r heard those names before!"

"You would not hear them. Neither people knows its own name!"

"Strange!"

"Perhaps so! but hardly any one anywhere knows his own name! It would
make many a fine gentleman stare to hear himself addressed by what is
really his name!"

I held my peace, beginning to wonder what my name might be.

"What now do you fancy yours?" she went on, as if aware of my thought.
"But, pardon me, it is a matter of no consequence."

I had actually opened my mouth to answer her, when I discovered that my
name was gone from me. I could not even recall the first letter of it!
This was the second time I had been asked my name and could not tell it!

"Never mind," she said; "it is not wanted. Your real name, indeed, is
written on your forehead, but at present it whirls about so irregularly
that nobody can read it. I will do my part to steady it. Soon it will go
slower, and, I hope, settle at last."

This startled me, and I was silent.

We had left the channels and walked a long time, but no sign of the
cottage yet appeared.

"The Little Ones told me," I said at length, "of a smooth green country,
pleasant to the feet!"

"Yes?" she returned.

"They told me too of a girl giantess that was queen somewhere: is that
her country?"

"There is a city in that grassy land," she replied, "where a woman is
princess. The city is called Bulika. But certainly the princess is not
a girl! She is older than this world, and came to it from yours--with
a terrible history, which is not over yet. She is an evil person, and
prevails much with the Prince of the Power of the Air. The people of
Bulika were formerly simple folk, tilling the ground and pasturing
sheep. She came among them, and they received her hospitably. She taught
them to dig for diamonds and opals and sell them to strangers, and made
them give up tillage and pasturage and build a city. One day they found
a huge snake and killed it; which so enraged her that she declared
herself their princess, and became terrible to them. The name of the
country at that time was THE LAND OF WATERS; for the dry channels,
of which you have crossed so many, were then overflowing with live
torrents; and the valley, where now the Bags and the Lovers have their
fruit-trees, was a lake that received a great part of them. But the
wicked princess gathered up in her lap what she could of the water over
the whole country, closed it in an egg, and carried it away. Her lap,
however,