bird's
wings as it dives into the blue sea, the Prince's broad sword gleamed
and fell on the loathsome monster's flat, scaly head, and in a great
voice he cried aloud on all living things to witness that if this
creature of evil magic did him any harm, he would strike her dead. Then
there befell a great wonder, for in human voice, but all hoarse and
strange and ugly, as though almost too great were the effort for human
soul to burst through brute form, the Laidley Worm spoke to her
conqueror: "Oh! quit thy sword and put aside thy bow!" it moaned--so
moans the sea through the crash of the waves on nights when the storm
strews the beach of the North Country with wreckage--"Oh! quit thy
sword, for, poisonous monster though I be, no scaith will I do thee."
Then those who heard the wonder felt sure that the Worm sought by
subtilty to destroy their Prince, for still as a white, dead man he
stood, and gazed at the brute that shivered before him like a whipped
dog that would fain lick his master's feet. But again it spoke, in that
terrible, fearsome voice of mortal pain:

"Oh! quit thy sword and bend thy bow,
And give me kisses three;
If I'm not won ere the sun go down,
Won I shall never be."

Brave men, well-proved soldiers, were Childe Wynd's three-and-thirty,
but they cried out aloud to him, and some let go of their oars and
sprang shoulder-deep in the sea that they might drag their lord back
from this noisome horror that would destroy him. Prince Wynd's heart
gave a great stound, and back rushed the blood into his face, that had
been so pale and grim, and none was quick enough to come between him and
what his heart had told his mind, and what his mind most gladly willed.
As though he were kissing for the first time the one he loved, and she
the fairest of the land, so did he bow his head in courtly fashion, and
three times kiss with loving lips the Laidley Worm of Spindleston-Heugh.
And at the third kiss a great cry of wonder rose from his men, for lo,
the Laidley Worm had vanished, as fades an evil dream when one awakes,
and in its place there stood the fairest maid in all England, their own
dear Princess Margaret. With laughter and with tears did Childe Wynd and
his sister then embrace; but when the Princess had told her tale, her
brother's brow grew dark, and on his sword he vowed to destroy the vile
witch who had been his gentle sister's cruel enemy. With tears and with
laughter, and with gl