that ever lived; and if any one can help our
sister Violet, it is he."

Violet shook her head sorrowfully.

"I do not know the way," she said.

"I will lead you," hummed a bee, from the deep cup of a cowslip.

"And I will sing you my merriest songs to cheer you by the way," warbled
a thrush, circling lovingly round her head.

"And I," cried the glowworm, "will light you at night with my golden
lamp."

"We all love you, Fairy Violet, because you are so gentle and good,"
they sang in chorus; and Violet lifted her head, comforted, and smiled a
sweet, joyous smile, as she bade farewell to her sister fairies.

It was a long journey that she undertook, for the Wizard of the Black
Rock lived quite at the other end of the earth.

Sometimes a benighted traveller, hurrying homewards, fancied he saw a
golden light flash like lightning past his dazzled eyes, or heard a
warbling of sweet music, delighting for an instant his bewildered ears;
but light and music were gone in a moment, and he never guessed that it
was the Fairy Violet who had passed him as she glided onward with her
three faithful attendants to seek the Wizard of the Black Rock.

At length they reached the great Black Rock, which rose up, grim and
forbidding, from a wide, desolate plain. The bee sank down humming
cheerfully, at the base, the thrush perched himself on a projecting
ridge, and the glowworm hid himself behind a tuft of withered grass.

Violet advanced boldly to the small black door, studded with iron nails,
which was standing open, guarded only by a black dwarf of preternatural
ugliness. He turned as the beautiful fairy came floating towards him,
and led the way silently through dark long passages, and up narrow
winding stairs to his master's chamber. It was a small dark room,
lighted only by a silver lamp of great brilliancy, which stood on a
table by the fire-place, where, though the month was May, and the
weather bright and sunny, there burned a dim, smouldering fire. The
Wizard, whose silvery locks contrasted strangely with the surrounding
gloom, bent over a book; its jewelled clasps were rusted with age, each
page was enriched with coloured tracery. He was very old. More than a
hundred years had elapsed since it was first rumoured that a famous
magician had taken up his abode in the Black Rock, and all that time he
had spent in studying the great black book of magic spells that lay open
before him. No wonder he was wise and learned!

The