ry river-bed across country. We are certain that there
_are_ Earthquakers, otherwise how can we account for earthquakes? But
how to tackle an Earthquaker, how to get at him, and what to do with him
when you have got at him, are questions which might puzzle even King
Prigio.

It was not easy to have the better of an enchantress like Jaqueline and a
prince like Ricardo. In no ordinary circumstances could they have been
baffled and defeated; but now it must be admitted that they were in a
very trying and alarming situation, especially the princess. The worst
of it was, that as Jaqueline sat and thought and thought, she began to
remember that she was back in her own country. The hills were those she
used to see from her father's palace windows when she was a child. And
she remembered with horror that once a year her people used to send a
beautiful girl to the Earthquaker, by way of keeping him quiet, as you
shall hear presently. And now she heard light footsteps and a sound of
weeping, and lo! a great troop of pretty girls passed, sweeping in and
out of the halls in a kind of procession, and looking unhappy and lost.

Jaqueline ran to them.

"Where am I? who are you?" she cried, in the language of her own country,
which came back to her on a sudden.

"We are nurses of the Earthquaker," they said. "Our duty is to sing him
asleep, and every year he must have a new song; and every year a new
maiden must be sent down from earth, with a new sleepy song she has
learned from the priests of Manoa, the City of the Sun. Are you the new
singer?"

"No, I'm _not_," said Jaqueline. "I don't know the priests of Manoa; I
don't know any new sleepy song. I only want to find the way out."

"There is no way, or we should have found it," said one of the maidens;
"and, if you are the wrong girl, by the day after to-morrow they must
send the right one, otherwise the Earthquaker will waken, and shake the
world, and destroy Manoa, the City of the Sun." Then they all wept
softly in the stillness. "Can we get anything to eat here?" asked poor
Jaqueline, at last.

She was beginning to be very hungry, and however alarmed she might be,
she felt that dinner would not be unwelcome. The tallest of the maidens
clapped her hands, and immediately a long table was spread by unseen
sprites with meringues and cold chicken, and several sorts of delicious
ices.

We shall desert Jaqueline, who was rather less alarmed when she found
that she