g till he found it. Then he
boiled it, and he drank some of it himself, to see whether it might be
poison, and it put him into a deep sleep. And when he woke he went to
the priest's house and told the whole story and gave the Princess some
of the drink, and then she went to sleep and did not wake till the
next day. And when she woke she had her speech back.

"Ah, well, by this time they was both in love with each other, and all
that I did for myself or against them had only helped them. But it was
not long before the Princess was saying that she must be off to her
father, and nothing that the priest and Guleesh could do would make
her stay. So the priest took the jewels that she had on her when
Guleesh first brought her, and he sold them and gave her the money,
and she took it and paid her way back to France.

"And after that great grief and melancholy came over Guleesh, and
nothing would do him but he must start off for France to find the
Princess again. Start off he did, and that was the last that I ever
saw of him, only I heard that he found the Princess at her father's
court and that at long last they were married."

There was nothing strange in the last that Naggeneen had told--nothing
more strange, I mean, than that a peasant boy should marry the
daughter of the King of France--but his voice, before he had ended,
was so low and so full of grief that all the other fairies kept very
still to listen, and when he had told his story none of them spoke for
a little while. At last the King said: "How long was all this ago,
Naggeneen?"

"Many years," Naggeneen answered; "I couldn't be counting how many."

"Then what is it to you now?" said the King. "Sure they're both dead
long ago, and here are you as sound as ever."

"Yes," Naggeneen cried, "as sound as ever and as sound as I'll ever
be. They're not dead. They had souls. They're alive now, and when what
they call 'the Last Day' comes, they'll live still, forever. And then
I shall go out, like a shadow when the light falls on it. There's no
more of me that can last than a shadow. And you will go out that way,
too, and all of us. It was not her that I wanted so much. It was the
soul that I thought I'ld get, and her married to me. That was it. And
a stupid mortal had tricked me twice. It was then I left the rath. It
was then I could bear to look at nobody, man or fairy. Then I put on
the red jacket and went by myself. After a time I was a lepracaun, and
a cluricaun,