out as
the Gateman silences music.)_

_Gateman_: Great news and wonderful news and
a great story!

_First Aunt_: The fight is ended!

_Second Aunt_: The Dragon is brought to his
last goal!

_Gateman_: That young fighting man that has
him flogged! Made at him like a wave breaking
on the strand! They crashed at one another like
two days of judgment! Like the battle of the
cold with the heat!

_First Aunt_: You'd say he was going through
dragons all his life!

_Second Aunt_: It can hardly put a stir out of
itself!

_Gateman_: That champion has it baffled and
mastered! It is after being chased over seven
acres of ground!

_First Aunt_: Drove it to its knees on the flaggy
shore and made an end of it!

_King_: God bless that man to-day and to-morrow!

_Second Aunt_: He has put it in a way it will eat
no more kings' daughters!

_Princess_: And the stranger that mastered it--is
he safe?

_First Aunt_: What signifies if he is or is not, so
long as we have our own young prince to bring
home!

_Gatekeeper_: He is not safe. No sooner had he
the beast killed and conquered than he fell dead,
and the life went out of him.

_Princess_: Oh, that is not right! He to be dead
and I living after him!

_King_: He was surely noble and high-blooded.
There are some that will be sorry for his death.

_Princess_: And who should be more sorry than
I myself am sorry? Who should keen him unless
myself? There is a man that gave his life for me,
and he young and all his days before him and shut
his eyes on the white world for my sake!

_Queen_: Indeed he was a man you might have
been content to wed with, hard and all as you are
to please.

_Princess_: I never will wed with any man so
long as my life will last, that was bought for me
with a life was more worthy by far than my own!
He is gone out of my reach; let him wait for me
to give him my thanks on the other side. Bring
me now his sword and his shield till I will put
them before me and cry my eyes down with grief!

_Gateman_: Here is his cap for you, anyway, and
his cleaver and his bunch of skivers. For the
champion you are crying was no other than that
lad of a cook!

_Queen_: That is not true! It is not possible!

_Gateman_: Sure I seen him myself going out the
gate a while ago. He put off his cook's apparel
and threw it along with these behind the turfstack. I
gathered them up presently and I coming in the door.

_King_: The world is gone beyond me en