seen it?'

"'Oh, many times.'

"'Then you shall show me the way.'

"'Whenever you are ready,' returned Purity. So saying, she passed him,
still accompanied by the hounds, and walked up the steps of the castle and
passed within and out of sight."

* * * * *

The story-teller paused. Jewel had risen from her seat on the floor and
come to sit on a wicker hassock at his feet, and Topaz rapped with his tail
as she moved.

"I wish you'd been there, grandpa, to take care of that little girl," she
said earnestly, her eyes fixed on his. "What happened next?"

"Ask your father," was the response.

Harry Evringham rolled over in the hammock where he lay stretched, until he
could see his daughter's face. She rose again and pulled her hassock close
to him as he continued:--

"As Purity passed into the house, the dogs whined, and the servant calling
them, they ran back to him. The old man stood still, bewildered, for a
minute; then he struck his hands together.

"'It is true, then. Even that child has seen it. I will go to her at once,
and we will set forth.'

"So the old man entered the castle, and gave orders that the child who had
just come in should be found and brought to him.

"The servants immediately flew to do his bidding, but no child could they
find.

"'Lock the gates lest she escape,' ordered the master. 'She is here. Find
her, or off goes every one of your foolish heads.'

"This was a terrible threat. You may be sure the servants ran hither and
thither, and examined every nook and corner; but still no little girl could
be found. The master scowled and fumed, but he considered that if he had
his servants all beheaded, it would put him to serious inconvenience; so he
only sat down and bit his thumbs, and began to try to think up some new way
to search for the Castle of True Delight.

"He felt sure the child had told the truth when saying she had beheld it.
It was even in the country where she had her home. The man began to see
that he had made a mistake not to treat the stranger more civilly. The very
dogs that he kept to drive away intruders had been more hospitable than he.

"All at once he had a bright thought. The roc, the oldest and wisest of all
birds, lived at the top of the mountain which rose above his castle.

"'She will tell me the way,' he said, 'for she knows the world from its
very beginning.'

"So he ordered that they should saddle and bridle his strongest