ing, little dears! Good-morning, my beautiful ones. How fresh
and sweet and fair you are!" And, plucking a single blossom, a cup of
the frailest pink, she placed it in her yellow hair, her only
ornament. Then she danced toward the little arbor, for it was her
favorite early-morning bower. But when she came to the door, instead of
entering, she started back with a scream. For through the morning-glory
vines two bright eyes were peering at her.

"Peek-a-boo!" said a merry voice. And out stepped a lad with a smiling,
handsome face. He was dressed all in green. By his side hung a sword,
and over his shoulder he bore a little lute, such as minstrels use.

"Good-morning, merry maiden," he said, doffing his cap and bowing very
low. "You, too, love flowers in the early morning. We have good taste,
we two, alone of all this place, it seems."

"You are not of this place. How came you here?" asked the Princess,
stepping back and frowning somewhat. "Do you not know that this is the
garden of a Princess, who allows no one to visit it between dusk and the
third hour after sunrise?"

"Ah!" cried the youth, with a merry laugh. "That I learned yesterday
down below there in the village. And a foolish law it is. If the
Princess knows no better than to forbid the sight of her garden when it
is most beautiful, then the Princess deserves to be disobeyed. And for
that matter, pretty maiden, are not you, too, a trespasser at this early
hour? Aha! Oho!" The lad laughed, teasingly, shaking his finger at her.

The Princess bit her lip to keep from laughing. But she said as sternly
as she could: "You are rude, Sir Greencoat. I am one of the best friends
the Princess has. She allows me to come here at this hour, alone of all
the world."

"Ah, share the right with me, dear maiden, share it with me!" exclaimed
the Stranger. "Let me play with you here in the garden early in the
morning. Do not tell her of my fault; but let me repeat it again, and
yet again, while I remain in this land."

The Princess hesitated, then answered him with a question. "You are then
of another country? You are soon to go away?"

"Yes, I am of a far country. My name is Joyeuse, and I am a merry
fellow,--a traveler, a minstrel, a swordsman, an herb-gatherer. I have
earned my bread in many ways. I was passing through this country when
the fragrance of this wondrous garden met my flower-loving nose, guiding
me hither. Ah, how beautiful it is! Because I wished to see it a