she
held clasped in her hand.

"Then Olga wept at the castle gate; wept outside in the night and the
darkness, in her beggar's garb of tow. But after awhile, through her
sobbing, stole the answering sob of the night wind. 'Hush-sh!' it
seemed to say. 'Sh-sh! Never a heart can come to harm, if the lips but
speak the old dame's charm.'

"The voice of the night wind sounded so much like the voice of the old
flax-spinner that Olga was startled and looked around wonderingly. Then
suddenly she seemed to see the little thatched cottage and the bent form
of the lonely old woman at the wheel. All the years in which the good
dame had befriended her seemed to rise up in a row, and out of each one
called a thousand kindnesses as with one voice: 'How canst thou forget
us, Olga? We were done for thee, for love's sweet sake, and that alone.'

"Then was Olga sorry and ashamed that she had been so proud and
forgetful, and she wept again. The tears seemed to clear her vision, for
now she saw plainly that through no power of her own could she wrest
strange favours from fortune. Only the power of the old charm could make
them hers. She remembered it then, and holding fast to the one bead in
her hand, she repeated, humbly:

"'For love's sweet sake, in my hour of need,
Blossom and deck me, little seed.'

"Lo, as the words left her lips, the moon shone out from behind the
clouds above the dark forest. There was a fragrance of lilies all about
her, and a gossamer gown floated around her, whiter than the whiteness
of the fairest lily. It was fine, like the finest lace that the
frost-elves weave, and softer than the softest ermine of the snow. On
her long golden hair gleamed a coronet of pearls.

"So beautiful, so dazzling was she as she entered the castle door, that
the prince came down to meet her, and kneeling, kissed her hand, and
claimed her as his bride. Then came the bishop in his mitre, and led her
to the throne, and before them all the flax-spinner's maiden was married
to the prince, and made the Princess Olga.

"Then, until the seven days and seven nights were done, the revels
lasted in the castle. And in the merriment the old flax-spinner was
again forgotten. Her kindness of the past, her loneliness in the
present, had no part in the thoughts of the Princess Olga.

"But the beads that had rolled away into the darkness buried themselves
in the earth, and took root and sprang up. There at the castle gate they
bloo