would often seat herself
on the margin of the well, and wave her arms in the air; then suddenly
she would dive into the deep well, when her frog nature enabled her to
dive and rise, down and up, until she climbed forth again like a cat,
and came back into the hall dripping with water, so that the green
leaves strewn upon the ground floated and turned in the streams that
flowed from her garments.

[Illustration: THE TRANSFORMED PRINCESS.]

But there was one thing that imposed a check upon Helga, and that was
the evening twilight. When that came she was quiet and thoughtful, and
would listen to reproof and advice; and then a secret feeling seemed
to draw her towards her mother. And when the sun sank, and the usual
transformation of body and spirit took place in her, she would sit
quiet and mournful, shrunk to the shape of the frog, her body indeed
much larger than that of the animal whose likeness she took, and for
that reason much more hideous to behold; for she looked like a
wretched dwarf with a frog's head and webbed fingers. Her eyes then
assumed a very melancholy expression. She had no voice, and could only
utter a hollow croaking that sounded like the stifled sob of a
dreaming child. Then the Viking's wife took her on her lap, and forgot
the ugly form as she looked into the mournful eyes, and said,

"I could almost wish that thou wert always my poor dumb frog-child;
for thou art only the more terrible when thy nature is veiled in a
form of beauty."

And the Viking woman wrote Runic characters against sorcery and spells
of sickness, and threw them over the wretched child; but she could not
see that they worked any good.

"One can scarcely believe that she was ever so small that she could
lie in the cup of a water-lily," said stork-papa, "now she's grown up
the image of her Egyptian mother. Ah, we shall never see that poor
lady again! Probably she did not know how to help herself, as you and
the learned men said. Year after year I have flown to and fro, across
and across the great moorland, and she has never once given a sign
that she was still alive. Yes, I may as well tell you, that every
year, when I came here a few days before you, to repair the nest and
attend to various matters, I spent a whole night in flying to and fro
over the lake, as if I had been an owl or a bat, but every time in
vain. The two suits of swan feathers which I and the young ones
dragged up here out of the land of the Nile have conseq