and the girl was happy again.

The feast was already at its height, and the hall was brilliant with
youth and beauty, when the door was flung wide and Dotterine entered,
making all the other maidens look pale and dim beside her. Their hopes
faded as they gazed, but their mothers whispered together, saying,
'Surely this is our lost princess!'

The young king did not know her again, but he never left her side nor
took his eyes from her. And at midnight a strange thing happened. A
thick cloud suddenly filled the hall, so that for a moment all was dark.
Then the mist suddenly grew bright, and Dotterine's godmother was seen
standing there.

'This,' she said, turning to the king, 'is the girl whom you have always
believed to be your sister, and who vanished during the siege. She is
not your sister at all, but the daughter of the king of a neighbouring
country, who was given to your mother to bring up, to save her from the
hands of a wizard.'

Then she vanished, and was never seen again, nor the wonder-working
basket either; but now that Dotterine's troubles were over she could get
on without them, and she and the young king lived happily together till
the end of their days.

(Ehstnische Marchen.)

STAN BOLOVAN

Once upon a time what happened did happen, and if it had not happened
this story would never have been told.

On the outskirts of a village just where the oxen were turned out to
pasture, and the pigs roamed about burrowing with their noses among the
roots of the trees, there stood a small house. In the house lived a man
who had a wife, and the wife was sad all day long.

'Dear wife, what is wrong with you that you hang your head like a
drooping rosebud?' asked her husband one morning. 'You have everything
you want; why cannot you be merry like other women?'

'Leave me alone, and do not seek to know the reason,' replied she,
bursting into tears, and the man thought that it was no time to question
her, and went away to his work.

He could not, however, forget all about it, and a few days after he
inquired again the reason of her sadness, but only got the same reply.
At length he felt he could bear it no longer, and tried a third time,
and then his wife turned and answered him.

'Good gracious!' cried she, 'why cannot you let things be as they are?
If I were to tell you, you would become just as wretched as myself. If
you would only believe, it is far better for you to know nothing.'

But no man y