ish leapt in the air, and a bright gleam flashed
through the night. 'The sabre!' they shouted, and plunged into the
stream, and with a sharp tug, pulled out the sword, while the fish lay
on the water, exhausted by its struggles. Swimming back with the
sabre to land, they carefully dried it in their coats, and then
carried it to the palace and placed it on the king's pillow. In an
instant colour came back to the waxen face, and the hollow cheeks
filled out. The king sat up, and opening his eyes he said:

'Where is Zoulvisia?'

'That is what we do not know,' answered the little men; 'but now that
you are saved you will soon find out.' And they told him what had
happened since Zoulvisia had betrayed his secret to the witch.

'Let me go to my horse,' was all he said. But when he entered the
stable he could have wept at the sight of his favourite steed, which
was nearly in as sad a plight as his master had been. Languidly he
turned his head as the door swung back on its hinges, but when he
beheld the king he rose up, and rubbed his head against him.

'Oh, my poor horse! How much cleverer were you than I! If I had acted
like you I should never have lost Zoulvisia; but we will seek her
together, you and I.'

* * * * *

For a long while the king and his horse followed the course of the
stream, but nowhere could he learn anything of Zoulvisia. At length,
one evening, they both stopped to rest by a cottage not far from a
great city, and as the king was lying outstretched on the grass,
lazily watching his horse cropping the short turf, an old woman came
out with a wooden bowl of fresh milk, which she offered him.

He drank it eagerly, for he was very thirsty, and then laying down the
bowl, began to talk to the woman, who was delighted to have someone to
listen to her conversation.

'You are in luck to have passed this way just now,' said she, 'for in
five days the king holds his wedding banquet. Ah! but the bride is
unwilling, for all her blue eyes and her golden hair! And she keeps by
her side a cup of poison, and declares that she will swallow it
rather than become his wife. Yet he is a handsome man too, and a
proper husband for her--more than she could have looked for, having
come no one knows whither, and bought from a witch----'

The king started. Had he found her after all? His heart beat
violently, as if it would choke him; but he gasped out:

'Is her name Zoulvisia?'

'Ay, so sh