The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Blue Moon, by Laurence Housman

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Title: The Blue Moon

Author: Laurence Housman

Posting Date: February 28, 2009 [EBook #3527]
Release Date: November, 2002
Last Updated: November 8, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLUE MOON ***




Produced by A. Elizabeth Warren





THE BLUE MOON

By Laurence Housman




CONTENTS


     THE BLUE MOON
     A CHINESE FAIRY-TALE
     THE WAY OF THE WIND
     A CAPFUL OF MOONSHINE
     THE MOON-STROKE
     HOW LITTLE DUKE JARL SAVED THE CASTLE
     THE WHITE DOE
     THE GENTLE COCKATRICE
     THE RAT-CATCHER’S DAUGHTER
     WHITE BIRCH




THE BLUE MOON

Nillywill and Hands-pansy were the most unimportant and happy pair of
lovers the world has ever gained or lost.

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

Nothing could undo that; for day by day earth and sun and wind came to
rub it in deeper, and water could not wash it off. So when they had been
seven years together there could be no doubt that they felt as if they
had been made for each other in heaven. And then something very big and
sad came to pass; for one day Nillywill had to leave off being a peasant
child and become a princess once more. People very grand and grown-up
came to the woodside where she flowered so gaily, and caught her by the
golden hair of her head and pulled her up by her dear little roots, and
carried her quite away from Hands-pansy to a place she had never been
in before. They put her into a large palace, with woods and terraces and
landscape gardens on all sides of it; and there she sat crying and pale,
saying that she wanted to be taken back to Hands-pansy and grow up and
marry him, though he was but the poor peasant boy he had always been.

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

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

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

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

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

So time went on, and Nillywill had entered gently into sweet
womanhood--the comeliest princess that ever dropped a tear; and all she
could do for love was to fill her garden with dark-eyed pansies, and
walk among their humble upturned faces which reminded her so well of her
dear Hands--Hands who was a long five thousand miles away. “And, oh!”
 she sighed, watching for the blue moon to rise, “when will it come and
make me at one with all my wish?”

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

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

“Do you not hear?” said they.

“Hear what?” asked the Princess.

“We are low in the ground: we hear!” said the pansies. “Stoop down your
head and listen!”

The Princess let her head go to the ground; and “click, click,” she
heard wooden shoes coming along the road. She ran to the gate, and there
was Hands, tall and lean, dressed as a poor peasant, with a bundle tied
up in a blue cotton handkerchief across his shoulder, and five thousand
miles trodden to nothing by the faithful tramping of his old wooden
shoes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where shall we go?” asked Hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




A CHINESE FAIRY TALE


Tiki-pu was a small grub of a thing; but he had a true love of Art deep
down in his soul. There it hung mewing and complaining, struggling to
work its way out through the raw exterior that bound it.

Tiki-pu’s master professed to be an artist: he had apprentices and
students, who came daily to work under him, and a large studio littered
about with the performances of himself and his pupils. On the walls hung
also a few real works by the older men, all long since dead.

This studio Tiki-pu swept; for those who worked in it he ground colours,
washed brushes, and ran errands, bringing them their dog chops and
bird’s-nest soup from the nearest eating-house whenever they were too
busy to go out to it themselves. He himself had to feed mainly on the
breadcrumbs which the students screwed into pellets for their drawings
and then threw about upon the floor. It was on the floor, also, that he
had to sleep at night.

Tiki-pu looked after the blinds, and mended the paper window-panes,
which were often broken when the apprentices threw their brushes
and mahl-sticks at him. Also he strained rice-paper over the
linen-stretchers, ready for the painters to work on; and for a treat,
now and then, a lazy one would allow him to mix a colour for him. Then
it was that Tiki-pu’s soul came down into his finger-tips, and his heart
beat so that he gasped for joy. Oh, the yellows and the greens, and the
lakes and the cobalts, and the purples which sprang from the blending of
them! Sometimes it was all he could do to keep himself from crying out.

Tiki-pu, while he squatted and ground at the colour-powders, would
listen to his master lecturing to the students. He knew by heart the
names of all the painters and their schools, and the name of the great
leader of them all who had lived and passed from their midst more than
three hundred years ago; he knew that too, a name like the sound of the
wind, Wio-wani: the big picture at the end of the studio was by him.

That picture! To Tiki-pu it seemed worth all the rest of the world put
together. He knew, too, the story which was told of it, making it as
holy to his eyes as the tombs of his own ancestors. The apprentices
joked over it, calling it “Wio-wani’s back-door,” “Wio-wani’s
night-cap,” and many other nicknames; but Tiki-pu was quite sure, since
the picture was so beautiful, that the story must be true.

Wio-wani, at the end of a long life, had painted it; a garden full of
trees and sunlight, with high-standing flowers and green paths, and
in their midst a palace. “The place where I would like to rest,” said
Wio-wani, when it was finished.

So beautiful was it then, that the Emperor himself had come to see it;
and gazing enviously at those peaceful walks, and the palace nestling
among the trees, had sighed and owned that he too would be glad of such
a resting-place. Then Wio-wani stepped into the picture, and walked away
along a path till he came, looking quite small and far-off, to a low
door in the palace-wall. Opening it, he turned and beckoned to the
Emperor; but the Emperor did not follow; so Wio-wani went in by himself,
and shut the door between himself and the world for ever.

That happened three hundred years ago; but for Tiki-pu the story was
as fresh and true as if it had happened yesterday. When he was left to
himself in the studio, all alone and locked up for the night, Tiki-pu
used to go and stare at the picture till it was too dark to see, and
at the little palace with the door in its wall by which Wio-wani
had disappeared out of life. Then his soul would go down into his
finger-tips, and he would knock softly and fearfully at the beautifully
painted door, saying, “Wio-wani, are you there?”

Little by little in the long-thinking nights, and the slow early
mornings when light began to creep back through the papered windows of
the studio, Tiki-pu’s soul became too much for him. He who could strain
paper, and grind colours, and wash brushes, had everything within reach
for becoming an artist, if it was the will of fate that he should be
one.

He began timidly at first, but in a little while he grew bold. With the
first wash of light he was up from his couch on the hard floor, and was
daubing his soul out on scraps, and odds-and-ends, and stolen pieces of
rice-paper.

Before long the short spell of daylight which lay between dawn and the
arrival of the apprentices to their work did not suffice him. It took
him so long to hide all traces of his doings, to wash out the brushes,
and rinse clean the paint-pots he had used, and on the top of that to
get the studio swept and dusted, that there was hardly time left him in
which to indulge the itching appetite in his fingers.

Driven by necessity, he became a pilferer of candle-ends, picking them
from their sockets in the lanterns which the students carried on dark
nights. Now and then one of these would remember that, when last used,
his lantern had had a candle in it, and would accuse Tiki-pu of having
stolen it. “It is true,” he would confess; “I was hungry--I have eaten
it.” The lie was so probable, he was believed easily, and was well
beaten accordingly. Down in the ragged linings of his coat Tiki-pu could
hear the candle-ends rattling as the buffeting and chastisement fell
upon him, and often he trembled lest his hoard should be discovered.
But the truth of the matter never leaked out and at night, as soon as he
guessed that all the world outside was in bed, Tiki-pu would mount one
of his candles on a wooden stand and paint by the light of it, blinding
himself over his task, till the dawn came and gave him a better and
cheaper light to work by.

Tiki-pu quite hugged himself over the results; he believed he was doing
very well. “If only Wio-wani were here to teach me,” thought he, “I
would be in the way of becoming a great painter!”

The resolution came to him one night that Wio-wani should teach him. So
he took a large piece of rice-paper and strained it, and sitting down
opposite “Wio-wani’s back-door,” began painting. He had never set
himself so big a task as this; by the dim stumbling light of his candle
he strained his eyes nearly blind over the difficulties of it; and at
last was almost driven to despair. How the trees stood row behind row,
with air and sunlight between, and how the path went in and out, winding
its way up to the little door in the palace-wall were mysteries he could
not fathom. He peered and peered and dropped tears into his paint-pots;
but the secret of the mystery of such painting was far beyond him.

The door in the palace-wall opened; out came a little old man and began
walking down the pathway towards him.

The soul of Tiki-pu gave a sharp leap in his grubby little body. “That
must be Wio-wani himself and no other!” cried his soul.

Tiki-pu pulled off his cap and threw himself down on the floor with
reverent grovellings. When he dared to look up again Wio-wani stood
over him big and fine; just within the edge of his canvas he stood and
reached out a hand.

“Come along with me, Tiki-pu!” said the great one. “If you want to know
how to paint I will teach you.”

“Oh, Wio-wani, were you there all the while?” cried Tiki-pu
ecstatically, leaping up and clutching with his smeary little puds the
hand which the old man extended to him.

“I was there,” said Wio-wani, “looking at you out of my little window.
Come along in!”

Tiki-pu took a heave and swung himself into the picture, and fairy
capered when he found his feet among the flowers of Wio-wani’s beautiful
garden. Wio-wani had turned, and was ambling gently back to the door of
his palace, beckoning to the small one to follow him; and there
stood Tiki-pu, opening his mouth like a fish to all the wonders that
surrounded him. “Celestiality, may I speak?” he said suddenly.

“Speak,” replied Wio-wani; “what is it?”

“The Emperor, was he not the very flower of fools not to follow when you
told him?”

“I cannot say,” answered Wio-wani, “but he certainly was no artist.”

Then he opened the door, that door which he had so beautifully painted,
and led Tiki-pu in. And outside the little candle-end sat and guttered
by itself, till the wick fell overboard, and the flame kicked itself
out, leaving the studio in darkness and solitude to wait for the
growings of another dawn.

It was full day before Tiki-pu reappeared; he came running down the
green path in great haste, jumped out of the frame on to the studio
floor, and began tidying up his own messes of the night and the
apprentices’ of the previous day. Only just in time did he have things
ready by the hour when his master and the others returned to their work.

All that day they kept scratching their left ears, and could not think
why; but Tiki-pu knew, for he was saying over to himself all the things
that Wio-wani, the great painter, had been saying about them and their
precious productions. And as he ground their colours for them and washed
their brushes, and filled his famished little body with the breadcrumbs
they threw away, little they guessed from what an immeasurable distance
he looked down upon them all, and had Wio-wani’s word for it tickling
his right ear all the day long.

Now before long Tiki-pu’s master noticed a change in him; and though he
bullied him, and thrashed him, and did all that a careful master should
do, he could not get the change out of him. So in a short while he grew
suspicious. “What is the boy up to?” he wondered. “I have my eye on him
all day: it must be at night that he gets into mischief.”

It did not take Tiki-pu’s master a night’s watching to find that
something surreptitious was certainly going on. When it was dark he took
up his post outside the studio, to see whether by any chance Tiki-pu had
some way of getting out; and before long he saw a faint light showing
through the window. So he came and thrust his finger softly through one
of the panes, and put his eye to the hole.

There inside was a candle burning on a stand, and Tiki-pu squatting with
paint-pots and brush in front of Wio-Wani’s last masterpiece.

“What fine piece of burglary is this?” thought he; “what serpent have I
been harbouring in my bosom? Is this beast of a grub of a boy
thinking to make himself a painter and cut me out of my reputation and
prosperity?” For even at that distance he could perceive plainly that
the work of this boy went head and shoulders beyond his, or that of any
painter then living.

Presently Wio-wani opened his door and came down the path, as was his
habit now each night, to call Tiki-pu to his lesson. He advanced to the
front of his picture and beckoned for Tiki-pu to come in with him; and
Tiki-pu’s master grew clammy at the knees as he beheld Tiki-pu catch
hold of Wio-wani’s hand and jump into the picture, and skip up the green
path by Wio-wani’s side, and in through the little door that Wio-wani
had painted so beautifully in the end wall of his palace!

For a time Tiki-pu’s master stood glued to the spot with grief and
horror. “Oh, you deadly little underling! Oh, you poisonous little
caretaker, you parasite, you vampire, you fly in amber!” cried he,
“is that where you get your training? Is it there that you dare to go
trespassing; into a picture that I purchased for my own pleasure and
profit, and not at all for yours? Very soon we will see whom it really
belongs to!”

He ripped out the paper of the largest window-pane and pushed his way
through into the studio. Then in great haste he took up paint-pot and
brush, and sacrilegiously set himself to work upon Wio-wani’s last
masterpiece. In the place of the doorway by which Tiki-pu had entered
he painted a solid brick wall; twice over he painted it, making it two
bricks thick; brick by brick he painted it, and mortared every brick
to its place. And when he had quite finished he laughed, and called
“Good-night, Tiki-pu!” and went home to bed quite happy.

The next day all the apprentices were wondering what had become of
Tiki-pu; but as the master himself said nothing, and as another boy came
to act as colour-grinder and brush-washer to the establishment, they
very soon forgot all about him.

In the studio the master used to sit at work with his students all about
him, and a mind full of ease and contentment. Now and then he would
throw a glance across to the bricked-up doorway of Wio-wani’s palace,
and laugh to himself, thinking how well he had served out Tiki-pu for
his treachery and presumption.

One day--it was five years after the disappearance of Tiki-pu--he was
giving his apprentices a lecture on the glories and the beauties and the
wonders of Wio-wani’s painting--how nothing for colour could excel,
or for mystery could equal it. To add point to his eloquence, he stood
waving his hands before Wio-wani’s last masterpiece, and all his
students and apprentices sat round him and looked.

Suddenly he stopped at mid-word, and broke off in the full flight of his
eloquence, as he saw something like a hand come and take down the top
brick from the face of paint which he had laid over the little door in
the palace-wall which Wio-wani had so beautifully painted. In another
moment there was no doubt about it; brick by brick the wall was being
pulled down, in spite of its double thickness.

The lecturer was altogether too dumfounded and terrified to utter
a word. He and all his apprentices stood round and stared while the
demolition of the wall proceeded. Before long he recognised Wio-wani
with his flowing white beard; it was his handiwork, this pulling down of
the wall! He still had a brick in his hand when he stepped through the
opening that he had made, and close after him stepped Tiki-pu!

Tiki-pu was grown tall and strong--he was even handsome; but for all
that his old master recognised him, and saw with an envious foreboding
that under his arms he carried many rolls and stretchers and portfolios,
and other belongings of his craft. Clearly Tiki-pu was coming back into
the world, and was going to be a great painter.

Down the garden-path came Wio-wani, and Tiki-pu walked after
him; Tiki-pu was so tall that his head stood well over Wio-wani’s
shoulders--old man and young man together made a handsome pair.

How big Wio-wani grew as he walked down the avenues of his garden and
into the foreground of his picture! and how big the brick in his hand!
and ah, how angry he seemed!

Wio-wani came right down to the edge of the picture-frame and held up
the brick. “What did you do that for?” he asked.

“I... didn’t!” Tiki-pu’s old master was beginning to reply; and the lie
was still rolling on his tongue when the weight of the brick-bat, hurled
by the stout arm of Wio-wani, felled him. After that he never spoke
again. That brick-bat, which he himself had reared, became his own
tombstone.

Just inside the picture-frame stood Tiki-pu, kissing the wonderful hands
of Wio-wani, which had taught him all their skill. “Good-bye, Tiki-pu!”
 said Wio-wani, embracing him tenderly. “Now I am sending my second self
into the world. When you are tired and want rest come back to me: old
Wio-wani will take you in.”

Tiki-pu was sobbing, and the tears were running down his cheeks as he
stepped out of Wio-wani’s wonderfully painted garden and stood once
more upon earth. Turning, he saw the old man walking away along the
path toward the little door under the palace-wall. At the door Wio-wani
turned back and waved his hand for the last time. Tiki-pu still stood
watching him. Then the door opened and shut, and Wio-wani was gone.
Softly as a flower the picture seemed to have folded its leaves over
him.

Tiki-pu leaned a wet face against the picture and kissed the door in the
palace-wall which Wio-wani had painted so beautifully. “O Wio-wani, dear
master,” he cried, “are you there?”

He waited, and called again, but no voice answered him.




THE WAY OF THE WIND


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Katipah’s next-door neighbour had everything that her own lonely heart
most wished for: not only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well.
Yet she was such a jealous, cross-grained body that she seemed to get
no happiness out of the fortune Heaven had sent her. Husband and child
seemed both to have caught the infection of her bitter temper: all day
and night beating and brawling went on; there seemed no peace in that
house.

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

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

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

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

“That cannot be,” thought Katipah, with her fingers fast upon a stalk
of field-sorrel; “it is too soon for anything so good to happen.” So she
picked the sorrel quietly, and put it into her basket. But now, not to
be mistaken, arms came round her, and she was kissed.

She stood up and put her hands into her breast, quite afraid lest her
little heart, which had grown so light, should be caught by a puff of
wind and blown right away out of her bosom, and over the hill and into
the sea, and be drowned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He set her once more in the treetop, and disappeared from her sight.
“Come down to me, Katipah!” she heard his voice calling all round her.

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

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

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

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

“I will tell them,” said Gamma-gata; and suddenly he was gone. Katipah
saw a drift of white petals borne over the treetops and away to sea,
and she knew that there went Gamma-gata, the beautiful windy youth who,
loving her so well, had made her his wife between the showers of the
plum-blossom and the sunshine, and had promised to return to her as soon
as she was fit to receive him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every day after this Bimsha thrust her face over the fence to say:
“Katipah, where is this fine husband of yours? He does not seem to come
home often.”

Katipah answered slily; “He comes home late, when it is dark, and he
goes away very early, almost before it is light. It is not necessary for
his happiness that he should see _you_.”

“Certainly there is a change in Katipah,” thought Bimsha: “she has
become saucy with her tongue.” But her envious heart would not allow
her to let matters be. Night and morning she cried to Katipah, “Katipah,
where is your fine husband?” And Katipah laughed at her, thinking to
herself: “To begin with, I will not be afraid of anything Bimsha may
say. Let Gamma-gata know that!”

And now every day she looked up into the sky to see what wind was
blowing; but east, or north, or south, it was never the one wind that
she looked for. The east wind came from the sea, bringing rain, and
beat upon Katipah’s door at night. Then Katipah would rise and open, and
standing in the downpour, would cry, “East wind, east wind, go and tell
your brother Gamma-gata that I am not afraid of you any more than I am
of Bimsha!”

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

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

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

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

And now every day and all day long she sent up her kite from the
seashore, praying that a child might be born to her and convince Bimsha
of the truth. Every one said: “Katipah is mad about kite-flying! See
how early she goes and how late she stays: hardly any weather keeps her
indoors.”

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

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

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

It had become so dark that Katipah hardly knew what the kite had brought
her till she touched the tiny warm limbs that lay cradled among the
strings that netted the frame to its cord. Full of wonder and delight,
she lifted the windling out of its nest, and laid it in her bosom.
Then she slung her kite across her shoulder, and ran home, laughing and
crying for joy and triumph to think that all Bimsha’s mockery must now
be at an end. So, quite early the next morning, Katipah sat herself down
very demurely in the doorway, with her child hidden in the folds of her
gown, and waited for Bimsha’s evil eye to look out upon her happiness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Up in air the kite made a far plunge forward, fluttered and stumbled
in its course, and came shooting headlong to earth. “Oh dear!” cried
Katipah, “it my beautiful little kite gets torn, Bimsha, that will be
your fault!”

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

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

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

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

“Ah!” answered Katipah slily, “he was up in the clouds when the kite
left him, and he came down with the rain last night. It is nothing
wonderful. You were foolish, Bimsha, if you thought that to fall into
the clouds would do the child any harm. Up there you can have no idea
how beautiful it is--such fields of gold, such wonderful gardens, such
flowers and fruits: it is from there that all the beauty and wealth of
the world must come. See all that he has brought with him! and it is all
your doing, because you cut the cord of the kite. Oh, clever Bimsha!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So Katipah gave him the child through the bars of her prison window, and
when he was gone lay down and slept till it became light.

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

“I have not eaten my child, and I am no witch,” said Katipah, as,
taking with her her blue-and-green kite she trotted out to the place of
execution. When she was come to the appointed spot she said to the chief
magistrate, “To every criminal it is permitted to plead in defence of
himself; but because I am innocent, am I not also allowed to plead?” The
magistrate told her she might speak if she had anything to say.

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

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

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

“Prove it!” cried the magistrate.

“I cannot,” replied Katipah.

“Then you must die!” said the magistrate.

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

“Prove it!” cried the chief magistrate again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




A CAPFUL OF MOONSHINE


On the top of Drundle Head, away to the right side, where the track
crossed, it was known that the fairies still came and danced by night.
But though Toonie went that way every evening on his road home from
work, never once had he been able to spy them.

So one day he said to the old faggot-maker, “How is it that one gets to
see a fairy?” The old man answered, “There are some to whom it comes by
nature; but for others three things are needed--a handful of courage,
a mouthful of silence, and a capful of moonshine. But if you would be
trying it, take care that you don’t go wrong more than twice; for with
the third time you will fall into the hands of the fairies and be their
bondsman. But if you manage to see the fairies, you may ask whatever you
like of them.”

Toonie believed in himself so much that the very next night he took his
courage in both hands, filled his cap with moon-shine, shut his mouth,
and set out. Just after he had started he passed, as he thought, a
priest riding by on a mule. “Good evening to you, Toonie,” called the
priest.

“Good evening, your reverence,” cried Toonie, and flourished off his
cap, so that out fell his capful of moonshine. And though he went on all
the way up over the top of Drundle Head, never a fairy did he spy; for
he forgot that, in passing what he supposed to be the priest, he had let
go both his mouthful of silence and his capful of moonshine.

The next night, when he was coming to the ascent of the hill, he saw a
little elderly man wandering uncertainly over the ground ahead of him;
and he too seemed to have his hands full of courage and his cap full of
moonshine. As Toonie drew near, the other turned about and said to him,
“Can you tell me, neighbour, if this be the way to the fairies?”

“Why, you fool,” cried Toonie, “a moment ago it was! But now you have
gone and let go your mouthful of silence!”

“To be sure, to be sure--so I have!” answered the old man sadly; and
turning about, he disappeared among the bushes.

As for Toonie, he went on right over the top of Drundle Head, keeping
his eyes well to the right; but never a fairy did he see. For he too had
on the way let go his mouthful of silence.

Toonie, when his second failure came home to him, was quite vexed with
himself for his folly and mismanagement. So that it should not happen
again, he got his wife to tie on his cap of moonshine so firmly that it
could not come off, and to gag up his mouth so that no word could come
out of it. And once more taking his courage in both hands, he set out.

For a long way he went and nothing happened, so he was in good hopes of
getting the desire of his eyes before the night was over; and, clenching
his fists tight upon his courage, he pressed on.

He had nearly reached to the top of Drundle Head, when up from the
ground sprang the same little elderly man of the evening before, and
began beating him across the face with a hazel wand. And at that Toonie
threw up both hands and let go his courage, and turned and tried to run
down the hill.

When her husband did not return, Toonie’s wife became a kind of a
widow. People were very kind to her, and told her that Toonie was not
dead--that he had only fallen into the hands of the good-folk; but all
day long she sat and cried, “I fastened on his cap of moonshine, and I
tied up his tongue; and for all that he has gone away and left me!” And
so she cried until her child was born and named Little Toonie in memory
of his lost father.

After a while people, looking at him, began to shake their heads; for as
he grew older it became apparent that his tongue was tied, seeing that
he remained quite dumb in spite of all that was done to teach him; and
his head was full of moonshine, so that he could understand nothing
clearly by day--only as night came on his wits gathered, and he seemed
to find a meaning for things. And some said it was his mother’s fault,
and some that it was his father’s, and some that he was a changeling
sent by the fairies, and that the real child had been taken to share
his father’s bondage. But which of these things was true Little Toonie
himself had no idea.

After a time Little Toonie began to grow big, as is the way with
children, and at last he became bigger than ever old Toonie had been.
But folk still called him Little Toonie, because his head was so full
of moonshine; and his mother, finding he was no good to her, sold him
to the farmer, by whom, since he had no wits for anything better, he was
set to pull at waggon and plough just as if he were a cart-horse; and,
indeed, he was almost as strong as one. To make him work, carter and
ploughman used to crack their whips over his back; and Little Toonie
took it as the most natural thing in the world, because his brain was
full of moonshine, so that he understood nothing clearly by day.

But at night he would lie in his stable among the horses, and wonder
about the moonlight that stretched wide over all the world and lay free
on the bare tops of the hills; and he thought--would it not be good to
be there all alone, with the moonbeams laying their white hands down on
his head? And so it came that one night, finding the door of his stable
unlocked, he ran out into the open world a free man.

A soft wind breathed at large, and swung slowly in the black-silver
treetops. Over them Little Toonie could see the quiet slopes of Drundle
Head, asleep in the moonlight.

Before long, following the lead of his eyes, he had come to the bottom
of the ascent. There before him went walking a little shrivelled elderly
man, looking to right and left as if uncertain of the road.

As Little Toonie drew near, the other one turned and spoke. “Can you
tell me,” said he, “if this be the way to the fairies?”

Little Toonie had no tongue to give an answer; so, looking at his
questioner, he wagged his head and went on.

Quickening his pace, the old man came alongside and began peering; then
he smiled to himself, and after a bit spoke out. “So you have lost your
cap, neighbour? Then you will never be able to find the fairies.” For
he did not know that Little Toonie, who wore no cap on his head, carried
his capful of moonshine safe underneath his skull, where it had been
since the hour of his birth.

The little elderly man slipped from his side, disappearing suddenly
among the bushes, and Toonie went on alone. So presently he was more
than halfway up the ascent, and could see along the foot-track of the
thicket the silver moonlight lying out over the open ahead.

He had nearly reached to the top of the hill, when up from the ground
sprang the little elderly man, and began beating him across the face
with a hazel wand. Toonie thought surely this must be some carter or
ploughman beating him to make him go faster; so he made haste to get on
and be rid of the blows.

Then, all of a sudden, the little elderly man threw away his hazel
stick, and fell down, clutching at Little Toonie’s ankles, whining and
praying him not to go on.

“Now that I have failed to keep you from coming,” he cried, “my masters
will put me to death for it! I am a dead man, I tell you, if you go
another step!”

Toonie could not understand what the old fellow meant, and he could not
speak to him. But the poor creature clung to his feet, holding them to
prevent him from taking another step; so Toonie just stooped down,
and (for he was so little and light) picked him up by the scruff, and
carried him by his waistband, so that his arms and legs trailed together
along the ground.

In the open moonlight ahead little people were all agog; bright dewdrops
were shivering down like rain, where flying feet alighted--shot from
bent grass-blades like arrows from a drawn bow. Tight, panting little
bodies, of which one could count the ribs, and faces flushed with fiery
green blood, sprang everywhere. But at Toonie’s coming one cried up
shriller than a bat; and at once rippling burrows went this way and that
in the long grass, and stillness followed after.

The poor, dangling old man, whom Toonie was still carrying, wriggled and
whined miserably, crying, “Come back, masters, for it is no use--this
one sees you! He has got past me and all my poor skill to stop him. Set
me free, for you see I am too old to keep the door for you any longer!”

Out buzzed the fairies, hot and angry as a swarm of bees. They came
and fastened upon the unhappy old man, and began pulling him. “To the
ant-hills!” they cried; “off with him to the ant-hills!” But when they
found that Toonie still held him, quickly they all let go.

One fairy, standing out from the rest, pulled off his cap and bowed low.
“What is your will, master mortal?” he inquired; “for until you have
taken your wish and gone, we are all slaves at your bidding.”

They all cringed round him, the cruel little people; but he answered
nothing. The moonbeams came thick, laying their slender white palms
graciously upon Toonie’s head; and he, looking up, opened his mouth for
a laugh that gave no sound.

“Ah, so! That is why--he is a mute!” cried the fairies.

Quickly one dipped his cap along the grass and brought it filled with
dew. He sprang up, and poured it upon Toonie’s tongue; and as the fairy
dew touched it, “Now speak!” they all cried in chorus, and fawned and
cringed, waiting for him to give them the word.

Cudgelling his brain for what it all meant, he said, “Tell me first what
wish I may have.”

“Whatever you like to ask,” said they, “for you have become one of our
free men. Tell us your name?”

“I am called Little Toonie,” said he, “the son of old Toonie that was
lost.”

“Why, as I live and remember,” cried the little elderly man, “old Toonie
was me!” Then he threw himself grovelling at his son’s feet, and began
crying: “Oh, be quick and take me away! Make them give me up to you: ask
to have me! I am your poor, loving old father whom you never saw; all
these years have I been looking and longing for you! Now take me away,
for they are a proud, cruel people, as spiteful as they are small; and
my back has been broken twenty years in their bondage.”

The fairies began to look blue, for they hate nothing so much as to give
up one whom they have once held captive. “We can give you gold,” said
they, “or precious stones, or the root of long living, or the waters of
happiness, or the sap of youth, or the seed of plenty, or the blossom of
beauty. Choose any of these, and we can give it you.”

The old man again caught hold of his son’s feet. “Don’t choose these,”
 he whimpered, “choose me!”

So because he had a capful of moonshine in his head, and because the
moonbeams were laying their white hands on his hair, he chose the weak,
shrivelled old man, who crouched and clung to him, imploring not to be
let go.

The fairies, for spite and anger, bestowed every one a parting pinch
on their tumble-down old bondsman; then they handed him to his son, and
swung back with careless light hearts to their revels.

As father and son went down the hill together, the old man whistled and
piped like a bird. “Why, why!” he said, “you are a lad of strength and
inches: with you to work and look after me, I can keep on to a merry old
age! Ay, ay, I have had long to wait for it; but wisdom is justified in
her children.”




THE MOON-STROKE



In the hollow heart of an old tree a Jackdaw and his wife had made
themselves a nest. As soon as the mother of his eggs had finished
laying, she sat waiting patiently for something to come of it. One by
one five mouths poked out of the shells, demanding to be fed; so for
weeks the happy couple had to be continually in two places at once
searching for food to satisfy them.

Presently the wings of the young ones grew strong; they could begin to
fly about; and the parents found time for a return to pleasuring and
curiosity-hunting. They began gathering in a wise assortment of broken
glass and chips of platter to grace the corners of their dwelling. All
but the youngest Jackdaw were enchanted with their unutterable beauty
and value; they were never tired of quarrelling over the possession and
arrangement of them.

“But what are they for?” asked the youngest, a perverse bird who
grouped himself apart from the rest, and took no share in their daily
squabblings.

The mother-bird said: “They are beautiful, and what God intended for us:
therefore they must be true. We may not see the use of them yet, but no
doubt some day they will come true.”

The little Jackdaw said: “Their corners scratch me when I want to go to
sleep; they are far worse than crumbs in the bed. All the other birds do
without them--why should not we?”

“That is what distinguishes us from the other birds!” replied the
Janedaw, and thanked her stars that it was so.

“I wish we could sing!” sighed the littlest young Jackdaw. “Babble,
babble!” replied his mother angrily.

And then, as it was dinner-time, he forgot his grief as they all said
grace, and fell-to.

One evening the old Jackdaw came home very late, carrying something that
burned bright and green, like an evening star; all the nest shone where
he set it down.

“What do you think of that for a discovery?” he said to the Janedaw.

“Think?” she said; “I can’t. Some of it looks good to eat; but that
fire-patch at the end would burn one’s inside out.”

Presently the Jackdaw family settled itself down to sleep; only the
youngest one sat up and watched. Now he had seen something beautiful.
Was it going to come true? Its light was like the song of the
nightingale in the leaves overhead: it glowed, and throbbed, and grew
strong, flooding the whole place where it lay.

Soon, in the silence, he heard a little wail of grief: “Why have they
carried me away here,” sighed the glow-worm, “out of the tender grass
that loves the ground?”

The littlest Jackdaw listened with all his heart. Now something at last
was going to become true, without scratching his legs and making him
feel as though crumbs were in his bed.

A little winged thing came flying down to the green light, and two
voices began crying together--the glow-worm and its mate.

“They have carried you away?”

“They have carried me away; up here I shall die!”

“I am too weak to lift you,” said the one with wings; “you will stay
here, and you will die!” Then they cried yet more.

“It seems to me,” thought the Jackdaw, “that as soon as the beautiful
becomes true, God does not intend it to be for us.” He got up softly
from among his brothers. “I will carry you down,” he said. And without
more ado, he picked it up and carried it down out of the nest, and laid
it in the long grass at the foot of the tree.

Overhead the nightingale sang, and the full moon shone; its rays struck
down on the little Jackdaw’s head. For a bird that is not a nightingale
to wake up and find its head unprotected under the rays of a full moon
is serious: there and then he became moon-struck. He went back into bed;
but he was no longer the same little Jackdaw. “Oh, I wish I could sing!”
 he thought; and not for hours could he get to sleep.

In the morning, when the family woke up, the beautiful and the true was
gone. The father Jackdaw thought he must have swallowed it in his sleep.

“If you did,” said his wife “there’ll be a smell of burnt feathers
before long!”

But the littlest Jackdaw said, “It came true, and went away, because it
was never intended for us.”

Now some days after this the old Jack-daw again came carrying something
that shone like an evening star--a little spike of gold with a burning
emerald set in the end of it. “And what do you think of that?” said he
to his wife.

“I daren’t come near it,” she answered, “for fear it should burn me!”

That night the little Jackdaw lay awake, while all the others slept,
waiting to hear the green stone break out into sorrow, and to see if its
winged mate would come seeking it. But after hours had gone, and nothing
stirred or spoke, he slipped softly out of the nest, and went down
to search for the poor little winged mate who must surely be about
somewhere.

And now, truly, among the grasses and flowers he heard something sobbing
and sighing; a little winged thing darted into sight and out again,
searching the ground like a dragon-fly at quest. And all the time,
amid the darting and humming of its wings, came sobbing and wringing of
hands.

The young Jackdaw called: “Little wings, what have you lost? Is it not a
spike with a green light at the end of it?”

“My wand, my wand!” cried the fairy, beside herself with grief. “Just
about sunset I was asleep in an empty wren’s nest, and when I woke up my
wand was gone!”

Then the little Jackdaw, being moon-struck, and not knowing the value of
things, flew up to the nest and brought back the fairy her wand.

“Oh!” she cried, “you have saved my life!” And she thanked the Jackdaw
till he grew quite modest and shy.

“What is it for? What can you do with it?” he asked.

“With this,” she answered, “I can make anything beautiful come true! I
can give you whatever you ask; you have but to ask, and you shall have.”

Then the little Jackdaw, being moon-struck, and not knowing the value of
things, said, “Oh, if I could only sing like a nightingale!”

“You can!” said the fairy, waving her wand but once; and immediately
some-thing like a melodious sneeze flew into his head and set it
shaking.

“Chiou! chiou! True-true-true-true! Jug! jug! Oh, beautiful! beautiful!”
 His beak went dabbling in the sweet sound, rippling it this way and
that, spraying it abroad out of his blissful heart as a jewel throws out
its fires.

The fairy was gone; but the little Jackdaw sprang up into the high elm,
and sang on endlessly through the whole night.

At dawn he stopped, and looking down, there he saw the family getting
ready for breakfast, and wondering what had become of him. Just as they
were saying grace he flew in, his little heart beating with joy over his
new-found treasure. What a jewel of a voice he had: better than all the
pieces of glass and chips of platter lying down there in the nest! As
soon as the parent-birds had finished grace, he lifted his voice and
thanked God that the thing he had wished for had become true.

None of them understood what he said, but they paid him plenty of
attention. All his brothers and sisters put up their heads and giggled,
as the young do when one of their number misbehaves.

“Don’t make that noise!” said his mother; “it’s not decent!”

“It’s low!” said the father-bird.

The littlest young Jackdaw was overwhelmed with astonishment. When he
tried to explain, his unseemly melodies led to his immediate expulsion
from the family circle. Such noises, he was told, could only be made in
private; when he had quite got over them he might come back,--but not
until.

He never got over them; so he never came back. For a few days he hid
himself in different trees of the garden, and sang the praises of
sorrow; but his family, though they comprehended him not, recognised his
note, and came searching him with beak and claw, and drove him out so as
not to have him near them committing such scandalous noises to the ears
of the public.

“He lies in his throat!” said the old Jackdaw. “Everything he says he
garbles. If he is our son he must have been hatched on the wrong side of
the nest!”

After that, wherever he went, all the birds jeered at and persecuted
him. Even the nightingales would not listen to his brotherly voice. They
made fun of his black coat, and called him a Nonconformist without a
conscience. “All this has come about,” thought he, “because God never
meant anything beautiful to come true.”

One day a man who saw him and heard him singing, caught him, and took
him round the world in a cage for show. The value of him was discovered.
Great crowds came to see the little Jackdaw, and to hear him sing.
He was described now as the “Amphabulous Philomel, or the
Mongrel-Minstrel”; but it gave him no joy.

Before long he had become what we call tame--that is to say, his wings
had been clipped; he was allowed out of his cage, because he could no
longer fly away, and he sang when he was told, because he was whipped if
he did not.

One day there was a great crowd round the travelling booth where he was
on view: the showman had a new wonder which he was about to show to the
people. He took the little Jackdaw out of his cage, and set him to perch
upon his shoulder, while he busied himself over something which he was
taking carefully out of ever so many boxes and coverings.

The Jackdaw’s sad eye became attracted by a splendid scarf-pin that the
showman wore--a gold pin set with a tiny emerald that burned like fire.
The bird thought, “Now if only the beautiful could become true!”

And now the showman began holding up a small glass bottle for the crowd
to stare into. The people were pushing this way and that to see what
might be there.

At the bottom sat the little fairy, without her wand, weeping and
beating her hands on the glass.

The showman was so proud he grew red in the face, and ran shouting up
and down the plank, shaking and turning the bottle upside down now and
then, so as to make the cabined fairy use her wings, and buzz like a fly
against the glass.

The Jackdaw waggled unsteadily at his perch on the man’s shoulder.
“Look at him!” laughed some one in the crowd, “he’s going to steal his
master’s scarf-pin.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” shouted the showman. “See this bird now! See the
marvellous mongrel nature of the beast! Who tells me he’s only a
nightingale painted black?”

The people laughed the more at that, for there was a fellow in the crowd
looking sheepish. The Jackdaw had drawn out the scarf-pin, and held it
gravely in its beak, looking sideways with cunning eyes. He was wishing
hard. All the crowd laughed again.

Suddenly the showman’s hand gave a jerk, the bottle slipped from his
hold and fell, shivering itself upon the ground.

There was a buzz of wings--the fairy had escaped.

“The beautiful is coming true,” thought the Jackdaw, as he yielded to
the fairy her wand, and found, suddenly, that his wings were not clipped
after all.

“What more can I do for you?” asked the fairy, as they flew away
together. “You gave me back my wand; I have given you back your wings.”

“I will not ask anything,” said the little Jackdaw; “what God intends
will come true.”

“Let me take you up to the moon,” said the fairy. “All the Jackdaws up
there sing like nightingales.”

“Why is that?” asked the little Jackdaw.

“Because they are all moon-struck,” she answered.

“And what is it to be moon-struck?” he asked.

“Surely you should know, if any one!” laughed the fairy. “To see things
beautifully, and not as they are. On the moon you will be able to do
that without any difficulty.”

“Ah,” said the little Jackdaw, “now I know at last that the beautiful is
going to come true!”




HOW LITTLE DUKE JARL SAVED THE CASTLE

Duke Jarl had found a good roost for himself when his long work of
expelling the invader was ended. Seawards and below the town, in the
mouth of the river, stood a rock, thrusting out like a great tusk ready
to rip up any armed vessel that sought passage that way. On the top of
this he had built himself a castle, and its roots went deep, deep
down into the solid stone. No man knew how deep the deepest of the
foundations went; but wherever they were, just there was old Duke Jarl’s
sleeping-chamber. Thither he had gone to sleep when the world no longer
needed him; and he had not yet returned.

That was three hundred years ago, and still the solid rock vaulted the
old warrior’s slumber; and over his head men talked of him, and told
how he was reserving the strength of his old age till his country should
again call for him.

The call seemed to come now; for his descendant, little Duke Jarl the
Ninth, was but a child; and being in no fear of him, the old foe had
returned, and the castle stood besieged. Also, farther than the eye
could see from the topmost tower, the land lay all overrun, its richness
laid waste by armed bands who gathered in its harvest by the sword, and
the town itself lay under tribute; from the tower one could see the busy
quays, and the enemy loading his ships with rich merchandise.

Sent up there to play in safety, little Duke Jarl could not keep his red
head from peering over the parapet. He began making fierce faces at the
enemy--he was still too young to fight: and quick a grey goose-shaft
came and sang its shrill song at his ear. So close had it gone that a
little of the ducal blood trickled out over his collar. His face worked
with rage; leaning far out over the barrier, he began shouting, “I will
tell Duke Jarl of you!” till an attendant ran up and snatched him away
from danger.

Things were going badly: the castle was cut off from the land, and on
the seaward side the foe had built themselves a great mole within which
their war-ships could ride at anchor safe from the reach of storm. Thus
there was no way left by which help or provender could come in.

Little Duke Jarl saw men round him growing more gaunt and thin day by
day, but he did not understand why till he chanced once upon a soldier
gnawing a foul bone for the stray bits of meat that clung to it; then
he learned that all in the castle except himself had been put upon
quarter-rations, though every day there was more and more fighting work
to be done.

So that day when the usual white bread and savouries were brought to
him, he flung them all downstairs, telling the cook that the day he
really became Duke he would have his head off if he ever dared to send
him anything again but the common fare.

Hearing of it, the old Chief Constable picked up little Master Ninth
Duke between finger and thumb, and laughed, holding him in the air.
“With you alive,” said he, “we shall not have to wake Duke Jarl after
all!” The little Duke asked when he would let him have a sword; and the
Constable clapped his cheeks and ran back cheerfully at a call from the
palisades.

But others carried heavy looks, thinking, “Long before his fair promise
can come to anything our larders will be empty and our walls gone!”

It was no great time after this that the Duke’s Constable was the only
man who saw reason in holding out. That became known all through the
castle, and the cook, honest fellow, brought up little Jarl’s dinner one
day with tears in his eyes. He set down his load of dainties. “It is no
use!” said he, “you may as well eat to-day, since to-morrow we give up
the castle.”

“Who dares to say ‘we’?” cried little Duke Jarl, springing to his feet.

“All but the Constable,” said the cook; “even now they are in the
council-hall, trying to make him see reason. Whether or no, they will
not let him hold on.”

Little Jarl found the doors of the great hall barred to the thunderings
of his small fist: for, in truth, these men could not bear to look upon
one who had in his veins the blood of old Duke Jarl, when they were
about to give up his stronghold to the enemy.

So little Jarl made his way up to the bowery, where was a minstrel’s
window looking down into the hall. Sticking out his head so that he
might see down to where the council was sitting, “If you give up the
castle, I will tell Duke Jarl!” he cried. Hearing his young master’s
voice, the Constable raised his eyes; but not able to see him for tears
in them, called out: “Tell him quick, for here it is all against one!
Only for one day more have they promised to follow my bidding, and keep
the carrion crows from coming to Jarl’s nest.”

And even as he spoke came the renewed cry of attack, and the answering
shout of “Jarl, Jarl!” from the defenders upon the walls. Then all leapt
up, over-turning the council-board, and ran out to the battlements to
carry on with what courage was left to them a hopeless contest for one
more day.

Little Duke Jarl remained like a beating heart in the great empty keep.
He ran wildly from room to room, calling in rage and desperation on Old
Jarl to return and fight. From roof to basement he ran, commanding the
spirit of his ancestor to appear, till at last he found himself in the
deepest cellars of all. Down there he could hear but faintly the sound
of the fighting; yet it seemed to him that through the stone he could
hear the slow booming of the sea, and as he went deeper into the
castle’s foundations the louder had grown its note. “Does the sea come
in all the way under the castle?” he wondered. “Oh that it would sap the
foundations and sink castle and all, rather than let them give up old
Jarl’s stronghold to his enemies!”

All was quite dark here, where the castle stood embedded; but now
and then little Duke Jarl could feel a puff of wind on his face, and
presently he was noticing how it came, as if timed to the booming of the
sea underneath: whenever came the sound of a breaking wave, with it came
a draught of air. He wondered if, so low down, there might not be some
secret opening to the shore.

Groping in the direction of the gusts, his feet came upon stairs. So low
and narrow was the entrance, he had to turn sideways and stoop; but
when he had burrowed through a thickness of wall he was able to stand
upright; and again he found stairs leading somewhere.

Down, these led down. He had never been so low before. And what a storm
there must be outside! Against these walls the thunders of: the sea grew
so loud he could no longer hear the tramp of his own feet descending.

And now the wind came at him in great gusts; first came the great boom
of the sea, and then a blast of air. The way twisted and circled, making
his head giddy for a fall; his feet slipped on the steepness and slime
of the descent, and at each turn the sound grew more appalling, and the
driving force of the wind more and more like the stroke of a man’s fist.

Presently the shock of it threw him from his standing, so that he had to
lie down and slide feet foremost, clinging with his eyelids and nails
to break the violence of his descent. And now the air was so full of
thunder that his teeth shook in their sockets, and his bones jarred in
his flesh. The darkness growled and roared; the wind kept lifting him
backwards--the force of it seemed almost to flay the skin off: his face;
and still he went on, throwing his full weight against the air ahead.

Then for a moment he felt himself letting go altogether: solid walls
slipping harshly past him in the darkness, he fell; and came headlong,
crashed and bruised, to a standstill.

At first his brain was all in a mist; then, raising himself, he saw a
dim blue light falling through a low vaulted chamber. At the end of it
sat old Jarl, like adamant in slumber. His head was down on his breast,
buried in a great burning bush of hair and beard; his hands, gripping
the arms of his iron throne, had twisted them like wire; and the weight
of his feet where they rested had hollowed a socket in the stone floor
for them to sink into.

All his hair and his armour shone with a red-and-blue flame; and the
light of him struck the vaulting and the floor like the rays of a torch
as it burns. Over his head a dark tunnel, bored in the solid rock,
reached up a hollow throat seawards. But not by that way came the wind
and the sound of the sea; it was old Jarl himself, breathing peacefully
in his sleep, waiting for the hour which should call his strength to
life.

Young Duke Jarl ran swiftly across the chamber, and struck old Jarl’s
knees, crying, “Wake, Jarl! or the castle will be taken!” But the
sleeper did not stir. Then he climbed the iron bars of the Duke’s chair,
and reaching high, caught hold of the red beard. “Forefather!” he cried,
“wake, or the castle will be betrayed!”

But still old Duke Jarl snored a drowsy hurricane. Then little Jarl
sprang upon his knee, and seizing him by the head, pulled to move its
dead weight, and finding he could not, struck him full on the mouth,
crying, “Jarl, Jarl, old thunderbolt! wake, or you will betray the
castle!”

At that old Jarl hitched himself in his seat, and “Humph!” cried he,
drawing in a deep breath.

In rushed the wind whistling from the sea, and down it rushed whistling
from the way by which little Jarl had come; like the wings of cranes
flying homewards in spring, so it whistled when old Jarl drew in his
breath.

Off his knee dropped little Ninth Jarl, buffeted speechless to earth.
And old Jarl, letting go one breath, settled himself back to slumber.

Far up overhead, at the darkening-in of night, the besiegers saw the
eyes of the castle flash red for an instant, and shut again; then they
heard the castle-rock bray out like a great trumpet, and they trembled,
crying, “That is old Jarl’s warhorn; he is awake out of slumber!”

They had reason enough to fear; for suddenly upon their ships-of-war
there crashed, as though out of the bowels of the earth, a black wind
and sandblast; and coming, it took the reefed sails and rigging, and
snapped the masts and broke every vessel from its moorings, and drove
all to wreck and ruin against the great mole that had been built to
shelter them.

And away inland, beyond the palisades and under the entrenched camp of
the besiegers, the ground pitched and rocked, so that every tent fell
grovelling; and whenever the ground gaped, captains and men-at-arms were
swallowed down in detachments.

Hardly had the call of old Jarl’s war-horn ceased, before the Constable
commanded the castle gates to be thrown open, and out he came leading
a gaunt and hungry band of Jarl-folk warriors; for over in the enemy’s
camp they had scent of a hot supper which must be cooked and eaten
before dawn. And in a little while, when the cooking was at its height,
young Duke Jarl stuck his red head out over the battlements, and
laughed.

So this has told how old Duke Jarl once turned and talked in his sleep;
but to tell of the real awakening of old Jarl would be quite another
story.




THE WHITE DOE

One day, as the king’s huntsman was riding in the forest, he came to a
small pool. Fallen leaves covering its surface had given it the colour
of blood, and knee-deep in their midst stood a milk-white doe drinking.

The beauty of the doe set fire to the huntsman’s soul; he took an arrow
and aimed well at the wild heart of the creature. But as he was loosing
the string the branch of a tree overhanging the pool struck him across
the face, and caught hold of him by the hair; and arrow and doe vanished
away together into the depths of the forest.

Never until now, since he entered the king’s service, had the huntsman
missed his aim. The thought of the white doe living after he had willed
its death inflamed him with rage; he could not rest till he had brought
hounds on the trail, determined to follow until it had surrendered to
him its life.

All day, while he hunted, the woods stayed breathless, as if to watch;
not a blade moved, not a leaf fell. About noon a red deer crossed his
path; but he paid no heed, keeping his hounds only to the white doe’s
trail.

At sunset a fallow deer came to disturb the scent, and through the
twilight, as it deepened, a grey wolf ran in and out of the underwood.
When night came down, his hounds fled from his call, following through
tangled thickets a huge black boar with crescent tusks. So he found
himself alone, with his horse so weary that it could scarcely move.

But still, though the moon was slow in its rising, the fever of the
chase burned in the huntsman’s veins, and caused him to press on. For
now he found himself at the rocky entrance of a ravine whence no way
led; and the white doe being still before him, he made sure that he
would get her at last. So when his horse fell, too tired to rise again,
he dismounted and forced his way on; and soon he saw before him the
white doe, labouring up an ascent of sharp crags, while closer and
higher the rocks rose and narrowed on every side. Presently she had
leapt high upon a boulder that shook and swayed as her feet rested, and
ahead the wall of rocks had joined so that there was nowhere farther
that she might go.

Then the huntsman notched an arrow, and drew with full strength, and
let it go. Fast and straight it went, and the wind screamed in the
red feathers as they flew; but faster the doe overleapt his aim, and,
spurning the stone beneath, down the rough-bouldered gully sent it
thundering, shivering to fragments as it fell. Scarcely might the
huntsman escape death as the great mass swept past: but when the danger
was over he looked ahead, and saw plainly, where the stone had once
stood, a narrow opening in the rock, and a clear gleam of moonlight
beyond.

That way he went, and passing through, came upon a green field, as full
of flowers as a garden, duskily shining now, and with dark shadows in
all its folds. Round it in a great circle the rocks made a high wall,
so high that along their crest forest-trees as they clung to look over
seemed but as low-growing thickets against the sky.

The huntsman’s feet stumbled in shadow and trod through thick grass into
a quick-flowing streamlet that ran through the narrow way by which he
had entered. He threw himself down into its cool bed, and drank till
he could drink no more. When he rose he saw, a little way off, a small
dwelling-house of rough stone, moss-covered and cosy, with a roof of
wattles which had taken root and pushed small shoots and clusters of
grey leaves through their weaving. Nature, and not man, seemed there to
have been building herself an abode.

Before the doorway ran the stream, a track of white mist showing where
it wound over the meadow; and by its edge a beautiful maiden sat, and
was washing her milk-white feet and arms in the wrinkling eddies.

To the huntsman she became all at once the most beautiful thing that the
world contained; all the spirit of the chase seemed to be in her blood,
and each little movement of her feet made his heart jump for joy. “I
have looked for you all my life!” thought he, as he halted and gazed,
not daring to speak lest the lovely vision should vanish, and the memory
of it mock him for ever.

The beautiful maiden looked up from her washing. “Why have you come
here?” said she.

The huntsman answered her as he believed to be the truth, “I have come
because I love you!”

“No,” she said, “you came because you wanted to kill the white doe. If
you wish to kill her, it is not likely that you can love me.”

“I do not wish to kill the white doe!” cried the huntsman; “I had not
seen you when I wished that. If you do not believe that I love you,
take my bow and shoot me to the heart; for I will never go away from you
now.”

At his word she took one of the arrows, looking curiously at the red
feathers, and to test the sharp point she pressed it against her breast.
“Have a care!” cried the hunter, snatching it back. He drew his breath
sharply and stared. “It is strange,” he declared; “a moment ago I almost
thought that I saw the white doe.”

“If you stay here to-night,” said the maiden, “about midnight you will
see the white doe go by. Take this arrow, and have your bow ready, and
watch! And if to-morrow, when I return, the arrow is still unused in
your hand, I will believe you when you say that you love me. And you
have only to ask, and I will do all that you desire.”

Then she gave the huntsman food and drink and a bed of ferns upon which
to rest. “Sleep or wake,” said she as she parted from him; “if truly you
have no wish to kill the white doe, why should you wake? Sleep!”

“I do not wish to kill the white doe,” said the huntsman. Yet he could
not sleep: the memory of the one wild creature which had escaped him
stung his blood. He looked at the arrow which he held ready, and grew
thirsty at the sight of it. “If I see, I must shoot!” cried his hunter’s
heart. “If I see, I must not shoot!” cried his soul, smitten with love
for the beautiful maiden, and remembering her word. “Yet, if I see,
I know I must shoot--so shall I lose all!” he cried as midnight
approached, and the fever of long waiting remained unassuaged.

Then with a sudden will he drew out his hunting-knife, and scored the
palms of his two hands so deeply that he could no longer hold his bow
or draw the arrow upon the string. “Oh, fair one, I have kept my word to
you!” he cried as midnight came. “The bow and the arrow are both ready.”

Looking forth from the threshold by which he lay, he saw pale moonlight
and mist making a white haze together on the outer air. The white doe
ran by, a body of silver; like quicksilver she ran. And the huntsman,
the passion to slay rousing his blood, caught up arrow and bow, and
tried in vain with his maimed hands to notch the shaft upon the string.

The beautiful creature leapt lightly by, between the curtains of
moonbeam and mist; and as she went she sprang this way and that across
the narrow streamlet, till the pale shadows hid her altogether from his
sight. “Ah! ah!” cried the huntsman, “I would have given all my life to
be able to shoot then! I am the most miserable man alive; but to-morrow
I will be the happiest. What a thing is love, that it has known how to
conquer in me even my hunter’s blood!”

In the morning the beautiful maiden returned; she came sadly. “I gave
you my word,” said she: “here I am. If you have the arrow still with you
as it was last night, I will be your wife, because you have done what
never huntsman before was able to do--not to shoot at the white doe when
it went by.”

The huntsman showed her the unused arrow; her beauty made him altogether
happy. He caught her in his arms, and kissed her till the sun grew high.
Then she brought food and set it before him; and taking his hand, “I
am your wife,” said she, “and with all my heart my will is to serve you
faithfully. Only, if you value your happiness, do not shoot ever at the
white doe.” Then she saw that there was blood on his hand, and her face
grew troubled. She saw how the other hand also was wounded. “How came
this?” she asked; “dear husband, you were not so hurt yesterday.”

And the huntsman answered, “I did it for fear lest in the night I should
fail, and shoot at the white doe when it came.”

Hearing that, his wife trembled and grew white. “You have tricked us
both,” she said, “and have not truly mastered your desire. Now, if you
do not promise me on your life and your soul, or whatever is dearer,
never to shoot at a white doe, sorrow will surely come of it. Promise
me, and you shall certainly be happy!”

So the huntsman promised faithfully, saying, “On your life, which is
dearer to me than my own, I give you my word to keep that it shall be
so.” Then she kissed him, and bound up his wounds with healing herbs;
and to look at her all that day, and for many days after, was better to
him than all the hunting the king’s forests could provide.

For a whole year they lived together in perfect happiness, and two
children came to bless their union--a boy and a girl born at the same
hour. When they were but a month old, they could run; and to see them
leaping and playing before the door of their home made the huntsman’s
heart jump for joy. “They are forest-born, and they come of a hunter’s
blood; that is why they run so early, and have such limbs,” said he.

“Yes,” answered his wife, “that is partly why. When they grow older they
will run so fast--do not mistake them for deer if ever you go hunting.”

No sooner had she said the word than the memory of it, which had slept
for a whole year, stirred his blood. The scent of the forest blew up
through the rocky ravine, which he had never repassed since the day
when he entered, and he laid his hands thoughtfully on the weapons he no
longer used.

Such restlessness took hold of him all that day that at night he slept
ill, and, waking, found himself alone with no wife at his side. Gazing
about the room, he saw that the cradle also was empty. “Why,” he
wondered, “have they gone out together in the middle of the night?”

Yet he gave it little more thought, and turning over, fell into a
troubled sleep, and dreamed of hunting and of the white doe that he had
seen a year before stooping to drink among the red leaves that covered
the forest pool.

In the morning his wife was by his side, and the little ones lay asleep
upon their crib. “Where were you,” he asked, “last night? I woke, and
you were not here.”

His wife looked at him tenderly, and sighed. “You should shut your eyes
better,” said she. “I went out to see the white doe, and the little ones
came also. Once a year I see her; it is a thing I must not miss.”

The beauty of the white doe was like strong drink to his memory: the
beautiful limbs that had leapt so fast and escaped--they alone, of all
the wild life in the world, had conquered him. “Ah!” he cried, “let me
see her, too; let her come tame to mv hand, and I will not hurt her!”

His wife answered: “The heart of the white doe is too wild a thing; she
cannot come tame to the hand of any hunter under heaven. Sleep again,
dear husband, and wake well! For a whole year you have been sufficiently
happy; the white doe would only wound you again in your two hands.”

When his wife was not by, the hunter took the two children upon his
knee, and said, “Tell me, what was the white doe like? what did she do?
and what way did she go?”

The children sprang off his knee, and leapt to and fro over the stream.
“She was like this,” they cried, “and she did this, and this was the
way she went!” At that the hunter drew his hand over his brow. “Ah,” he
said, “I seemed then almost to see the white doe.”

Little peace had he from that day. Whenever his wife was not there he
would call the little ones to him, and cry, “Show me the white doe and
what she did.” And the children would leap and spring this way and that
over the little stream before the door, crying, “She was like this, and
she did this, and this was the way she went!”

The huntsman loved his wife and children with a deep affection, yet
he began to have a dread that there was something hidden from his eyes
which he wished yet feared to know. “Tell me,” he cried one day, half
in wrath, when the fever of the white doe burned more than ever in his
blood, “tell me where the white doe lives, and why she comes, and when
next. For this time I must see her, or I shall die of the longing that
has hold of me!” Then, when his wife would give no answer, he seized his
bow and arrows and rushed out into the forest, which for a whole year
had not known him, slaying all the red deer he could find.

Many he slew in his passion, but he brought none of them home, for
before the end a strange discovery came to him, and he stood amazed,
dropping the haunch which he had cut from his last victim. “It is a
whole year,” he said to himself, “that I have not tasted meat; I, a
hunter, who love only the meat that I kill!”

Returning home late, he found his wife troubling her heart over his long
absence. “Where have you been?” she asked him, and the question inflamed
him into a fresh passion.

“I have been out hunting for the white doe,” he cried; “and she carries
a spot in her side where some day my arrow must enter. If I do not find
her I shall die!”

His wife looked at him long and sorrowfully; then she said: “On your
life and soul be it, and on mine also, that your anger makes me tell
what I would have kept hidden. It is to-night that she comes. Now it
remains for you to remember your word once given to me!”

“Give it back to me!” he cried; “it is my fate to finish the quest of
the white doe.”

“If I give it,” said she, “your happiness goes with it, and mine, and
that of our children.”

“Give it back to me!” he said again; “I cannot live unless I may master
the white doe! If she will come tame to my hand, no harm shall happen to
her.”

And when she denied him again, he gave her his bow and arrows, and bade
her shoot him to the heart, since without his word rendered back to him
he could not live.

Then his wife took both his hands and kissed them tenderly, and with
loud weeping quickly set him free of his promise. “As well,” said she,
“ask the hunter to go bound to the lion’s den as the white doe to come
tame into your keeping; though she loved you with all her heart, you
could not look at her and not be her enemy.” She gazed on him with full
affection, and sighed deeply. “Lie down for a little,” she said, “and
rest; it is not till midnight that she comes. When she comes I will wake
you.”

She took his head in her hands and set it upon her knee, making him lie
down. “If she will come and stand tame to my hand,” he said again, “then
I will do her no harm.”

After a while he fell asleep; and, dreaming of the white doe, started
awake to find it was already midnight, and the white doe standing there
before him. But as soon as his eyes lighted on her they kindled with
such fierce ardour that she trembled and sprang away out of the door and
across the stream. “Ah, ah, white doe, white doe!” cried the wind in the
feathers of the shaft that flew after her.

Just at her leaping of the stream the arrow touched her; and all her
body seemed to become a mist that dissolved and floated away, broken
into thin fragments over the fast-flowing stream.

By the hunter’s side his wife lay dead, with an arrow struck into her
heart. The door of the house was shut; it seemed to be only an evil
dream from which he had suddenly awakened. But the arrow gave real
substance to his hand: when he drew it out a few true drops of blood
flowed after. Suddenly the hunter knew all he had done. “Oh, white doe,
white doe!” he cried, and fell down with his face to hers.

At the first light of dawn he covered her with dried ferns, that the
children might not see how she lay there dead. “Run out,” he cried to
them, “run out and play! Play as the white doe used to do!” And the
children ran out and leapt this way and that across the stream, crying,
“She was like this, and she did this, and this was the way she went!”

So while they played along the banks of the stream, the hunter took up
his beautiful dead wife and buried her. And to the children he said,
“Your mother has gone away; when the white doe comes she will return
also.”

“She was like this,” they cried, laughing and playing, “and she did
this, and this was the way she went!” And all the time as they played he
seemed to see the white doe leaping before him in the sunlight.

That night the hunter lay sleepless on his bed, wishing for the world
to end; but in the crib by his side the two children lay in a sound
slumber. Then he saw plainly in the moonlight the white doe, with a red
mark in her side, standing still by the doorway. Soon she went to where
the young ones were lying, and, as she touched the coverlet softly with
her right fore-foot, all at once two young fawns rose up from the ground
and sprang away into the open, following where the white doe beckoned
them.

Nor did they ever return. For the rest of his life the huntsman stayed
where they left him, a sorrowful and lonely man. In the grave where lay
the woman’s form he had slain he buried his bow and arrows far from the
sight of the sun or the reach of his own hand; and coming to the place
night by night, he would watch the mists and the moonrise, and cry,
“White doe, white doe, will you not some day forgive me?” and did not
know that she had forgiven him when, before she died, she kissed his two
hands and made him sleep for the last time with his head on her knee.




THE GENTLE COCKATRICE

Far above the terraces of vine, where the goat pastures ended and the
rocks began, the eye could take a clear view over the whole plain. From
that point the world below spread itself out like a green map, and
the only walls one could see were the white flanks and tower of the
cathedral rising up from the grey roofs of the city; as for the streets,
they seemed to be but narrow foot-tracks, on which people appeared like
ants walking.

This was the view of the town which Beppo, the son of the common
hangman, loved best. It was little pleasure to him to be down there,
where all the other lads drove him from their play: for the hang-man had
had too much to do with the fathers and brothers of some of them, and
his son was not popular. When there was a hanging they would rush off to
the public square to see it; afterwards they made it their sport to play
at hanging Beppo, if by chance they could catch him; and that play had a
way at times of coming uncomfortably near to reality.

Beppo did not himself go to the square when his father’s trade was on;
the near view did not please him. Perched on the rocky hillside, he
would look down upon a gathering of black specks, where two others stood
detached upon a space in their midst, and would know that there his
father was hanging a man.

Sometimes it was more than one, and that made Beppo afraid. For he knew
that for every man that he hanged his father took a dram to give him
courage for the work; and if there were several poor fellows to be cast
off from life, the hangman was not pleasant company afterwards for those
very near and dear to him.

It happened one day that the hangman was to give the rope to five
fellows, the most popular and devil-may-care rakes and roysterers in
the whole town. Beppo was up very early that morning, and at the first
streak of light had dropped himself over the wall into the town ditch,
and was away for the open country and the free air of the hills; for he
knew that neither at home nor in the streets would life be worth living
for a week after, because of all the vengeances that would fall on him.

Therefore he had taken from the home larder a loaf of bread and a clump
of dried figs; and with these hoped to stand the siege of a week’s
solitude rather than fall in with the hard dealings of his own kind. He
knew a cave, above where the goats found pasture, out of which a little
red, rusty water trickled; there he thought to make himself a castle and
dream dreams, and was sure he would be happy enough, if only he did not
grow afraid.

Beppo had discovered the cave one day from seeing a goat push out
through a thicket of creepers on the side of the hill; and, hidden under
their leaves, he had found it a wonderful, cool refuge from the heat of
summer noons. Now, as he entered, the place struck very cold; for it was
early spring, and the earth was not yet warmed through with the sun.
So he set himself to gather dead grass, and briers, and tufts of
goat’s hair, and from farther down the hillside the wood of a ruined
goat-paddock, till he had a great store of fuel at hand. He worked all
day like a squirrel for its winter hoard; and as his pile mounted he
grew less and less afraid of the cave where he meant to live.

Seeing so large a heap of stuff ready for the feeding of his fire, he
began to rise to great heights in his own imagination. First he had been
a poor outlaw, a mere sheep-stealer hiding from men’s clutches; then he
became a robber-chief; and at last he was no less than the king of the
mountains.

“This mountain is all caves,” he said to himself, “and all the caves are
full of gold; and I am the king to whom it all belongs.”

In the evening Beppo lighted his fire, in the far back of his cave,
where its light would not be seen, and sat down by its warmth to eat
dried figs and bread and drink brackish water. To-morrow he meant to
catch a kid and roast it and eat it. Why should he ever go home again?
Kid was good--he did not get that to eat when he was at home; and now in
the streets the boys must be looking for him to play at their cruel game
of hanging. Why should he go back at all?

The fire licked its way up the long walls of the cavern; slowly the
warmth crept round on all sides. The rock where Beppo laid his hand was
no longer damp and cold; he made himself a bed of the driest litter in
a niche close to the fire, laid his head on a smooth knob of stone, and
slept. But even in his sleep he remembered his fire, dreading to awake
and find himself in darkness. Every time the warmth of it diminished he
raised himself and put on more fuel.

In the morning--for faint blue edges of light marking the ridged throat
of the cavern told that outside the day had begun--he woke fully, and
the fire still burned. As he lay, his pillow of rock felt warm and
almost soft; and, strangely enough, through it there went a beating
sound as of blood. This must be his own brain that he heard; but he
lifted his head, and where he laid his hand could feel a slow movement
of life going on under it. Then he stared hard at the overhanging rock,
and surely it heaved softly up and down, like some great thing breathing
slowly in its sleep.

Yet he could make out no shape at all till, having run to the other side
of the cave, he turned to see the whole face of the rock which seemed to
be taking on life. Then he realised very gradually what looked to be the
throat and jaws of a great monster lying along the ground, while all the
rest passed away into shadow or lay buried under masses of rock, which
closed round it like a mould. Below the nether jaw-bone the flames
licked and caressed the throat; and the tough, mud-coloured hide ruffled
and smoothed again as if grateful for the heat that tickled its way in.

Very slowly indeed the great Cockatrice, which had lain buried for
thousands of years, out of reach of the light or heat of the sun, was
coming round again to life. That was Beppo’s own doing, and for some
very curious reason he was not afraid.

His heart was uplifted. “This is my cave,” thought he, “so this must be
my Cockatrice! Now I will ride out on him and conquer the world. I shall
be really a king then!”

He guessed that it must have been the warmth which had waked the
Cockatrice, so he made fires all down the side of the cave; wherever the
great flank of the Cockatrice seemed to show, there he lighted a fire to
put heat into the slumbering body of the beast.

“Warm up, old fellow,” he cried; “thaw out, I tell you! I want you to
talk to me.”

Presently the mouth of the Cockatrice unsealed itself, and began to
babble of green fields. “Hay--I want hay!” said the Cockatrice; “or
grass. Does the world contain any grass?”

Beppo went out, and presently returned with an armful. Very slowly the
Cockatrice began munching the fresh fodder, and Beppo, intent on feeding
him back to life, ran to and fro between the hillside and the cavern
till he was exhausted and could go no more. He sat down and watched the
Cockatrice finish his meal.

Presently, when the monster found that his fodder was at an end, he
puckered a great lid, and far up aloft in the wall of the cave flashed
out a green eye.

If all the emeralds in the world were gathered together, they might
shine like that; if all the glow-worms came up out of the fields and put
their tails together, they might make as great an orb of fire. All the
cave looked as green as grass when the eye of the Cockatrice lighted on
it; and Beppo, seeing so mighty an optic turning its rays on him, felt
all at once shrivelled and small, and very weak at the knees.

“Oh, Cockatrice,” he said, in a monstrous sad voice, “I hope I haven’t
hurt you!”

“On the contrary,” said the Cockatrice, “you have done me much good.
What are you going to do with me now?”

“I do with you?” cried Beppo, astonished at so wild a possibility
offering to come true. “I would like to get you out, of course--but can
I?”

“I would like that dearly also!” said the Cockatrice.

“But how can I?” inquired Beppo.

“Keep me warm and feed me,” re-turned the monster. “Presently I shall be
able to find out where my tail is. When I can move that I shall be able
to get out.”

Beppo undertook whatever the Cockatrice told him--it was so grand to
have a Cockatrice of his own. But it was a hard life, stoking up fires
day and night, and bringing the Cockatrice the fodder necessary to
replenish his drowsy being. When Beppo was quite tired out he would
come and lay his head against the monster’s snout; and the Cockatrice
would open a benevolent eye and look at him affectionately.

“Dear Cockatrice,” said the boy one day, “tell me about yourself, and
how you lived and what the world was like when you were free!”

“Do you see any green in my eye?” said the Cockatrice.

“I do, indeed!” said Beppo. “I never saw anything so green in all the
world.”

“That’s all right, then!” said the Cockatrice. “Climb up and look in,
and you will see what the world was like when I was young.”

So Beppo climbed and scrambled, and slipped and clung, till he found
himself on the margin of a wonderful green lake, which was but the
opening into the whole eye of the Cockatrice.

And as soon as Beppo looked, he had lost his heart for ever to the world
he saw there. It was there, quite real before him: a whole world full
of living and moving things--the world before the trouble of man came to
it.

“I see green hills, and fields, and rocks, and trees,” cried Beppo, “and
among them a lot of little Cockatrices are playing!”

“They were my brothers and sisters; I remember them,” said the
Cockatrice. “I have them all in my mind’s eye. Call them--perhaps they
will come and talk to you; you will find them very nice and friendly.”

“They are too far off,” said Beppo, “they cannot hear me.”

“Ah, yes,” murmured the Cockatrice, “memory is a wonderful thing!”

When Beppo came down again he was quite giddy, and lost in wonder and
joy over the beautiful green world the Cockatrice had shown him. “I like
that better than this!” said he.

“So do I,” said the Cockatrice. “But perhaps, when my tail gets free, I
shall feel better.”

One morning he said to Beppo: “I do really begin to feel my tail. It is
somewhere away down the hill yonder. Go and look out for me, and tell me
if you can see it moving.”

So Beppo went to the mouth of the cave, and looked out towards the city,
over all the rocks and ridges and goat-pastures and slopes of vine that
lay between.

Suddenly, as he looked, the steeple of the cathedral tottered, and down
fell its weathercock and two of its pinnacles, and half the chimneys of
the town snapped off their tops. All that distance away Beppo could hear
the terrified screams of the inhabitants as they ran out of their houses
in terror.

“I’ve done it!” cried the Cockatrice, from within the cave.

“But you mustn’t do that!” exclaimed Beppo in horror.

“Mustn’t do what?” inquired the Cockatrice.

“You mustn’t wag your tail! You don’t know what you are doing!”

“Oh, master!” wailed the Cockatrice; “mayn’t I? For the first time this
thousand years I have felt young again.”

Beppo was pale and trembling with agitation over the fearful effects of
that first tail-wagging. “You mustn’t feel young!” said he.

“Why not?” asked the Cockatrice, with a piteous wail.

“There isn’t room in the world for a Cockatrice to feel young nowadays,”
 answered Beppo gravely.

“But, dear little master and benefactor,” cried the Cockatrice, “what
did you wake me up for?”

“I don’t know,” replied Beppo, terribly perplexed. “I wouldn’t have done
it had I known where your tail was.”

“Where is it?” inquired the Cockatrice, with great interest. “It’s right
underneath the city where I mean to be king,” said Beppo; “and if you
move it the city will come down; and then I shall have nothing to be
king of.”

“Very well,” said the Cockatrice sadly; “I will wait!”

“Wait for what?” thought Beppo. “Waiting won’t do any good.” And he
began to think what he must do. “You lie quite still!” said he to the
Cockatrice. “Go to sleep, and I will still look after you.”

“Oh, little master,” said the Cockatrice, “but it is difficult to go to
sleep when the delicious trouble of spring is in one’s tail! How long
does this city of yours mean to stay there? I am so alive that I find it
hard to shut an eye!”

“I will let the fires that keep you warm go down for a bit,” said Beppo,
“and you mustn’t eat so much grass; then you will feel better, and your
tail will be less of an anxiety.”

And presently, when Beppo had let the fires which warmed him get low,
and had let time go by without bringing him any fresh fodder, the
Cockatrice dozed off into an uneasy, prehistoric slumber.

Then Beppo, weeping bitterly over his treachery to the poor beast which
had trusted him, raked open the fires and stamped out the embers; and,
leaving the poor Cockatrice to get cold, ran down the hill as fast as he
could to the city he had saved--the city of which he meant to be king.

He had been away a good many days, but the boys in the street were still
on the watch for him. He told them how he had saved the city from the
earth-quake; and they beat him from the city gate to his father’s door.
He told his own father how he had saved the city; and his father beat
him from his own door to the city gate. Nobody believed him.

He lay outside the town walls till it was dark, all smarting with his
aches and pains; then, when nobody could see him, he got up and very
miserably made his way back to the cave on the hill. And all the way he
said to himself, “Shall I put fire under the Cockatrice once more, and
make him shake the town into ruins? Would not that be fine?”

Inside, the cave was quite still and cold, and when he laid his hand on
the Cockatrice he could not feel any stir or warmth in its bones. Yet
when he called, the Cockatrice just opened a slit of his green eye and
looked at him with trust and affection.

“Dear Cockatrice,” cried Beppo, “forgive me for all the wrong I have
done you!” And as he clambered his way toward the green light, a
great tear rolled from under the heavy lid and flowed past him like a
cataract.

“Dear Cockatrice,” cried Beppo again, when he stood on the margin of the
green lake, “take me to sleep with you in the land where the Cockatrices
are at play, and keep quite still with your tail!”

Slowly and painfully the Cockatrice opened his eye enough to let Beppo
slip through; and Beppo saw the green world with its playful cockatrices
waiting to welcome him. Then the great eyelid shut down fast, and the
waking days of the Cockatrice were over. And Beppo’s native town lay
safe, because he had learned from the Cockatrice to be patient and
gentle, and had gone to be king of a green world where everything was
harmless.




THE RAT-CATCHER’S DAUGHTER

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

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

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

Now all good gnomes have this about them: they love whatever is
beautiful, and hate to see harm happen to it. A gnome who lived far
away underground below where stood the rat-catcher’s house, said to his
fellows: “Up yonder is a man who has a daughter; so greedy is he, he
would sell her to the first comer who gave him gold enough! I am going
up to look after her.”

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

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

The rat-catcher screwed up his mouth to look virtuous. “If I let you
out, what will you give me?” “A sack full of gold,” answered the gnome,
“just as heavy as myself--not a pennyweight less!”

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

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

“I’m a poor man,” said the rat-catcher; “a poor man mayn’t afford to be
generous!”

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

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

The gnome laughed to himself to see how the trapper was being trapped
in his own avarice as, with the most melancholy air, he answered: “I can
make you the richest man in the world; but I know of no way of making
the king’s son marry your daughter, except one.”

“What way?” asked the rat-catcher.

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

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

The gnome went down into the ground, and fetched up sacks and sacks of
gold, until he had made the rat-catcher the richest man in the world.
Then the father called his daughter, whose name was Jasome’, and bade
her follow the gnome down into the heart of the earth. It was all in
vain that Jasome’ begged and implored; the rat-catcher was bent on
having her married to the king’s son. So he pushed, and the gnome
pulled, and down she went; and the earth closed after her.

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

The gnome was very kind to her; nothing did he spare of underground
commodities that might afford her pleasure. He taught her the legends of
all the heroes that have gone down into earth, and been forgotten, and
the lost songs of the old poets, and the buried languages that once gave
wisdom to the world: down there all these things are remembered.

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

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

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

Far below, in the house of the gnome, Jasome’ sat and cried. When the
sound of the great bells ringing for Easter came down to her, the gnome
said: “To-day I cannot bind you; it is the great rising day for all
Christians. If you wish, you may go up, and ask your father now to
release you.”

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

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

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

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

At last the third Easter came, and she was all gold. She kissed the
gnome many times, and was almost sorry to leave him, for he had been
very kind to her. And now he told her about her father catching him
in the trap, and robbing him of his gold by a hard bargain, and of his
being forced to take her down to live with him, till she was turned into
gold, so that she might marry the king’s son. “For now,” said he, “you
are so compounded of gold that only the gnomes could rub it off you.”

So this time, when Jasome’ came up once more to the light of day, she
did not go back again to her cruel father, but went and sat by the
roadside, and played with the sunbeams, and wondered when the king’s son
would come and marry her. And as she sat there all the country-people
who passed by stopped and mocked her; and boys came and threw mud at her
because she was all gold from head to foot--an object, to be sure, for
all simple folk to laugh at. So presently, instead of hoping, she fell
to despair, and sat weeping, with her face hidden in her hands.

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

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

So the prince said, “Come with me, and I will take you to my father’s
palace, and there nobody shall mock you, but you shall sit all your
days in the sunshine, and be happy.” And as they went, more and more he
wondered at her great beauty--so spoiled that he could not look at her
without grief--and was taken with increasing wonder at the beautiful
wisdom stored in her golden mind; for she told him the tales of the
heroes which she had learned from the gnome, and of buried cities; also
the songs of old poets that have been forgotten; and her voice, like the
rest of her, was golden.

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

One day he saki to her, “Under all this disguise you must be the most
beautiful thing upon earth! Already to me you are the dearest!” and he
sighed, for he knew that a king’s son might not marry a figure of gold.
Now one day after this, as Jasome’ sat alone in the sunshine and cried,
the little old gnome stood before her, and said, “Well, Jasome’, have
you married the king’s son?”

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

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

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

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

Up jumped Jasome’, and ran to the rat-catcher’s house. “Oh, father,” she
cried, “now you can undo all your cruelty to me; for now, if you will
give back the gnome his gold, he will give my own face back to me, and I
shall marry the king’s son!”

But the rat-catcher was filled with admiration at the sight of her, and
would not believe a word she said. “I have given you your dowry,” he
answered; “three years I had to do without you to get it. Take it away,
and get married, and leave me the peace and plenty I have so hardly
earned!”

Jasome’ went back and told the gnome.

“Really,” said he, “I must show this rat-catcher that there are other
sorts of traps, and that it isn’t only rats and gnomes that get caught
in them! I have given him his taste of wealth; now it shall act as
pickle to his poverty!”

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

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

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

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

“Oh no!” laughed the gnome. “Guess again!”

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

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


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

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

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




WHITE BIRCH

Once upon a time there lived in a wood a brother and sister who had been
forgotten by all the world. But this thing did not greatly grieve
their hearts, because they themselves were all the world to each other:
meeting or parting, they never forgot that. Nobody remained to tell them
who they were; but she was “Little Sister,” and he was “Fair Brother,”
 and those were the only names they ever went by.

In their little wattled hut they would have been perfectly happy but
for one thing which now and then they remembered and grieved over. Fair
Brother was lame--not a foot could he put to the ground, nor take one
step into the outside world. But he lay quiet on his bed of leaves,
while Little Sister went out and in, bringing him food and drink, and
the scent of flowers, and tales of the joy of earth and of the songs of
birds.

One day she brought him a litter of withered birch-leaves to soften his
bed and make it warmer for the approaching season of cold; and all the
winter he lay on it, and sighed. Little Sister had never seen him so sad
before.

In the spring, when the songs of the pairing birds began, his sorrow
only grew greater. “Let me go out, let me go out,” he cried; “only a
little way into the bright world before I die!” She kissed his feet, and
took him up in her arms and carried him. But she could only go a very
little way with her burden; presently she had to return and lay him down
again on his bed of leaves.

“Have I seen all the bright world?” he asked. “Is it such a little
place?”

To hide her sorrow from him, Little Sister ran out into the woods, and
as she went, wondering how to comfort his grief, she could not help
weeping.

All at once at the foot of a tree she saw the figure of a woman seated.
It was strange, for she had never before seen anybody else in the wood
but themselves. The woman said to her, “Why is it that you weep so?”

“The heart of Fair Brother is breaking,” replied Little Sister. “It is
because of that that I am weeping.”

“Why is his heart breaking?” inquired the other. “I do not know,”
 answered Little Sister. “Ever since last autumn fell it has been so.
Always, before, he has been happy; he has no reason not to be, only he
is lame.”

She had come close to the seated figure; and looking, she saw a woman
with a very white skin, in a robe and hood of deep grey. Grey eyes
looked back at her with just a soft touch in them of the green that
comes with the young leaves of spring.

“You are beautiful,” said Little Sister, drawing in her breath. “Yes, I
am beautiful,” answered the other. “Why is Fair Brother lame? Has he no
feet?”

“Oh, beautiful feet!” said Little Sister. “But they are like still
water; they cannot run.”

“If you want him to run,” said the other, “I can tell you what to do.
What will you give me in exchange?”

“Whatever you like to ask,” answered Little Sister; “but I am poor.”

“You have beautiful hair,” said the woman; “will you let that go?”

Little Sister stooped down her head, and let the other cut off’ her
hair. The wind went out of it with a sigh as it fell into the grey
woman’s lap. She hid it away under her robe, and said, “Listen, Little
Sister, and I will tell you! To-night is the new moon. If you can hold
your tongue till the moon is full, the feet of Fair Brother shall run
like a stream from the hills, dancing from rock to rock.”

“Only tell me what I must do!” said Little Sister.

“You see this birch-tree, with its silver skin?” said the woman. “Cut
off two strips of it and weave them into shoes for Fair Brother. And
when they are finished by the full moon, if you have not spoken, you
have but to put them upon Fair Brother’s feet, and they will outrun
yours.”

So Little Sister, as the other had told her, cut off two strips from the
bark of the birch-tree, and ran home as fast as she could to tell her
brother of the happiness which, with only a little waiting, was in store
for them. But as she came near home, over the low roof she saw the new
moon hanging like a white feather in the air; and, closing her lips, she
went in and kissed Fair Brother silently.

He said, “Little Sister, loose out your hair over me, and let me feel
the sweet airs; and tell me how the earth sounds, for my heart is sick
with sorrow and longing.” She took his hand and laid it upon her heart
that he might feel its happy beating, but said no word. Then she sat
down at his feet and began to work at the shoes. All the birch-bark she
cut into long strips fit for weaving, doing everything as the grey woman
had told her.

Fair Brother fretted at her silence, and cried, calling her cruel; but
she only kissed his feet, and went on working the faster. And the white
birch shoes grew under her hands; and every night she watched and saw
the moon growing round.

Fair Brother said, “Little Sister, what have you done with your hair in
which you used to fetch home the wind? And why do you never go and bring
me flowers or sing me the song of the birds?” And Little Sister looked
up and nodded, but never answered or moved from her task, for her
fingers were slow, and the moon was quick in its growing.

One night Fair Brother was lying asleep, and his head was filled with
dreams of the outer world into which he longed to go. The full moon
looked in through the open door, and Little Sister laughed in her heart
as she slipped the birch shoes on to his feet. “Now run, dear feet,” she
whispered; “but do not outrun mine.”

Up in his sleep leapt Fair Brother, for the dream of the white birch had
hold of him. A lady with a dark hood and grey eyes full of the laughter
of leaves beckoned him. Out he ran into the moonlight, and Little Sister
laughed as she ran with him.

In a little while she called, “Do not outrun me, Fair Brother!” But he
seemed not to hear her, for not a bit did he slacken the speed of his
running.

Presently she cried again, “Rest with me a while, Fair Brother! Do
not outrun me!” But Fair Brother’s feet were fleet after their long
idleness, and they only ran the faster. “Ah, ah!” she cried, all out of
breath. “Come back to me when you have done running, Fair Brother.” And
as he disappeared among the trees, she cried after him, “How will you
know the way, since you were never here before? Do not get lost in the
wood, Fair Brother!”

She lay on the ground and listened, and could hear the white birch shoes
carrying him away till all sound of them died.

When, next morning, he had not returned, she searched all day through
the wood, calling his name.

“Where are you, Fair Brother? Where have you lost yourself?” she cried,
but no voice answered her.

For a while she comforted her heart, saying, “He has not run all these
years--no wonder he is still running. When he is tired he will return.”

But days and weeks went by, and Fair Brother never came back to her.
Every day she wandered searching for him, or sat at the door of the
little wattled hut and cried.

One day she cried so much that the ground became quite wet with her
tears. That night was the night of the full moon, but weary with grief
she lay down and slept soundly, though outside the woods were bright.

In the middle of the night she started up, for she thought she heard
somebody go by; and, surely, feet were running away in the distance. And
when she looked out, there across the doorway was the print of the birch
shoes on the ground she had made wet with her tears.

“Alas, alas!” cried Little Sister. “What have I done that he comes to
the very door of our home and passes by, though the moon shines in and
shows it him?”

After that she searched everywhere through the forest to discover the
print of the birch shoes upon the ground. Here and there after rain she
thought she could see traces, but never was she able to track them far.

Once more came the night of the full moon, and once more in the middle
of the night Little Sister started up and heard feet running away in the
distance. She called, but no answer came back to her.

So on the third full moon she waited, sitting in the door of the hut,
and would not sleep.

“If he has been twice,” she said to herself, “he will come again, and
I shall see him. Ah, Fair Brother, Fair Brother, I have given you feet;
why have you so used me?”

Presently she heard a sound of footsteps, and there came Fair Brother
running towards her. She saw his face pale and ghostlike, yet he never
looked at her, but ran past and on without stopping.

“Fair Brother, Fair Brother, wait for me; do not outrun me!” cried
Little Sister; and was up in haste to be after him.

He ran fast, and would not stop; but she ran fast too, for her love
would not let him go. Once she nearly had him by the hair, and once she
caught him by the cloak; but in her hand it shredded and crumbled like a
dry leaf; and still, though there was no breath left in her, she ran on.

And now she began to wonder, for Fair Brother was running the way that
she knew well--towards the tree from which she had cut the two strips
of bark. Her feet were failing her; she knew that she could run no more.
Just as they came together in sight of the birch-tree Little Sister
stumbled and fell.

She saw Fair Brother run on and strike with his hands and feet against
the tree, and cry, “Oh, White Birch, White Birch, lift the latch up,
or she will catch me!” And at once the tree opened its rind, and Fair
Brother ran in.

“So,” said Little Sister, “you are there, are you, Brother? I know,
then, what I have done to you.”

She went and laid her ear to the tree, and inside she could hear Fair
Brother sobbing and crying. It sounded to her as if White Birch were
beating him.

“Well, well, Fair Brother, she shall not beat you for long!” said Little
Sister.

She went home and waited till the next full moon had come. Then, as soon
as it was dark, she went along through the wood until she came to the
place, and there she crept close to the white birch-tree and waited.

Presently she heard Fair Brother’s voice come faintly out of the heart
of the tree: “White Birch, it is the full moon and the hour in which
Little Sister gave life to my feet. For one hour give me leave to go,
that I may run home and look at her while she sleeps. I will not stop or
speak, and I promise you that I will return.”

Then she heard the voice of White Birch answer grudgingly: “It is her
hour and I cannot hold you, therefore you may go. Only when you come
again I will beat you.”

Then the tree opened a little way, and Fair Brother ran out. He ran so
quickly in his eager haste that Little Sister had not time to catch
him, and she did not dare to call aloud. “I must make sure,” she said
to herself, “before he comes back. To-night White Birch will have to let
him go.”

So she gathered as many dry pieces of wood as she could find, and made
them into a pile near at hand; and setting them alight, she soon had a
brisk fire burning.

Before long she heard the sound of feet in the brushwood, and there came
Fair Brother, running as hard as he could go, with the breath sobbing in
and out of his body.

Little Sister sprang out to meet him, but as soon as he saw her he beat
with his hands and feet against the tree, crying, “White Birch, White
Birch, lift the latch up, or she will catch me!”

But before the tree could open Little Sister had caught hold of the
birch shoes, and pulled them off his feet, and running towards the fire
she thrust them into the red heart of the embers.

The white birch shivered from head to foot, and broke into lamentable
shrieks. The witch thrust her head out of the tree, crying, “Don’t,
don’t! You are burning my skin! Oh, cruel! how you are burning me!”

“I have not burned you enough yet,” cried Little Sister; and raking the
burning sticks and faggots over the ground, she heaped them round the
foot of the white birch-tree, whipping the flames to make them leap
high.

The witch drew in her head, but inside she could be heard screaming.
As the flames licked the white bark she cried, “Oh, my skin! You are
burning my skin. My beautiful white skin will be covered with nothing
but blisters. Do you know that you are ruining my complexion?”

But Little Sister said, “If I make you ugly you will not be able to show
your face again to deceive the innocent, and to ruin hearts that were
happy.”

So she piled on sticks and faggots till the outside of the birch-tree
was all black and scarred and covered with blisters, marks of which have
remained to this day. And inside, the witch could be heard dancing time
to the music of the flames, and crying because of her ruined complexion.

Then Little Sister stooped and took up Fair Brother in her arms. “You
cannot walk now,” she whispered, “I have taken away your feet; so I will
carry you.”

He was so starved and thin that he was not very heavy, and all the long
way home Little Sister carried him in her arms. How happy they were,
looking in each other’s eyes by the clear light of the moon! “Can you
ever be happy again in the old way?” asked Little Sister. “Shall you not
want to run?”

“No,” answered Fair Brother; “I shall never wish to run again. And as
for the rest”--he stroked her head softly--“why, I can feel that your
hair is growing--it is ever so long, and I can see the wind lifting it.
White Birch has no hair of her own, but she has some that she wears,
just the same colour as yours.”





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