incess kept her room, with the curtains drawn to shut out the
dying lake, but could not shut it out of her mind for a moment. It
haunted her imagination so that she felt as if the lake were her soul,
drying up within her, first to mud, then to madness and death. She thus
brooded over the change, with all its dreadful accompaniments, till she
was nearly distracted. As for the prince, she had forgotten him. However
much she had enjoyed his company in the water, she did not care for him
without it. But she seemed to have forgotten her father and mother too.

The lake went on sinking. Small slimy spots began to appear, which
glittered steadily amidst the changeful shine of the water. These grew
to broad patches of mud, which widened and spread, with rocks here and
there, and floundering fishes and crawling eels swarming. The people
went everywhere catching these, and looking for anything that might have
dropped from the royal boats.

At length the lake was all but gone, only a few of the deepest pools
remaining unexhausted.

It happened one day that a party of youngsters found themselves on the
brink of one of these pools in the very centre of the lake. It was a
rocky basin of considerable depth. Looking in, they saw at the bottom
something that shone yellow in the sun. A little boy jumped in and dived
for it. It was a plate of gold covered with writing. They carried it to
the king.

On one side of it stood these words:

"Death alone from death can save.
Love is death, and so is brave.
Love can fill the deepest grave.
Love loves on beneath the wave."

Now this was enigmatical enough to the king and courtiers. But the
reverse of the plate explained it a little. Its writing amounted to
this:

"If the lake should disappear, they must find the hole through which the
water ran. But it would be useless to try to stop it by any ordinary
means. There was but one effectual mode. The body of a living man could
alone staunch the flow. The man must give himself of his own will; and
the lake must take his life as it filled. Otherwise the offering would
be of no avail. If the nation could not provide one hero, it was time it
should perish,"

XIII

_Here I Am_!

This was a very disheartening revelation to the king--not that he was
unwilling to sacrifice a subject, but that he was hopeless of finding a
man willing to sacrifice himself. No time was to be lost however, for
the princess was lying motionless on her