most frightful way. That the contest did
not come to any decisive result may easily be
surmised, since the faculty of burning up
another flame is just the faculty a flame does
not possess. Luckily, a beggar happened to
pass that way, whereupon the white flame
cried out:

"Pour a little water on the red flame, and
I'll give you a penny."

"No, no," cried the other. "Pour a little
water on the white flame, and I'll give you a
ducat."

The beggar, who wisely preferred a ducat
to a penny, extinguished the white flame—
thus bringing the dynasty of the three kings
completely to an end. The sage resumed his
original shape, swung himself on the Sun-
horse, flung a ducat to the beggar, and rode
off at full gallop.

The scene that occurred in the palace after
the events above recorded was affecting
enough. The walls were at once hung with
black cloth; the three widows bewailed aloud
the loss of their three royal husbands; and
the old lady, who seemed more in anger than
in sorrow, stalked through the rooms,
muttering, clenching her fist, and stamping her
foot— all which gestures are utterly at
variance with the hypothesis that she was a
screech-owl. Suddenly she stopped; a flash
of her eye seemed to indicate the occurrence
of a bright thought; a stamp of the foot,
harder than those which had preceded it,
denoted revived energy. The three daughters
stared in the midst of their tears, and
asked her what she was going to do ? By
way of answer she calmly seated herself on
the poker, clasped the three young widows
in her arms, and off they all sailed through
the open air.

In the meanwhile the sage and his attendant
had been travelling through a desert
country with nothing to eat, and getting so
exceedingly hungry that they almost longed
to cut a steak from the Sun-horse. At last
they came to an apple-tree laden with the
most tempting fruit, which the ravenous
attendant desired to taste. " Stop!"
exclaimed the sage, drawing his sword and
cutting into the apple tree, from which blood
copiously flowed. "That is the old lady's
eldest daughter planted by her mother, on
purpose to work our destruction, and if you
had eaten one of the apples you would have
been a dead man." A fountain and a rose
tree likewise offered their temptations— less
potent we should imagine, considering the
appetite of the tempted party— and were
similarly wounded by the sword of the sage,
who explained that they were the second and
third daughters of the terrible old dame.
We purposely cut this part of the narrative
as short as we can, for trees, that bleed
when they are cut, are among the commonest
common-places of fairy lore—to say nothing
of the wound inflicted upon poor Polydore
by the hand of the pious Eneas, as
recorded in the third book of Virgil's immortal
epic.

When the adventurous pair had proceeded
beyond the limits of old Striga's domain, a
new difficulty arose from quite another
quarter. A little man, coming nobody knew
whence, crept under the horse, and touched
his nose with a bridle which he held in his
hand. A tumble of the sage from his steed,
and the instant departure of the latter with
the small man upon his back, was the
immediate consequence of this operation. The
attendant was not a little astonished at this
sudden change of fortune; but the sage, shaking
himself, quietly declared that it was no
more than he had expected.

New devices were now requisite for the
recovery of the Sun-horse. Assuming the
form of a travelling countryman, the sage
followed the little man, and offered his
services as a groom. The offer was accepted,
and the sage, who went home with the little
man, had the privilege of grooming the Sun-
horse every day, though, much to his annoyance,
he saw no chance of running away with
him. Had the little man, who was a potent
magician, been in his right senses, he would
have detected the real character of his groom;
but, poor fellow, he was so completely head-
over-ears in love with a certain princess, who
lived in a castle situated on the top of a
poplar tree which grew out of the midst of the
sea, that he could think of nothing else, and
even had a notion of employing his disguised
enemy as an agent in his hitherto
unprosperous love-match. The thought soon
resulted in action; and the sage, now habited
as a merchant, was despatched in a boat to
the foot of the poplar tree, with the hint,
that if he brought back the princess he should
be richly rewarded, but that, if he failed in
the attempt, his punishment would be severe.

Arrived at the foot of the poplar tree, the
sage had recourse to the same stratagem that
was employed by the Phœnicians for the
abduction of lo, as narrated in the Clio of
Herodotus. He tempted the princess down
into the boat by offering sundry articles of
finery for sale, and then put off for the shore.
At first, when she perceived that she had
been tricked into the power of the little
magician, she began to utter loud lamentations;
but, in the course of conversation, she
soon found that the pretended merchant
shared with her a feeling of intense hatred
for her adorer, and before they reached the
shore, an alliance, offensive and defensive,
was concluded between them.

Highly delighted was the little magician
at the arrival of the princess, and so
completely was he besotted, when she feigned to
return his affections, that he immediately
began to tell her all his secrets— one of which
is the most curious thing in the whole story.
He told her that in a wood hard by, there
was a large tree — that at the foot of the tree
there was a stag— that inside the stag there