reature that should ever think of making love!"

"Charming!" cried Nymphalin, clasping her hands; "it is just the sort of
story I like."

"And I suppose, sir," said Nip, pertly, "that the dog and the cat lived
very happily ever afterwards? Indeed the nuptial felicity of a dog and
cat is proverbial!"

"I dare say they lived much the same as any other married couple,"
answered the prince.

CHAPTER XIII. THE TOMB OF A FATHER OF MANY CHILDREN.

THE feast being now ended, as well as the story, the fairies wound their
way homeward by a different path, till at length a red steady light
glowed through the long basaltic arches upon them, like the Demon
Hunters' fires in the Forest of Pines.

The prince sobered in his pace. "You approach," said he, in a grave
tone, "the greatest of our temples; you will witness the tomb of a
mighty founder of our race!" An awe crept over the queen, in spite of
herself. Tracking the fires in silence, they came to a vast space, in
the midst of which was a long gray block of stone, such as the traveller
finds amidst the dread silence of Egyptian Thebes.

And on this stone lay the gigantic figure of a man,--dead, but not
death-like, for invisible spells had preserved the flesh and the long
hair for untold ages; and beside him lay a rude instrument of music, and
at his feet was a sword and a hunter's spear; and above, the rock wound,
hollowed and roofless, to the upper air, and daylight came through,
sickened and pale, beneath red fires that burned everlastingly around
him, on such simple altars as belong to a savage race. But the place was
not solitary, for many motionless but not lifeless shapes sat on large
blocks of stone beside the tomb. There was the wizard, wrapped in his
long black mantle, and his face covered with his hands; there was
the uncouth and deformed dwarf, gibbering to himself; there sat the
household elf; there glowered from a gloomy rent in the wall, with
glittering eyes and shining scale, the enormous dragon of the North. An
aged crone in rags, leaning on a staff, and gazing malignantly on the
visitors, with bleared but fiery eyes, stood opposite the tomb of the
gigantic dead. And now the fairies themselves completed the group! But
all was dumb and unutterably silent,--the silence that floats over
some antique city of the desert, when, for the first time for a hundred
centuries, a living foot enters its desolate remains; the silence that
belongs to the dust of eld