grandeur she had about her. She walked
in solitude and melancholy, and never even thought of looking at her
own image in the polished glass walls that were on every side of her,
although she was the prettiest creature anyone could wish to see. The
lad thought so too while he swam round the palace and peeped in from
every side.

'Here, indeed, it would be better to be a man than such a poor dumb fish
as I am now,' said he to himself; 'if I could only remember the words
that the troll says when he changes my shape, then perhaps I could help
myself to become a man again.' He swam and he pondered and he thought
over this until he remembered the sound of what the troll said, and then
he tried to say it himself. In a moment he stood in human form at the
bottom of the sea.

He made haste then to enter the glass palace, and went up to the young
girl and spoke to her.

At first he nearly frightened the life out of her, but he talked to
her so kindly and explained how he had come down there that she soon
recovered from her alarm, and was very pleased to have some company to
relieve the terrible solitude that she lived in. Time passed so quickly
for both of them that the youth (for now he was quite a young man, and
no more a lad) forgot altogether how long he had been there.

One day the girl said to him that now it was close on the time when he
must become a fish again--the troll would soon call him home, and he
would have to go, but before that he must put on the shape of the fish,
otherwise he could not pass through the sea alive. Before this, while he
was staying down there, she had told him that she was a daughter of the
same troll whom the youth served, and he had shut her up there to keep
her away from everyone. She had now devised a plan by which they could
perhaps succeed in getting to see each other again, and spending the
rest of their lives together. But there was much to attend to, and he
must give careful heed to all that she told him.

She told him then that all the kings in the country round about were
in debt to her father the troll, and the king of a certain kingdom,
the name of which she told him, was the first who had to pay, and if he
could not do so at the time appointed he would lose his head. 'And he
cannot pay,' said she; 'I know that for certain. Now you must, first of
all, give up your service with my father; the three years are past,
and you are at liberty to go. You will go off with your six bush