ire!" she opened the door and asked him to
come in.

"Fill your lantern with our coals," Gilda said, "and they will surely
light the fire in the castle. Tell the King, though, that in return
for the coals he must make my father Captain of the guards."

The Messenger took the coals and started back to the castle. He had
gone but a little way, though, when he saw that the coals from Gilda's
fire were no longer burning but had turned to gray ashes. So he
emptied them out in the snow and went on down the hill. But his
search was a hard one. So few of the coals that he was given would
burn, and so few people wanted to give them freely.

At last he came to a tiny house on a bleak side of the hill. The wind
blew down through the old chimney, and the frost had crept in through
the cracks in the wall. The door opened at once when he knocked,
though, and inside he found a little girl, stirring porridge over a
small fire.

"A light for the castle fire?" she repeated when the Messenger had
told her what he wanted. "You may have as many coals as you like,
although we have few large ones. I am my father's housewife and I tend
this small fire so that the kitchen may be comfortable for him when he
comes home from work. I am cooking his supper, too," she said. "But do
you sit down and warm yourself, and have a bowl of warm supper before
you start out in the cold again. Then you may have half of our fire if
the King needs it."

The Messenger did as the little girl bade him, and then he lifted one
small, bright coal from the fire, and put it in his lantern.

"It will never burn all the way back to the castle," he said to
himself, but with each step the coal grew brighter. It cast pink
shadows on the snow as if the spring were sending wild roses up
through the ground. It made the dark road in front of the Messenger
as bright as if the sun were shining, and it warmed him like the
summer time. When he came to the castle, the coal still burned and
glowed. As soon as he touched it to the gray logs in the fireplace
they burst into flames, and the castle fire was kindled again.

They wondered why the new fire made the kettle sing so much more
sweetly than it had ever sung before, and warmed the hearts of the
castle folk so that they forgot to quarrel. At last, when they talked
it over with the Messenger, they decided that it was because love had
come from the cottage with the coal, and was kindled and burning now
in the castle fire.