all gold, all the people mocked
at her, and boys threw mud at her; and she had nowhere to go, unless it
were back to the kind gnome who lived underground, out of sight of the
sweet sun.

So the prince said, "Come with me, and I will take you to my father's
palace, and there nobody shall mock you, but you shall sit all your
days in the sunshine, and be happy." And as they went, more and more he
wondered at her great beauty--so spoiled that he could not look at her
without grief--and was taken with increasing wonder at the beautiful
wisdom stored in her golden mind; for she told him the tales of the
heroes which she had learned from the gnome, and of buried cities; also
the songs of old poets that have been forgotten; and her voice, like the
rest of her, was golden.

The prince said to himself, "I shut my eyes, and am ready to die loving
her; yet, when I open them, she is but a talking statue!"

One day he saki to her, "Under all this disguise you must be the most
beautiful thing upon earth! Already to me you are the dearest!" and he
sighed, for he knew that a king's son might not marry a figure of gold.
Now one day after this, as Jasome' sat alone in the sunshine and cried,
the little old gnome stood before her, and said, "Well, Jasome', have
you married the king's son?"

"Alas!" cried Jasome', "you have so changed me: I am no longer human!
Yet he loves me, and, but for that, he would marry me."

"Dear me!" said the gnome. "If that is all, I can take the gold off you
again: why, I said so!"

Jasome' entreated him, by all his former kindness, to do so for her now.

"Yes," said the gnome, "but a bargain is a bargain. Now is the time for
me to get back my bags of gold. Do you go to your father, and let him
know that the king's son is willing to marry you if he restores to me my
treasure that he took from me; for that is what it comes to."

Up jumped Jasome', and ran to the rat-catcher's house. "Oh, father," she
cried, "now you can undo all your cruelty to me; for now, if you will
give back the gnome his gold, he will give my own face back to me, and I
shall marry the king's son!"

But the rat-catcher was filled with admiration at the sight of her, and
would not believe a word she said. "I have given you your dowry," he
answered; "three years I had to do without you to get it. Take it away,
and get married, and leave me the peace and plenty I have so hardly
earned!"

Jasome' went back and told the gnome.

"Rea