,--your bride, Mr. Tyss?"

"Woman!" cried Mr. Tyss, "unlucky woman, she is here!--in the
house!--and you do not tell me till now?"

"Where,"--replied the old woman, without in the least losing her
composure,--"where should the princess be but here, where she has found
her mother?"

"How!" cried Peregrine--"what is it you say, Alina?"

"Yes," rejoined the old woman, drawing herself up--"yes, Alina is my
right name, and who knows what else may come to light, in a short time,
before your nuptials?"

Peregrine entreated her, by all the angels and devils, to go on; but,
without paying the least attention to his hurry, she seated herself
snugly in the arm-chair, drew out her snuffbox, took a prodigious
pinch, and demonstrated to Peregrine very circumstantially, that there
was no worse failing than impatience.

"Calmness, my son, calmness, is above all things requisite, or
otherwise you run the risk of losing all in the moment that you think
you have gained it. Before you get a word out of me, you must first
promise to seat yourself there, quite quietly like a pretty-behaved
child, and for the life of you not to interrupt me in my story."

Nothing was left to Peregrine but to obey the old woman, who, when he
had seated himself, related things that were strange enough to hear.

According to the old woman's tale, the two gentlemen, namely,
Swammerdamm and Leuwenhock, had another tough struggle in the chamber,
and for a time kept up a terrible clatter. Then again all had become
quite still, when a heavy moaning had made her fancy that one of the
two was mortally wounded; but on peeping through the keyhole she
perceived something quite different from what she had expected.
Swammerdamm and Leuwenhock had seized George Pepusch, and stroaked and
squeezed him with their fists, so that he grew thinner and thinner;
during which operation he had uttered the moans heard by the old woman.
At last, when he had grown as thin as a thistle-stem, they had tried to
squeeze him through the keyhole, and the poor Pepusch was hanging with
half his body out, when she ran away in terror. Soon afterwards she
heard a loud laughing, and saw Pepusch in his natural form, quietly led
out of the house by the two magicians, while at the room-door stood
Doertje and beckoned her in. The little one wished to dress herself, and
needed her assistance.

The old woman could not talk enough of the great heap of clothes which
the princess brought out of a v