y
young man to venture even to speak to her before he had seen her six
times at least. But there was even less danger than the wicked fairy
thought; for, however much the princess might desire to be set free, she
was dreadfully afraid of the wrong prince. Now, however, the fairy was
going to do all she could.

She so contrived it by her deceitful spells, that the next night the
prince could not by any endeavour find his way to the glade. It would
take me too long to tell her tricks. They would be amusing to us, who
know that they could not do any harm, but they were something other than
amusing to the poor prince. He wandered about the forest till daylight,
and then fell fast asleep. The same thing occurred for seven following
days, during which neither could he find the good fairy's cottage. After
the third quarter of the moon, however, the bad fairy thought she might
be at ease about the affair for a fortnight at least, for there was no
chance of the prince wishing to kiss the princess during that period.
So the first day of the fourth quarter he did find the cottage, and the
next day he found the glade. For nearly another week he haunted it. But
the princess never came. I have little doubt she was on the farther
edge of it some part of every night, but at this period she always wore
black, and, there being little or no light, the prince never saw her.
Nor would he have known her if he had seen her. How could he have
taken the worn decrepit creature she was now, for the glorious Princess
Daylight?

At last, one night when there was no moon at all, he ventured near the
house. There he heard voices talking, although it was past midnight; for
her women were in considerable uneasiness, because the one whose turn it
was to watch her had fallen asleep, and had not seen which way she went,
and this was a night when she would probably wander very far, describing
a circle which did not touch the open glade at all, but stretched away
from the back of the house, deep into that side of the forest--a part
of which the prince knew nothing. When he understood from what they said
that she had disappeared, and that she must have gone somewhere in the
said direction, he plunged at once into the wood to see if he could find
her. For hours he roamed with nothing to guide him but the vague notion
of a circle which on one side bordered on the house, for so much had he
picked up from the talk he had overheard.

It was getting towards the