found
him, and hustled and shoved him along till he was face to face with Sep,
in a green glade. The glade was green, but all the bushes and trees
around were red-brown with squirrel fur, and shining bright with
squirrel eyes.

Then Sep said, 'Give the Princess back her eyes and her hearing and her
voice.'

But the mole would not.

'Give the Princess back her eyes and her hearing and her voice,' said
Sep again. But the mole only gnashed his wicked teeth and snarled.

And then in a minute the squirrels fell on the mole and killed it, and
Sep thanked them and rode back to the palace, for, of course, he knew
that when a magician is killed, all his magic unworks itself instantly.

But when he got to his Princess she was still as deaf as a post and as
dumb as a stone, and she was still crying bitterly with her poor blind
eyes, till the tears ran down her grass-green gown with the red roses on
it.

'Cheer up, my sweetheart,' he said, though he knew she couldn't hear
him, and as he spoke the wind came in at the open window, and spoke very
softly, because it was in the presence of the Princess.

'All right,' it whispered, 'the old villain gave us the slip that
journey. Got out of the mole-skin in the very nick of time. He's a wild
boar now.'

'Come,' said Sep, fingering his sword-hilt, 'I'll kill that myself
without asking it any questions.'

So he went and fought it. But it was a most uncommon boar, as big as a
horse, with tusks half a yard long; and although Sep wounded it it
jerked the sword out of his hand with its tusk, and was just going to
trample him out of life with its hard, heavy pigs'-feet, when a great
roar sounded through the forest.

'Ah! would ye?' said the lion, and fastened teeth and claws in the great
boar's back. The boar turned with a scream of rage, but the lion had got
a good grip, and it did not loosen teeth or claws till the boar lay
quiet.

'Is he dead?' asked Sep when he came to himself.

'Oh yes, he's _dead_ right enough,' said the lion; but the wind came up
puffing and blowing, and said:

'It's no good, he's got away again, and now he's a fish. I was just a
minute too late to see _what_ fish. An old oyster told me about it, only
he hadn't the wit to notice what particular fish the scoundrel changed
into.'

So then Sep went back to the palace, and he said to the King:

'Let me marry the dear Princess, and we'll go out and seek our fortune.
I've got to kill that Magician, and I'l