see he is madly in love with
her."

Then Caporushes told herself she would not dance again, since it was not
fit for a gay young master to be in love with his scullery-maid; but,
alas! the moment she heard the fiddlers fiddling, she just upped and
offed with her rushes, and there she was fine and tidy as ever! She
didn't even have to brush her beautiful golden hair! And once again she
was in the ball-room in a trice, dancing away with young master, who
never took his eyes off her, and implored her to tell him who she was.
But she kept her own counsel and only told him that she never, never,
never would come to dance any more, and that he must say good-bye. And
he held her hand so fast that she had a job to get away, and lo and
behold! his ring came off his finger, and as she ran up to her bed there
it was in her hand! She had just time to put on her cap and robe of
rushes, when her fellow-servants came trooping in and found her awake.

"It was the noise you made coming upstairs," she made excuse; but they
said, "Not we! It is the whole place that is in an uproar searching for
the beautiful stranger. Young master he tried to detain her; but she
slipped from him like an eel. But he declares he will find her; for if
he doesn't he will die of love for her."

Then Caporushes laughed. "Young men don't die of love," says she. "He
will find some one else."

But he didn't. He spent his whole time looking for his beautiful dancer,
but go where he might, and ask whom he would, he never heard anything
about her. And day by day he grew thinner and thinner, and paler and
paler, until at last he took to his bed.

And the housekeeper came to the cook and said, "Cook the nicest dinner
you can cook, for young master eats nothing."

Then the cook prepared soups, and jellies, and creams, and roast
chicken, and bread sauce; but the young man would none of them.

And Caporushes cleaned the pots and scraped the saucepans and said
nothing.

Then the housekeeper came crying and said to the cook, "Prepare some
gruel for young master. Mayhap he'd take that. If not he will die for
love of the beautiful dancer. If she could see him now she would have
pity on him."

So the cook began to make the gruel, and Caporushes left scraping
saucepans and watched her.

"Let me stir it," she said, "while you fetch a cup from the
pantry-room."

So Caporushes stirred the gruel, and what did she do but slips young
master's ring into it before the co