like cords and held her down. Tears of pain ran down her
cheeks, and she sobbed, and instead of the joyous words what the music
said was—

  “Join us, Nanina, dance again,
  One last dance will ease your pain.”

[Illustration:

  “Join us, Nanina, dance again,
  One last dance will ease your pain.”]

Presently the music grew quicker, and her longing to move with it
grew stronger. She swayed herself about, and cried and screamed as
the fairy and flock danced, now solemnly and slowly, now joyously and
wildly. Just when she felt that she could bear it no longer there came
one long low note on the pipe, and with a mighty crash like thunder the
shepherd and the goats disappeared, and not only had they gone, but the
walls of the old palace had fallen, and nothing was left of it but a
heap of stones. Beside her on the grass was the last of her lost sheep.
“Good-bye, Nanina,” said the voice from the beech tree; “now you have
all your flock again,” and she felt the roots loosen round her feet,
but when she looked at them she found that her legs were wounded and
bleeding, where she had dashed them about in trying to dance. She knelt
down and smoothed over the earth where it was torn up among the trees,
and she put her arms round the trunk and kissed and thanked it for
having helped her, but the voice did not speak again. Then she drove
home the last sheep, but she had to go on her hands and knees, for her
feet were too bad to walk.

Next day when the farmer came home, he was well pleased that she had
kept his flock safe, but he would fain know how she had got such sore
feet that for long she must walk lame. “Of a truth, master,” she quoth,
“it was in saving the lambs when they got into dangerous places.”

Underneath the beech tree, where Nanina’s feet had bled among the
earth, there sprang up pretty little scarlet flowers, and whenever
she passed and saw them she remembered how she had been punished for
disobeying her master, and made up her mind never to do so again.

[Illustration: THE END]




[Illustration: THE GIPSY’S CUP]


IN a little village there lived a young potter, who made his living by
making all sorts of earthenware. He took the clay, and made it into
shapes on the wheel, and then baked his cups and jars in a kiln. He
made big jugs and little jugs, and basins and cups and saucers, and
indeed every sort of pot or jar that could be wanted. He was very
fond of his work, and was always thinking of how to make new shapes,
or colour his jars with pretty colours. It was a very tiny village
he lived in, and he worked at throwing his pots on his wheel by the
road-side, but people came from many other villages and towns to buy
his ware. Once a year there was a big fair, held in the town near, and
just before it, the potter was always very busy making new pots and
jugs to sell there. A few nights before the fair was to be held, he was
hard at work, trying to finish a number of little bowls, so he sat at
his wheel late in the evening after the sun was set. All day long the
road had been gay with folk coming to the fair, some were in carts,
and some were on foot, and there were a number of gipsies in caravans,
bringing all sorts of goods to sell. Most of them went through the
village and on to a big common a little further on, where they got out
of their carts and put up tents, to sleep in while the fair went on.
The potter was so busy with his little basins on his turning wheel
that he did not hear the sound of footsteps, and when he looked up, he
was surprised to see a young gipsy girl standing near, watching him.
She was quite young, and had big black eyes, and rosy round cheeks,
and her black hair was twisted up in little red beads and chains. She
was dressed in some very gay stuff, and round her neck was a gold
necklace, and on her fingers and arms were rings and bracelets.

“That should be a fine cup,” said the girl, “since you keep your eyes
on it and can look at nothing else.”

“I keep my eyes for my work, that I may do it well,” said the potter,
“for I live by my work, and neither by stealing nor begging.”

“But I fancy many others can do your work as well, or better than you,”
answered the gipsy. “What can your cups do when they are finished? I
don’t hear you say anything to them, so I should think they would be
stupid cups—only fit to drink out of.”

“And what else should they be for?” asked the potter angrily. “What do
you mean by saying that you don’t hear me saying anything to my cups?
I don’t think you know what you are talking about. It is nonsense, and
you are talking nonsense.”

“My grandfather used to make pots on a wheel,” said the gipsy, and she
laughed low, and showed her white teeth in the moonlight; “ah! but he
knew how to do them, and he had charms to say to them when he threw
them. And one of his cups would make you wise if you drank out of it,
and another would give you your true love’s heart if she drank from it,
and another would make you forget everything—yes, even your true love,
and all your mirth and all your sorrow, and I think that was the best
cup of all;” and again the gipsy laughed in the moonlight, and sang a
little song to herself as she sat herself down before the potter.

“Now this is real child’s talk,” said the potter very impatiently.
“’Tis easy to say your grandfather knew how to do all this, but why
should I believe you? and because your grandfather may have been able
to throw a bowl upon the wheel, that doesn’t make you know anything
about the craft, or how it is done.”

“Nay, but he taught me too,” said the gipsy. “Give me a piece of your
clay, and let me come to your wheel and you shall see.”

At first the potter thought she was talking nonsense, but to his great
surprise she took hold of the clay in her little brown hands, and
moulded and modelled it with the greatest skill. Then she placed it on
the wheel and threw a little jug, and he wondered to see how deft she
was.

“Now I will make you a little bowl,” she said, and then she made jugs
and pots and jars, far more quickly and skilfully than the potter could
have done. “And now I will colour them too,” she cried. “See, I shall
catch the colour from the moon, and to-morrow you can put them into
your kiln and bake them, and you may be sure that you have never had
such pots there before.” Then she put her little brown hands out into
the moonlight, and they were covered with rings which glittered and
shone, but as she held up her palms to the moon’s rays, it seemed to
the potter as if they too were full of some strange glittering liquid.
“And now,” she said, “see, I will put it on to your pots, and I should
think I had taught you that I know more about your trade than you do
yourself.” And she took the pots in her hands and rubbed her palms over
them, and she traced patterns on them with her fingers.

The potter looked at her and felt almost angry, but she only laughed in
his face.

“And now one last thing,” she cried, “and that is, that I will make
you a cup that has a spell in it, and it shall be a present for you
to remember me by. It will be very plain, and there will be no gay
colours in it, but when you give it to your true love to drink from,
if once you have drunk from it yourself, you will have all her heart,
but beware that she doesn’t take a second draught. For though the first
draught that she drinks will be drunk to love, the second draught will
be drunk to hate, and though she have loved you more than all else on
earth, all her love will turn to hate when she drinks again. And as you
are so ignorant how to make bowls and cups, you will not know how to
fashion one so as to win back her love again.”

The potter stared in silence, while the gipsy took another bit of
clay and placed it upon the wheel, and then she bent her head, which
glittered with beads and coins, low over it, and placing her rosy lips
close to the mouth of the cup, sang some words into it, while she
moulded it with her hands, and turned the wheel with her foot. It was
in some strange language that the potter had never heard before.

“Good-bye,” she said presently. “Now, there, that is for you, and be
sure you do not sell the little brown cup, but keep it and give it to
your true love to drink out of; but only one draught, for if there
are two maybe you will need the gipsy’s help again.” Then she laughed,
and nodding her head over her shoulder, tripped lightly away in the
moonlight while the potter stared after her.

At first he thought he had been asleep, but there around him stood the
little rows of jugs and pots which the gipsy had made, and truly they
were beautifully done. He took them up, and turned them over in his
hand, and wondered at their shape and workmanship.

“To-morrow,” he said, “I will put them into the kiln, and see how they
come out. She certainly was a clever wench, and knew her work; but as
for her talk about having coloured them, that was all nonsense, and as
for breathing spells and charms into the cups, why it is like baby’s
talk.”

But next day when the pots were baked, the potter was even more
surprised, for they had the most wonderful colours that he had ever
seen: silver, blue, grey and yellow, in all sorts of patterns, all save
the little brown cup, which was the last the gipsy had made. But when
he looked at it the potter felt a little uncomfortable, and began to
wonder if it really did contain the charm as she had declared.

When the fair began, the potter placed all the gipsy’s wares on a stall
with his own, and marked them with very high prices, but had he asked
three times as much he could have got it, for there were some rich folk
from the big houses who came to the fair, and they at once bought them
all up, declaring that such pots and jugs they had never seen. At this
the potter was well pleased, and found that he had made more money than
he had earned in many a long month past; but when people wanted him to
make them more like them, he was obliged to shake his head, and say,
“That he was very sorry, but he had had them coloured from afar, and he
did not know where he could now have them done.” Of the gipsy he saw
nothing more, though he looked for her everywhere during the three days
in which the fair lasted, but she was not to be seen, and when the fair
was over, and the other people were packing their carts and vans to go
on their way, he saw very many gipsies, and supposed that she had gone
with some of them, without giving him the chance of speaking to her
again.

Years went by, and the potter never heard anything more of the gipsy,
indeed he would have thought it had all been a dream if it had not been
for the little brown pot standing on the shelf. Sometimes he took it
up, and looked at it, and wondered when he saw how well and cleverly it
was made. He still laughed when he remembered what the gipsy had said
about leaving a charm in it, for though he himself had drunk out of it
many times, he never thought it had brought any spell on him.

One year when the fair was being held, the potter was at his place
as usual with his stall covered with pots, and there came and placed
herself beside him at the next stall a woman with some spinning-wheels.
Her stall was covered with fine linen cloths woven in pretty patterns,
and so fine and well wrought were they, that many people wanted
to buy them. With her were her two daughters, and one sat at the
spinning-wheel and spun the flax, and the other had a hand-loom and
wove it when it was spun to show the good folk how the cloths were
made. Both were pretty girls, but the girl who had the hand-loom had
the sweetest face the potter had ever seen. Her eyes were very blue,
and her hair was like golden corn, and when she smiled, it was as if
the sun shone. The potter watched her as she sat weaving, and could
not keep his eyes from her or attend properly to his own pots, or to
the people who wanted to buy them. Every day he watched the young girl
at her work, for the fair lasted for a week, and the more he looked at
her the more he wanted to look, till at last he said to himself that
somehow or other he must get her for his wife; so when the fair was
done he begged her to marry him, and to remain with him, and he said he
would always work for her, and she should want for nothing. The mother
was a poor widow, and she and her daughters made their bread by going
about the country spinning and weaving, and she would have been quite
willing that the potter should marry her daughter, but the girl only
laughed, and said that she scarcely knew the potter, but when she came
back again the next year to the fair, she would give him his answer. So
the widow and her two daughters went away, and no sign of them was left
with the potter, save a lock of golden hair, which he had begged from
the daughter.

The year passed away, but to the potter it seemed the longest year he
had ever lived. He pined for the time to come when the fair should
be held, and the widow and her daughters should return. As the time
drew near he got down the brown cup, and looked at it again and again.
“Nay,” he said, “what harm could it do? the gipsy said it would give me
my true love’s heart if she drank out of it after I had drunk, and I
have drunk out of it many a time. I don’t believe it, but all the same
it would be no harm for her to drink from it.”

And so when the fair was opened, he took the brown cup down with him,
and stood it upon the stall with his other ware. The spinning woman and
her two daughters came back with their fine cloths, and their wheel
and their loom, and when he saw the golden-haired girl, he loved her
still more than before, for he thought her eyes were bluer and her
smile was brighter. He watched her all the time as she sat weaving, but
said nothing, but when the fair was over, and they were packing their
goods to go on their way, he pressed the maid for her answer. Still
she hesitated, and then the potter took the little brown cup off his
stall, and poured into it some choice wine, and said to her,

“If then you wish to go away, and never see me again, I pray you drink
one draught, in remembrance of the happy days we have had together.”

The young girl took the cup, but no sooner had she tasted it than she
put it down and turned her eyes on the potter, and said in a low voice,

“I will stay with you always, if you want me, and will be a true wife
to you, and love you better than anything on earth.”

So the potter married her, and she went to live in his little cottage.

Time passed, and the potter and his young wife lived together very
happily, and every day he thought her fairer and sweeter. And they had
a little baby girl with blue eyes like its mother’s, and the potter
thought himself the happiest man on earth, and the little brown pot
stood on the shelf, and the potter looked at it, and still he would not
believe about the charm, for he said to himself, “My wife loved me for
my own sake, and not for any silly charm or nonsense.”

[Illustration: “I pray you drink one draught, in remembrance of the
happy days we have had together.”]

So for a time all things went well, but there came a day when the
potter had to go to a neighbouring town and leave his wife at home
alone all day. When he was gone she sat by the window with her little
child, and presently there came up outside a dark, rough-looking man,
with a wicked face, and he looked at her as she sat rocking the cradle,
and thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen on earth.
When he looked at her the potter’s wife was frightened, but when he
told her he was very hungry, and begged her for food and drink, she
rose, for her heart was tender, and she fetched him bread and meat, and
spread them on the table before him. So the rough man came into the
cottage and sat at the table, and ate the potter’s bread and meat, and
drank his wine. “And who is your husband, and where is he?” he said. “I
am sure he is a lucky man to have such a wife and such a home.”

“Yes, truly,” said the potter’s wife. “We are very happy, and we love
each other dearly, and we really have nothing else to wish for.”

Then the gipsy man said, “But your dress is plain, and your rooms are
bare; now, were you the wife of some wealthy man, he would give you
pearls and diamonds for your neck, and beautiful silks and satins.”

“No, but I don’t want them,” said the potter’s wife smiling. “My
husband works very hard, and he gives me all he can, and I am quite
content with it.”

“And you say he is a potter; then what sort of things does he make?”
asked the gipsy man as he cast his eyes about the room, and they lit
upon the little brown jug standing upon the shelf. “And did he make the
little bowl there?”

“I don’t know,” said his wife, and she took it down and turned it about
in her hand. “I suppose so, but he has told me it was very old.”

The gipsy man seized it eagerly, and poured wine in it, and looked
inside it, and then he laughed, and stooping his head over it, said a
few words, and then laughed again.

“I have seen cups like this before,” he said. “And they are worth a
mint of money, though you would not think it. And have you never drunk
out of it? Has it not been used?”

“I don’t drink from it,” said the potter’s wife, “but I believe I did
so once, and that was on the day when I promised my husband I would be
his wife.”

Then the gipsy laughed again and again. “See,” he said, “I am going a
long way off, perhaps to die by cold and hunger by the road-side, while
you and your husband are cosy and warm. You set small store by this
cup, but it may be that in foreign countries I could sell it for what
would keep me for many a long day. Give it to me, I pray you, that I
may take it with me.”

The potter’s wife hesitated and trembled. She was afraid of the man,
and she thought he had a hard, bad face, but she did not want to seem
unkind.

“Well, take it,” she said; “but why should you want it?”

Then the gipsy man came and caught her by the arm. “Now,” he said,
“you are the fairest woman I have ever seen, and I am going away, and
shall never see you again. So I beg you wish me God-speed, and drink my
health out of the little brown cup you have given me. And if your lips
have touched it, it will be the dearest thing I have on earth!”

Then the potter’s wife was still more frightened, and trembled more
than before. But the man looked so dark and threatening, that she did
not like to refuse him, and she took the cup in her hand,

“And then you will go on your way,” she said.

“And then I shall go on my way,” cried the gipsy. “And you will wait
here till your husband comes, whom you love more than anything else on
this earth.”

Then the potter’s wife bent her head and tasted the wine out of the
cup, and wished the gipsy happiness. And when she had done so he
laughed again, long and low, till her heart sank with fear, and he
picked up the cup and put it into his bundle, and went his way. Then
the potter’s wife sat down by the cradle, and almost cried, she knew
not why, and the whole room seemed cold, and when she looked out at the
sunshine it looked dark, and she bent over the baby in the cradle with
her tears falling.

“Alack!” she cried, “why doesn’t my husband come home? Where is he
gone? How cruel it is to leave me all alone here, so that any rough
man may come into the house. In truth I don’t think he can love me
much, since all he thinks of is to go away and leave me; and as for me,
surely I could have had many a better husband, and one who should have
loved me more. How foolish I was to marry him.”

Thus she sat and lamented all day, and in the evening, when the potter
drove up to his door and cried out “Wife, wife,” she wouldn’t go out
to receive him. And when he came in to their little sitting-room, he
found her with tears in her eyes, sitting lamenting and complaining.
When he went up to her to take her in his arms and kiss her, she turned
away from him and would not let him touch her, and the potter, who had
never seen his wife cross or angry, knew that there must be something
wrong. She must be ill, he thought; to-morrow or the next day she will
be well again. So he urged her to rest well, and took no notice of her
angry words; but the next day, and the next, there was no change, and
things were growing from bad to worse. For now the wife wouldn’t speak
to him at all, and when she came nigh him she looked at him with anger,
and would not even suffer him to touch the hem of her dress. Then the
potter began to think of the little brown cup, and he looked up at the
shelf and saw that it was not there, and he began to feel very much
alarmed.

“Why,” he said, “what has become of my little old brown cup that used
to stand up on the shelf?”

“I gave it to a gipsy man,” she answered scornfully. “He seemed to like
it, and I didn’t see that I was obliged to keep all the rubbish that
you had in the house.”

Then the potter groaned within himself and said,

“But did you just take it off the shelf and give it to him, and did he
ask you for it? Why did he want it?”

“Of course he asked for it,” said the wife very angrily, “and I just
gave it him when I had drunk his health out of it, as he wished me to.”

Then the potter was stricken with deadly fear, and remembered the words
of the gipsy. “The first draught she will drink to your love, and the
second draught she will drink to your hate,” and he knew in his heart
that the words were true, and that the cup carried with it a charm.

[Illustration]

He sat and thought and thought, and waited many days, hoping that his
wife would change, and love him as before, but she remained cold and
hard. Then the potter packed a wallet full of clothes, and put some
money in his pocket, and he went to his wife and said, “Wife, there is
a man somewhere who has done me a great wrong, and perhaps he did it
unwittingly. I am going out to find him, and to make him right it, and
though you do not love me, you will bide here quietly with your baby
till I come back. And I do not know if that will be in months or in
years.” Then the potter’s wife fell a-crying.

“I do not love you, nay, I hate you, and shall be glad when you have
gone, but perhaps it may be because I am a wicked woman; and I do not
know what has come over me, that now I want to fly away from you, when
I used to think that I had the best husband on all this earth.” The
potter sighed bitterly, but he kissed her cheeks, which felt as cold as
ice, and then he said good-bye to his baby, and started on his way with
the tears filling his eyes.

When the potter had gone the wife cried sorely, but still she was glad
that she had not to see him, and for some time she lived with her baby
happily enough. She kept the house, and mended and swept and cleaned as
before, and thought little of the potter or where he had gone; but by
and by all her money began to be spent, and she knew that unless the
potter returned she would soon be very poor, and the winter was coming
on, and she feared cold and hunger for her little one. So she went into
a garret where she kept her old weaving loom, and she brought it out,
and she bought flax, and sat down to weave just as she used to, when
she went round the country with her sister who spun the flax. And she
found that she could still weave her cloths very skilfully, and she
began to sell them to the passers by, and in this way she earned her
bread.

The winter set in very cold and hard, and the potter’s wife felt very
sad. “But perhaps,” she said, “it is thinking of the poor things
who are starving around with no homes,” for she never thought of
her husband at all. And the flax began to be very dear, and she had
difficulty in buying it. “Instead of doing all these cheap clothes,”
she said, “it would be better to get very fine flax, and do a very very
fine cloth; it will be the finest cloth I have ever woven, and I will
sell it to some very rich lady.” So she bought the finest flax that
money could bring her, and when she had woven a little bit of it, she
sat and looked at it in her room, and she saw a tress of her own golden
hair lying upon it, and she thought how beautiful it looked. Then she
said—

“There is no one now who loves me or my hair, so I will weave it into
a cloth with this very fine flax, and I must sell it for a very large
sum of money, or else I shall have nothing left to go on with.” But
she couldn’t think of any pattern in which the hair looked well with
the fine linen flax, till at last she hit on one in which there was a
cup with a heart on the top of it. The cup she made of the gold hair,
and the heart also. She worked at it for many long days, and when she
had finished it she looked at it, and was very much pleased, and said
indeed it was the most beautiful cloth she had ever made; and now she
must make haste and take it in to the town and sell it for a great deal
of money, or she and her child would begin to do badly for food and
fire.

The snow was lying heavily upon the ground, as the potter’s wife stood
by the window looking at her cloth, when there crawled up outside the
window a poor gipsy woman leading a little boy by the hand. She had
big black eyes and a brown face, but her cheeks were so thin that the
colour scarcely showed in them, and the potter himself would have had
much ado to recognize her as the gipsy girl who made the cup years
before; and her clothes all hung upon her in rags, and her little boy
was crying bitterly with the cold. She knocked against the window with
her poor thin hands. “Take me in,” she cried, “and have pity on me,
for I can go no further.” Then the potter’s wife opened the door, and
the gipsy woman entered the room with her little boy by her side, and
crouched by the fire.

“Where is the potter who lived here?” said the gipsy. “It is long years
ago since I saw him, and now I have come back to pray that he would
give me food, for I am starving.”

“No,” said the wife, “I know not where he is, for he is my husband, and
he has left me, and right glad of it am I; but if you will stay here I
will give you food and drink and attend to you, for, poor woman, you
seem to me to be very ill; so stay here and I will attend to you till
you are well enough to go your way.”

“There is only one way that I shall ever go,” said the gipsy, and she
looked into the fire with her big black eyes, “and that is the road
which leads to the churchyard. But if he was your husband, why do you
say that you are glad he is away? Is he not kind to you?”

“He was very kind to me,” said the potter’s wife, “he gave me
everything I wanted, and money and to spare, but for all that I could
not love him, and I am glad he has gone, and left me alone with my baby
girl.”

“You are a foolish woman,” said the gipsy. “If you had a husband who
loved you and worked for you well, you should have loved him and
cherished him. My husband beat me, and was cruel to me, and stole all I
had. And now that I am dying, he has deserted me to die as I may.”

Then the potter’s wife brought her food and bid her lie down, and dried
her rags of clothes, and she wrapped the little boy in her own clothes,
and gave him food and put him to sleep; and as she lay, the gipsy woman
watched her with her great black eyes, and at last she said, “Have you
a brown cup here, a little rough brown cup? did your husband give it to
you?”

The potter’s wife stared with astonishment. “How did you know I had a
little rough brown cup?” she said. “There was such a one, and it stood
upon the shelf, but I have given it away. I gave it to a poor gipsy man
who begged it of me; he wanted it so badly that I couldn’t refuse, and
he made me drink his health in it ere he took it away.”

Then the gipsy woman raised her head, and her eyes looked blacker and
her cheeks blacker.

“And what was the gipsy man like?” she cried. “Had you drunk from the
cup before? Can you remember?”

“I remember well,” said the woman. “I drank from it on the day when I
promised I would marry my husband, and I drank from it once again when
I wished the gipsy God-speed, and soon after that, my husband left me,
for I could not bear to have him near me.”

Then the gipsy cried out aloud, and said something in a language which
the woman did not understand, and beat her hands.

“I think it was my husband,” she said. “Alack a day! to-morrow night
I shall die, and who will take care of my little boy, and see that he
does not starve? for his father would beat and ill-treat him if he
found him.” Then the potter’s wife kneeled down beside the gipsy woman,
and kissed her on the forehead.

“Be at peace,” she said. “If it be that you must die, die with a
quiet heart, for I will keep your little boy. What is enough for two
is enough for three, and he shall call my little girl sister and me
mother.”

The gipsy said nothing, but she looked at the potter’s wife for long,
and then she said, “And my clothes are all in rags, and I have no
garment in which you can wrap me for my grave.”

Then the potter’s wife began to cry. “Be at peace,” she said, “for I
have a fine cloth made of flax and my own hair, and in it you can lie
clad like a princess.”

Then again the gipsy woman cried out words that the potter’s wife did
not understand, and again she beat her breast and lamented. But as
evening drew nigh she turned to the potter’s wife, and told her all the
truth about the charms in the cup, and wept for the evil she had done
her, who was so good and kind.

The potter’s wife sat by her all that day, and into the dark hours of
the night, but when it was drawing nigh to twelve o’clock the gipsy
woman sat up, and stretched out her arms. “The wheel,” she cried,
“bring me your husband’s wheel, and give me a piece of clay, that while
there is yet time I may throw my last cup, and you may drink from it
before the dawn and undo the harm I have worked.”

The potter’s wife wondered much, but she feared to disobey her, and she
went out into her husband’s workshop, and she brought in his wheel and
a piece of clay which stood there, and placed them beside the gipsy.
The gipsy was so weak that she could scarcely sit up, but when she saw
the wheel she staggered to her feet, and took the clay in her thin
little brown hands, and moulded it as she had done years before; and
then she set it on the wheel, and set the wheel spinning, and formed it
into a little brown bowl, and bent her head over it, and whispered into
it.

“Now drink,” she cried, “although the clay is still wet. Pour water
into it and drink from my little bowl, and wish me God-speed as you did
to my husband. And then dress me in white and gold like a princess, for
I must start upon my journey. But keep my little boy always, and if my
husband comes to search for me, give him my ring, but tell him that he
shall never find me more.”

The potter’s wife poured some water into the little clay cup, and
stooped her face and drank it, that the woman might be content, and
when she had done so, the gipsy folded her hands and lay back and
died. But when she had tasted the water out of the wet clay, the
potter’s wife thought of her husband, and she called his name, and
cried to him to come and help her with the poor gipsy woman. And then
she thought of how long it was since he had been with her, and she
began to cry, and wept bitterly as she leant over the dead woman.

“Oh, where is he gone? why did I drive him from me?” she said. “Have
I been mad? Truly the poor gipsy spoke rightly, that if a woman has a
husband who loves her and works for her, she should cherish him with
all her might. Alas, alas! and now my husband is out in the wide world,
and I am alone here with no one to help me; until this poor woman told
me, I never knew how wrong I was.” Then she looked at the gipsy woman
lying in all her rags, and she remembered her promise to her, and she
took the fine linen cloth in which was woven the gold heart and the
gilt cup, and she clothed her in it as if she were a princess, and the
next day the poor woman was buried, and no one knew from whence she
came nor to whom she belonged.

Then the potter’s wife sat down, and grieved bitterly, for she didn’t
know what it would be best to do to find her husband again, and tell
him that she loved him as at first. At first she thought she would go
out and seek for him in the wide, wide world, but then she remembered
how he bid her wait where she was till he came back, and she knew she
ought to do what he had told her; but as now she had three to keep
instead of two, she feared they would be very poor, and as she had
buried the gipsy in the fine gold and white cloth woven with her hair,
she had not got it to sell, and she had not any money left wherewith
to buy more fine thread to weave. The gipsy’s little boy was a pretty
boy, with dark eyes like his mother’s, and when she looked at him she
said they would all three starve together, but she would keep him, as
she had promised his mother, rather than turn him out into the cold
streets. So she washed him, and mended his rags as best she might, and
then she began to seek everywhere for something she might weave to
sell, and keep them from starving. She wandered round the garden, and
in and out of the house, and the gipsy boy, who was a clever, bright
lad, went with her.

“What are you searching for?” he asked.

“I am searching for thread, that I may weave into some kind of cloth
and sell,” she said. “Otherwise we shall surely starve, for I have no
money left to buy it with, and nothing more left to sell.”

“I will go and get you something to weave,” said the boy, and he ran
out into the road, and looked up and down it to see what would come
past. Presently there came up a big cart laden with straw, and on the
top of the cart lay one man, while another drove. The horses went
slowly, and the gipsy boy followed them, and began to beg.

“Run off, little chap,” cried the man at the top, “I have no money to
give to beggars.”

“But I don’t ask you for money,” cried the boy, “but of your charity
give me a handful of straw.”

“And what do you want with a handful of straw?” asked the carter, as
the boy still went on begging.

“Why, see!” cried the lad, “I am all in rags, but if my mother had a
handful of straw she can weave me a coat, and I shall be quite warm,”
at which the men both laughed, and declared that the idea of a coat
of straw was very funny, but the driver said, “Well, give some to the
little chap. I expect he comes from a lot of lying gipsies further on,
and they want it for their animals, still it won’t do any harm to give
him a few wisps,” and so they flung down a bundle, and the boy picked
it up, and ran back with it to the potter’s wife.

“See what I have brought you,” he cried. “Now make that into a mat, and
I will take it out and sell it, and bring you back the money.”

The potter’s wife was amazed by his cleverness, but she knew that the
gipsies had to live by their wits, and that teaches them to be sharp,
so she sat down, and tried to weave the straw into a mat, as the gipsy
boy had said.

At first she found it very hard to use, for it was coarse and brittle,
and she thought she could make nothing of it. The lad sat beside her,
and cut it into even lengths for her, and chose out the good pieces,
and at last betwixt them it was done, and it looked quite a smart
little mat, and the boy took it on his back and ran away with it to the
village.

“A mat, a mat,” he cried, “who wants to buy a good straw mat to wipe
their feet on when they are dirty, or for the cat to sit on by the
fire, or to put over the fowl-house and keep it warm?”

At first all the people he met laughed at him, and said nobody wished
to buy a mat at all. Then he turned into the ale-house. There were
some men smoking and keeping themselves warm by the fire, and when the
host saw him, and the mat over his shoulder, he said it was quite a
well-made thing, and he would have it to lay down by his doorway for
in-comers to tread on; and then one and another looked at it, and the
boy told them where it came from, and said he could bring them plenty
more straw mats and carpets, all as good or better, and so well worked
that they would last almost for ever; and presently one and another
began to say that they would buy them, and when he had taken his money,
the gipsy boy ran home well content.

So the potter’s wife sat all day weaving straw mats, and presently she
got to do them so well, that from far and near the people sent to buy
them of her. Then after a time she put patterns into them, made with
red, and black, and white straws, but do what she could, the patterns
always came out in the shape of a cup, and still she wept and grieved
all day long. Then the gipsy lad said to her—

“What are you crying for now? You have plenty to eat and drink. Tell me
why you are crying, and I will help you if I can, because you took my
mother into your house to die, and buried her in your fine cloth like a
princess.”

“I cry because my husband has gone a long way off,” said the potter’s
wife, “and he doesn’t know that I love him, and he will never come back
to me, for when he went away I hated him.”

“He will never know it if you don’t try to tell him,” said the gipsy
boy. “You should tell it to every one you meet, to all the birds of the
air, and the wild animals too. That is what my mother told me to do,
if I wanted to send news abroad. You should say it even to the winds,
and write it in the sand, and on the earth, and on the leaves of the
trees in case they blow about, for she said all things could pass on a
secret, though none can keep one. And why don’t you weave it into your
mats too? For the people who buy them take them far and near, and maybe
he will see one, and know that you want him to come home again.”

Then the potter’s wife tried to weave her secret into her mats, and
beside the pattern of the cup she wove a little verse—

  “From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love,
  From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate,
  But when she gave me a cup again
  My love had gone and I drank too late.”

“Now,” cried the gipsy boy, “your husband may see it, and perhaps he
will come home, and all will be well with us.”

But still the potter journeyed far into the world, and wherever he went
he asked if any gipsy had been near there; and if there happened to be
a gipsy camp in the neighbourhood, he went to it at once, and asked
for a gipsy woman with red beads and gold chains in her hair, or for a
gipsy man who carried a brown cup with him. But though he saw hundreds
of gipsies, yet he never again saw the girl who had thrown the cup,
and none of the men knew anything about the man, nor could tell him
anything about the little brown bowl. Then he went to the shops in the
big towns where jars and bowls are sold, and asked for a cup that had
a spell in it, for he thought if they sold such a one, they might know
how to help him to undo the work of the gipsy’s bowl, but everywhere
the people only laughed at him.

So he went through strange countries, seeing strange things, but none
of them gave him any pleasure, since he was always thinking of his wife
at home. Then he returned to his native land, and pondered whether he
should go back to his own cottage, but his heart failed him, and he
kept far from the little village where it stood.

“It would be little use to go home,” he said, “for if my wife is not
glad to see me, it is no home to me; and she will not be glad to see me
till I can find the gipsy and know how the charm can be broken.”

One night he went into a booth where there were a number of men
drinking, and amongst them there was one who looked like a gipsy, a
dark, savage-looking fellow who was talking loud, and boasting much
of all he had done. The potter sat and listened to their talk, and
presently they began quarrelling, and talking about who was the most
beautiful woman in the world. The gipsy cried out that he knew the
most beautiful, and that she had given him a parting gift and wished
him God-speed, and now he was going back to her, for he knew now the
way to make her love him, and he meant to wed her and have her for his
wife.

Upon this the others laughed and jeered, and said, was it likely that
such a beautiful woman would care for such a rough, ill-favoured fellow
as he, and declared they didn’t think much of her beauty if she was
willing to marry him and to be his wife.

Then another man standing near said that he knew where lived the most
beautiful woman on the face of the earth, though he did not believe
that she would ever be wife of his, still all the same it would be hard
to beat her for loveliness; and she was a clever worker too, for she it
was who worked the mats that lay under his feet in the cart he drove.
Upon this they all began to wrangle, and their words grew high.

“And if the beautiful woman loved you so,” cried one man to the gipsy,
“how could you come away and leave her?”

The gipsy laughed. “She didn’t love me then,” he said, “but she will
now, for I am taking her a charm which will make her love me more than
any one on earth. She has only to drink out of the cup I carry here,
and she will be mine for life.”

Upon this they all laughed, and derided him still more.

“Then let every one believe that what I say is true,” cried the gipsy,
and from his bosom he took out a small brown bowl and waved it in the
air, “and here is the cup to prove it.” And the potter’s heart almost
stood still, for he recognized the cup which the gipsy girl had made
for him years before.

The other man laughed scornfully. “That proves nothing,” he said. “I
might take the mat out from the cart and ask it to say if I spoke the
truth; but mats and cups have no tongues to speak with, though my mat
can say more than your cup, for there is a rhyme on it with a pattern
of a cup; moreover, the rhyme is about a gipsy too.”

“Let us see it,” cried they all.

Then the man went out to his cart and fetched in a white and brown
straw mat, covered with a pattern made of cups, and he read the rhyme
which was written upon it—

  “From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love,
  From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate,
  And when she gave me that cup again
  My love was gone and I drank too late.”

On hearing this the potter jumped up, and dashed into their midst, and
seized the cup.

“The gipsy speaks truth,” he cried, “when he says she is the most
beautiful woman in the world, but he speaks false when he says that she
will ever love him; for he has stolen that cup, and I shall take it
from him, and if he tries to stop me, why then I will fight him, and
let every one see who is the better fellow of the two.”

But when the gipsy had seen the rhyme upon the mat, he stood and stared
as if he were made of stone, and said no word to the potter, and indeed
scarcely seemed to notice that he had taken away the cup from him. Then
the potter turned to the man who owned the mat and said, “If you will
sell me your mat I will pay you handsomely for it, and I beg you to
tell me who made it, and where you got it, for I would like to buy some
more like it.”

The traveller was much astonished, but he told the potter that it was
made by a woman who lived in a village a little way off, and she sat by
her doorway and wove mats, with a gipsy boy to help her; and she was
the loveliest woman he had ever seen on earth, with eyes just like blue
cornflowers and hair like golden corn. Then the potter took his bowl
and the mat and started to go home, but the gipsy slunk out of the room
and went into the night, and nobody noticed him.

Meantime the potter’s wife continued to grieve and lament, for in spite
of her taking the gipsy boy’s advice, and telling all things that she
loved her husband and wished him back, he did not come back to her; and
though she wove her rhyme into every mat that she made, she despaired
of the potter’s ever seeing one. The only thing which seemed to console
her, was the little brown clay cup that the gipsy woman had thrown for
her, before she died. As it had never been baked in the oven, the clay
was dry and hard and cracked, and it was a sorry thing to look at, but
still the potter’s wife kept it beside her, and would drink out of
nothing else, and from time to time she kissed it, and laid her cheek
against it.

The gipsy boy said to her—

“If I were you I should watch for my husband all day. I would weave my
mats in the doorway, and look up the road both ways, from morn till
night, otherwise your husband will come back and go past the cottage
and you will never know.” So she took her loom and sat by the roadway,
and watched, and looked over the hill and to right and left for whoever
might come. And often the gipsy boy would watch too, and look from the
other side of the cottage while the potter’s wife sat in the front. One
day the gipsy boy ran round to her and said, “There is some one coming
up the road who will come here, but it is not your husband. It is my
father, and he will want to take me away, and he will beat me as he did
my mother. And if he gets hold of the cup that my mother made for you,
he knows all her charms, and he can undo what she did, and perhaps can
throw some evil spell on us all, so that your husband will never return
again. So the best thing will be for you to give me the cup and let me
hide myself with it, and then you must tell him that you do not know
where I am, and if he asks, tell him that the cup is gone; and when he
is gone I will come back again, but promise that you will not give me
up to him.”

So the potter’s wife promised that she would never give up the little
boy, and she bid him take the cup and run quickly and hide himself, and
then she took her little girl by the hand and sat and waited for the
gipsy man to come, though she trembled with fear, and wished him far
away.

Presently the gipsy man came up to the front of the cottage where the
potter’s wife sat, and bid her good-day.

“I was here before,” he said. “And you gave me something to eat and
drink. Is your husband come back, for he was away then?”

“My husband is away still,” she said. “But soon I hope he will be here.”

Then the gipsy took up one of her mats which lay on the ground beside
her, and looked at it.

“You are clever with your loom,” he said; “but what do you mean by the
little verse you put on all these mats?”

“It is a little verse which can but be rightly read by one person,”
she answered; “and if he sees it, it will not matter whether others
understand it or no.”

“And have you been here all alone since I came by?” asked the gipsy;
“have no other gipsies been past? for I want to join some of my own
people, and perhaps you can tell me which way they are gone.”

“One came not so long ago,” answered the potter’s wife, “but she was
so tired with tramping far that she could go no further. So she has
stayed, and rests in the churchyard. She was a gipsy woman with red
beads and coins in her hair. And I kept her and let her die in peace,
and wrapped her in a cloth of white and gold.”

“And did she do nothing while she rested here?” asked the gipsy man.
“Did she make you no present to pay you for your trouble?”

“She made me a present which paid me for my trouble well,” said the
woman, “though it was only a little cup of clay that was grey and wet.
And she gave me this ring, and bid me give it to her husband if he came
by here, and tell him that it was useless for him to seek her further.”

The gipsy man looked at the ring she held out to him, and he turned
pale, and knit his brows.

“And where is that cup?” he asked; “and where is her little boy? For I
will take him with me into the world.”

“I don’t know where he is gone,” said the potter’s wife; “as for the
cup, he took it with him when he went.”

Meantime the gipsy boy had hidden in a hay-stack quite close to the
cottage, from where he could see the roadways all round, and he looked
to right and left for who should pass, for he was still half afraid
that his father might come and search for him, and take him away by
force. As he lay and watched he saw a man coming over the hill, who
looked spent and tired, as if he had walked far. He seemed to know the
path well, and he came straight to the cottage, but he did not come in,
but waited near as if he wanted to see who was there. Then the gipsy
boy said to himself—

“Perhaps this is the potter himself, whom she has been looking for all
this time.” So he slid down and ran to the man and began to pretend to
beg.

The man looked at him and said—

“You are a gipsy’s child. Where do you come from? Are you living under
a hedge, or do you come from a gipsy’s camp near?”

“It is true I am a gipsy’s child,” answered the boy, “but I am living
under no hedge, but in that little cottage, for the woman who lives
there keeps me for love of my mother, who helped her when she was in
trouble.”

“And what did your mother do for the woman?” asked the man, who was no
other than the potter. “It must have been a great service, that she
should be willing to take you and keep you.”

“She saved her from an evil charm that had been cast upon her,”
answered the boy, “and taught her to love her husband again, and she
waits his return now and longs for him to come. Therefore she promised
to keep me with her, but now I dare not go into the cottage, because my
father, who is a gipsy, is there, and I am afraid lest he may take me
away with him.”

When the potter heard that the gipsy man was there he would have run
straight into the cottage, but the boy implored him to listen first
and hear what he was saying. So they crept round to the side of the
cottage, and they heard the gipsy man growing angry, and threatening
the potter’s wife, that if she did not tell him where his boy had gone
he would seize her by the hair and wring her throat, in spite of her
being so fair a woman. At this the potter waited no longer, but burst
into the cottage, and seized the gipsy and hurled him out of the house
with all his might; but he and his wife never looked to see if he was
hurt or no, for they looked at nothing but each other and the little
child that the potter’s wife held by the hand. And the gipsy man went
away, and they never heard of him again.

Then the potter’s wife showed her husband the gipsy boy, and told him
of her promise to his mother, and of all he had done for her, and
begged him that he would let her keep him with them. And the potter
promised that she should, and said that when he grew up to be a man he
would teach him his trade, and make him a potter like himself. So they
all lived happily together, and the gipsy boy learned to make cups and
bowls, and was very clever at doing them, but they were cups and bowls
that carried no charms with them, and so could do no one any harm that
drank from them.




[Illustration: THE STORY OF A CAT]


ONCE there lived an old gentleman who was a very rich old gentleman,
and able to buy nearly everything he wanted. He had earned all his
wealth for himself by trading in a big city, and now he had grown so
fond of money that he loved it better than anything else in the world,
and thought of nothing except how he could save it up and make more.
But he never seemed to have time to enjoy himself with all that he had
earned, and he was very angry if he was asked to give money to others.
He lived in a handsome house all alone, and he had a very good cook who
cooked him a sumptuous dinner every day, but he rarely asked any one
to share it with him, though he loved eating and drinking, and always
had the best of wine and food. His cook and his other servants knew
that he was greedy and hard, and cared for nobody, and though they
served him well because he paid them, they none of them loved him.

It was one Christmas, and the snow lay thick upon the ground, and the
wind howled so fiercely that the old gentleman was very glad he was not
obliged to go out into the street, but could sit in his comfortable
arm-chair by the fire and keep warm.

“It really is terrible weather,” he said to himself, “terrible
weather;” and he went to the window and looked out into the street,
where all the pavements were inches deep in snow. “I am very glad that
I need not go out at all, but can sit here and keep warm for to-day,
that is the great thing, and I shall have some ado to keep out the cold
even here with the fire.”

He was leaving the window, when there came up in the street outside
an old man, whose clothes hung in rags about him, and who looked half
frozen. He was about the same age as the old gentleman inside the
window, and the same height, and had grey, curly hair, like his, and
if they had been dressed alike any one would have taken them for two
brothers.

“Oh, really,” said the old gentleman irritably, “this is most annoying.
The parish ought to take up these sort of people, and prevent their
wandering about the streets and molesting honest folk,” for the poor
old man had taken off his hat, and began to beg.

“It is Christmas Day,” he said, and though he did not speak very loud,
the old gentleman could hear every word he said quite plainly through
the window. “It is Christmas Day, and you will have your dinner here in
your warm room. Of your charity give me a silver shilling that I may go
into an eating-shop, and have a dinner too.”

“A silver shilling!” cried the old gentleman, “I never heard of such a
thing! Monstrous! Go away, I never give to beggars, and you must have
done something very wicked to become so poor.”

But still the old man stood there, though the snow was falling on his
shoulders, and on his bare head. “Then give me a copper,” he said;
“just one penny, that to-day I may not starve.”

“Certainly not,” cried the old gentleman; “I tell you I never give to
beggars at all.” But the old man did not move.

“Then,” he said, “give me some of the broken victuals from your table,
that I may creep into a doorway and eat a Christmas dinner there.”

“I will give you nothing,” cried the old gentleman, stamping his foot.
“Go away. Go away at once, or I shall send for the policeman to take
you away.”

The old beggar-man put on his hat and turned quietly away, but what
the old gentleman thought was very odd was, that instead of seeming
distressed he was laughing merrily, and then he looked back at the
window, and called out some words, but they were in a foreign tongue,
and the old gentleman could not understand them. So he returned to his
comfortable arm-chair by the fire, still murmuring angrily that beggars
ought not to be allowed to be in the streets.

Next morning the snow fell more thickly than ever, and the streets were
almost impassable, but it did not trouble the old gentleman, for he
knew he need not go out and get wet or cold. But in the morning when he
came down to breakfast, to his great surprise there was a cat on the
hearthrug in front of the fire, looking into it, and blinking lazily.
Now the old gentleman had never had any animal in his house before,
and he at once went to it and said “Shoo-shoo!” and tried to turn it
out. But the cat did not move, and when the old gentleman looked at it
nearer, he could not help admiring it very much. It was a very large
cat, grey and black, and had extremely long soft hair, and a thick soft
ruff round its neck. Moreover, it looked very well fed and cared for,
and as if it had always lived in comfortable places. Somehow it seemed
to the old gentleman to suit the room and the rug and the fire, and to
make the whole place look more prosperous and cosy even than it had
done before.

“A fine creature! a very handsome cat!” he said to himself; “I should
really think that a reward would be offered for such an animal, as it
has evidently been well looked after and fed, so it would be a pity to
turn it away in a hurry.”

One thing struck him as very funny about the cat, and that was that
though the ground was deep in snow and slush outside, the cat was quite
dry, and its fur looked as if it had just been combed and brushed.
The old gentleman called to his cook and asked if she knew how the cat
had come in, but she declared she had not seen it before, and said
she believed it must have come down the chimney as all the doors and
windows had been shut and bolted. However, there it was, and when his
own breakfast was finished the old gentleman gave it a large saucer of
milk, which it lapped up not greedily or in a hurry, but as if it were
quite used to good food and had had plenty of it always.

“It really is a very handsome animal, and most uncommon,” said the
old gentleman, “I shall keep it awhile and look out for the reward;”
but though he looked at all the notices in the street and in the
newspapers, the old gentleman could see no notice about a reward being
offered for a grey and black cat, so it stayed on with him from day to
day.

Every day the cat seemed to his master to grow handsomer and handsomer.
The old gentleman never loved anything but himself, but he began to
take a sort of interest in the strange cat, and to wonder what sort
it was—if it was a Persian or a Siamese, or some curious new sort of
which he had never heard. He liked the sound of its lazy contented
purring after its food, which seemed to speak of nothing but comfort
and affluence. So the cat remained on till nearly a year had passed
away.

It was not very long before Christmas that an acquaintance of the old
gentleman’s came to his rooms on business. He knew a great deal about
all sorts of animals and loved them for their own sakes, but of course
he had never talked to the old gentleman about them, because he knew he
did not love anything. But when he saw the grey cat, he said at once—

“Do you know that this is a very valuable creature, and I should think
would be worth a great deal?”

At these words the old gentleman’s heart beat high. Here, he thought,
would be a piece of great luck if a stray cat could make him richer
than he was before.

“Why, who would want to buy it?” he said. “I don’t know anybody who
would be so foolish as to give any money for a cat which is of no
use in life except to catch mice, when you can so easily get one for
nothing.”

“Ah, but many people are very fond of cats, and would give much for
rare sorts like this. If you want to sell it, the right thing would
be to send it to the Cat Show, and there you would most likely take a
prize for it, and then some one would be sure to buy it, and, it may
be, would give a great deal. I don’t know what kind it is, or where it
comes from, for I have never seen one the least like it, but for that
reason it is very sure to be valuable.”

Upon this the old gentleman almost laughed with joy.

“Where is the Cat Show?” he asked; “and when is it to be held?”

“There will be a Cat Show in this city quite soon,” said his
acquaintance; “and it will be a particularly good one, for the new
Princess is quite crazy about cats, and she is coming to it, and it is
said that she doesn’t mind what she gives for a cat if she sees one she
likes.”

So then he told the old gentleman how he should send his name and the
cat’s name to the people who managed the show, and where it was to be
held, and went away, leaving the old gentleman well pleased, but to
himself he laughed and said, “I don’t think that old man thinks of
anything on earth but making money. How pleased he was at the idea of
selling that beautiful cat if he could get something for it!”

When he had gone, the grey puss came and rubbed itself about his
master’s legs, and looked up in his face as though it had understood
the conversation, and did not like the idea of being sent to the show.
But the old gentleman was delighted, and sat by the fire and mused on
what he was likely to get for the cat, and wondered if it would not
take a prize.

“I shall be sorry to have to send it away,” he said; “still, if I could
get a good round sum of money it would be a real sin not to take it, so
you will have to go, puss; and it really was extraordinary good luck
for me that you ever came here.”

The days passed, and Christmas Day came, and again the snow fell, and
the ground was white. The wind whistled and blew, and on Christmas
morning the old gentleman stood and looked out of the window at the
falling snow and rain, and the grey cat stood beside him, and rubbed
itself against his hand. He rather liked stroking it, it was so soft
and comfortable, and when he touched the long hair he always thought of
how much money he should get for it.

This morning he saw no old beggar-man outside the window, and he said
to himself: “I really think they manage better with the beggars than
they used to, and are clearing them from the town.”

But just as he was leaving the window he heard something scratching
outside, and there crawled on to the window-sill another cat. It was
a very different creature to the grey cat on the rug. It was a poor,
thin, wretched-looking animal, with ribs sticking through its fur, and
it mewed in the most pathetic manner, and beat itself against the pane.
When it saw it, the handsome grey puss was very much excited, and ran
to and fro, and purred loudly.

“Oh you disgraceful-looking beast!” said the old gentleman angrily;
“go away, this is not the place for an animal like you. There is
nothing here for stray cats. And you look as if you had not eaten
anything for months. How different to my puss here!” and he tapped
against the window to drive it away. But still it would not go, and
the old gentleman felt very indignant, for the sound of its mewing was
terrible. So he opened the window, and though he did not like to touch
the miserable animal, he took it up and hurled it away into the snow,
and it trotted away, and in the deep snow he could not see the way it
went.

But that evening, after he had had his Christmas dinner, as he sat by
the fire with the grey puss on the hearthrug beside him, he heard again
the noise outside the window, and then he heard the stray cat crying
and mewing to be let in, and again the grey and black cat became very
much excited, and dashed about the room, and jumped at the window as if
it wanted to open it.

“I shall really be quite glad when I have sold you at the Cat Show,”
said the old gentleman, “if I am going to have all sorts of stray cats
worrying here,” and for the second time he opened the window, and
seized the trembling, half-starved creature, and this time he threw
it with all his might as hard as he could throw. “And now there is an
end of you, I hope,” he said as he heard it fall with a dull thud, and
settled himself again in his arm-chair, and the grey puss returned to
the hearthrug, but it did not purr or rub itself against its master.

Next morning when he came down to breakfast, the old gentleman poured
out a saucer of milk for his cat as usual. “You must be well fed if you
are going to be shown at the show,” he said, “and I must not mind a
little extra expense to make you look well. It will all be paid back,
so this morning you shall have some fish as well as your milk.” Then he
put the saucer of milk down by the cat, but it never touched it, but
sat and looked at the fire with its tail curled round it.

“Oh, well, if you have had so much already that you don’t want it, you
can take it when you do,” so he went away to his work and left the
saucer of milk by the fire. But when he came back in the evening there
was the saucer of milk and the piece of fish, and the grey cat had not
touched them. “This is rather odd,” said the old gentleman; “however, I
suppose cook has been feeding you.”

Next morning it was just the same. When he poured out the milk the cat
wouldn’t lap it, but sat and looked at the fire. The old gentleman felt
a little anxious, for he fancied that the animal’s fur did not look
so bright as usual, and when in the evening and the next day and the
next, it would not lap its milk, or even smell the nice pieces of fish
he gave it, he was really uncomfortable. “The creature is getting ill,”
he said, “and this is most provoking. What will be the use of my having
kept it for a year, if now I cannot show it?” He scolded his cook
for having given it unwholesome food, but the cook swore it had had
nothing. Anyhow it was growing terribly thin, and all day long it sat
in front of the fire with its tail hanging down, not curled up neatly
round it, and its coat looked dull and began to come out in big tufts
of hair.

“Now really I shall have to do something,” said the old gentleman,
“it is enough to make any one angry! No one would believe that this
could be a prize cat. It looks almost as wretched as that stray beast
that came to the window on Christmas Day.” So he went to a cat and
dog doctor, who lived near, and asked him to come in and see a very
beautiful cat which had nothing the matter with it, but which refused
to eat its food. The cat’s doctor came and looked at the cat, and then
looked very grave, and shook his head, and looked at it again.

“I don’t know what sort of cat it is,” he said, “for I never saw any
other like it, but it is a very handsome beast, and must be very
valuable. Well, I will leave you some physic for it, and I hope you may
be able to pull it round, but with these foreign cats you never know
what ails them, and they are hard to cure.”

Now the day was close at hand when the cat should have been sent to the
show, and the old gentleman was getting more and more uneasy, for the
grey cat lay upon the rug all day and never moved, and its ribs could
almost be seen through its side, so thin had it grown. And oddly enough
the old gentleman, who had never cared for any one or anything in his
life except himself, began to feel very unhappy, not only because of
not getting the money, but because he did not like to think of losing
the cat itself. He sent for his friend who had first told him about the
Cat Show, and asked his advice, but his friend could not tell him what
to do with it.

“Well, well,” he said, “this is a bad business, for I have told every
one that you are going to exhibit a most extraordinarily beautiful
cat, and now this poor creature is really fit for nothing but the
knacker’s yard. I think, maybe, some naturalist would give you a good
price for its skin, as it is so very uncommon, and if I were you I
should kill it at once, for if it dies a natural death its skin won’t
be worth a brass farthing.” At these words the grey cat lifted its
head, and looked straight into the old gentleman’s face, as if it
could understand, and for the first time for many a long year, the old
gentleman felt a feeling of pity in his heart, and was angry with his
friend for his suggestion.

“I won’t have it killed,” he cried; “why, I declare, though it does
seem absurd, I have lived with this creature for a year, and I feel as
if it were my friend, and if it would only get well and sit up on the
hearthrug, I shouldn’t mind about the money one bit!”

At this his friend was greatly astonished, and went away wondering,
while the old gentleman sat by the fire and watched the cat lying
panting on the rug.

“Poor pussy, poor old pussy!” he said, “it is a pity that you can’t
speak and tell me what you want. I am sure I would give it to you.”
Just as he spoke there came a noise outside, and he heard a mewing, and
looking through the window he saw the same thin ugly brown cat that
had come there last Christmas, and it looked as thin and wretched as
ever. When she heard the sound the grey cat stood up on her tottering
feet and tried to walk to the window. This time the old gentleman did
not drive it away, but looked at it, and almost felt sorry for it; it
looked almost as thin and ill as his own grey puss.

“You are an ugly brute,” he said, “and I don’t want you always hanging
about; still, maybe you would be none the worse for a little milk now,
and it might make you look better.” So he opened the window a little,
and then he shut it and then he opened it again, and this time the
brown cat crawled into the room, and went straight to the hearthrug to
the grey puss. There was a big saucer of milk on the hearthrug, and the
brown cat began to lap it at once, and the old gentleman never stopped
it.

He thought as he watched it, that it grew fatter under his eyes as it
drank, and when the saucer was empty he took a jug and gave it some
more. “I really am an old fool,” he said; “that is a whole pennorth
of milk.” No sooner had he poured out the fresh milk than the grey
cat raised itself, and sitting down by the saucer began to lap it as
well, as if it were quite well. The old gentleman stared with surprise.
“Well, this is the queerest thing,” he said. So he took some fish and
gave it to the strange cat, and then, when he offered some to his own
puss, it ate it as if there was nothing the matter. “This is most
remarkable,” said the old gentleman; “perhaps it was the company of a
creature of its own sort that my cat needed, after all.” And the grey
cat purred and began to rub itself against his legs.

[Illustration]

So for the next few days the two cats lay together on the hearthrug,
and though it was too late to send the grey cat to the show, the old
gentleman never thought about it, so pleased was he that it had got
well again.

[Illustration]

But seven nights after the stray cat had come in from outside, as the
old gentleman lay asleep in bed at night, he felt something rub itself
against his face, and heard his cat purring softly, as though it wanted
to say “good-bye.” “Be quiet, puss, and lie still till the morning,” he
said. But when he came down to have his breakfast in the morning, there
sat the brown tabby, looking fat and comfortable by the fire, but the
grey cat was not there, and though they looked for it everywhere, no
one could find it, though all the windows and doors had been shut, so
they could not think how it could have got away. The old gentleman was
very unhappy about it, but he looked at the strange cat on his hearth
and said, “it would be unkind now to send this poor thing away, so it
may as well stay here.”

When she heard him speaking of its being unkind, his old cook burst out
laughing. “Perhaps,” she said, “’twas a fairy cat, as it could get away
through bolts and locks, and nothing but a fairy could have taught my
master to think of a thing being unkind or not. I only hope that now
he’ll think of some one in this world besides himself and his money.”
And sure enough from that time the old gentleman began to forget about
his money, and to care for the people about him, and it was all the
doing of the strange cat who had come from no one knew where, and gone
away to no one knew where.




[Illustration: DUMB OTHMAR]


ONCE upon a time there was a village on the top of a mountain, where
during the winter months the villagers saw no one but each other, for
the mountain was so steep and the path so narrow that, when it was
blocked with ice, it was dangerous to ascend: so during the winter
months the people lived by themselves, and cheered themselves as
they might in the long dreary evenings, with games and dancing and
singing and playing on pipes, for they were cheerful folk, joyous and
light-hearted. The sweetest singer in the village was a lad named
Othmar; his voice was as sweet as a nightingale’s before the dawn,
and also he was the handsomest young fellow in all the country round.
Strangers turned to look after him as he went by; he was tall and
straight, and had curly brown hair, and big brown eyes, and lips that
always smiled. He lived with his old mother, who was a widow, and he
worked for them both in the fields and on the farms. When he was a
boy he learned the notes of all the birds, and could imitate them so
exactly that they would fly down to him and settle on his shoulders.
When the farmers had sown their fields, and the birds would have come
to pick up the grain, they sent for Othmar, and he sang and whistled
till they all left the field and flew after him. So often he was called
the bird-boy.

One evening before the winter had set in, or the roads were blocked
with ice, there came along the high road into the village, a dwarf in
a yellow cap leading a donkey, on whose back were fastened numberless
musical instruments. Fiddles of all sorts, and viols, horns, trumpets,
and pipes, and a big drum, and a small one with triangles and cymbals.
In the middle of the village the little man stopped and looked about
him. “Who would like to hear my music?” he cried, and then as the
villagers came crowding around him, he bade them all sit down while he
unpacked his mule, but he forbade any of them to help him, or to touch
one of the instruments. “For mine is no common music,” he quoth; “all
these I have made myself, and in each is a machine which makes it go on
playing by itself, if once I start it. See here!” and he took up a long
pipe and began to blow, and there came forth the sweetest notes that
had ever been heard from any pipe. The little man paused for a minute,
with the pipe in his hand, and then laid it down on the ground, when,
wonderful to relate, it went on playing of itself.

All the villagers stared with surprise, and some called out that it
was magic, and crossed themselves, but the little man took up another
pipe, and set that going too, and then the horns and the trumpets, and
the drums and the cymbals, and then he took a fiddle and drew the bow
across it, and how it played! It made the people weep and laugh. Othmar
lay on the ground listening, and it seemed to him as if the sound were
made of silver, and when the musician had started them, and all the
other fiddles were playing together, he felt as if he should go mad for
joy to hear anything so lovely.

Just behind where Othmar lay sat a young girl, named Hulda. She was
an orphan, and dwelt alone with an old woman, who gave her food and
lodging for sweeping out her room, and cleaning and cooking. Also Hulda
made money for her by going out to work for the other women in the
village. She was neither pretty nor clever, but she was a good girl,
and if any of the villagers were ill or in trouble, it was for Hulda
they would send at once, because they knew she would spare no pains to
help them, and would think nothing too much trouble. She had played
with Othmar ever since they were babies, and loved him dearly. She was
the only one who listened to the music who did not think it beautiful.
She shuddered as she heard it, and she sat and watched Othmar and saw
that there were tears in his eyes, and she grieved that she did not
love it as he did.

When at last the instruments stopped and the listeners began to feel
for money for the musician, he laughed and said, “You need not give me
money, for I am very rich, and don’t need it. In return for my playing,
I only ask for one recompense. Let any of your young folks who sing,
sing me a song, for I too love hearing music that is not my own.” On
this the villagers began to look round for all who could sing, and they
chose out some three or four, and begged them to sing their very best
to the wonderful musician. Among them was Othmar, but they all bid him
wait to the last, as his would be the best. Whilst the others were
singing, the little man did not seem to heed them much, though they
tried hard to sing well, and chose their prettiest songs, but their
voices sounded very rough and poor after the playing.

But when Othmar began he stopped twanging the fiddle-strings and
watched him. Othmar’s voice rang out clear and sweet, and all the
village folk felt proud of his singing, even after hearing the
wonderful instruments. When he ceased the little man rose, and said—

“You have a sweet voice, my boy, be sure that you always use it well;
and now I must be going my way, but as I am a stranger here, perhaps
you would not mind setting me on my road, and showing me the best way
over the hill.”

Othmar sprang up, delighted to go with him, but Hulda, who watched from
behind, came up to him and whispered—

“Oh, Othmar, don’t let him take you far—come back soon.”

“How silly you are, Hulda!” said Othmar, almost angrily. “Of course I
shall come back, but I shall go with him as far as he wants, and then,
perhaps, he will let me hear him play again.”

Othmar and the little dwarf started with the mule laden with
instruments, and Othmar led the way down the best road. The dwarf did
not speak at all, and so they went on in silence till they had got on
to the top of a high hill where they could see the country all round
for miles, and the moon was beginning to rise. Here the musician
stopped his mule, and stood for a while looking all round. Then he
turned, and said to Othmar—“I know now where I am, and here will I
stay for to-night, but first before you leave me, would you not like to
hear my fiddles and horns again?”

“That I would,” cried Othmar, and he sat himself down on the ground
delighted, while the little man unloaded the mule.

“And now,” he said to Othmar with a twisted smile, “you shall hear them
play as no one has ever heard them. Yes, and you shall see them too;”
then he laid them in rows—the fiddles first, and the viols, and then
the horns and trumpets, and last the drums and cymbals and triangles,
and clapped his hands, giving a long, shrill whistle. As he whistled,
the instruments rose from the ground, and they began to swell, and
their shapes to change till no longer did they look like musical
instruments, but like human beings, only each had in a strange way kept
the shape it had formerly. The flutes and pipes were tall and thin,
and they and the violins had changed into beautiful girls with slender
throats, and the trumpets were all men and boys of different sizes, but
the drum was the strangest of all, for it was a fat man with very short
legs. The moon had risen and Othmar could see them all quite clearly,
and though he trembled with fear and his heart beat high, yet still
he watched. They stood silent together for a space in a weird crowd,
and then the dwarf waved his arms and called, “Ay! are you all there,
my children?—yes, one, two three four five, six seven eight, nine
ten eleven twelve, thirteen—that is right. Come practice, practice,
practice, and then you shall have a game, and see who Othmar loves
best, and who he will kiss first.”

Then they all began to sing together, but each voice was like the sound
of its own instrument, only it said words through its tones, and in
Othmar’s ears their music sounded as never music had sounded before.
The voices of the violin girls were so sweet that he felt as if he must
weep to hear them, while the sound of the pipes and trumpets filled him
with longing to go into the world and fight and win battles. He sat on
the ground and listened to them like one in a trance, and he felt as if
he never wished to rise or go away again. The dwarf sat on a hillock
near, and did not seem to heed them much. When Othmar took his eyes
from the dancers for a minute, he found that the place was quite full
of all the animals who are never seen by day, but who fly out by night.
There were crowds of bats and owls, and odd moths, all poised in the
air, and seeming to watch the musicians and listen to their singing.
Then when he looked on the ground, he saw that strange wood-snakes and
toads had come out boldly, and with their heads turned towards the
dancers remained motionless and watched them, whilst near him green and
brown lizards lay still as stone, with heads on one side, all staring
through the dusky night at the singers. Othmar thought he only had
watched them for a few minutes, when suddenly the dwarf cried out—“The
dawn, the dawn, my children; see, there is red in the sky. Come, be
quick, see who will win Othmar’s gift before we go on our way.” When
he was silent all the singing girls approached Othmar, but before the
others came one who looked slighter and younger, and whose voice though
as sweet was weaker.

“See, Othmar,” she cried, “before we go on and leave you, let us try to
sing one song together. Sing you as I do.” And Othmar sang with her as
she sang, in a clear voice like a bird’s—

  “Ere the sun shines in the sky,
  We will sing together, my love and I;
  But none shall hear him sing again,
  ’Neath moon or sun, in shine or rain.”

And then ere the last notes had left Othmar’s mouth, she bent forward,
and clasped him in her slender arms, and kissed him on the lips while
still they were open to sing.

“Good-bye, Othmar,” cried she, “and that will be your last note for
many a long year, for surely you will have no need to sing after I am
gone,” and at that all the strange folk standing near gave a laugh
that was more a chord of music than a laugh. And when her lips touched
Othmar’s he quivered all over as a fiddle-string does when the bow is
drawn across it; and he gave a cry which was like the sweet sound of a
bell.

“Mine, mine!” cried the girl, as he fell back from her frightened. “Now
my voice will be the sweetest and best of all, for I have got Othmar’s
too. No one will hear Othmar now,—Othmar who sang like the birds. And
never will he call the birds again, but I can sing as he sang, and all
who hear me will think that Othmar sings too. Rejoice, my sisters, sing
and rejoice,” but at that moment the dwarf started up crying out—

[Illustration: She bent forward, and clasped him in her slender arms,
and kissed him on the lips.]

“The dawn, the dawn, my children; see, the sun, the sun; beware, beware
its rays.” Then came a great burst of sound like a chord from all the
music folk, followed by a flash of light like lightning, and when it
had cleared away, the singing men and girls had gone, and in their
places there lay upon the ground all the musical instruments—fiddles,
viols, pipes, horns, and cymbals. Othmar stood staring as if he had
been turned to stone, and watched as if he were in a dream, while the
little man quietly packed the instruments on to the mule, and went away
leading it by the bridle as he had come.

“Good-bye, Othmar,” he called back, “good-bye. When you hear my fiddles
again, they will be sweeter than ever, for I have added your voice to
them.” And he went on his way over the hillside and disappeared beyond
the ridge. Othmar ran after him, but he stumbled and fell. He tried to
call out, but no voice would come! Tears ran down his cheeks, and he
sobbed bitterly, but no sound came with the sobs, and he knew that his
voice had left him. The singing girl had stolen it, and he could never
sing or cry out again!

The sun was rising high in the heavens. The green lizards, slow-worms,
frogs and beetles were still ranged around, and gazed at Othmar with
their heads wonderingly on one side. The birds sang louder and louder,
and their voices sounded sweet in the morning air. Othmar bent his head
and wept because he knew that never could he call them to him again.
Then from behind a bush there rose a big black raven, who cast a long
shadow behind him which almost covered Othmar as he sat, and it gave a
deep croak and then spoke quite clearly—

[Illustration]

“Poor Othmar!” it said, “she has stolen your voice!” and he hopped
down. “You will never speak nor sing again. Poor Othmar!—ah! they
stole my voice too; once I could sing far better than the birds you
hear now. That was thousands of years ago, but the dwarf came to my
nest, and told me if I would go with him he would teach me how to
whistle so that the worms should rise out of the ground and jump into
my mouth when they heard me, and he called one of his trumpet-men
to teach me—one you saw dance—and he bid me lay my beak below his
lips while he sang; then he stole my voice, all but a croak, which he
did not want because it was so harsh, but all your voice was sweet,
therefore she has got it all—poor Othmar, poor Othmar!”

Then Othmar raised himself, with the tears running from his eyes, and
turned to find his way back to the village. It seemed a long distance,
for he missed his path, and it was near nightfall before he saw the
tops of the cottages and his own little home; but as he neared the
village, he could see Hulda standing in the road, shading her eyes from
the sun, and watching the way he came.

“Othmar,” she cried when she saw him, “is it you? I have been to search
for you far and near, and there are others now looking for you, for we
were afraid lest you had fallen down some crevice, or slipped over the
rocks.”

Othmar came up to her, and put out his hand, and she saw how pale he
was, and that his eyes were full of tears, but he said nothing.

“Othmar, tell me,” cried Hulda; “what has happened? why don’t you
speak?” but still Othmar was silent. “Are you hurt, Othmar? Did the
dwarf do you any harm?”

Then Othmar flung himself on the ground, and began to sob, but his sobs
gave no sound, though the ground was wet with his tears, and Hulda knew
that Othmar was dumb.

“Poor Othmar, poor Othmar!” croaked the raven who had kept close to
Othmar, and flew overhead, but Hulda did not understand it, only she
wept to see his grief.

“Never fear, Othmar,” she said tenderly, “your voice will soon come
back; it was the long cold night, and the fear that has driven it away.
Come home with me, and let me nurse you, and you shall soon be well.”

Othmar shook his head, and the tears fell from his eyes, but he let her
take his hand and lead him into the village where his old mother sat
and waited for him; but still, although she sprang forward to greet
him, and put her arms around his neck, he could not speak, and his deep
sobs gave no sound. At first the villagers said he was ill, and soon
he would be well again, but as the days passed and he never spoke, they
knew that he was struck dumb. Some said it was the cold, and some that
he had been frightened; only Hulda said to herself, “it was the wicked
little man.”

So the days passed, and Othmar remained silent and worked with the
other young men of the village without speaking, and no longer could
he sing or call the birds to him. Always he looked white and sad,
but saddest of all when there was any village merry-making, and the
villagers sang and danced together. Then when he heard them he would
put his fingers in his ears and hide his eyes so as not to see them and
run afar off by himself; for the sound of any music was quite horrible
to him after the singing of the travelling musicians. So a year passed,
and Othmar never spoke, and instead of calling him the bird-boy, the
village people called him “dumb Othmar.”

It was midsummer-night, and the villagers had been having a
merry-making and dancing cheerily on the green in the village. Othmar
was not with them; he had left the village and went and sat apart on
the top of a rocky hill, from where afar the sea could be seen when the
weather was clear. The moon was wonderfully bright, and the country
was almost as light as by day. Othmar could hear the sound of their
laughter, but he never laughed, and as he sat with his head bowed upon
his knees he wept silently. So he remained alone till far into the
night when all the singing and dancing was done, and the villagers had
gone home, but just when the clocks struck twelve he saw Hulda, who
came slowly to him, and he saw that she too was crying.

“Othmar,” she said, “I have thought and thought, and I know that the
little man with the fiddles was a wicked fairy.” Othmar nodded. “So I
am going into the big world to find him, for if he has done you this
ill he will know how to cure you, and I have saved all my money for a
year.”

Then Othmar took her hand, and kissed it, but still wept, as he shook
his head and made signs to her that she must not go, as it would be all
in vain. But Hulda did not heed him.

“And now,” she said, “I am going, Othmar, and it may be long years
before I return, so you must do three things. First, you must give me
a long curl of your brown hair, that I may lay it next my heart and
wear it day and night, not to forget you. Then you must kiss me on my
lips to say good-bye; and then you must promise that my name shall be
the first words your lips say when they again can speak.” Then Othmar
took his knife and cut from his head the longest, brightest curl of his
hair, and drew her to him and kissed her thrice upon the lips, and then
he took her hand and with it wrote upon his lips her name, “Hulda,” as
a promise that her name should be the first thing they said.

“Good-bye, Othmar,” she said; “you will wait for me.” Then she turned
away and started alone to go down the mountain-side, and she looked
back as she went and called back, “Good-bye, Othmar,” as long as he
could see or hear her.

She went straight down the hill and journeyed for a long way, till the
dawn began to show red in the sky, and she lay under a tree and slept
soundly till the sun had risen and woke her.

She sat and thought which way she should go. “I must seek out some
wise man who knows about fairies and wicked witches,” she said to
herself, “and who will tell me where to search. And I will ask every
one I meet where the wisest person is to be found.” So she went on for
many days till she came to a tiny village, outside which, in a field,
she saw a shepherd minding sheep. Hulda stopped and asked if he could
tell her where she could find a very wise man who could answer her
question.

The shepherd thought a bit, and then he said, “The wisest man in these
parts lives up in the little cottage on the other side of the village.
He cured my sheep two years back when all the flock were sick and many
died—a little cottage with a red gate.” Hulda thanked the shepherd,
and went on till she came to the little cottage with the red gate. When
she had knocked at the door a tall man came out, and she asked him if
’twas he who had cured the shepherd’s sheep, and as he was so clever,
if he would tell her what to do. She told him she wanted to find a
dwarf who led a donkey covered with musical instruments, and whom she
knew to be a wicked sorcerer, since he struck folk dumb.

The tall man looked at her and said, “My business is to cure sheep,
cows, and horses, and I know it right well; but I know nothing of
dwarfs and witches, and how can I tell you which way he has gone, or
anything about him?”

“Then of whom had I best ask?” said Hulda. “Tell me who is the wisest
and most learned man in these parts, and I will go to him.”

The tall man rubbed his head and considered. “I suppose,” quoth he,
“that the old school-master at the village school yonder would be said
to be the most learned man hereabouts, for he teaches the children
all sorts of things that they forget when they grow up. That is the
school-house on the hill.” So on went Hulda again to the school.

As she came near she could hear the children calling out their lessons,
and their master, who was an old priest, teaching them. So she waited
about till school hours were over, and the children had all come out,
and then she timidly went in and curtseyed to the old school-master,
and told him her tale, and asked him, as he was so very learned, if he
would advise her what to do; but instead of answering her the old man
at first stared at her in bewilderment, and then he said, “I can teach
you to read and write and many wonderful things, but of dwarfs who can
steal a boy’s voice I know nothing. You would do best not to think more
of it.”

“But some one there must be,” cried Hulda, beginning to cry, “who can
tell me what to do, and which way to go. For I am sure that the old man
was a fairy, and if so, no living man can help Othmar, but only he who
did the mischief can undo it.”

The old priest looked at her sadly and shook his head. “My child,”
he said, “this is a foolish talk about fairies and sorcerers, I know
nothing of such things. It is only untaught folk and fools who give
heed to such matters.”

“To untaught folk and fools then I must go, for surely they can help
me more than the wise,” she cried. So she left the school-house, and
started again through the little village street. The first person
she met was a baker going home after taking round his bread, and she
stopped him and asked him who was the most ignorant and foolish person
in those parts.

[Illustration]

The baker stood and stared at her, and seemed to be half angry. At
last he said, “I am sure I don’t know anything about fools. You had
better go on to the cake-maker, who lives a mile up the hill. He is,
to my mind, the biggest fool in these parts.” And tossing his basket
about and seeming to be much offended, he went his way. Hulda went on
for a mile up the hill, and there she found a little group of cottages,
and in their midst was a shop with an open oven, and she could see its
owner busy making cakes and sweets. Hulda went in and bought a cake,
and as she sat and ate it, she asked the man timidly if he knew many
of the people in that neighbourhood, and if any were very ignorant and
foolish.

“Indeed,” cried the man, “you may well ask that. Why, a more silly,
ignorant set of folk I never knew, quite different from the people in
my native town, but that is miles away.”

“And who do you think the silliest then?” asked Hulda.

“Why, for sure ’tis hard to say,” said the man, scratching his head.
“They’re such a poor silly lot, right away from the Mayor down to Tommy
the fool.”

“And who is Tommy the fool?” asked Hulda eagerly.

“’Tis a poor natural-born idiot who lives with his mother in the little
cabin on the side of the common. He spends all his time trying to catch
a bird, and he never has caught one, and never will.”

“Thank you for telling me about him,” said Hulda, rising to go away.
“Maybe if he is really a fool he could answer my questions as they
say,” and she went on again with a lighter heart. At last she came to
the common on which the fool lived with his mother. When she approached
the little cabin, she saw some one dancing about in front of an oak,
dressed up with the feathers of birds and fowls, which looked as if
they had been picked up from the ground. He was a young man of about
eighteen, and he had a cheerful face, but any one looking at him could
see at once he was an idiot. He was dancing round the tree and pointing
up to the birds, and calling them to come down to him. Hulda came up
and stood quite close and watched him, as he ran round smiling and
giggling. Then she said, “Please can you tell me where I shall find a
little man, a dwarf who drives a donkey covered with pipes and fiddles?”

The fool looked at her very gravely, but he said nothing; so then she
went on to tell him how the little man had come to their village, and
how he had stolen Othmar’s voice, and how she had come out to seek it.
Just as she finished speaking, there rose from the ground a raven,
and soared above their heads. When he saw it the fool pointed to it,
and cried out, “The raven, the raven, follow the raven,” and as the
raven flew, he ran after him with Hulda following in turn. They ran
for a long way, the fool leaping and bounding, and pointing with his
finger and crying, “The raven, the raven, do what the raven does.” Then
suddenly he turned, giving a wild laugh, and began to run home again,
but as he went he nodded and called to Hulda, “Follow the raven, follow
it, do what the raven does.”

Hulda felt inclined to burst into tears with disappointment, but still
she ran meekly after the bird, murmuring to herself, “He said follow
the raven, but what good can that do me?” But when the fool had turned
back, the raven slackened his pace, and cawed and lighted on a tree,
and Hulda, panting for breath, sat down under it, and looked up at it.

“Poor Hulda!” it croaked, but she couldn’t understand it; “poor Hulda,
come with me, and I will show you where the dwarf is.” Then it began to
fly slowly on again.

“What shall I do?” sobbed Hulda. “He was only an idiot, he knew
nothing; still he told me to follow the raven, and no one else has
told me anything;” so on she went, and this time the raven flew quite
slowly, so that Hulda kept up with it walking. On they travelled till
evening was well advanced, into all sorts of places where Hulda had
never been, and through many villages. Then it began to grow dark, and
the moon came out, but still they travelled on. Hulda was foot-sore and
weary, but she would not give up, and said to herself, “It was what the
fool said, ‘Follow the raven, do what the raven does!’”

Just before dawn, they came out on to a big plain, where there were
neither houses nor trees, but in the far distance you could see a long
line of mountains; a little further in the centre of the plain Hulda
saw a little dark mass, and straight to this the raven flew, and as
Hulda approached it, she saw that it was the little dwarf, lying asleep
upon the ground beside his heap of musical instruments, with the mule
grazing near. “Oh, good wise fool,” cried Hulda, “now indeed you have
given me the best advice. Since the raven has led me to the wicked
dwarf, now indeed will I do what the raven does, whatever it be.”

The raven flew on, and lit upon a scrubby bush, a little way from
the sleeping dwarf, and Hulda followed and crouched beside it, making
no noise lest she should disturb the sleeper, and hiding behind the
branches so that she could not be seen. Presently the little man
rose from the ground, and called out, “Come, my children, practice,
practice; the dawn is here, and the sun will rise, and then we must go
upon our way.”

Then Hulda saw what Othmar had seen before. The pipes raised themselves
from the ground, and untwisted, and became tall, lithe men; some
gradually uncurled themselves, and put forth long arms and became
beautiful girls, till each instrument had taken the likeness of a human
being. Then they began to dance and to sing, and Hulda watched them
as Othmar had watched them, and she too felt as if she had never seen
and heard anything so beautiful in her life, and she longed to rush to
them, but she heard the raven croak above her, and remembered the words
of the fool, “The raven, the raven, do what the raven does.” Then she
saw that the raven had hopped off the tree, and was standing upon the
earth in front of her, and was beginning to dig in the earth with its
long beak, as if it would find a worm. “The fool said, Do what the
raven does, so must I dig too,” thought she, and she began to scoop the
brown earth with her hand, till she had made a hole, watching the raven
all the time.

Presently she saw that the raven had found a long worm, and held it by
its throat in the air, but it did not swallow it. Hulda looked into her
hole to see if there was a worm there also, and at the bottom she saw
lying a long, lithe, green snake, twisted up and apparently torpid.
“Surely,” thought Hulda, “if I do what the raven does, I shall take
this out,” and she put her hand into the hole, and grasped the snake
by its throat, though she was very much afraid of it, and then she
crouched down behind the raven and the bush.

“Come,” cried the dwarf, when they had all sung together, “now let us
hear the last new voice. Othmar’s voice was as sweet as silver. Now
let me hear how my youngest daughter has treated it.” Then there came
to the front the youngest and fairest of the girls, and began to sing,
and when she heard it, Hulda could scarcely keep from screaming, for
she recognized that the tones were Othmar’s; but just as the singing
sounded the sweetest, the raven with a croak opened his mouth, and
dropped the worm upon the ground, and Hulda let go her hold of the
bright green snake, which darted through the short grass towards the
dancers.

There arose from all sides the cry of “A snake, a snake!” and they
seemed panic-stricken. The snake glided straight towards the singing
girl, and deftly coiled itself round her ankles, while from the old
man and all the others came a terrible uproar, but the snake from the
girl’s ankles had slid up her body in bright green coils, and then
twisted itself around her throat, and coiled tighter and tighter and
tighter, till her head fell over on one side. Then Hulda heard a noise
like the sighing of wind, but sweet and tender, while the dwarf and all
the singers were in a hubbub and confusion.

For a moment the old man stood motionless, then he rose and gave a
terrible cry. Hulda trembled when she heard his voice, it sounded like
nothing earthly, but ere he was silent there had risen from the ground
and from the bushes near a number of little cloudy forms, black and
thick, and twirling in all directions, and they twisted in and out
among the singers; and as they twisted among them, they ceased to be
men and women, but became musical instruments, as they had been before,
all save the girl around whose neck the snake had wound, and who seemed
to shrivel and shrivel in its coils till she was no more to be seen.

In less than a minute they were all packed again upon the mule, and the
little old man was leading it quietly away, as if nothing had happened.
And upon the grass lay the glittering snake, though all trace of the
girl around whose neck it had twisted had gone. Hulda ran to it, and
then she almost cried, for she feared that after all the girl with
Othmar’s voice had escaped her. But she remembered the words of Tommy
the fool, “Do as the raven does; follow the raven,” and looking up
she saw that the raven was fluttering above her, with the worm it had
picked up from the ground in its mouth.

“Oh, dear raven,” cried Hulda, “you brought me to where the little man
was, now lead me back and show me what to do next.” And mindful of the
fool’s advice, she picked up the snake, and holding it firmly by the
throat, turned to follow the raven, who flew ahead of her. Thus they
journeyed back, over the same country through which Hulda had come
before. All looked just the same, but Hulda was sorely tired, for she
had now been walking many days, and she felt sad, for she did not know
if after all she had gained anything, or whether she ought not to have
followed the little old man, and though she had heard Othmar’s voice,
she did not know how she was to get it back to him. “Never mind,” she
said to herself, “the fool told me right so far, and evidently he knew
all about it, so I had best keep to his advice.”

The sun rose high in the sky and the day was very hot, and poor Hulda
longed to lie down under the trees and sleep; moreover the snake in her
hand twisted and twisted, till she could scarce hold it. Sometimes she
cried from very weariness, but still the raven flew in front of her.
She had bought dry bread as she came along, and when the raven stopped
and hopped upon the ground, she munched it to stave off her hunger,
but directly the raven began to fly she followed it, and she never let
the snake from her grasp. The sun had set, and dark was all over the
land ere she came to the village where the fool lived, but no fool was
there to be seen. Hulda sought everywhere, but she could not find him.
Then she saw that the raven had stopped and settled on the roof of the
cottage where the fool lived, and, standing on one leg, had gone to
sleep with its head under its wing, so Hulda lay down by the side of
the door, and laying her head on a stone rested too. But first she took
off her girdle and tied it firmly round the snake’s throat, and then
tied it round her waist again lest she should fall asleep and the snake
glide away.

Just when the stars were beginning to look pale, and as there were
signs of the dawn in the sky, the door of the cottage opened, and out
there came the fool, dressed up as Hulda had seen him before, with
feathers and weeds and bits of bright rag. Hulda started up, and he
laughed when he saw her. “Look,” he said, “the sun is rising; I am come
out to see it.”

“I have come back,” cried Hulda, “and I have seen them all—the old
man and the musician girls, and the one who stole Othmar’s voice will
never use it again, for this snake has throttled her; but what am I to
do now? How can I give him back his voice? What shall I do to make him
speak?” And as she spoke she took the snake from her bosom and showed
it to the fool. He looked at it very gravely as he always did when
anything was shown to him, and looked very wise and nodded. “It is a
snake,” he said; “perhaps Othmar will like the snake.”

Hulda begged him to tell her if he knew what she should do, but he
would say no more, but began to dance and sing as she had seen him do
before. Then at last Hulda burst out crying, “He is nothing but a poor
idiot,” she said, “and I have been on a fool’s errand when I did as he
told me, though I did see the wicked little man, and this snake did
punish the singing girl, so I will take it back to Othmar that he may
see I have tried. But now I believe he will be dumb for ever.”

And she took the snake and looked at it as she held it. It was very
still, and seemed half torpid, though the weather was warm. She saw it
was not a common snake, for it was bright brown, and green with odd
markings, and it glittered oddly when the sun’s rays touched it.

“I will go back now,” said Hulda; “I will go back to Othmar, and tell
him I have failed, and ask him to forgive my vanity in thinking
I could help him. I will go back at once and tell him all.” And
overhead the raven croaked and told her to go quickly, but she did not
understand what he said.

So again she began to trudge on, holding the snake in her hands and
toiling over fields and moors in the way that she knew led to her own
little village, though by now her feet were so swollen and her legs so
stiff that she almost cried for pain.

Presently she came to the village where the cake-maker lived, and as
she passed his shop, she saw that he stood at the door and nodded to
her as he saw her coming.

“Good-day,” he cried; “you are the young wench I saw go past awhile
back.”

“Yes, I am going home now,” said Hulda.

“And have you found your fiddles and horns that turned to men and
women?” he asked. “It was a fool’s errand, I fear, you were going on;
and what have you got in your hand now?”

“It is a snake,” answered Hulda, “and——”

“A snake!” screamed the cake-maker. “Lord love the girl, is she mad to
go wandering over the country carrying a snake with her? Why, it might
kill you, wench! Drop it at once!”

“No, indeed, I will not drop it,” said Hulda, “for it seems to me that
it is the only thing which may do Othmar good, for at any rate it has
killed the girl who stole his voice, and——”

At this the man started and called out, “Good Lord, she is clean off
her head. Stolen Othmar’s voice! What can the wench mean? Why, girl,
that snake might bite you, and you would be dead at once. Why on earth
should you carry it because it has killed a girl?”

“I am carrying it because the fool told me to do what the raven does,”
answered Hulda, “and he has still a worm in his mouth. Look.”

At this the man burst out laughing. “Why, what has that to do with
you?” he cried; “a raven will often carry a worm for a bit. Drop this
snake at once, you silly lass, or, better still, hold it firm while I
crush its head with my poker.” And he seized the poker to kill it with.

Then Hulda was frightened lest he might steal the snake from her, or
kill it by force, and she ran on; but she ran in such haste that she
stumbled against the baker who was just coming out from his shop with
his basket of loaves on his arm.

“Can’t you look where you are going?” he cried in anger, as he picked
up the bread which had rolled into the road; and then, seeing it was
Hulda, he said:—“Why, who are you running away from, my girl? Are you
on the look-out for more fools that you can’t see when an honest man
comes along? And whatever have you got there?”

“It is only a snake I have found,” said Hulda, when she had asked the
man’s pardon, and she tried to hide the snake in her skirt, but the
baker seized her arm and made her show it to him.

“What on earth are you carrying a live snake with you for?” he asked.
“Don’t you know they are venomous beasts, and the bite of one is
certain death?” And, like the cake-maker, he tried to wrench the snake
from her. At this Hulda was terribly frightened.

“If they take the snake from me,” she thought, “then my last chance is
gone,” and she tried to free herself from the baker, but he seized her
by the skirt and held her fast, and shouted out to others to come and
help him.

“Help, help!” he cried. “Here is a poor mad girl, and she has got hold
of a poisonous adder, and she will let it loose in the village and it
will bite some of our children and kill them.” And when they heard his
cry the villagers all came running out of their cottages.

“Let me go, let me go,” shrieked Hulda, “it will do no harm. I will
hold it tight, and I would not lose it for the wide world.”

“I tell you she is mad,” roared the baker, and the cake-maker came up
and said the same thing. “She wandered by here some time back, and all
she wanted to know was where she could find another as mad as herself,
but she will have far to go before she meets one, I reckon. We must
secure her and take the snake from her, but beware how you catch it,
for fear it should bite.”

And the people all gathered round her and made a great hubbub, though
they were afraid to touch the snake which Hulda still held firmly in
her hand. And they made such a din that the old school-master came out
of the school-house with his pupils after him.

The people told him there was a poor mad girl who had got a snake, and
would not let them take it from her, and he remembered Hulda as the
others had done, and shook his head and said sadly, “I fear it is too
true. The poor child is really mad, but we cannot wrench the snake from
her lest it may turn and bite us. But it is certain that it would not
be safe to let her go; so, as the children are all going home now, let
us lock her into the school-house here, till we can get something to
kill the creature with, and then when the doctor comes, he can see if
the poor girl is very bad, and what had better be done with her.”

Hulda turned quite white with fear, and cried out that she was not mad,
and that the snake should harm no one, but they would not heed her,
and pushed her into the school-house, and bolted the doors on her, and
there Hulda sat on the floor and cried as if her heart would break.

“Alas!” cried she, “now all hope is gone, and Othmar will be dumb for
ever. For what good have I carried this snake with me all this way, if
now it is to be taken from me and killed?” and her tears fell on the
viper as she looked at it in her hand. It was very bright green and
yellow, and it kept wrinkling and twisting its skin as she grasped
it, and making a loud hissing noise. As her tears were still falling
she heard a croak over her head, and saw the raven perched on a window
above her, and again her hopes revived.

“Maybe he has come to help me,” she thought, “for I should never have
found the little dwarf if it had not been for the raven.” Then as she
looked up at the raven sitting in the window, she saw that it was
pecking at a piece of rope that hung through the window, and Hulda
thought—“Surely if I could climb up to the window, I could scramble
through it, and climb down the rope on to the ground. Only if they were
to see me, they would catch me again, so I must wait till nightfall
when there is no one there.”

So she sat down again and waited till the sun had set, and she trembled
at every noise lest it might be some one coming to seek her, but they
left her alone, and no one came. When it was quite dark, and all the
village was quiet she went to the window, and tried to climb up to it,
but she found that she could not manage to get up on to the window-sill
while she held the snake in her hand. Then first she thought she would
wind it around her waist, but she remembered how it had tightened
around the singing girl and killed her, and for some time she could
not think what to do with it. At last she twisted it into a knot, and
placed it in her bosom, though she trembled lest it should bite her.
And when she placed it in her bosom, she saw the curl of Othmar’s hair
that lay there, and she took it and tied up the snake’s jaws with it so
that it might not open its mouth. “For Othmar’s hair will not break or
give way,” she said; “it is like his heart, it will be true and strong
till the end.”

Then she climbed up on to the window-ledge, and scrambled through the
window, and took the piece of rope and let herself down on to the
ground outside. And when she lit upon the ground, she heard the raven
croaking above her, and her heart leapt for joy, and she began to run
as fast as she could to get away from the village lest they might catch
her again.

When she came again into the open country, she looked for the raven,
and saw that it was flying in front of her as before, towards the
distant mountains where she knew lay her home. She toiled on, for many
days, but by now the summer had nearly passed away, and when she got
into the high mountain land, she found that the cold winter had given
signs of coming, and the trees were beginning to be bare, and there was
a light white frost on the ground. It was far into the night when she
arrived in the village, and the villagers were all asleep and their
cottages shut. Outside the cottage where Othmar lived grew a big old
ivy tree, and on this the raven perched, and underneath it Hulda lay
down to wait the dawn and Othmar’s waking. She lay quiet for a bit,
but when she saw a faint glimmering of light where the sun was going
to rise, she felt she could be still no longer, and she sprang up and
called, “Othmar, come down, I am here,” for she dreaded having to tell
him before the other villagers that she had failed.

In a few moments the door of the cottage opened and Othmar came out,
and ran to greet her, but she kept afar.

“Othmar,” she cried, “I have done you no good, save that I have
punished the wicked girl who took your voice. This snake killed her, so
she will never sing as you did again. See.” And she held out the snake
to him; it was curled round and still tied up with his hair, and as the
sun began to shine it glittered brightly.

“But I have done you no good, indeed rather harm,” Hulda went on, “for
I have made you hope where there was no hope, and you have waited and
expected that I should bring you back what you had lost, and I have not
done it, and now I shall never hear you say my name ‘Hulda’ again,” and
she wept so bitterly that the tears fell from her face, and dropped
upon the snake which still she grasped. Othmar held out his hand, and
tried to take her hand that he might kiss it, and as he did so, he
touched the snake’s long tail, and it began to writhe and twist, and
glisten more and more as the sun shone on it. And as he raised her hand
to his mouth, Othmar tried to say her name “Hulda” with his poor dumb
lips that could make no sound, and he breathed it on the snake, and it
seemed as if the snake vibrated with the name, and suddenly it swelled
and swelled, and shone still more brightly, and its mouth grew wide and
burst Othmar’s hair which had bound it, and widened out till it was not
a snake any more, but a curled golden trumpet, curled up as the snake
had been, and like that which had been changed into the singing girl
who stole Othmar’s voice. “Take it, Othmar, and blow,” cried Hulda,
and he put it to his lips and cried “Hulda!” and Hulda heard her name
echoing back in a burst of music from all around. At its sound the
birds awoke in all the trees, and began their morning chorus, and the
village folk ran to their windows to see what the trumpet’s peal had
been, and saw Othmar standing with Hulda in his arms, and at their feet
the bright trumpet which he had dropped. It lay on the ground, but as
Othmar began to speak and to say, “Hulda, Hulda, you have brought it
back, you have given me my voice again,” the trumpet broke into many
pieces, and with every word crumbled, till there was nothing left but
a little heap of shining golden sand, and from under it there glided
out a dark green snake with yellow markings, and it slid away into the
bushes and disappeared.

Then all the villagers rejoiced, and Hulda wept with happiness. And
Othmar married Hulda, and his voice never left him again; but when
long years after folk would tell him his voice was sweet and far more
beautiful than the birds, he would say, “But it is not really my voice,
it is my wife’s, Hulda’s, for I should have been dumb for ever if she
had not sought it and brought it back to me.”




[Illustration: THE RAIN MAIDEN]


ONCE upon a time there lived a shepherd and his wife, who lived in
a very lonely little cottage far from town or village, near some
mountains. It was a wild neighbourhood, and the wind blew across the
mountains fiercely, and the rain often fell so heavily that it seemed
as if the cottage would be washed away. One evening when the shepherd
was out, there came on a great storm of rain which beat against the
doors and the windows violently. As the shepherd’s wife sat listening
to it by the fire, it seemed to her as if it sounded louder than she
had ever heard it before, and the raindrops sounded like the knock of
a hand that was knocking to gain admittance. It went on for a little
time, till the shepherd’s wife could bear to listen to it no longer,
and she rose and went to the door to open it, though she knew that
she would let the wind and rain into the room. As she opened the door
a gust of rain was blown in her face, and then she saw that in the
doorway stood a woman who had been knocking. She was a tall woman
wrapped in a grey cloak with long hair falling down her back. “Thank
you,” she said. And though her voice was very low, the shepherd’s wife
could hear it plainly through all the storm. “Thank you for opening the
door to me. Many would have let me stand outside. Now may I come into
your cottage and rest?”

“How wet you must be!” cried the shepherd’s wife; “come in and rest,
and let me give you food. Have you come from far?”

“No, I come from quite near,” said the woman, and she came into the
cottage as she spoke, and sat down in a chair near the door. “And I
want no food, only a glass of water. I must go on directly, but I have
not far to go, and I shall be no wetter than I am now.”

The shepherd’s wife stared in surprise, for she saw that apparently
the woman’s clothes were not wet at all. And what was stranger still,
though she had thought she was only clad in a dull grey cloak, now she
saw that she was covered with jewellery,—clear stones, like diamonds
with many flashing colours; and she also saw that all her clothes were
of the finest. She gave her a glass of water, and begged that as well
she might give her other food, but the woman shook her head, and said
no, water was all she needed. When she had drunk the water she gave
back the glass to the shepherd’s wife, and said, “And so this is your
home. Have you all that you want in life? Are you happy?”

“Ay, we are happy enough,” said the shepherd’s wife, “save indeed for
one thing. Ten years ago my little baby girl died, and I have no other
children. I long for one sorely, that I might take care of it and make
it happy, while it is little, and then in turn, when I am old, it would
love and care for me.”

“And if you had a little child,” said the woman, rising up and
standing before the shepherd’s wife, “you think you would really love
it better than anything in the world. Many women say that, but few do
it. Before long a little child will be born to you, and as long as you
love it better than anything in the world it will remain with you, but
when you love anything else better than your little daughter and her
happiness, it will go from you; so remember my words. Good-bye,” and
the woman walked to the door and went quietly out into the rain, and
the shepherd’s wife saw her disappearing, and the rain pelting around
her, but her clothes were not blown about, neither did the rain seem to
wet her.

[Illustration]

A year passed away, and the shepherd’s wife had a tiny daughter, a
lovely little baby with the bluest eyes and the softest skin; the
evening she was born the wind howled and the rain fell as fiercely as
on the night when the grey woman had come into the shepherd’s cottage.
The shepherd and his wife both loved their little daughter very dearly,
as well they might, as no fairer child was ever seen. But as she grew
older, some things about her frightened her mother, and she had some
ways of which she could not cure her.

[Illustration]

She would never go near a fire, however cold she was, neither did she
love the sunshine, but always ran from it and crept into the shade;
but when she heard the rain pattering against the window-panes she
would cry, “Listen, mother, listen to my brothers and sisters dancing,”
and then she would begin to dance too in the cottage, her little feet
pattering upon the boards; or, if she possibly could, she would run
out on to the moor and dance, with the rain falling upon her, and her
mother had much ado to get her to come back into the cottage, yet she
never seemed to get very wet, nor did she catch cold.

[Illustration]

A river ran near the cottage, and by it she would go and sit for hours
dabbling her feet in the water, and singing sweet little songs to
herself.

[Illustration]

Still, in all other ways she was a good, affectionate girl, and did all
that her mother told her, and seemed to love both her parents tenderly,
and the shepherd’s wife would say to herself, “My only trouble is that
when she is grown up, she will want to marry, and leave me, and I shall
have to do without her.” Time passed, and the old shepherd died, but
his wife and daughter still lived on in the little cottage, and the
daughter grew to be a most beautiful young maiden. Her eyes were clear
light-blue, like the colour of the far-off sea, but it was difficult
to say what was the colour of her hair, save that it was very light,
and hung in heavy masses over her brow and shoulders. Once or twice her
mother felt sorely frightened about her; it was when spring showers
were falling, and the young girl had gone into the little garden in
front of the cottage to let the rain fall upon her head and face, as
she loved to do, in spite of all her mother could say. Then she began
to dance, as she always did when the rain fell, and as she danced the
sun came out while the rain was yet falling. Her mother watched her
from the cottage-window, but while she watched her it seemed to her
as if her daughter was covered with jewels of every colour, clear and
bright; they hung around her in chains, and made her look more like
a king’s daughter than a shepherd’s girl. “Come in, child, come in,”
called the shepherd’s wife, and when the young girl came in the cottage
all traces of the jewels had gone, and when her mother upbraided her
for going out to dance in the rain, she only answered, “It hurts no
one, my mother, and it pleases me, why should you stop me?”

[Illustration]

A little way from the cottage on the mountain-side stood an old castle,
where formerly the Kings of the land used to come and stay, but which
now had not been used for very many years. One day, however, the
shepherd’s wife saw great preparations were being made to beautify and
adorn it, and she knew that the King and his son were coming to stay
there again. Soon after they had arrived, the shepherd’s daughter went
down to the river, as was her wont, and sat on the bank, dipping her
feet in the ripples. Presently there came up a boat, and it was a grand
young man dressed all in velvet and gold who leaned over the side to
fish.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” cried the shepherd’s
daughter, for she was afraid of no one.

“I am the King’s son,” said he, “and I am coming here to fish. Who are
you, and where do you come from, for I have never seen such a beautiful
maiden in my life?” and he looked at her and could scarce speak, so
beautiful did she seem to him.

“It is cruel to take the fishes out of the water,” cried the shepherd’s
daughter, “leave them alone, and come and dance on the bank with me,”
and she went under the shade of a large tree, and began to dance, and
the King’s son watched her, and again he thought so beautiful a maid
there had never been.

[Illustration: “Leave the fishes alone, and come and dance on the bank
with me.”]

Day after day he came down to the river to fish, and day after day he
left the line and tackle to sit and watch the shepherd’s daughter, and
each time found her more enchanting. Once he tried to kiss her hand,
but she sprang from him and left him sitting in his boat alone. At last
a day came when the Prince said to his father, “My father, you want me
to wed so that I may have an heir to the throne, but there is only one
woman that can ever be my wife, and that is the daughter of the poor
woman who lives in the little cottage out yonder.”

At first the old King was very wroth, but he loved his son well, and
knew that nothing would shake him from his word, so he told him that if
he would bring home his bride, he too would rejoice and love her as his
daughter even though she be a beggar-maid. Then the young Prince rode
down to the cottage, and went in and told the shepherd’s wife how he
had seen her daughter, and loved her and wished to make her his wife,
so that she would be Queen of the country.

The shepherd’s wife went nearly wild with joy. “To think that my
daughter should be the Queen,” she said to herself, and when her
daughter came into the cottage she did not know how to contain herself,
but folded her in her arms and kissed her, crying and declaring that
never was woman so blessed.

“Why, what has happened, my mother? and what has pleased you so?” said
her daughter, while still the shepherd’s wife rejoiced and wept for joy.

“It is the King’s son, my girl, the King’s own son, and he has just
been here, and he loves you because you are so beautiful, and he will
marry you and make you Queen of all the land. Was there ever such luck
for a poor woman?”

But the daughter only said, “But I don’t want to marry the King’s son,
mother, or any one. I will never be the wife of any man; I will stay
with you and nurse you when you are old and sick, for I can live in no
house but this cottage, and have no friend but my mother.”

On hearing this the shepherd’s wife became very angry, and told her
daughter that she must be mad, and that she must wait for a day or two,
and she would be only too thankful for the love of the King’s son, and
for the honour he was going to do her in making her his Queen. But
still the daughter shook her head, and said quite quietly, “I will
never be the wife of the King’s son.” The shepherd’s wife did not dare
tell the King’s son what her daughter had said, but told him that he
had better speak to her himself if he wished to make her his wife. Then
when he was again sitting in the boat on the river, and the maiden on
the bank, the King’s son told her how much he loved her, and that he
would share with her all that he had in this world. But the shepherd’s
daughter only shook her head and said, “I will never live at the
palace, and I will never be a Queen.”

The old King had ordered great preparations to be made for the wedding,
which was to take place immediately, and all sorts of fine clothes were
ordered for the shepherd’s daughter, that she might appear properly as
the wife of the Prince, but for the few days just before the wedding,
the rain fell as it had never been known to have fallen; it beat
through the roofs of the cottages, and the river swelled and overflowed
its banks; everyone was frightened, save indeed the shepherd’s
daughter, who went out into the wet and danced as was her wont, letting
the torrents fall upon her head and shoulders.

But the evening before the wedding-day she knelt beside her mother’s
side. “Dear mother,” she said, “let me stop with you and nurse you when
you are old. Do not send me away to the palace to live with the King’s
son.”

Then the mother was very angry, and told her daughter that she was very
ungrateful, and she ought to be thankful that such luck had come in her
way, and who was she, the daughter of a poor shepherd, that she should
object to marrying the King’s son?

All night long the rain fell in torrents, and when next day the
shepherd’s daughter was dressed in all her finery, it was through pools
on the ground that she had to step into the grand carriage which the
King had sent to fetch her, and while the marriage-service was being
read, the priest’s voice could scarcely be heard for the pattering of
the drops upon the roof, and when they went into the castle to the
banquet, the water burst through the doors opened to receive them,
so that the King and the wedding guests had hard ado to keep dry. It
was a grand feast, and the King’s son sat at one end of the table,
and his young wife was beside him dressed in white and gold. All the
courtiers and all the fine guests declared that surely the world had
never contained such a beautiful young woman as their future Queen. But
just when the goblets were filled with wine, to drink to the health of
the bride and bridegroom, there came a cry, “The floods! the floods!”
and the servants ran into the hall, crying out that the waters were
pouring in, and in one moment the rooms were filled with water, and no
one thought of anything but to save themselves. When the hurricane had
subsided, and the waters gone down, they looked around for the Prince’s
wife, who was nowhere to be found. Every one said that she had been
swept away by the torrents, and that she had been drowned in all her
youth and beauty; only the shepherd’s wife wept alone, and remembered
the words of the woman who came to her on the night of the storm: “When
you love aught on earth better than your daughter and her happiness,
she will go from you.”

The King’s son mourned his wife, and for long would not be comforted;
but when many years had passed, he married a beautiful Princess, and
with her lived very happily; only when the rain fell in torrents and
beat against the window-panes it would seem to him as if he heard the
sound of dancing feet, and a voice that called out, “Come and dance
with me, come and dance with me and my brothers and sisters, oh, King’s
son, and feel our drops upon your face.”




[Illustration: THE PLOUGHMAN & THE GNOME]


A YOUNG ploughman was following his plough in a field one morning when
suddenly the horses stopped, and do what he would he could not make
them stir. Then he tried to push the plough himself, but he could
not move it one hair’s-breadth. He stooped down to see what could be
stopping it, when a deep voice cried, “Stop, I am coming up.” The
voice was so loud that the ploughman shook with fear, but though he
looked all around him, he could see no one from whom it could come.
But presently it spoke again (only this time it was a little lower),
and called out, “Have patience, and I shall be up in a moment.” The
ploughman quaked in every limb, and stood quite still, and the voice
began again (but this time it was no louder than most folks’), and it
said—“If you will only not be in such a hurry, I will tell you what I
want. Look in front of your horse’s right foot, and pick me up.”

He bent down and looked on the ground, and there in the earth, just in
front of his horse’s right foot, he saw what he thought was a little
black lizard. He touched it very cautiously, and started back with
surprise when the voice spoke again, and he found it came from this
tiny creature.

“Yes,” it said, “that is quite right. You can pick me up in your hand
if you like, but I think I must grow a little bigger, as I am really
uncomfortably small,” and while he held it on the palm of his hand,
the ploughman saw that it was beginning to grow larger, and it swelled
so fast that in a few seconds it was near a foot high, and he had to
take both hands to hold it. Then he saw that it was not a lizard, but
a little black woman with a face that looked as though it were made of
india-rubber, and ugly little black hands.

“There, that will do,” said the strange little gnome. “That is a nice
useful size. Oh dear, how tiring growing is! I don’t think I’ll be any
bigger just yet. Now be sure you don’t drop me, and handle me very
carefully, for I do not like to be roughly touched. I have not slept
nearly as long as I meant to. I wanted a hundred years’ nap, and it
cannot be more than fifty, but now that I am awake I think I will keep
so for a bit. You seem to be rather a nice civil young man. How would
you like to take me for a lodger?”

“A lodger!” gasped the ploughman. “Why, what should I do with you?”

“I should give no trouble,” said the gnome. “But are there any women in
your house?”

“No,” said the ploughman, “for I have no wife, and I am too poor to
keep a servant.”

“So much the better,” said the gnome. “For though I am a woman myself,
I detest women, and only get on with men.”

“You a woman!” cried the ploughman, and he laughed outright.

“Of course I am a woman,” said the creature. “Come, say quickly, do you
like to have me for a lodger or not? Of course you will have to agree
to my terms.”

“And what are your terms?” asked the ploughman.

“Only this. Whatever comes into the house, you must always give the
best of it to me. I will choose where I shall live for myself, when I
see the house, but of all the food you have, you must save the best and
give it to me. Not much of it, but the very best pieces. As you are
a man I cannot wear your clothes, but you can give me some of their
material, and of everything else that comes into the house of any sort,
tobacco, or carpets, or furniture, I must have some of the best. And at
meals I must always be helped first. If you agree to this, I may stay
with you for a very long time.”

“Oh, oh,” said the ploughman, “and pray what shall I get by it? It
seems to me as if you wanted to get the best of everything and give
nothing in return.”

“On the contrary,” replied the gnome, “I shall give a very great deal.
For as long as I remain in your house, all things will go well with
you. You are a poor man now, but you will soon be a rich one. If you
sow seeds they will give twice as much crop as other people’s. All your
animals will do well, and in a little time, instead of being a poor
ploughman, you will be the richest farmer in the countryside.”

“Well,” quoth the ploughman, “I don’t mind trying. I think it would
rather amuse me to take you to my cottage; but if you don’t keep your
part of the bargain, and I don’t find things are going very well with
me, I warn you I’ll pretty soon turn you out.”

“Agreed,” said the gnome; “but remember, if you fail in your compact
with me, I shall go by myself. Now carry me home and let me choose
where I will live.”

The ploughman carried the odd little figure back to his cottage, gaping
with astonishment; there he put it down on the kitchen-table in the
little kitchen. It looked all round it, and twisted about its little
black head.

“That will do nicely,” it said at last; “there is a little hole in
that corner, down which I can go, and near that hole you must place all
your daintiest bits, and remember that I must always be helped first
at all your meals.” And without a word it leaped from the table, and
scuttled away down a big hole that the rats had made, and was no more
to be seen.

But when in the evening the ploughman came in to eat his meal, before
he began it he took the very best bit of meat and the nicest of the
vegetable, and laid them down near the hole. Then he watched eagerly
to see what would happen, but while he looked there they remained.
Suddenly, however, the door shut with a bang, and he turned his head
for a moment to see what caused it, and when he looked back the food
had disappeared. Every day it was much the same. He put some of the
best food on the table down near the hole, but as long as he watched
there it remained, but when he took his eyes off for a moment it had
disappeared. In the same way when he had new clothes, he took a choice
bit of material and laid it near the hole, and it vanished also. And of
whatever came into the house he took some of the best and did the same
with it.

Meantime things began to improve very much with him. He had only a
little bit of land round his cottage, but this year the vegetables and
fruit he had planted there grew so well that he had a large quantity to
send to market, and he sold them for such good prices, that soon he was
able to get more land and buy his own animals, and in a little while
had a farm of his own, and had grown to be quite a rich man, while all
his neighbours said his luck was extraordinary. Meantime he saw or
heard nothing more of the little black gnome, and except when he put
the food and other thing’s near the hole almost forgot all about her.

Time passed, and the time came when the ploughman began to think he
would like to take a wife; he made up his mind to marry a very pretty
girl in the next village, who was said to be the prettiest girl in all
the neighbourhood. Many of the young men would have liked to marry
her, but the ploughman was a handsome, cheery young fellow, and she
preferred him to all of the others, and so they were married, and she
came home to live at the farm. The evening after their wedding they had
a fine fat fowl for supper, and the ploughman before he helped his
wife cut off the choicest slice from the breast and took it as usual to
the hole.

“Husband,” cried the wife, “have you gone mad that you should give the
best of the food to the rats and the mice?”

“I am not mad at all,” said the ploughman, “but my grandfather loved
nothing in the world so well as rats and mice, and he made me promise
before he died that they should always be well cared for in my house,
and have of the best.”

“Then if you are not mad,” replied the wife, “I think your grandfather
was! It is only the best poison that is good for rats and mice,
and they shall have it soon, now that I am in the house.” But the
ploughman caressed his wife and begged her to let him keep his promise
to his grandfather, and the wife held her peace, not liking to seem
bad-tempered on her wedding-day. After a bit she got used to her
husband putting down little bits of food, as he said, for the rats and
mice, and though she always declared she was going to poison them, she
did not try to do so, as her husband seemed grieved when she talked
about it.

Thus things went on very happily for some months, when the wife began
to think that her clothes were getting very old, and that she must
have some new ones. So she took plenty of money and went into the
neighbouring town, and came home with new dresses, and hats, and
bonnets, and very pretty she looked in them, and her husband was very
much pleased with them. But that evening after his wife was gone
to bed, as the ploughman was finishing his pipe in the kitchen, he
suddenly heard a deep voice from the hole, which called out just as it
had done months before, “Stop, I am coming up.”

For an instant the ploughman quaked with fear, then he saw something no
bigger than a black beetle creeping through the hole, and it came in
front of his chair, and he heard the voice, which was not so loud this
time, say—

“That will do, now I am going to begin to grow a little,” and it began
to grow, and grow, and grow, till it was about eight inches high, and
the ploughman saw it was the little black woman. “There,” she said,
speaking quite quietly, “that is a nice useful size, that will do.
Now I have something to say to you, and you will have to attend very
carefully. I consider that you are breaking your compact. In the first
place, you married without asking my leave, and, as I told you, I don’t
like women in the house, but I will say nothing about that, as we had
not spoken about it before, but how can you explain about all the fine
clothes that your wife fetched home to-day? She has taken them to her
room and not given one to me!”

“Nay,” cried the ploughman, “they are my wife’s clothes, not mine.”

“Nonsense,” said the gnome, “you gave her the money for them. Now
understand that whatever she buys for herself in the future, she must
buy the same for me. Two of everything: dresses, hats, gloves, whatever
she has, I must have too, and be sure that mine are quite as good as
hers.”

“But how am I to manage that?” cried the ploughman; “how can I explain
it to her without telling her that you are there?”

“That is your business,” said the gnome. “All I say is that I must
have the things if I am to remain in your house. You can tell her what
you please. So now you know, and see that you do as I tell you,” and
suddenly the little figure shrunk up till it was about the size of a
black beetle, and then disappeared down the hole without another word.

The ploughman rubbed his head, and wondered what he could do. He did
not at all want to tell his wife about the little gnome, for he was
sure she would not like it, but at the same time he did not want the
gnome to leave his house and take away his luck.

A few days after, his wife told him she was going to the shoemaker’s
to buy herself some smart new shoes, and the ploughman thought of the
gnome, and knew he must do as she had told him. So he said to his wife,
“Wife, when you get those shoes for yourself, I wish you would get a
pair just like them for my cousin who has written to me to ask me for a
present. I should like to send her some nice boots and shoes as she is
very poor, so I shall be very much obliged if you will get two pairs of
whatever you may get for yourself that I may send her one.”

The wife wondered very much, for she did not know the ploughman had any
cousin; however, she went into the town, and brought home two pairs of
smart red shoes with bows on the top.

When she had gone to bed at night, the ploughman took one pair and
laid it by the hole in the same place where he had put the food, and
it disappeared just as the food did without his seeing where it went.
“Now,” thought he, “when she sees I am quite honest, perhaps the ugly
little gnome will be content, and let us go on in peace.”

So time went on, and the ploughman and his wife lived very happily
and quietly, till one evening a pedlar came round with a tray holding
all sorts of pretty things to sell. The ploughman’s wife went to the
door, and looked at the things: then she bought a pretty comb for her
hair, but she would not show it to her husband, as she meant to wear it
before him as a surprise next day.

But that evening after his wife had gone to bed, as the ploughman
sat finishing his pipe by the fire, he heard the voice from the hole
calling as loudly as ever, “Stop! I am coming up.” Again the ploughman
quaked with fear, and then he saw coming through the hole something no
bigger than a black beetle, and again the voice said in a lower tone,
“Now I will begin to grow a little,” and presently the tiny black
thing had swelled into the ugly little black woman with the face like
india-rubber.

“Listen to me,” she said, “and know that I am beginning to feel very
angry. You are beginning to cheat me. To-day your wife bought herself
a brand-new comb from a pedlar at the door, and never got one for me.
To-morrow evening I must have that comb. I don’t care how you get it,
but have it I must.”

The ploughman scratched his head and was sore perplexed. “What on earth
am I to do?” he cried, “for my wife will think me very cruel if I take
away all the pretty little things she buys for herself.”

“I can’t help that,” answered the gnome. “I have got to have that comb
by this time to-morrow night, and I warn you if you begin to deceive
me, just as if I were an ordinary human being, I shall pretty soon take
myself off,” and with that the gnome disappeared through the hole in an
instant.

Next morning at breakfast the wife came down with the new comb in her
hair, and said to her husband, “See, husband, I bought this of the
pedlar yesterday, and he tells me they are quite the newest fashion,
and all the great ladies in town are wearing them.”

“Well,” quoth the ploughman, “such a fashion may be all very well for
the great ladies who have scarce any hair of their own, but, for my own
part, I had rather see your beautiful hair just as it is without any
adornment.”

At this the wife pouted, and was very cross. “’Tis too bad of you
to say that. I thought you would like your wife to wear all the new
fashions, and be smart like other folks.”

“Nay,” cried the ploughman, “my wife is much prettier than other folks,
and she looks prettiest of all when she has little to adorn her. If any
of these great ladies had hair like yours you may be sure they would
pretty soon throw away any combs or caps or pins, so that nothing but
their hair should be seen.”

When her husband was gone, the wife went to her glass and looked at
herself, and took out the comb and then put it in, and tried it every
way. “’Tis true, for sure,” said she, “my hair is very beautiful, and
maybe it looks best done up as I used to wear it, still it seems a pity
not to use the comb when I have bought it.” So when her husband came
back, she said to him, “I believe you are right, husband, and it suits
me better not to have anything in my hair, but maybe if you are wanting
to send a present to that cousin of yours, you would like to send her
that comb. It would save buying anything fresh.”

On this the ploughman laughed to himself, but he thanked his wife very
much and put the comb in his pocket. In the evening after the wife had
gone to bed, the ploughman took it, and put it down by the hole, and
then went on smoking his pipe without waiting to see if it disappeared.
But in a few minutes he heard the voice crying, “Stop! I am coming up,”
and saw again the gnome come through the hole and then begin to grow as
before. “Now this is too bad,” cried the ploughman. “What can you want
now? Here I have just given you the comb you wanted, and nothing else
new has come into the house.” “On the contrary,” answered the gnome, “I
consider that you have brought a great many new things into the house
since I came to live here, and I mean now to have my choice of some of
them, since I do not find that you are honest enough to offer them to
me. To begin with, I want your wife’s hair. I have been trying mine
with that comb, and I find I can’t make it do at all, and so I mean to
have your wife’s.”

“My wife’s!” gasped the ploughman. “You must be mad!”

“Mad or not mad,” replied the gnome, “I mean to have it, and, moreover,
it is my due. You married without consulting me, and if I kept you to
your bargain, I should have a great deal that I have not got. Certainly
your wife has the best head of hair in the house, so you must cut it
off near her head and bring it all to me.”

“But whatever shall I say to my wife?” cried the ploughman in distress.

“That is your look-out, not mine,” said the gnome. “Anyhow you have got
to give it to me. But as the thought of it seems to annoy you I will
give you a week to get it in.”

The ploughman sat and thought and thought, and very sad did he feel
at thinking of all his wife’s beautiful hair being given away to the
little gnome.

Next day he took his horse and cart, and told his wife he had to go for
a long drive on business to a big town, a long way off. It was quite
the biggest town in that neighbourhood, and many very fine people
lived there. At first the wife wanted to go too, but her husband said
it was too far and she would be too tired, as he could not be back till
very late at night.

Next morning, when they sat at breakfast, he told his wife all he had
heard and seen in the big town, and then he added, “And all the very
fine ladies there have now the funniest fashion.”

“And what is that?” asked his wife; “pray tell me, for I love to hear
the new fashions.”

“Why,” said the ploughman, “’tis with their hair. Instead of wearing it
long, they have it cut quite close all round their heads, because they
say it looks smarter now.”

“Well, I do call that a silly fashion,” said the wife; “they can’t have
had much hair to consent to have had it cut off.”

“No, indeed,” said her husband, “and yet with some of them, they look
very smart and pretty with their little curly heads.”

“Much like boys, I should think,” said the wife scornfully.

“No, not quite that, either,” said the ploughman, “more like the
pictures of angels in the old churches, and they say it is the great
thing for it to curl up all round the head, and when it does that of
itself, they are very proud of it.”

“Well, then, some of them might be very proud of mine,” said the wife,
“for it’s as curly as may be, and if I were to cut it short would be
all in tiny curls.”

When her husband had gone to his work, the ploughman’s wife could do
nothing but think of the strange new fashion of which her husband had
told her. “I wonder how it would suit me,” she thought, and when he
came in to dinner she said to him—

“Husband, is it really true that all those fine ladies looked very
pretty and smart with their hair short?”

“Ay, that they did,” he said; “I was quite surprised to see them, and
I heard they said ’twas a wonderful saving of trouble, and that their
hair could never grow untidy.”

“That is true,” said the wife, “yet I should be sorry to cut mine off.”

[Illustration: “I wonder how it would look?” and she snipped off a big
bit.]

“No need that you should,” said the ploughman, “and there are not many
folks up here to see if we are in the fashion or not. All the same,
you are sure to look prettier than the town ladies any way, whichever
way your hair is done, for your face is prettier.”

But when her husband had gone away again the wife went to her glass
with the scissors in her hand. “As my husband says,” she quoth, “it
would be a wonderful saving of trouble, and then it would be very nice
to let all the women round see that I could be in the fashion before
they. I wonder how it would look?” and she snipped off a big bit. “Here
goes,” she cried; “after all ’tis best to follow the fashions, whatever
they are,” and she went on cutting till, when her husband came in, he
found her with her hair all cut off beside her.

“There, husband,” cried she, “do I look like the smart ladies in town?”

“Ay, that you do,” he answered, “only ten times prettier; but as for
all that beautiful hair, you must just give it to me, for it is so
beautiful I would not let it be lost for anything,” and he took up all
the heap of fine gold hair and tied it together with a bright ribbon.

The wife looked at herself in the glass, and thought she really looked
very nice with little curls all round her head, and though the
ploughman grieved over it in his heart, yet he was glad he had got her
hair, and thought, “Now at last that miserable little gnome will be
content, and leave me alone.” So that evening, when his wife was gone
to bed, he took the bunch of hair and laid it near the hole, and it
disappeared, and he knew the gnome had it.

So for a time all went on quietly with the ploughman, and he hoped he
should not hear more of the gnome, but one evening, after his wife had
gone to bed and he was in the kitchen smoking his pipe alone, he heard
the hated voice shouting, “Stop! I am coming up,” and then he saw the
little black thing like a black beetle coming through the hole, and all
happened just as before.

“Well, what do you want now?” cried the ploughman when he saw the ugly
little woman in front of him. “I have given you my wife’s hair, and
surely you ought to be content.”

“Not at all,” said the gnome, “for I have tried on her hair, and I find
it does not suit my complexion. I have never seen her myself, and I
don’t think you any judge, but I heard you telling her that her face
was prettier than any of the town ladies. In that case you have no
right to keep it for yourself. I must have your wife’s face.”

“My wife’s face!” screamed the ploughman, “I think you must be mad. How
can I give you my wife’s face? And what would you do with it?”

“Wear it,” answered the gnome; “and all you have to do is to fetch your
wife in here this day week, and tell her what I wish; and I will come
up and scrape off as much of her face as I want.”

“Why, it would kill her,” cried the ploughman.

“Not at all,” said the gnome, “neither would it hurt her, for she would
scarcely feel my little knife; the only thing is, that when I have
done, her skin will be rather black and shrivelled like my own, but as
mine has been good enough for me all these years, it will surely be
good enough for a common human woman. Anyhow, now you know. I must have
your wife’s complexion to wear with her hair, or else I go at once. And
as it will be you who have broken the compact, I shall take all your
wealth with me.” And repeating in a deep voice, “Remember, this day
week at twelve o’clock,” the gnome grew small, and disappeared through
the hole.

Next day the ploughman was very miserable, and whenever he looked at
his wife felt inclined to burst into tears. The wife, not knowing what
was amiss, tried to cheer him, and asked if he were ill. But he shook
his head, and told her “no,” and had not the courage to tell her the
truth. Thus things went on, the ploughman growing sadder and sadder
every day, till the evening before that on which the gnome had told him
he must bring his wife to meet her. The ploughman was scarce able to
check his sobs before his wife, and at last she came into the kitchen,
and there found him crying outright.

When she saw this, she kneeled down by him, and said, “Husband, you
surely do not think me a good wife, for a good wife shares all her
husband’s troubles. Tell me what troubles you. Two heads are better
than one, and perhaps I can help you.”

Then the ploughman told her all about the hated gnome, and how he had
found it in a field, and how he had promised to give it some of the
best of everything, and now how it wanted her face.

At first the wife would scarcely believe it, and then she cried, “But
if ’tis such a little creature why not pick it up and strangle it, or
let me put my foot on it, while it is no bigger than a black beetle.”

“Nay, do not think of such a thing,” said her husband, “for it is ill
to play tricks with fairy folk, and most likely she would kill us
outright.”

“But part with my face I never will,” cried the wife.

“Then we will let her go and take with her the house and all our
wealth, and be contented to live in my old cottage again, and be quite
poor folk,” said her husband.

On hearing this the wife burst into tears, and wept more bitterly than
her husband, for she would not stop at all. It was in vain for him to
try to cheer her and tell her that poor folk could be quite as happy
as rich ones. She declared she could never be happy poor. Then when
he said if she would let her face go, he would love her just as much
or more without it, she cried that she could never be happy with a
dreadful shrivelled black skin like a monkey’s. All that night she
cried, and when morning came her skin was all red, and her eyes could
scarce be seen, so swelled were their lids, but still she cried on all
day, and her husband said nothing to comfort her, because he did not
know what to say. By the time it grew dark, her face was so swelled and
sore that she could not bear to touch it, and she had cried herself
almost blind, but still the tears were rolling down. When the time came
for the clock to strike twelve, her husband took her hand and led her
to the kitchen, and there she sat with her face in her hands sobbing.
Just as the clock struck, they heard the voice like thunder shouting,
“Stop! I am coming up,” and the wife peeped between her fingers and
saw the little thing no bigger than a black beetle come through the
hole and then grow, and grow, and grow, till it was like an ugly little
black woman near a foot high. And when she saw how hideous it was she
thought, “Never, never will I consent to have a skin like that—not for
millions of pounds.”

The gnome did not speak to her, but said to the ploughman, “So you have
brought your wife. That is a good thing, if you wish me to remain with
you. So now tell her to take down her hands and let me see this face
you make such a fuss about. I have my knife all ready.”

And the ploughman saw that she had in her hand a tiny knife, which did
not look as if it could hurt any one.

“Wife, wife,” groaned the ploughman, “what shall we do?”

Then the wife looked up out of her swollen eyes, and was just going to
speak, when the gnome gave a shriek. “What?” she cried, “that face! Do
you mean to say that is what you think so pretty, and that I am going
to change my beautiful, dry, black skin for that swollen red mass? No,
indeed. You must be mad. It is a good thing that I saw it in time. I
shall leave the house at once.”

“Nay,” cried the ploughman, “but it is you who are breaking your
compact this time.”

But the gnome made no reply, but scuttled down through the hole as fast
as it could, and the ploughman and his wife burst out laughing for joy.
And that was the last they ever saw of it, and it must have gone right
away, but they knew it had left some of its luck behind it, as they
both lived happily for the rest of their days.


THE END


_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay._




Books for the Young


 SYLVIA IN FLOWERLAND. By LINDA GARDINER. With Sixteen Illustrations by
 HERBERT E. BUTLER. 3_s._ 6_d._

“A charming fantasy.... We have never observed a more dexterous
administration of the facts of science in the guise of
romance.”—_World._

“A charming book.”—_Guardian._

“The illustrations are particularly good.”—_Spectator._

 LILY AND THE LIFT, and other Fairy Stories. By Mrs. HERBERT RAILTON.
 With Illustrations by the Author. Cloth, gilt edges, 3_s._ 6_d._

“Altogether a charming book for children.”—_Pall Mall Gazette._

“The illustrations are very dainty.”—_Queen._

 THE LIFE OF AN ELEPHANT. With Twenty-four Illustrations. 3_s._ 6_d._

“Beautifully illustrated ... full of humour and pathos.”—_Christian
World._

 THE LIFE OF A BEAR. His Birth, Education, and Adventures. With
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“Narrated with great skill, and whilst abounding in many quaint touches
of humour, conveys incidentally, without being too didactic, many
useful lessons.”—_School Guardian._

 AMONG THE STARS; or, Wonderful Things in the Sky. By AGNES GIBERNE.
 With Coloured Illustrations. Sixth Thousand. 5_s._

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 THE STARRY SKIES. First Lessons on the Sun, Moon and Stars. By AGNES
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“Nothing could be more attractive than the method of these excellent
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Historical Stories


_BY THE REV. A. J. CHURCH_

 HELMET AND SPEAR. Stories from the Wars of the Greeks and Romans. With
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 HEROES OF CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE. With Eight Coloured Illustrations by
 G. MORROW. Cloth, 5_s._

“Couched in vigorous language, and as exciting and interesting as it
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 WITH THE KING AT OXFORD: A Story of the Great Rebellion. With Coloured
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“Excellent sketches of the times.”—_Athenæum._

 THE COUNT OF THE SAXON SHORE: A Tale of the Departure of the Romans
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“A good stirring tale.”—_Daily News._

 TO THE LIONS: A Tale of the Early Christians. Cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._

“The picture of the life of the early Christians is drawn with
admirable simplicity and distinctness.”—_Guardian._

 THREE GREEK CHILDREN: A Story of Home in Old Time. With Illustrations.
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“A very fascinating little book.”—_Spectator._

 THE STORY OF THE LAST DAYS OF JERUSALEM FROM JOSEPHUS. With Coloured
 Illustrations. Cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._

       *       *       *       *       *

 THE DRAGON OF THE NORTH: A Tale of the Normans in Italy. By E. J.
 OSWALD. With Illustrations. Cloth, 5_s._

“There is fun and adventure enough in it to suit the youngsters, while
it is thoroughly wholesome in every way.”—_Saturday Review._

 IN HIS NAME: A Story of the Waldenses seven hundred years ago. By E.
 E. HALE. With many Illustrations by G. P. JACOMB HOOD. Cloth, gilt
 edges, 6_s._

“Charmingly written, and full of life and character.... It is difficult
to praise this work too highly.”—_Standard._




Historical Stories


 THE ISLAND OF THE ENGLISH: A Story of Napoleon’s Days. By FRANK
 COWPER, Author of “Caedwalla,” etc. With Illustrations by GEORGE
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LONDON: SEELEY & CO. LTD., 38 GREAT RUSSELL ST.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

 1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical
    errors.

 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.



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