The cart rattled away. Joe and the crate blundered out of hearing, and Quentin looked cautiously round the water-butt.

This was an adventure. But he was cooler now than he had been at starting—his hot anger had died down. He would have been contented, he could not help feeling, with a less adventurous adventure.

But he was in for it now. He felt, as I suppose people feel when they jump off cliffs with parachutes, that return was impossible.

Hastily turning his school cap inside out—the only disguise he could think of, he emerged from the water-butt seclusion and into the street, trying to look as if there was no reason why he should not be there. He did not know the village. It was not Lyndhurst. And of course asking the way was not to be thought of.

There was a piece of sacking lying on the road; it must have dropped from the carrier's cart. He picked it up and put it over his shoulders.

'A deeper disguise,' he said, and walked on.

He walked steadily for a long, long way as it seemed, and the world got darker and darker. But he kept on. Surely he must presently come to some village, or some signpost.

Anyhow, whatever happened, he could not go back. That was the one certain thing. The broad stretches of country to right and left held no shapes of houses, no glimmer of warm candle-light; they were bare and bleak, only broken by circles of trees that stood out like black islands in the misty grey of the twilight.

'I shall have to sleep behind a hedge,' he said bravely enough; but there did not seem to be any hedges. And then, quite suddenly, he came upon it.

A scattered building, half transparent as it seemed, showing black against the last faint pink and primrose of the sunset. He stopped, took a few steps off the road on short, crisp turf that rose in a gentle slope. And at the end of a dozen paces he knew it. Stonehenge! Stonehenge he had always wanted so desperately to see. Well, he saw it now, more or less.

He stopped to think. He knew that Stonehenge stands all alone on Salisbury Plain. He was very tired. His mother had told him about a girl in a book who slept all night on the altar stone at Stonehenge. So it was a thing that people did—to sleep there. He was not afraid, as you or I might have been—of that lonely desolate ruin of a temple of long ago. He was used to the forest, and, compared with the forest, any building is homelike.

There was just enough light left amid the stones of the wonderful broken circle to guide him to its centre. As he went his hand brushed a plant; he caught at it, and a little group of flowers came away in his hand.

'St. John's wort,' he said, 'that's the magic flower.' And he remembered that it is only magic when you pluck it on Midsummer Eve.

'And this is Midsummer Eve,' he told himself, and put it in his buttonhole.

'I don't know where the altar stone is,' he said, 'but that looks a cosy little crack between those two big stones.'

He crept into it, and lay down on a flat stone that stretched between and under two fallen pillars.

The night was soft and warm; it was Midsummer Eve.

'Mother isn't going till the twenty-sixth,' he told himself. 'I sha'n't bother about hotels. I shall send her a telegram in the morning, and get a carriage at the nearest stables and go straight back to her. No, she won't be angry when she hears all about it. I'll ask her to let me go to sea instead of to school. It's much more manly. Much more manly ... much much more, much.'

He was asleep. And the wild west wind that swept across the plain spared the little corner where he lay asleep, curled up in his sacking with the inside-out school cap, doubled twice, for pillow.

He fell asleep on the smooth, solid, steady stone.

He awoke on the stone in a world that rocked as sea-boats rock on a choppy sea.

He went to sleep between fallen moveless pillars of a ruin older than any world that history knows.

He awoke in the shade of a purple awning through which strong sunlight filtered, and purple curtains that flapped and strained in the wind; and there was a smell, a sweet familiar smell, of tarred ropes and the sea.

'I say,' said Quentin to himself, 'here's a rum go.'

He had learned that expression in a school in Salisbury, a long time ago as it seemed.

The stone on which he lay dipped and rose to a rhythm which he knew well enough. He had felt it when he and his mother went in a little boat from Keyhaven to Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight. There was no doubt in his mind. He was on a ship. But how, but why? Who could have carried him all that way without waking him? Was it magic? Accidental magic? The St. John's wort perhaps? And the stone—it was not the same. It was new, clean cut, and, where the wind displaced a corner of the curtain, dazzlingly white in the sunlight.

There was the pat pat of bare feet on the deck, a dull sort of shuffling as though people were arranging themselves. And then people outside the awning began to sing. It was a strange song, not at all like any music you or I have ever heard. It had no tune, no more tune than a drum has, or a trumpet, but it had a sort of wild rough glorious exciting splendour about it, and gave you the sort of intense all-alive feeling that drums and trumpets give.

Quentin lifted a corner of the purple curtain and looked out.

Instantly the song stopped, drowned in the deepest silence Quentin had ever imagined. It was only broken by the flip-flapping of the sheets against the masts of the ship. For it was a ship, Quentin saw that as the bulwark dipped to show him an unending waste of sea, broken by bigger waves than he had ever dreamed of. He saw also a crowd of men, dressed in white and blue and purple and gold. Their right arms were raised towards the sun, half of whose face showed across the sea—but they seemed to be, as my old nurse used to say, 'struck so,' for their eyes were not fixed on the sun, but on Quentin. And not in anger, he noticed curiously, but with surprise and ... could it be that they were afraid of him?



Quentin was shivering with the surprise and newness of it all. He had read about magic, but he had not wholly believed in it, and yet, now, if this was not magic, what was it? You go to sleep on an old stone in a ruin. You wake on the same stone, quite new, on a ship. Magic, magic, if ever there was magic in this wonderful, mysterious world!

The silence became awkward. Some one had to say something.

'Good-morning,' said Quentin, feeling that he ought perhaps to be the one.

Instantly every one in sight fell on his face on the deck.

Only one, a tall man with a black beard and a blue mantle, stood up and looked Quentin in the eyes.

'Who are you?' he said. 'Answer, I adjure you by the Sacred Tau!' Now this was very odd, and Quentin could never understand it, but when this man spoke Quentin understood him perfectly, and yet at the same time he knew that the man was speaking a foreign language. So that his thought was not, 'Hullo, you speak English!' but 'Hullo, I can understand your language.'

'I am Quentin de Ward,' he said.

'A name from other stars! How came you here?' asked the blue-mantled man.

'I don't know,' said Quentin.

'He does not know. He did not sail with us. It is by magic that he is here,' said Blue Mantle. 'Rise, all, and greet the Chosen of the Gods.'

They rose from the deck, and Quentin saw that they were all bearded men, with bright, earnest eyes, dressed in strange dress of something like jersey and tunic and heavy golden ornaments.

'Hail! Chosen of the Gods,' cried Blue Mantle, who seemed to be the leader.

'Hail, Chosen of the Gods!' echoed the rest.

'Thank you very much, I'm sure,' said Quentin.

'And what is this stone?' asked Blue Mantle, pointing to the stone on which Quentin sat.

And Quentin, anxious to show off his knowledge, said:

'I'm not quite sure, but I think it's the altar stone of Stonehenge.'

'It is proved,' said Blue Mantle. 'Thou art the Chosen of the Gods. Is there anything my Lord needs?' he added humbly.

'I ... I'm rather hungry,' said Quentin; 'it's a long time since dinner, you know.'

They brought him bread and bananas, and oranges.

'Take,' said Blue Mantle, 'of the fruits of the earth, and specially of this, which gives drink and meat and ointment to man,' suddenly offering a large cocoa-nut.

Quentin took, with appropriate 'Thank you's' and 'You're very kind's.'

'Nothing,' said Blue Mantle, 'is too good for the Chosen of the Gods. All that we have is yours, to the very last day of your life you have only to command, and we obey. You will like to eat in seclusion. And afterwards you will let us behold the whole person of the Chosen of the Gods.'

Quentin retired into the purple tent, with the fruits and the cocoa-nut. As you know, a cocoa-nut is not handy to get at the inside of, at the best of times, so Quentin set that aside, meaning to ask Blue Mantle later on for a gimlet and a hammer.

When he had had enough to eat he peeped out again. Blue Mantle was on the watch and came quickly forward.

'Now,' said he, very crossly indeed, 'tell me how you got here. This Chosen of the Gods business is all very well for the vulgar. But you and I know that there is no such thing as magic.'

'Speak for yourself,' said Quentin. 'If I'm not here by magic I'm not here at all.'

'Yes, you are,' said Blue Mantle.

'I know I am,' said Quentin, 'but if I'm not here by magic what am I here by?'

'Stowawayishness,' said Blue Mantle.

'If you think that why don't you treat me as a stowaway?'

'Because of public opinion,' said Blue Mantle, rubbing his nose in an angry sort of perplexedness.

'Very well,' said Quentin, who was feeling so surprised and bewildered that it was a real relief to him to bully somebody. 'Now look here. I came here by magic, accidental magic. I belong to quite a different world from yours. But perhaps you are right about my being the Chosen of the Gods. And I sha'n't tell you anything about my world. But I command you, by the Sacred Tau' (he had been quick enough to catch and remember the word), 'to tell me who you are, and where you come from, and where you are going.'

Blue Mantle shrugged his shoulders. 'Oh, well,' he said, 'if you invoke the sacred names of Power.... But I don't call it fair play. Especially as you know perfectly well, and just want to browbeat me into telling lies. I shall not tell lies. I shall tell you the truth.'

'I hoped you would,' said Quentin gently.

'Well then,' said Blue Mantle, 'I am a Priest of Poseidon, and I come from the great and immortal kingdom of Atlantis.'

'From the temple where the gold statue is, with the twelve sea-horses in gold?' Quentin asked eagerly.

'Ah, I knew you knew all about it,' said Blue Mantle, 'so I don't need to tell you that I am taking the sacred stone, on which you are sitting (profanely if you are a mere stowaway, and not the Chosen of the Gods) to complete the splendid structure of a temple built on a great plain in the second of the islands which are our colonies in the North East.'

'Tell me all about Atlantis,' said Quentin. And the priest, protesting that Quentin knew as much about it as he did, told.

And all the time the ship was ploughing through the waves, sometimes sailing, sometimes rowed by hidden rowers with long oars. And Quentin was served in all things as though he had been a king. If he had insisted that he was not the Chosen of the Gods everything might have been different. But he did not. And he was very anxious to show how much he knew about Atlantis. And sometimes he was wrong, the Priest said, but much more often he was right.

'We are less than three days' journey now from the Eastern Isles,' Blue Mantle said one day, 'and I warn you that if you are a mere stowaway you had better own it. Because if you persist in calling yourself the Chosen of the Gods you will be expected to act as such—to the very end.'

'I don't call myself anything,' said Quentin, 'though I am not a stowaway, anyhow, and I don't know how I came here—so of course it was magic. It's simply silly your being so cross. I can't help being here. Let's be friends.'

'Well,' said Blue Mantle, much less crossly, 'I never believed in magic, though I am a priest, but if it is, it is. We may as well be friends, as you call it. It isn't for very long, anyway,' he added mysteriously.



And then to show his friendliness he took Quentin all over the ship, and explained it all to him. And Quentin enjoyed himself thoroughly, though every now and then he had to pinch himself to make sure that he was awake. And he was fed well all the time, and all the time made much of, so that when the ship reached land he was quite sorry. The ship anchored by a stone quay, most solid and serviceable, and every one was very busy.

Quentin kept out of sight behind the purple curtains. The sailors and the priests and the priests' attendants and everybody on the boat had asked him so many questions, and been so curious about his clothes, that he was not anxious to hear any more questions asked, or to have to invent answers to them.

And after a very great deal of talk—almost as much as Mr. Miles's carrying had needed—the altar stone was lifted, Quentin, curtains, awning and all, and carried along a gangway to the shore, and there it was put on a sort of cart, more like what people in Manchester call a lurry than anything else I can think of. The wheels were made of solid circles of wood bound round with copper. And the cart was drawn by—not horses or donkeys or oxen or even dogs—but by an enormous creature more like an elephant than anything else, only it had long hair rather like the hair worn by goats.

You, perhaps, would not have known what this vast creature was, but Quentin, who had all sorts of out-of-the-way information packed in his head, knew at once that it was a mammoth.

And by that he knew, too, that he had slipped back many thousands of years, because, of course, it is a very long time indeed since there were any mammoths alive, and able to draw lurries. And the car and the priest and the priest's retinue and the stone and Quentin and the mammoth journeyed slowly away from the coast, passing through great green forests and among strange gray mountains.

Where were they journeying?

Quentin asked the same question you may be sure, and Blue Mantle told him—

'To Stonehenge.' And Quentin understood him perfectly, though Stonehenge was not the word Blue Mantle used, or anything like it.

'The great temple is now complete,' he said, 'all but the altar stone. It will be the most wonderful temple ever built in any of the colonies of Atlantis. And it will be consecrated on the longest day of the year.'

'Midsummer Day,' said Quentin thoughtlessly—and, as usual, anxious to tell all he knew. 'I know. The sun strikes through the arch on to the altar stone at sunrise. Hundreds of people go to see it: the ruins are quite crowded sometimes, I believe.'

'Ruins?' said the priest in a terrible voice. 'Crowded? Ruins?'

'I mean,' said Quentin hastily, 'the sun will still shine the same way even when the temple is in ruins, won't it?'

'The temple,' said the priest, 'is built to defy time. It will never be in ruins.'

'That's all you know,' said Quentin, not very politely.

'It is not by any means all I know,' said the priest. 'I do not tell all I know. Nor do you.'

'I used to,' said Quentin, 'but I sha'n't any more. It only leads to trouble—I see that now.'

Now, though Quentin had been intensely interested in everything he had seen in the ship and on the journey, you may be sure he had not lost sight of the need there was to get back out of this time of Atlantis into his own time. He knew that he must have got into these Atlantean times by some very simple accidental magic, and he felt no doubt that he should get back in the same way. He felt almost sure that the reverse-action, so to speak, of the magic would begin when the stone got back to the place where it had lain for so many thousand years before he happened to go to sleep on it, and to start—perhaps by the St. John's wort—the accidental magic. If only, when he got back there he could think of the compelling, the magic word!

And now the slow procession wound over the downs, and far away across the plain, which was almost just the same then as it is now, Quentin saw what he knew must be Stonehenge. But it was no longer the grey pile of ruins that you have perhaps seen—or have, at any rate, seen pictures of.

From afar one could see the gleam of yellow gold and red copper; the flutter of purple curtains, the glitter and dazzle of shimmering silver.

As they drew near to the spot Quentin perceived that the great stones he remembered were overlaid with ornamental work, with vivid, bright-coloured paintings. The whole thing was a great circular building, every stone in its place. At a mile or two distant lay a town. And in that town, with every possible luxury, served with every circumstance of servile homage, Quentin ate and slept.

I wish I had time to tell you what that town was like where he slept and ate, but I have not. You can read for yourself, some day, what Atlantis was like. Plato tells us a good deal, and the Colonies of Atlantis must have had at least a reasonable second-rate copy of the cities of that fair and lovely land.

That night, for the first time since he had first gone to sleep on the altar stone, Quentin slept apart from it. He lay on a wooden couch strewn with soft bear-skins, and a woollen coverlet was laid over him. And he slept soundly.

In the middle of the night, as it seemed, Blue Mantle woke him.

'Come,' he said, 'Chosen of the Gods—since you will be that, and no stowaway—the hour draws nigh.'

The mammoth was waiting. Quentin and Blue Mantle rode on its back to the outer porch of the new temple of Stonehenge. Rows of priests and attendants, robed in white and blue and purple, formed a sort of avenue up which Blue Mantle led the Chosen of the Gods, who was Quentin. They took off his jacket and put a white dress on him, rather like a night-shirt without sleeves. And they put a thick wreath of London Pride on his head and another, larger and longer, round his neck.

'If only the chaps at school could see me now!' he said to himself proudly.

And by this time it was gray dawn.

'Lie down now,' said Blue Mantle, 'lie down, O Beloved of the Gods, upon the altar stone, for the last time.'

'I shall be able to go, then?' Quentin asked. This accidental magic was, he perceived, a tricky thing, and he wanted to be sure.

'You will not be able to stay,' said the priest. 'If going is what you desire, the desire of the Chosen of the Gods is fully granted.'

The grass on the plain far and near rustled with the tread of many feet; the cold air of dawn thrilled to the awed murmured of many voices.

Quentin lay down, with his pink wreaths and his white robe, and watched the quickening pinkiness of the East. And slowly the great circle of the temple filled with white-robed folk, all carrying in their hands the faint pinkiness of the flowers which we nowadays call London Pride.

And all eyes were fixed on the arch through which, at sunrise on Midsummer Day, the sun's first beam should fall upon the white, new, clean altar stone. The stone is still there, after all these thousands of years, and at sunrise on Midsummer Day the sun's first ray still falls on it.



The sky grew lighter and lighter, and at last the sun peered redly over the down, and the first ray of the morning sunlight fell full on the altar stone and on the face of Quentin.

And, as it did so, a very tall, white-robed priest with a deer-skin apron and a curious winged head-dress stepped forward. He carried a great bronze knife, and he waved it ten times in the shaft of sunlight that shot through the arch and on to the altar stone.

'Thus,' he cried, 'thus do I bathe the sacred blade in the pure fountain of all light, all wisdom, all splendour. In the name of the ten kings, the ten virtues, the ten hopes, the ten fears I make my weapon clean! May this temple of our love and our desire endure for ever, so long as the glory of our Lord the Sun is shed upon this earth. May the sacrifice I now humbly and proudly offer be acceptable to the gods by whom it has been so miraculously provided. Chosen of the Gods! return to the gods who sent thee!'

A roar of voices rang through the temple. The bronze knife was raised over Quentin. He could not believe that this, this horror, was the end of all these wonderful happenings.

'No—no,' he cried, 'it's not true. I'm not the Chosen of the Gods! I'm only a little boy that's got here by accidental magic!'

'Silence,' cried the priest, 'Chosen of the Immortals, close your eyes! It will not hurt. This life is only a dream; the other life is the real life. Be strong, be brave!'

Quentin was not brave. But he shut his eyes. He could not help it. The glitter of the bronze knife in the sunlight was too strong for him.

He could not believe that this could really have happened to him. Every one had been so kind—so friendly to him. And it was all for this!

Suddenly a sharp touch at his side told him that for this, indeed, it had all been. He felt the point of the knife.

'Mother!' he cried. And opened his eyes again.

He always felt quite sure afterwards that 'Mother' was the master-word, the spell of spells. For when he opened his eyes there was no priest, no white-robed worshippers, no splendour of colour and metal, no Chosen of the Gods, no knife—only a little boy with a piece of sacking over him, damp with the night dews, lying on a stone amid the grey ruins of Stonehenge, and, all about him, a crowd of tourists who had come to see the sun's first shaft strike the age-old altar of Stonehenge on Midsummer Day in the morning. And instead of a knife point at his side there was only the ferrule of the umbrella of an elderly and retired tea merchant in a mackintosh and an Alpine hat,—a ferrule which had prodded the sleeping boy so unexpectedly surprised on the very altar stone where the sun's ray now lingered.

And then, in a moment, he knew that he had not uttered the spell in vain, the word of compelling, the word of power: for his mother was there kneeling beside him. I am sorry to say that he cried as he clung to her. We cannot all of us be brave, always.

The tourists were very kind and interested, and the tea merchant insisted on giving Quentin something out of a flask, which was so nasty that Quentin only pretended to drink, out of politeness. His mother had a carriage waiting, and they escaped to it while the tourists were saying, 'How romantic!' and asking each other whatever in the world had happened.

* * * * *

'But how did you come to be there, darling?' said his mother with warm hands comfortingly round him. 'I've been looking for you all night. I went to say good-bye to you yesterday—Oh, Quentin—and I found you'd run away. How could you?'

'I'm sorry,' said Quentin, 'if it worried you, I'm sorry. Very, very. I was going to telegraph to-day.'

'But where have you been? What have you been doing all night?' she asked, caressing him.

'Is it only one night?' said Quentin. 'I don't know exactly what's happened. It was accidental magic, I think, mother. I'm glad I thought of the right word to get back, though.' And then he told her all about it. She held him very tightly and let him talk.

Perhaps she thought that a little boy to whom accidental magic happened all in a minute, like that, was not exactly the right little boy for that excellent school in Salisbury. Anyhow she took him to Egypt with her to meet his father, and, on the way, they happened to see a doctor in London who said: 'Nerves' which is a poor name for accidental magic, and Quentin does not believe it means the same thing at all.

Quentin's father is well now, and he has left the army, and father and mother and Quentin live in a jolly, little, old house in Salisbury, and Quentin is a 'day boy' at that very same school. He and Smithson minor are the greatest of friends. But he has never told Smithson minor about the accidental magic. He has learned now, and learned very thoroughly, that it is not always wise to tell all you know. If he had not owned that he knew that it was the Stonehenge altar stone!

* * * * *

You may think that the accidental magic was all a dream, and that Quentin dreamed it because his mother had told him so much about Atlantis. But then, how do you account for his dreaming so much that his mother had never told him? You think that that part wasn't true, well, it may have been true for anything I know. And I am sure you don't know more about it than I do.



IV

THE PRINCESS AND THE HEDGE-PIG

'But I don't see what we're to do' said the Queen for the twentieth time.

'Whatever we do will end in misfortune,' said the King gloomily; 'you'll see it will.'

They were sitting in the honeysuckle arbour talking things over, while the nurse walked up and down the terrace with the new baby in her arms.

'Yes, dear,' said the poor Queen; 'I've not the slightest doubt I shall.'

Misfortune comes in many ways, and you can't always know beforehand that a certain way is the way misfortune will come by: but there are things misfortune comes after as surely as night comes after day. For instance, if you let all the water boil away, the kettle will have a hole burnt in it. If you leave the bath taps running and the waste-pipe closed, the stairs of your house will, sooner or later, resemble Niagara. If you leave your purse at home, you won't have it with you when you want to pay your tram-fare. And if you throw lighted wax matches at your muslin curtains, your parent will most likely have to pay five pounds to the fire engines for coming round and blowing the fire out with a wet hose. Also if you are a king and do not invite the wicked fairy to your christening parties, she will come all the same. And if you do ask the wicked fairy, she will come, and in either case it will be the worse for the new princess. So what is a poor monarch to do? Of course there is one way out of the difficulty, and that is not to have a christening party at all. But this offends all the good fairies, and then where are you?

All these reflections had presented themselves to the minds of King Ozymandias and his Queen, and neither of them could deny that they were in a most awkward situation. They were 'talking it over' for the hundredth time on the palace terrace where the pomegranates and oleanders grew in green tubs and the marble balustrade is overgrown with roses, red and white and pink and yellow. On the lower terrace the royal nurse was walking up and down with the baby princess that all the fuss was about. The Queen's eyes followed the baby admiringly.

'The darling!' she said. 'Oh, Ozymandias, don't you sometimes wish we'd been poor people?'

'Never!' said the King decidedly.

'Well, I do,' said the Queen; 'then we could have had just you and me and your sister at the christening, and no fear of—oh! I've thought of something.'

The King's patient expression showed that he did not think it likely that she would have thought of anything useful; but at the first five words his expression changed. You would have said that he pricked up his ears, if kings had ears that could be pricked up. What she said was—

'Let's have a secret christening.'

'How?' asked the King.

The Queen was gazing in the direction of the baby with what is called a 'far away look' in her eyes.

'Wait a minute,' she said slowly. 'I see it all—yes—we'll have the party in the cellars—you know they're splendid.'

'My great-grandfather had them built by Lancashire men, yes,' interrupted the King.



'We'll send out the invitations to look like bills. The baker's boy can take them. He's a very nice boy. He made baby laugh yesterday when I was explaining to him about the Standard Bread. We'll just put "1 loaf 3. A remittance at your earliest convenience will oblige." That'll mean that 1 person is invited for 3 o'clock, and on the back we'll write where and why in invisible ink. Lemon juice, you know. And the baker's boy shall be told to ask to see the people—just as they do when they really mean earliest convenience—and then he shall just whisper: "Deadly secret. Lemon juice. Hold it to the fire," and come away. Oh, dearest, do say you approve!'

The King laid down his pipe, set his crown straight, and kissed the Queen with great and serious earnestness.

'You are a wonder,' he said. 'It is the very thing. But the baker's boy is very small. Can we trust him?'

'He is nine,' said the Queen, 'and I have sometimes thought that he must be a prince in disguise. He is so very intelligent.'

The Queen's plan was carried out. The cellars, which were really extraordinarily fine, were secretly decorated by the King's confidential man and the Queen's confidential maid and a few of their confidential friends whom they knew they could really trust. You would never have thought they were cellars when the decorations were finished. The walls were hung with white satin and white velvet, with wreaths of white roses, and the stone floors were covered with freshly cut turf with white daisies, brisk and neat, growing in it.

The invitations were duly delivered by the baker's boy. On them was written in plain blue ink,

'The Royal Bakeries 1 loaf 3d. An early remittance will oblige.'

And when the people held the letter to the fire, as they were whisperingly instructed to do by the baker's boy, they read in a faint brown writing:—

'King Ozymandias and Queen Eliza invite you to the christening of their daughter Princess Ozyliza at three on Wednesday in the Palace cellars.

'P.S.—We are obliged to be very secret and careful because of wicked fairies, so please come disguised as a tradesman with a bill, calling for the last time before it leaves your hands.'

You will understand by this that the King and Queen were not as well off as they could wish; so that tradesmen calling at the palace with that sort of message was the last thing likely to excite remark. But as most of the King's subjects were not very well off either, this was merely a bond between the King and his people. They could sympathise with each other, and understand each other's troubles in a way impossible to most kings and most nations.

You can imagine the excitement in the families of the people who were invited to the christening party, and the interest they felt in their costumes. The Lord Chief Justice disguised himself as a shoemaker; he still had his old blue brief-bag by him, and a brief-bag and a boot-bag are very much alike. The Commander-in-Chief dressed as a dog's meat man and wheeled a barrow. The Prime Minister appeared as a tailor; this required no change of dress and only a slight change of expression. And the other courtiers all disguised themselves perfectly. So did the good fairies, who had, of course, been invited first of all. Benevola, Queen of the Good Fairies, disguised herself as a moonbeam, which can go into any palace and no questions asked. Serena, the next in command, dressed as a butterfly, and all the other fairies had disguises equally pretty and tasteful.

The Queen looked most kind and beautiful, the King very handsome and manly, and all the guests agreed that the new princess was the most beautiful baby they had ever seen in all their born days.

Everybody brought the most charming christening presents concealed beneath their disguises. The fairies gave the usual gifts, beauty, grace, intelligence, charm, and so on.

Everything seemed to be going better than well. But of course you know it wasn't. The Lord High Admiral had not been able to get a cook's dress large enough completely to cover his uniform; a bit of an epaulette had peeped out, and the wicked fairy, Malevola, had spotted it as he went past her to the palace back door, near which she had been sitting disguised as a dog without a collar hiding from the police, and enjoying what she took to be the trouble the royal household were having with their tradesmen.

Malevola almost jumped out of her dog-skin when she saw the glitter of that epaulette.

'Hullo?' she said, and sniffed quite like a dog. 'I must look into this,' said she, and disguising herself as a toad, she crept unseen into the pipe by which the copper emptied itself into the palace moat—for of course there was a copper in one of the palace cellars as there always is in cellars in the North Country.

Now this copper had been a great trial to the decorators. If there is anything you don't like about your house, you can either try to conceal it or 'make a feature of it.' And as concealment of the copper was impossible, it was decided to 'make it a feature' by covering it with green moss and planting a tree in it, a little apple tree all in bloom. It had been very much admired.

Malevola, hastily altering her disguise to that of a mole, dug her way through the earth that the copper was full of, got to the top and put out a sharp nose just as Benevola was saying in that soft voice which Malevola always thought so affected,—

'The Princess shall love and be loved all her life long.'

'So she shall,' said the wicked fairy, assuming her own shape amid the screams of the audience. 'Be quiet, you silly cuckoo,' she said to the Lord Chamberlain, whose screams were specially piercing, 'or I'll give you a christening present too.'

Instantly there was a dreadful silence. Only Queen Eliza, who had caught up the baby at Malevola's first word, said feebly,—

'Oh, don't, dear Malevola.'

And the King said, 'It isn't exactly a party, don't you know. Quite informal. Just a few friends dropped in, eh, what?'

'So I perceive,' said Malevola, laughing that dreadful laugh of hers which makes other people feel as though they would never be able to laugh any more. 'Well, I've dropped in too. Let's have a look at the child.'

The poor Queen dared not refuse. She tottered forward with the baby in her arms.

'Humph!' said Malevola, 'your precious daughter will have beauty and grace and all the rest of the tuppenny halfpenny rubbish those niminy-piminy minxes have given her. But she will be turned out of her kingdom. She will have to face her enemies without a single human being to stand by her, and she shall never come to her own again until she finds——' Malevola hesitated. She could not think of anything sufficiently unlikely—'until she finds,' she repeated——

'A thousand spears to follow her to battle,' said a new voice, 'a thousand spears devoted to her and to her alone.'

A very young fairy fluttered down from the little apple tree where she had been hiding among the pink and white blossom.

'I am very young, I know,' she said apologetically, 'and I've only just finished my last course of Fairy History. So I know that if a fairy stops more than half a second in a curse she can't go on, and some one else may finish it for her. That is so, Your Majesty, isn't it?' she said, appealing to Benevola. And the Queen of the Fairies said Yes, that was the law, only it was such an old one most people had forgotten it.

'You think yourself very clever,' said Malevola, 'but as a matter of fact you're simply silly. That's the very thing I've provided against. She can't have any one to stand by her in battle, so she'll lose her kingdom and every one will be killed, and I shall come to the funeral. It will be enormous,' she added rubbing her hands at the joyous thought.

'If you've quite finished,' said the King politely, 'and if you're sure you won't take any refreshment, may I wish you a very good afternoon?' He held the door open himself, and Malevola went out chuckling. The whole of the party then burst into tears.

'Never mind,' said the King at last, wiping his eyes with the tails of his ermine. 'It's a long way off and perhaps it won't happen after all.'

* * * * *

But of course it did.

The King did what he could to prepare his daughter for the fight in which she was to stand alone against her enemies. He had her taught fencing and riding and shooting, both with the cross bow and the long bow, as well as with pistols, rifles, and artillery. She learned to dive and to swim, to run and to jump, to box and to wrestle, so that she grew up as strong and healthy as any young man, and could, indeed, have got the best of a fight with any prince of her own age. But the few princes who called at the palace did not come to fight the Princess, and when they heard that the Princess had no dowry except the gifts of the fairies, and also what Malevola's gift had been, they all said they had just looked in as they were passing and that they must be going now, thank you. And went.

And then the dreadful thing happened. The tradesmen, who had for years been calling for the last time before, etc., really decided to place the matter in other hands. They called in a neighbouring king who marched his army into Ozymandias's country, conquered the army—the soldiers' wages hadn't been paid for years—turned out the King and Queen, paid the tradesmen's bills, had most of the palace walls papered with the receipts, and set up housekeeping there himself.

Now when this happened the Princess was away on a visit to her aunt, the Empress of Oricalchia, half the world away, and there is no regular post between the two countries, so that when she came home, travelling with a train of fifty-four camels, which is rather slow work, and arrived at her own kingdom, she expected to find all the flags flying and the bells ringing and the streets decked in roses to welcome her home.

Instead of which nothing of the kind. The streets were all as dull as dull, the shops were closed because it was early-closing day, and she did not see a single person she knew.

She left the fifty-four camels laden with the presents her aunt had given her outside the gates, and rode alone on her own pet camel to the palace, wondering whether perhaps her father had not received the letter she had sent on ahead by carrier pigeon the day before.

And when she got to the palace and got off her camel and went in, there was a strange king on her father's throne and a strange queen sat in her mother's place at his side.

'Where's my father?' said the Princess, bold as brass, standing on the steps of the throne. 'And what are you doing there?'

'I might ask you that,' said the King. 'Who are you, anyway?'

'I am the Princess Ozyliza,' said she.

'Oh, I've heard of you,' said the King. 'You've been expected for some time. Your father's been evicted, so now you know. No, I can't give you his address.'

Just then some one came and whispered to the Queen that fifty-four camels laden with silks and velvets and monkeys and parakeets and the richest treasures of Oricalchia were outside the city gate. She put two and two together, and whispered to the King, who nodded and said:

'I wish to make a new law.'

Every one fell flat on his face. The law is so much respected in that country.

'No one called Ozyliza is allowed to own property in this kingdom,' said the King. 'Turn out that stranger.'

So the Princess was turned out of her father's palace, and went out and cried in the palace gardens where she had been so happy when she was little.

And the baker's boy, who was now the baker's young man, came by with the standard bread and saw some one crying among the oleanders, and went to say, 'Cheer up!' to whoever it was. And it was the Princess. He knew her at once.

'Oh, Princess,' he said, 'cheer up! Nothing is ever so bad as it seems.'

'Oh, Baker's Boy,' said she, for she knew him too, 'how can I cheer up? I am turned out of my kingdom. I haven't got my father's address, and I have to face my enemies without a single human being to stand by me.'



'That's not true, at any rate,' said the baker's boy, whose name was Erinaceus, 'you've got me. If you'll let me be your squire, I'll follow you round the world and help you to fight your enemies.'

'You won't be let,' said the Princess sadly, 'but I thank you very much all the same.'

She dried her eyes and stood up.

'I must go,' she said, 'and I've nowhere to go to.'

Now as soon as the Princess had been turned out of the palace, the Queen said, 'You'd much better have beheaded her for treason.' And the King said, 'I'll tell the archers to pick her off as she leaves the grounds.'

So when she stood up, out there among the oleanders, some one on the terrace cried, 'There she is!' and instantly a flight of winged arrows crossed the garden. At the cry Erinaceus flung himself in front of her, clasping her in his arms and turning his back to the arrows. The Royal Archers were a thousand strong and all excellent shots. Erinaceus felt a thousand arrows sticking into his back.

'And now my last friend is dead,' cried the Princess. But being a very strong princess, she dragged him into the shrubbery out of sight of the palace, and then dragged him into the wood and called aloud on Benevola, Queen of the Fairies, and Benevola came.

'They've killed my only friend,' said the Princess, 'at least.... Shall I pull out the arrows?'

'If you do,' said the Fairy, 'he'll certainly bleed to death.'

'And he'll die if they stay in,' said the Princess.

'Not necessarily,' said the Fairy; 'let me cut them a little shorter.' She did, with her fairy pocket-knife. 'Now,' she said, 'I'll do what I can, but I'm afraid it'll be a disappointment to you both. Erinaceus,' she went on, addressing the unconscious baker's boy with the stumps of the arrows still sticking in him, 'I command you, as soon as I have vanished, to assume the form of a hedge-pig. The hedge-pig,' she exclaimed to the Princess, 'is the only nice person who can live comfortably with a thousand spikes sticking out of him. Yes, I know there are porcupines, but porcupines are vicious and ill-mannered. Good-bye!'

And with that she vanished. So did Erinaceus, and the Princess found herself alone among the oleanders; and on the green turf was a small and very prickly brown hedge-pig.

'Oh, dear!' she said, 'now I'm all alone again, and the baker's boy has given his life for mine, and mine isn't worth having.'

'It's worth more than all the world,' said a sharp little voice at her feet.

'Oh, can you talk?' she said, quite cheered.

'Why not?' said the hedge-pig sturdily; 'it's only the form of the hedge-pig I've assumed. I'm Erinaceus inside, all right enough. Pick me up in a corner of your mantle so as not to prick your darling hands.'

'You mustn't call names, you know,' said the Princess, 'even your hedge-pigginess can't excuse such liberties.'

'I'm sorry, Princess,' said the hedge-pig, 'but I can't help it. Only human beings speak lies; all other creatures tell the truth. Now I've got a hedge-pig's tongue it won't speak anything but the truth. And the truth is that I love you more than all the world.'

'Well,' said the Princess thoughtfully, 'since you're a hedge-pig I suppose you may love me, and I may love you. Like pet dogs or gold-fish. Dear little hedge-pig, then!'

'Don't!' said the hedge-pig, 'remember I'm the baker's boy in my mind and soul. My hedge-pigginess is only skin-deep. Pick me up, dearest of Princesses, and let us go to seek our fortunes.'

'I think it's my parents I ought to seek,' said the Princess. 'However...'

She picked up the hedge-pig in the corner of her mantle and they went away through the wood.

They slept that night at a wood-cutter's cottage. The wood-cutter was very kind, and made a nice little box of beech-wood for the hedge-pig to be carried in, and he told the Princess that most of her father's subjects were still loyal, but that no one could fight for him because they would be fighting for the Princess too, and however much they might wish to do this, Malevola's curse assured them that it was impossible.

So the Princess put her hedge-pig in its little box and went on, looking everywhere for her father and mother, and, after more adventures than I have time to tell you, she found them at last, living in quite a poor way in a semi-detached villa at Tooting. They were very glad to see her, but when they heard that she meant to try to get back the kingdom, the King said:

'I shouldn't bother, my child, I really shouldn't. We are quite happy here. I have the pension always given to Deposed Monarchs, and your mother is becoming a really economical manager.'

The Queen blushed with pleasure, and said, 'Thank you, dear. But if you should succeed in turning that wicked usurper out, Ozyliza, I hope I shall be a better queen than I used to be. I am learning housekeeping at an evening class at the Crown-maker's Institute.'

The Princess kissed her parents and went out into the garden to think it over. But the garden was small and quite full of wet washing hung on lines. So she went into the road, but that was full of dust and perambulators. Even the wet washing was better than that, so she went back and sat down on the grass in a white alley of tablecloths and sheets, all marked with a crown in indelible ink. And she took the hedge-pig out of the box. It was rolled up in a ball, but she stroked the little bit of soft forehead that you can always find if you look carefully at a rolled-up hedge-pig, and the hedge-pig uncurled and said:

'I am afraid I was asleep, Princess dear. Did you want me?'

'You're the only person who knows all about everything,' said she. 'I haven't told father and mother about the arrows. Now what do you advise?'

Erinaceus was flattered at having his advice asked, but unfortunately he hadn't any to give.

'It's your work, Princess,' he said. 'I can only promise to do anything a hedge-pig can do. It's not much. Of course I could die for you, but that's so useless.'

'Quite,' said she.

'I wish I were invisible,' he said dreamily.

'Oh, where are you?' cried Ozyliza, for the hedge-pig had vanished.

'Here,' said a sharp little voice. 'You can't see me, but I can see everything I want to see. And I can see what to do. I'll crawl into my box, and you must disguise yourself as an old French governess with the best references and answer the advertisement that the wicked king put yesterday in the "Usurpers Journal."'

The Queen helped the Princess to disguise herself, which, of course, the Queen would never have done if she had known about the arrows; and the King gave her some of his pension to buy a ticket with, so she went back quite quickly, by train, to her own kingdom.

The usurping King at once engaged the French governess to teach his cook to read French cookery books, because the best recipes are in French. Of course he had no idea that there was a princess, the Princess, beneath the governessial disguise. The French lessons were from 6 to 8 in the morning and from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, and all the rest of the time the governess could spend as she liked. She spent it walking about the palace gardens and talking to her invisible hedge-pig. They talked about everything under the sun, and the hedge-pig was the best of company.

'How did you become invisible?' she asked one day, and it said, 'I suppose it was Benevola's doing. Only I think every one gets one wish granted if they only wish hard enough.'

On the fifty-fifth day the hedge-pig said, 'Now, Princess dear, I'm going to begin to get you back your kingdom.'

And next morning the King came down to breakfast in a dreadful rage with his face covered up in bandages.

'This palace is haunted,' he said. 'In the middle of the night a dreadful spiked ball was thrown in my face. I lighted a match. There was nothing.'

The Queen said, 'Nonsense! You must have been dreaming.'

But next morning it was her turn to come down with a bandaged face. And the night after, the King had the spiky ball thrown at him again. And then the Queen had it. And then they both had it, so that they couldn't sleep at all, and had to lie awake with nothing to think of but their wickedness. And every five minutes a very little voice whispered:

'Who stole the kingdom? Who killed the Princess?' till the King and Queen could have screamed with misery.

And at last the Queen said, 'We needn't have killed the Princess.'

And the King said, 'I've been thinking that, too.'

And next day the King said, 'I don't know that we ought to have taken this kingdom. We had a really high-class kingdom of our own.'

'I've been thinking that too,' said the Queen.

By this time their hands and arms and necks and faces and ears were very sore indeed, and they were sick with want of sleep.

'Look here,' said the King, 'let's chuck it. Let's write to Ozymandias and tell him he can take over his kingdom again. I've had jolly well enough of this.'

'Let's,' said the Queen, 'but we can't bring the Princess to life again. I do wish we could,' and she cried a little through her bandages into her egg, for it was breakfast time.

'Do you mean that,' said a little sharp voice, though there was no one to be seen in the room. The King and Queen clung to each other in terror, upsetting the urn over the toast-rack.

'Do you mean it?' said the voice again; 'answer, yes or no.'

'Yes,' said the Queen, 'I don't know who you are, but, yes, yes, yes. I can't think how we could have been so wicked.'

'Nor I,' said the King.

'Then send for the French governess,' said the voice.

'Ring the bell, dear,' said the Queen. 'I'm sure what it says is right. It is the voice of conscience. I've often heard of it, but I never heard it before.'

The King pulled the richly-jewelled bell-rope and ten magnificent green and gold footmen appeared.

'Please ask Mademoiselle to step this way,' said the Queen.

The ten magnificent green and gold footmen found the governess beside the marble basin feeding the gold-fish, and, bowing their ten green backs, they gave the Queen's message. The governess who, every one agreed, was always most obliging, went at once to the pink satin breakfast-room where the King and Queen were sitting, almost unrecognisable in their bandages.

'Yes, Your Majesties?' said she curtseying.

'The voice of conscience,' said the Queen, 'told us to send for you. Is there any recipe in the French books for bringing shot princesses to life? If so, will you kindly translate it for us?'

'There is one,' said the Princess thoughtfully, 'and it is quite simple. Take a king and a queen and the voice of conscience. Place them in a clean pink breakfast-room with eggs, coffee, and toast. Add a full-sized French governess. The king and queen must be thoroughly pricked and bandaged, and the voice of conscience must be very distinct.'

'Is that all?' asked the Queen.

'That's all,' said the governess, 'except that the king and queen must have two more bandages over their eyes, and keep them on till the voice of conscience has counted fifty-five very slowly.'

'If you would be so kind,' said the Queen, 'as to bandage us with our table napkins? Only be careful how you fold them, because our faces are very sore, and the royal monogram is very stiff and hard owing to its being embroidered in seed pearls by special command.'

'I will be very careful,' said the governess kindly.

The moment the King and Queen were blindfolded, the 'voice of conscience' began, 'one, two, three,' and Ozyliza tore off her disguise, and under the fussy black-and-violet-spotted alpaca of the French governess was the simple slim cloth-of-silver dress of the Princess. She stuffed the alpaca up the chimney and the grey wig into the tea-cosy, and had disposed of the mittens in the coffee-pot and the elastic-side boots in the coal-scuttle, just as the voice of conscience said—

'Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five!' and stopped.

The King and Queen pulled off the bandages, and there, alive and well, with bright clear eyes and pinky cheeks and a mouth that smiled, was the Princess whom they supposed to have been killed by the thousand arrows of their thousand archers.

Before they had time to say a word the Princess said:

'Good morning, Your Majesties. I am afraid you have had bad dreams. So have I. Let us all try to forget them. I hope you will stay a little longer in my palace. You are very welcome. I am so sorry you have been hurt.'

'We deserved it,' said the Queen, 'and we want to say we have heard the voice of conscience, and do please forgive us.'

'Not another word,' said the Princess, 'do let me have some fresh tea made. And some more eggs. These are quite cold. And the urn's been upset. We'll have a new breakfast. And I am so sorry your faces are so sore.'

'If you kissed them,' said the voice which the King and Queen called the voice of conscience, 'their faces would not be sore any more.'

'May I?' said Ozyliza, and kissed the King's ear and the Queen's nose, all she could get at through the bandages.

And instantly they were quite well.

They had a delightful breakfast. Then the King caused the royal household to assemble in the throne-room, and there announced that, as the Princess had come to claim the kingdom, they were returning to their own kingdom by the three-seventeen train on Thursday.

Every one cheered like mad, and the whole town was decorated and illuminated that evening. Flags flew from every house, and the bells all rang, just as the Princess had expected them to do that day when she came home with the fifty-five camels. All the treasure these had carried was given back to the Princess, and the camels themselves were restored to her, hardly at all the worse for wear.

The usurping King and Queen were seen off at the station by the Princess, and parted from her with real affection. You see they weren't completely wicked in their hearts, but they had never had time to think before. And being kept awake at night forced them to think. And the 'voice of conscience' gave them something to think about.

They gave the Princess the receipted bills, with which most of the palace was papered, in return for board and lodging.

When they were gone a telegram was sent off.

Ozymandias Rex, Esq., Chatsworth, Delamere Road, Tooting, England.

Please come home at once. Palace vacant. Tenants have left.—Ozyliza P.

And they came immediately.

When they arrived the Princess told them the whole story, and they kissed and praised her, and called her their deliverer and the saviour of her country.

'I haven't done anything,' she said. 'It was Erinaceus who did everything, and....'

'But the fairies said,' interrupted the King, who was never clever at the best of times, 'that you couldn't get the kingdom back till you had a thousand spears devoted to you, to you alone.'

'There are a thousand spears in my back,' said a little sharp voice, 'and they are all devoted to the Princess and to her alone.'

'Don't!' said the King irritably. 'That voice coming out of nothing makes me jump.'

'I can't get used to it either,' said the Queen. 'We must have a gold cage built for the little animal. But I must say I wish it was visible.'

'So do I,' said the Princess earnestly. And instantly it was. I suppose the Princess wished it very hard, for there was the hedge-pig with its long spiky body and its little pointed face, its bright eyes, its small round ears, and its sharp, turned-up nose.

It looked at the Princess but it did not speak.

'Say something now,' said Queen Eliza. 'I should like to see a hedge-pig speak.'

'The truth is, if speak I must, I must speak the truth,' said Erinaceus. 'The Princess has thrown away her life-wish to make me visible. I wish she had wished instead for something nice for herself.'

'Oh, was that my life-wish?' cried the Princess. 'I didn't know, dear Hedge-pig, I didn't know. If I'd only known, I would have wished you back into your proper shape.'

'If you had,' said the hedge-pig, 'it would have been the shape of a dead man. Remember that I have a thousand spears in my back, and no man can carry those and live.'

The Princess burst into tears.



'Oh, you can't go on being a hedge-pig for ever,' she said, 'it's not fair. I can't bear it. Oh Mamma! Oh Papa! Oh Benevola!'

And there stood Benevola before them, a little dazzling figure with blue butterfly's wings and a wreath of moonshine.

'Well?' she said, 'well?'

'Oh, you know,' said the Princess, still crying. 'I've thrown away my life-wish, and he's still a hedge-pig. Can't you do anything!'

'I can't,' said the Fairy, 'but you can. Your kisses are magic kisses. Don't you remember how you cured the King and Queen of all the wounds the hedge-pig made by rolling itself on to their faces in the night?'

'But she can't go kissing hedge-pigs,' said the Queen, 'it would be most unsuitable. Besides it would hurt her.'

But the hedge-pig raised its little pointed face, and the Princess took it up in her hands. She had long since learned how to do this without hurting either herself or it. She looked in its little bright eyes.

'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,' she said, 'to give you what you wish.'

'Kiss me once,' it said, 'where my fur is soft. That is all I wish, and enough to live and die for.'

She stooped her head and kissed it on its forehead where the fur is soft, just where the prickles begin.

And instantly she was standing with her hands on a young man's shoulders and her lips on a young man's face just where the hair begins and the forehead leaves off. And all round his feet lay a pile of fallen arrows.

She drew back and looked at him.

'Erinaceus,' she said, 'you're different—from the baker's boy I mean.'

'When I was an invisible hedge-pig,' he said, 'I knew everything. Now I have forgotten all that wisdom save only two things. One is that I am a king's son. I was stolen away in infancy by an unprincipled baker, and I am really the son of that usurping King whose face I rolled on in the night. It is a painful thing to roll on your father's face when you are all spiky, but I did it, Princess, for your sake, and for my father's too. And now I will go to him and tell him all, and ask his forgiveness.'

'You won't go away?' said the Princess. 'Ah! don't go away. What shall I do without my hedge-pig?'

Erinaceus stood still, looking very handsome and like a prince.

'What is the other thing that you remember of your hedge-pig wisdom?' asked the Queen curiously. And Erinaceus answered, not to her but to the Princess:

'The other thing, Princess, is that I love you.'

'Isn't there a third thing, Erinaceus?' said the Princess, looking down.

'There is, but you must speak that, not I.'

'Oh,' said the Princess, a little disappointed, 'then you knew that I loved you?'

'Hedge-pigs are very wise little beasts,' said Erinaceus, 'but I only knew that when you told it me.'

'I—told you?'

'When you kissed my little pointed face, Princess,' said Erinaceus, 'I knew then.'

'My goodness gracious me,' said the King.

'Quite so,' said Benevola, 'and I wouldn't ask any one to the wedding.'

'Except you, dear,' said the Queen.

'Well, as I happened to be passing ... there's no time like the present,' said Benevola briskly. 'Suppose you give orders for the wedding bells to be rung now, at once!'



V

SEPTIMUS SEPTIMUSSON

The wind was screaming over the marsh. It shook the shutters and rattled the windows, and the little boy lay awake in the bare attic. His mother came softly up the ladder stairs shading the flame of the tallow candle with her hand.

'I'm not asleep, mother,' said he. And she heard the tears in his voice.

'Why, silly lad,' she said, sitting down on the straw-bed beside him and putting the candle on the floor, 'what are you crying for?'

'It's the wind keeps calling me, mother,' he said. 'It won't let me alone. It never has since I put up the little weather-cock for it to play with. It keeps saying, "Wake up, Septimus Septimusson, wake up, you're the seventh son of a seventh son. You can see the fairies and hear the beasts speak, and you must go out and seek your fortune." And I'm afraid, and I don't want to go.'

'I should think not indeed,' said his mother. 'The wind doesn't talk, Sep, not really. You just go to sleep like a good boy, and I'll get father to bring you a gingerbread pig from the fair to-morrow.'

But Sep lay awake a long time listening to what the wind really did keep on saying, and feeling ashamed to think how frightened he was of going out all alone to seek his fortune—a thing all the boys in books were only too happy to do.

Next evening father brought home the loveliest gingerbread pig with currant eyes. Sep ate it, and it made him less anxious than ever to go out into the world where, perhaps, no one would give him gingerbread pigs ever any more.

Before he went to bed he ran down to the shore where a great new harbour was being made. The workmen had been blasting the big rocks, and on one of the rocks a lot of mussels were sticking. He stood looking at them, and then suddenly he heard a lot of little voices crying, 'Oh Sep, we're so frightened, we're choking.'

The voices were thin and sharp as the edges of mussel shells. They were indeed the voices of the mussels themselves.

'Oh dear,' said Sep, 'I'm so sorry, but I can't move the rock back into the sea, you know. Can I now?'

'No,' said the mussels, 'but if you speak to the wind,—you know his language and he's very fond of you since you made that toy for him,—he'll blow the sea up till the waves wash us back into deep water.'

'But I'm afraid of the wind,' said Sep, 'it says things that frighten me.'

'Oh very well,' said the mussels, 'we don't want you to be afraid. We can die all right if necessary.'

Then Sep shivered and trembled.

'Go away,' said the thin sharp voices. 'We'll die—but we'd rather die in our own brave company.'

'I know I'm a coward,' said Sep. 'Oh, wait a minute.'

'Death won't wait,' said the little voices.

'I can't speak to the wind, I won't,' said Sep, and almost at the same moment he heard himself call out, 'Oh wind, please come and blow up the waves to save the poor mussels.'

The wind answered with a boisterous shout—

'All right, my boy,' it shrieked, 'I'm coming.' And come it did. And when it had attended to the mussels it came and whispered to Sep in his attic. And to his great surprise, instead of covering his head with the bed-clothes, as usual, and trying not to listen, he found himself sitting up in bed and talking to the wind, man to man.

'Why,' he said, 'I'm not afraid of you any more.'

'Of course not, we're friends now,' said the wind. 'That's because we joined together to do a kindness to some one. There's nothing like that for making people friends.'

'Oh,' said Sep.

'Yes,' said the wind, 'and now, old chap, when will you go out and seek your fortune? Remember how poor your father is, and the fortune, if you find it, won't be just for you, but for your father and mother and the others.'

'Oh,' said Sep, 'I didn't think of that.'

'Yes,' said the wind, 'really, my dear fellow, I do hate to bother you, but it's better to fix a time. Now when shall we start?'

'We?' said Sep. 'Are you going with me?'

'I'll see you a bit of the way,' said the wind. 'What do you say now? Shall we start to-night? There's no time like the present.'

'I do hate going,' said Sep.

'Of course you do!' said the wind, cordially. 'Come along. Get into your things, and we'll make a beginning.'

So Sep dressed, and he wrote on his slate in very big letters, 'Gone to seek our fortune,' and he put it on the table so that his mother should see it when she came down in the morning. And he went out of the cottage and the wind kindly shut the door after him.

The wind gently pushed him down to the shore, and there he got into his father's boat, which was called the Septimus and Susie, after his father and mother, and the wind carried him across to another country and there he landed.

'Now,' said the wind, clapping him on the back, 'off you go, and good luck to you!'

And it turned round and took the boat home again.

When Sep's mother found the writing on the slate, and his father found the boat gone they feared that Sep was drowned, but when the wind brought the boat back wrong way up, they were quite sure, and they both cried for many a long day.

The wind tried to tell them that Sep was all right, but they couldn't understand wind-talk, and they only said, 'Drat the wind,' and fastened the shutters up tight, and put wedges in the windows.

Sep walked along the straight white road that led across the new country. He had no more idea how to look for his fortune than you would have if you suddenly left off reading this and went out of your front door to seek yours.

However, he had made a start, and that is always something. When he had gone exactly seven miles on that straight foreign road, between strange trees, and bordered with flowers he did not know the names of, he heard a groaning in the wood, and some one sighing and saying, 'Oh, how hard it is, to have to die and never see my wife and the little cubs again.'

The voice was rough as a lion's mane, and strong as a lion's claws, and Sep was very frightened. But he said, 'I'm not afraid,' and then oddly enough he found he had spoken the truth—he wasn't afraid.

He broke through the bushes and found that the person who had spoken was indeed a lion. A javelin had pierced its shoulder and fastened it to a great tree.

'All right,' cried Sep, 'hold still a minute, sir.'

He got out his knife and cut and cut at the shaft of the javelin till he was able to break it off. Then the lion drew back and the broken shaft passed through the wound and the broken javelin was left sticking in the tree.

'I'm really extremely obliged, my dear fellow,' said the lion warmly. 'Pray command me, if there's any little thing I can do for you at any time.'

'Don't mention it,' said Sep with proper politeness, 'delighted to have been of use to you, I'm sure.'

So they parted. As Sep scrambled through the bushes back to the road he kicked against an axe that lay on the ground.

'Hullo,' said he, 'some poor woodman's dropped this, and not been able to find it. I'll take it along—perhaps I may meet him.'

He was getting very tired and very hungry, and presently he sat down to rest under a chestnut-tree, and he heard two little voices talking in the branches, voices soft as a squirrel's fur, and bright as a squirrel's eyes. They were, indeed, the voices of two squirrels.

'Hush,' said one, 'there's some one below.'

'Oh,' said the other, 'it's a horrid boy. Let's scurry away.'

'I'm not a horrid boy,' said Sep. 'I'm the seventh son of a seventh son.'

'Oh,' said Mrs. Squirrel, 'of course that makes all the difference. Have some nuts?'

'Rather,' said Sep. 'At least I mean, yes, if you please.'

So the squirrels brought nuts down to him, and when he had eaten as many as he wanted they filled his pockets, and then in return he chopped all the lower boughs off the chestnut-tree, so that boys who were not seventh sons could not climb up and interfere with the squirrels' housekeeping arrangements.

Then they parted, the best of friends, and Sep went on.

'I haven't found my fortune yet,' said he, 'but I've made a friend or two.'

And just as he was saying that, he turned a corner of the road and met an old gentleman in a fur-lined coat riding a fine, big, grey horse.

'Hullo!' said the gentleman. 'Who are you, and where are you off to so bright and early?'

'I'm Septimus Septimusson,' said Sep, 'and I'm going to seek my fortune.'

'And you've taken an axe to help you carve your way to glory?'

'No,' said Sep, 'I found it, and I suppose some one lost it. So I'm bringing it along in case I meet him.'

'Heavy, isn't it?' said the old gentleman.

'Yes,' said Sep.

'Then I'll carry it for you,' said the old gentleman, 'for it's one that my head forester lost yesterday. And now come along with me, for you're the boy I've been looking for for seven years—an honest boy and the seventh son of a seventh son.'

So Sep went home with the gentleman, who was a great lord in that country, and he lived in that lord's castle and was taught everything that a gentleman ought to know. And in return he told the lord all about the ways of birds and beasts—for as he understood their talk he knew more about them than any one else in that country. And the lord wrote it all down in a book, and half the people said it was wonderfully clever, and the other half said it was nonsense, and how could he know. This was fame, and the lord was very pleased. But though the old lord was so famous he would not leave his castle, for he had a hump that an enchanter had fastened on to him, and he couldn't bear to be seen with it.

'But you'll get rid of it for me some day, my boy,' he used to say. 'No one but the seventh son of a seventh son and an honest boy can do it. So all the doctors say.'

So Sep grew up. And when he was twenty-one—straight as a lance and handsome as a picture—the old lord said to him.

'My boy, you've been like a son to me, but now it's time you got married and had sons of your own. Is there any girl you'd like to marry?'

'No,' said Sep, 'I never did care much for girls.'

The old lord laughed.

'Then you must set out again and seek your fortune once more,' he said, 'because no man has really found his fortune till he's found the lady who is his heart's lady. Choose the best horse in the stable, and off you go, lad, and my blessing go with you.'

So Sep chose a good red horse and set out, and he rode straight to the great city, that shone golden across the plain, and when he got there he found every one crying.

'Why, whatever is the matter?' said Sep, reining in the red horse in front of a smithy, where the apprentices were crying on to the fires, and the smith was dropping tears on the anvil.

'Why the Princess is dying,' said the blacksmith blowing his nose. 'A nasty, wicked magician—he had a spite against the King, and he got at the Princess when she was playing ball in the garden, and now she's blind and deaf and dumb. And she won't eat.'

'And she'll die,' said the first apprentice.

'And she is such a dear,' said the other apprentice.

Sep sat still on the red horse thinking.

'Has anything been done?' he asked.

'Oh yes,' said the blacksmith. 'All the doctors have seen her, but they can't do anything. And the King has advertised in the usual way, that any one who can cure her may marry her. But it's no good. King's sons aren't what they used to be. A silly lot they are nowadays, all taken up with football and cricket and golf.'

'Humph,' said Sep, 'thank you. Which is the way to the palace?'

The blacksmith pointed, and then burst into tears again. Sep rode on.

When he got to the palace he asked to see the King. Every one there was crying too, from the footman who opened the door to the King, who was sitting upon his golden throne and looking at his fine collection of butterflies through floods of tears.

'Oh dear me yes, young man,' said the King, 'you may see her and welcome, but it's no good.'

'We can but try,' said Sep. So he was taken to the room where the Princess sat huddled up on her silver throne among the white velvet cushions with her crown all on one side, crying out of her poor blind eyes, so that the tears ran down over her green gown with the red roses on it.

And directly he saw her he knew that she was the only girl, Princess as she was, with a crown and a throne, who could ever be his heart's lady. He went up to her and kneeled at her side and took her hand and kissed it. The Princess started. She could not see or hear him, but at the touch of his hand and his lips she knew that he was her heart's lord, and she threw her arms round his neck, and cried more than ever.

He held her in his arms and stroked her hair till she stopped crying, and then he called for bread and milk. This was brought in a silver basin, and he fed her with it as you feed a little child.

The news ran through the city, 'The Princess has eaten,' and all the bells were set ringing. Sep said good-night to his Princess and went to bed in the best bedroom of the palace. Early in the grey morning he got up and leaned out of the open window and called to his old friend the wind.

And the wind came bustling in and clapped him on the back, crying, 'Well, my boy, and what can I do for you? Eh?'

Sep told him all about the Princess.

'Well,' said the wind, 'you've not done so badly. At any rate you've got her love. And you couldn't have got that with anybody's help but your own. Now, of course, the thing to do is to find the wicked Magician.'

'Of course,' said Sep.

'Well—I travel a good deal—I'll keep my eyes open, and let you know if I hear anything.'

Sep spent the day holding the Princess's hand, and feeding her at meal times; and that night the wind rattled his window and said, 'Let me in.'

It came in very noisily, and said, 'Well, I've found your Magician, he's in the forest pretending to be a mole.'

'How can I find him?' said Sep.

'Haven't you any friends in the forest?' asked the wind.

Then Sep remembered his friends the squirrels, and he mounted his horse and rode away to the chestnut-tree where they lived. They were charmed to see him grown so tall and strong and handsome, and when he had told them his story they said at once—

'Oh yes! delighted to be of any service to you.' And they called to all their little brothers and cousins, and uncles and nephews to search the forest for a mole that wasn't really a mole, and quite soon they found him, and hustled and shoved him along till he was face to face with Sep, in a green glade. The glade was green, but all the bushes and trees around were red-brown with squirrel fur, and shining bright with squirrel eyes.

Then Sep said, 'Give the Princess back her eyes and her hearing and her voice.'

But the mole would not.

'Give the Princess back her eyes and her hearing and her voice,' said Sep again. But the mole only gnashed his wicked teeth and snarled.

And then in a minute the squirrels fell on the mole and killed it, and Sep thanked them and rode back to the palace, for, of course, he knew that when a magician is killed, all his magic unworks itself instantly.

But when he got to his Princess she was still as deaf as a post and as dumb as a stone, and she was still crying bitterly with her poor blind eyes, till the tears ran down her grass-green gown with the red roses on it.

'Cheer up, my sweetheart,' he said, though he knew she couldn't hear him, and as he spoke the wind came in at the open window, and spoke very softly, because it was in the presence of the Princess.

'All right,' it whispered, 'the old villain gave us the slip that journey. Got out of the mole-skin in the very nick of time. He's a wild boar now.'

'Come,' said Sep, fingering his sword-hilt, 'I'll kill that myself without asking it any questions.'

So he went and fought it. But it was a most uncommon boar, as big as a horse, with tusks half a yard long; and although Sep wounded it it jerked the sword out of his hand with its tusk, and was just going to trample him out of life with its hard, heavy pigs'-feet, when a great roar sounded through the forest.

'Ah! would ye?' said the lion, and fastened teeth and claws in the great boar's back. The boar turned with a scream of rage, but the lion had got a good grip, and it did not loosen teeth or claws till the boar lay quiet.

'Is he dead?' asked Sep when he came to himself.

'Oh yes, he's dead right enough,' said the lion; but the wind came up puffing and blowing, and said:

'It's no good, he's got away again, and now he's a fish. I was just a minute too late to see what fish. An old oyster told me about it, only he hadn't the wit to notice what particular fish the scoundrel changed into.'

So then Sep went back to the palace, and he said to the King:

'Let me marry the dear Princess, and we'll go out and seek our fortune. I've got to kill that Magician, and I'll do it too, or my name's not Septimus Septimusson. But it may take years and years, and I can't be away from the Princess all that time, because she won't eat unless I feed her. You see the difficulty, Sire?'

The King saw it. And that very day Sep was married to the Princess in her green gown with the red roses on it, and they set out together.

The wind went with them, and the wind, or something else, seemed to say to Sep, 'Go home, take your wife home to your mother.'

So he did. He crossed the land and he crossed the sea, and he went up the red-brick path to his father's cottage, and he peeped in at the door and said:

'Father, mother, here's my wife.'

They were so pleased to see him—for they had thought him dead, that they didn't notice the Princess at first, and when they did notice her they wondered at her beautiful face and her beautiful gown—but it wasn't till they had all settled down to supper—boiled rabbit it was—and they noticed Sep feeding his wife as one feeds a baby that they saw that she was blind.

And then all the story had to be told.

'Well, well,' said the fisherman, 'you and your wife bide here with us. I daresay I'll catch that old sinner in my nets one of these fine days.' But he never did. And Sep and his wife lived with the old people. And they were happy after a fashion—but of an evening Sep used to wander and wonder, and wonder and wander by the sea-shore, wondering as he wandered whether he wouldn't ever have the luck to catch that fish.

And one evening as he wandered wondering he heard a little, sharp, thin voice say:

'Sep. I've got it.'

'What?' asked Sep, forgetting his manners.

'I've got it,' said a big mussel on a rock close by him, 'the magic stone that the Magician does his enchantments with. He dropped it out of his mouth and I shut my shells on it—and now he's sweeping up and down the sea like a mad fish, looking for it—for he knows he can never change into anything else unless he gets it back. Here, take the nasty thing, it's making me feel quite ill.'

It opened its shells wide, and Sep saw a pearl. He reached out his hand and took it.

'That's better,' said the mussel, washing its shells out with salt water.

'Can I do magic with it?' Sep eagerly asked.

'No,' said the mussel sadly, 'it's of no use to any one but the owner. Now, if I were you, I'd get into a boat, and if your friend the wind will help us, I believe we really can do the trick.'

'I'm at your service, of course,' said the wind, getting up instantly.

The mussel whispered to the wind, who rushed off at once; and Sep launched his boat.

'Now,' said the mussel, 'you get into the very middle of the sea—or as near as you can guess it. The wind will warn all the other fishes.' As he spoke he disappeared in the dark waters.

Sep got the boat into the middle of the sea—as near as he could guess it—and waited.

After a long time he saw something swirling about in a sort of whirlpool about a hundred yards from his boat, but when he tried to move the boat towards it her bows ran on to something hard.

'Keep still, keep still, keep still,' cried thousands and thousands of sharp, thin, little voices. 'You'll kill us if you move.'

Then he looked over the boat side, and saw that the hard something was nothing but thousands and thousands of mussels all jammed close together, and through the clear water more and more were coming and piling themselves together. Almost at once his boat was slowly lifted—the top of the mussel heap showed through the water, and there he was, high and dry on a mussel reef.

And in all that part of the sea the water was disappearing, and as far as the eye could reach stretched a great plain of purple and gray—the shells of countless mussels.

Only at one spot there was still a splashing.

Then a mussel opened its shell and spoke.

'We've got him,' it said. 'We've piled our selves up till we've filled this part of the sea. The wind warned all the good fishes—and we've got the old traitor in a little pool over there. Get out and walk over our backs—we'll all lie sideways so as not to hurt you. You must catch the fish—but whatever you do don't kill it till we give the word.'

Sep promised, and he got out and walked over the mussels to the pool, and when he saw the wicked soul of the Magician looking out through the round eyes of a big finny fish he remembered all that his Princess had suffered, and he longed to draw his sword and kill the wicked thing then and there.

But he remembered his promise. He threw a net about it, and dragged it back to the boat.

The mussels dispersed and let the boat down again into the water—and he rowed home, towing the evil fish in the net by a line.

He beached the boat, and looked along the shore. The shore looked a very odd colour. And well it might, for every bit of the sand was covered with purple-gray mussels. They had all come up out of the sea—leaving just one little bit of real yellow sand for him to beach the boat on.

'Now,' said millions of sharp thin little voices, 'Kill him, kill him!'

Sep drew his sword and waded into the shallow surf and killed the evil fish with one strong stroke.

Then such a shout went up all along the shore as that shore had never heard; and all along the shore where the mussels had been, stood men in armour and men in smock-frocks and men in leather aprons and huntsmen's coats and women and children—a whole nation of people. Close by the boat stood a King and Queen with crowns upon their heads.

'Thank you, Sep,' said the King, 'you've saved us all. I am the King Mussel, doomed to be a mussel so long as that wretch lived. You have set us all free. And look!'

Down the path from the shore came running his own Princess, who hung round his neck crying his name and looking at him with the most beautiful eyes in the world.

'Come,' said the Mussel King, 'we have no son. You shall be our son and reign after us.'

'Thank you,' said Sep, 'but this is my father,' and he presented the old fisherman to His Majesty.

'Then let him come with us,' said the King royally, 'he can help me reign, or fish in the palace lake, whichever he prefers.'

'Thankee,' said Sep's father, 'I'll come and fish.'

'Your mother too,' said the Mussel Queen, kissing Sep's mother.

'Ah,' said Sep's mother, 'you're a lady, every inch. I'll go to the world's end with you.'

So they all went back by way of the foreign country where Sep had found his Princess, and they called on the old lord. He had lost his hump, and they easily persuaded him to come with them.

'You can help me reign if you like, or we have a nice book or two in the palace library,' said the Mussel King.

'Thank you,' said the old lord, 'I'll come and be your librarian if I may. Reigning isn't at all in my line.'

Then they went on to Sep's father-in-law, and when he saw how happy they all were together he said:

'Bless my beard but I've half a mind to come with you.'

'Come along,' said the Mussel King, 'you shall help me reign if you like ... or....'

'No, thank you,' said the other King very quickly, 'I've had enough of reigning. My kingdom can buy a President and be a republic if it likes. I'm going to catch butterflies.'

And so he does, most happily, up to this very minute.

And Sep and his dear Princess are as happy as they deserve to be. Some people say we are all as happy as we deserve to be—but I am not sure.



VI

THE WHITE CAT

The White Cat lived at the back of a shelf at the darkest end of the inside attic which was nearly dark all over. It had lived there for years, because one of its white china ears was chipped, so that it was no longer a possible ornament for the spare bedroom.

Tavy found it at the climax of a wicked and glorious afternoon. He had been left alone. The servants were the only other people in the house. He had promised to be good. He had meant to be good. And he had not been. He had done everything you can think of. He had walked into the duck pond, and not a stitch of his clothes but had had to be changed. He had climbed on a hay rick and fallen off it, and had not broken his neck, which, as cook told him, he richly deserved to do. He had found a mouse in the trap and put it in the kitchen tea-pot, so that when cook went to make tea it jumped out at her, and affected her to screams followed by tears. Tavy was sorry for this, of course, and said so like a man. He had only, he explained, meant to give her a little start. In the confusion that followed the mouse, he had eaten all the black-currant jam that was put out for kitchen tea, and for this too, he apologised handsomely as soon as it was pointed out to him. He had broken a pane of the greenhouse with a stone and.... But why pursue the painful theme? The last thing he had done was to explore the attic, where he was never allowed to go, and to knock down the White Cat from its shelf.

The sound of its fall brought the servants. The cat was not broken—only its other ear was chipped. Tavy was put to bed. But he got out as soon as the servants had gone downstairs, crept up to the attic, secured the Cat, and washed it in the bath. So that when mother came back from London, Tavy, dancing impatiently at the head of the stairs, in a very wet night-gown, flung himself upon her and cried, 'I've been awfully naughty, and I'm frightfully sorry, and please may I have the White Cat for my very own?'

He was much sorrier than he had expected to be when he saw that mother was too tired even to want to know, as she generally did, exactly how naughty he had been. She only kissed him, and said:

'I am sorry you've been naughty, my darling. Go back to bed now. Good-night.'

Tavy was ashamed to say anything more about the China Cat, so he went back to bed. But he took the Cat with him, and talked to it and kissed it, and went to sleep with its smooth shiny shoulder against his cheek.

In the days that followed, he was extravagantly good. Being good seemed as easy as being bad usually was. This may have been because mother seemed so tired and ill; and gentlemen in black coats and high hats came to see mother, and after they had gone she used to cry. (These things going on in a house sometimes make people good; sometimes they act just the other way.) Or it may have been because he had the China Cat to talk to. Anyhow, whichever way it was, at the end of the week mother said:

'Tavy, you've been a dear good boy, and a great comfort to me. You must have tried very hard to be good.'

It was difficult to say, 'No, I haven't, at least not since the first day,' but Tavy got it said, and was hugged for his pains.

'You wanted,' said mother, 'the China Cat. Well, you may have it.'

'For my very own?'

'For your very own. But you must be very careful not to break it. And you mustn't give it away. It goes with the house. Your Aunt Jane made me promise to keep it in the family. It's very, very old. Don't take it out of doors for fear of accidents.'

'I love the White Cat, mother,' said Tavy. 'I love it better'n all my toys.'

Then mother told Tavy several things, and that night when he went to bed Tavy repeated them all faithfully to the China Cat, who was about six inches high and looked very intelligent.

'So you see,' he ended, 'the wicked lawyer's taken nearly all mother's money, and we've got to leave our own lovely big White House, and go and live in a horrid little house with another house glued on to its side. And mother does hate it so.'

'I don't wonder,' said the China Cat very distinctly.

'What!' said Tavy, half-way into his night-shirt.

'I said, I don't wonder, Octavius,' said the China Cat, and rose from her sitting position, stretched her china legs and waved her white china tail.

'You can speak?' said Tavy.

'Can't you see I can?—hear I mean?' said the Cat. 'I belong to you now, so I can speak to you. I couldn't before. It wouldn't have been manners.'

Tavy, his night-shirt round his neck, sat down on the edge of the bed with his mouth open.

'Come, don't look so silly,' said the Cat, taking a walk along the high wooden mantelpiece, 'any one would think you didn't like me to talk to you.'

'I love you to,' said Tavy recovering himself a little.

'Well then,' said the Cat.

'May I touch you?' Tavy asked timidly.

'Of course! I belong to you. Look out!' The China Cat gathered herself together and jumped. Tavy caught her.

It was quite a shock to find when one stroked her that the China Cat, though alive, was still china, hard, cold, and smooth to the touch, and yet perfectly brisk and absolutely bendable as any flesh and blood cat.

'Dear, dear white pussy,' said Tavy, 'I do love you.'

'And I love you,' purred the Cat, 'otherwise I should never have lowered myself to begin a conversation.'

'I wish you were a real cat,' said Tavy.

'I am,' said the Cat. 'Now how shall we amuse ourselves? I suppose you don't care for sport—mousing, I mean?'

'I never tried,' said Tavy, 'and I think I rather wouldn't.'

'Very well then, Octavius,' said the Cat. 'I'll take you to the White Cat's Castle. Get into bed. Bed makes a good travelling carriage, especially when you haven't any other. Shut your eyes.'

Tavy did as he was told. Shut his eyes, but could not keep them shut. He opened them a tiny, tiny chink, and sprang up. He was not in bed. He was on a couch of soft beast-skin, and the couch stood in a splendid hall, whose walls were of gold and ivory. By him stood the White Cat, no longer china, but real live cat—and fur—as cats should be.

'Here we are,' she said. 'The journey didn't take long, did it? Now we'll have that splendid supper, out of the fairy tale, with the invisible hands waiting on us.'

She clapped her paws—paws now as soft as white velvet—and a table-cloth floated into the room; then knives and forks and spoons and glasses, the table was laid, the dishes drifted in, and they began to eat. There happened to be every single thing Tavy liked best to eat. After supper there was music and singing, and Tavy, having kissed a white, soft, furry forehead, went to bed in a gold four-poster with a counterpane of butterflies' wings. He awoke at home. On the mantelpiece sat the White Cat, looking as though butter would not melt in her mouth. And all her furriness had gone with her voice. She was silent—and china.

Tavy spoke to her. But she would not answer. Nor did she speak all day. Only at night when he was getting into bed she suddenly mewed, stretched, and said:

'Make haste, there's a play acted to-night at my castle.'

Tavy made haste, and was rewarded by another glorious evening in the castle of the White Cat.

And so the weeks went on. Days full of an ordinary little boy's joys and sorrows, goodnesses and badnesses. Nights spent by a little Prince in the Magic Castle of the White Cat.

Then came the day when Tavy's mother spoke to him, and he, very scared and serious, told the China Cat what she had said.

'I knew this would happen,' said the Cat. 'It always does. So you're to leave your house next week. Well, there's only one way out of the difficulty. Draw your sword, Tavy, and cut off my head and tail.'

'And then will you turn into a Princess, and shall I have to marry you?' Tavy asked with horror.

'No, dear—no,' said the Cat reassuringly. 'I sha'n't turn into anything. But you and mother will turn into happy people. I shall just not be any more—for you.'

'Then I won't do it,' said Tavy.

'But you must. Come, draw your sword, like a brave fairy Prince, and cut off my head.'

The sword hung above his bed, with the helmet and breast-plate Uncle James had given him last Christmas.

'I'm not a fairy Prince,' said the child. 'I'm Tavy—and I love you.'

'You love your mother better,' said the Cat. 'Come cut my head off. The story always ends like that. You love mother best. It's for her sake.'

'Yes.' Tavy was trying to think it out. 'Yes, I love mother best. But I love you. And I won't cut off your head,—no, not even for mother.'

'Then,' said the Cat, 'I must do what I can!'

She stood up, waving her white china tail, and before Tavy could stop her she had leapt, not, as before, into his arms, but on to the wide hearthstone.

It was all over—the China Cat lay broken inside the high brass fender. The sound of the smash brought mother running.

'What is it?' she cried. 'Oh, Tavy—the China Cat!'

'She would do it,' sobbed Tavy. 'She wanted me to cut off her head'n I wouldn't.'

'Don't talk nonsense, dear,' said mother sadly. 'That only makes it worse. Pick up the pieces.'

'There's only two pieces,' said Tavy. 'Couldn't you stick her together again?'

'Why,' said mother, holding the pieces close to the candle. 'She's been broken before. And mended.'

'I knew that,' said Tavy, still sobbing. 'Oh, my dear White Cat, oh, oh, oh!' The last 'oh' was a howl of anguish.

'Come, crying won't mend her,' said mother. 'Look, there's another piece of her, close to the shovel.'

Tavy stooped.

'That's not a piece of cat,' he said, and picked it up.

It was a pale parchment label, tied to a key. Mother held it to the candle and read: 'Key of the lock behind the knot in the mantelpiece panel in the white parlour.'

'Tavy! I wonder! But ... where did it come from?'

'Out of my White Cat, I s'pose,' said Tavy, his tears stopping. 'Are you going to see what's in the mantelpiece panel, mother? Are you? Oh, do let me come and see too!'

'You don't deserve,' mother began, and ended,—'Well, put your dressing-gown on then.'

They went down the gallery past the pictures and the stuffed birds and tables with china on them and downstairs on to the white parlour. But they could not see any knot in the mantelpiece panel, because it was all painted white. But mother's fingers felt softly all over it, and found a round raised spot. It was a knot, sure enough. Then she scraped round it with her scissors, till she loosened the knot, and poked it out with the scissors point.

'I don't suppose there's any keyhole there really,' she said. But there was. And what is more, the key fitted. The panel swung open, and inside was a little cupboard with two shelves. What was on the shelves? There were old laces and old embroideries, old jewelry and old silver; there was money, and there were dusty old papers that Tavy thought most uninteresting. But mother did not think them uninteresting. She laughed, and cried, or nearly cried, and said:

'Oh, Tavy, this was why the China Cat was to be taken such care of!' Then she told him how, a hundred and fifty years before, the Head of the House had gone out to fight for the Pretender, and had told his daughter to take the greatest care of the China Cat. 'I will send you word of the reason by a sure hand,' he said, for they parted on the open square, where any spy might have overheard anything. And he had been killed by an ambush not ten miles from home,—and his daughter had never known. But she had kept the Cat.

'And now it has saved us,' said mother. 'We can stay in the dear old house, and there are two other houses that will belong to us too, I think. And, oh, Tavy, would you like some pound-cake and ginger-wine, dear?'

Tavy did like. And had it.

The China Cat was mended, but it was put in the glass-fronted corner cupboard in the drawing-room, because it had saved the House.

Now I dare say you'll think this is all nonsense, and a made-up story. Not at all. If it were, how would you account for Tavy's finding, the very next night, fast asleep on his pillow, his own white Cat—the furry friend that the China Cat used to turn into every evening—the dear hostess who had amused him so well in the White Cat's fairy Palace?

It was she, beyond a doubt, and that was why Tavy didn't mind a bit about the China Cat being taken from him and kept under glass. You may think that it was just any old stray white cat that had come in by accident. Tavy knows better. It has the very same tender tone in its purr that the magic White Cat had. It will not talk to Tavy, it is true; but Tavy can and does talk to it. But the thing that makes it perfectly certain that it is the White Cat is that the tips of its two ears are missing—just as the China Cat's ears were. If you say that it might have lost its ear-tips in battle you are the kind of person who always makes difficulties, and you may be quite sure that the kind of splendid magics that happened to Tavy will never happen to you.