end, and also for having lost my
dear unruly sprite who kept me from being dull."

"Lost him!" exclaimed the lady. "How?"

"By now," said the man, "he must be quite dead, for I tied him to a tree
in the forest five days a go and left him to starve."

"You are a brute," said the lady, "and a very stupid man. Come, take
me to the tree. At least we can bury the poor sprite, and then we shall
part forever."

So he took her by the hand and guided her through the woods, and they
talked much of the sadness of parting forever.

When they came to the tree, there was the little sprite, with his wrists
and ankles bound, lying upon the moss. His eyes were closed, and his
body was white as a snowdrop. They knelt down, one on each side of him,
and untied the cord. To their surprise his hands felt warm. "I believe
he is not quite dead," said the lady. "Shall we try to bring him to
life?" asked the man. And with that they fell to chafing his wrists
and his palms. Presently he gave each of them a slight pressure of the
fingers.

"Did you feel that?" cried she.

"Indeed I did," the man answered. "It shook me to the core. Would you
like to take him on your lap so that I can chafe his feet?"

The lady nodded and took the soft little body on her knees and held
it close to her, while the man kneeled before her rubbing the small,
milk-white feet with strong and tender touches. Presently, as they were
thus engaged, they heard the sprite faintly whispering, while one of his
eyelids flickered:

"I think--if each of you--would kiss me--on opposite cheeks--at the
same moment--those kind of movements would revive me."

The two friends looked at each other, and the man spoke first.

"He talks ungrammatically, and I think he is an incorrigible little
savage, but I love him. Shall we try his idea?"

"If you love him," said the lady, "I am willing to try, provided you
shut your eyes."

So they both shut their eyes and tried.

But just at that moment the unruly sprite slipped down, and put his
hands behind their heads, and the two mouths that sought his cheeks met
lip to lip in a kiss so warm, so long, so sweet that everything else was
forgotten.

Now you can easily see that as the persons who had this strange
experience were the ones who told me the tale, their forgetfulness
at this point leaves it of necessity half-told. But I know from other
sources that the man who was also a writer went on making books, and
the lady always told