when he saw her coming back before her time.
"Oh, father," she cried, "let me come back for a little while to play
in the sun!" But her father, fearing lest the gilding of her complexion
should be spoiled, drove her back into the earth, and trampled it down
over her head.

The gnome seemed quite sorry for her when she returned; but already,
he said, a year was gone--and what were three years, when a king's son
would be the reward?

At the next Easter he let her go again; and now she looked quite golden,
except for her eyes, and her white teeth, and the nails on her pretty
little fingers and toes. But again her father drove her back into the
ground, and put a heavy stone slab over the spot to make sure of her.

At last the third Easter came, and she was all gold. She kissed the
gnome many times, and was almost sorry to leave him, for he had been
very kind to her. And now he told her about her father catching him
in the trap, and robbing him of his gold by a hard bargain, and of his
being forced to take her down to live with him, till she was turned into
gold, so that she might marry the king's son. "For now," said he, "you
are so compounded of gold that only the gnomes could rub it off you."

So this time, when Jasome' came up once more to the light of day, she
did not go back again to her cruel father, but went and sat by the
roadside, and played with the sunbeams, and wondered when the king's son
would come and marry her. And as she sat there all the country-people
who passed by stopped and mocked her; and boys came and threw mud at her
because she was all gold from head to foot--an object, to be sure, for
all simple folk to laugh at. So presently, instead of hoping, she fell
to despair, and sat weeping, with her face hidden in her hands.

Before long the king's son came that road, and saw something shining
like sunlight on a pond; but when he came near, he found a lovely maiden
of pure gold lying in a pool of her own tears, with her face hidden in
her hair.

Now the king's son, unlike the country-folk, knew the value of gold; but
he was grieved at heart for a maiden so stained all over with it, and
more, when he beheld how she wept. So he went to lift her up; and there,
surely, he saw the most beautiful face he could ever have dreamed of.
But, alas! so discoloured--even her eyes, and her lips, and the very
tears she shed were the colour of gold! When he could bring her to
speak, she told him how, because she was