this once, but yet
it is a great unkindness.'

"And as they were going to pour in the last sackful, there passed a
poor mortal beggar, who had strayed in from the men and women's world,
and she said, 'Pray give me some of that wheat, O fairy people! for I
am hungry. I have lost my way, and there is no money to be earned
here. Give me some of that wheat, that I may bake cakes, lest I and my
baby should starve.'

"And they said, 'What is starve? We never heard that word before, and
we cannot wait while you explain it to us.'

"So they poured it all into the lake; and then the white fairy said,
'This cannot be forgiven them'; and she covered her face with her
hands and wept. Then the black fairy rose and drove them all before
her,--the prince, with his chief shepherd and his reapers, his
courtiers and his knights; she drove them into the great bed of reeds,
and no one has ever set eyes on them since. Then the brown fairy went
into the palace where the king's aunt sat, with all her ladies and her
maids about her, and with the child-king on her knee.

"It was a very gloomy day.

"She stood in the middle of the hall, and said, 'Oh, you cold-hearted
and most unkind! my spell is upon you, and the first ray of sunshine
shall bring it down. Lose your present forms, and be of a more gentle
and innocent race, till a queen of alien birth shall come to reign
over you against her will.'

"As she spoke they crept into corners, and covered the dame's head
with a veil. And all that day it was dark and gloomy, and nothing
happened, and all the next day it rained and rained; and they thrust
the dame into a dark closet, and kept her there for a whole month, and
still not a ray of sunshine came to do them any damage; but the dame
faded and faded in the dark, and at last they said, 'She must come
out, or she will die; and we do not believe the sun will ever shine in
our country any more.' So they let the poor dame come out; and lo! as
she crept slowly forth under the dome, a piercing ray of sunlight
darted down upon her head, and in an instant they were all changed
into deer, and the child-king too.

"They are gentle now, and kind; but where is the prince? where are the
fairy knights and the fairy men?

"Wand! why do you turn?"

Now while Mopsa told her story the wand continued to bend, and Mopsa,
following, was slowly approaching the foot of a great precipice, which
rose sheer up for more than a hundred feet. The crowd that follo