nd
comfortable, and quite another to be able to carry it out when some
awful peril is threatening us. And if the wolf had made the girl quake
with terror, it seemed like a lamb beside this dreadful lion.

At the sound of his roar the very trees quivered and his claws were so
large that every one of them looked like a cutlass.

The breath of the princess came and went, and her feet rattled in the
stirrups. Suddenly the remembrance flashed across her of the wolf whom
she had put to flight, and waving her sword, she rushed so violently on
the lion that he had barely time to spring on one side, so as to avoid
the blow. Then, like a flash, she crossed this bridge also.

Now during her whole life, the princess had been so carefully brought
up, that she had never left the gardens of the palace, so that the sight
of the hills and valleys and tinkling streams, and the song of the larks
and blackbirds, made her almost beside herself with wonder and delight.
She longed to get down and bathe her face in the clear pools, and pick
the brilliant flowers, but the horse said 'No,' and quickened his pace,
neither turning to the right or the left.

'Warriors,' he told her, 'only rest when they have won the victory. You
have still another battle to fight, and it is the hardest of all.'

This time it was neither a wolf nor a lion that was waiting for her at
the end of the third day's journey, but a dragon with twelve heads, and
a golden bridge behind it.

The princess rode up without seeing anything to frighten her, when a
sudden puff of smoke and flame from beneath her feet, caused her to
look down, and there was the horrible creature twisted and writhing, its
twelve heads reared up as if to seize her between them.

The bridle fell from her hand: and the sword which she had just grasped
slid back into its sheath, but the horse bade her fear nothing, and with
a mighty effort she sat upright and spurred straight on the dragon.

The fight lasted an hour and the dragon pressed her hard. But in the
end, by a well-directed side blow, she cut off one of the heads, and
with a roar that seemed to rend the heavens in two, the dragon fell back
on the ground, and rose as a man before her.

Although the horse had informed the princess the dragon was really her
own father, the girl had hardly believed him, and stared in amazement at
the transformation. But he flung his arms round her and pressed her to
his heart saying, 'Now I see that you are