ubt!" cried every one. Then the Princess, going to the
place where the miller was concealed, led him forth by the hand.

"My lords and gentles," she said, "the coffer I spoke of is my heart;
here is the one key that can fit it, the key that I had lost and have
found again."

The Princess and the miller were married amid universal rejoicings;
and some time after the ceremony they did not fail to revisit the Lake
of Leguer, the scene of their first meeting, the legend of which still
clings like the mists of evening to its shores.

This quaint and curious tale, in which the native folk-lore and French
elements are so strangely mingled, deals, like its predecessor, with
the theme of the search for the fairy princess. We turn now to another
tale of quest with somewhat similar incidents, where the solar nature
of one of the characters is perhaps more obvious--the quest for the
mortal maiden who has been carried off by the sun-hero. We refrain in
this place from indicating the mythological basis which underlies such
a tale as this, as such a phenomenon is already amply illustrated in
other works in this series.

_The Castle of the Sun_

There once lived a peasant who had seven children, six of them boys
and the seventh a girl. They were very poor and all had to work hard
for a living, but the drudges of the family were the youngest son,
Yvon, and his sister, Yvonne. Because they were gentler and more
delicate than the others, they were looked upon as poor, witless
creatures, and all the hardest work was given them to do. But the
children comforted each other, and became but the better favoured as
they grew up.

One day when Yvonne was taking the cattle to pasture she encountered a
handsome youth, so splendidly garbed that her simple heart was filled
with awe and admiration. To her astonishment he addressed her and
courteously begged her hand in marriage. "To-morrow," he said, "I
shall meet you here at this hour, and you shall give me an answer."

Troubled, yet secretly happy, Yvonne made her way home, and told her
parents all that had chanced. At first they laughed her to scorn, and
refused to believe her story of the handsome prince, but when at
length they were convinced they told her she was free to marry whom
she would.

On the following day Yvonne betook herself to the trysting-place,
where her lover awaited her, even more gloriously resplendent than on
the occasion of his first coming. The very trappings of h