The Lost Princess

The Lost Princess

Written by:

George MacDonald

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I.

There was a certain country where things used to go rather oddly.

For instance, you could never tell whether it was going to rain or

hail, or whether or not the milk was going to turn sour. It was

impossible to say whether the next baby would be a boy, or a girl,

or even, after he was a week old, whether he would wake

sweet-tempered or cross.

In strict accordance with the peculiar nature of this country of

uncertainties, it came to pass one day, that in the midst of a

shower of rain that might well be called golden, seeing the sun,

shining as it fell, turned all its drops into molten topazes, and

every drop was good for a grain of golden corn, or a yellow cowslip,

or a buttercup, or a dandelion at least;--while this splendid rain

was falling, I say, with a musical patter upon the great leaves of

the horse-chestnuts, which hung like Vandyke collars about the necks

of the creamy, red-spotted blossoms, and on the leaves of the

sycamores, looking as if they had blood in their veins, and on a

multitude of flowers, of which some stood up and boldly held out

their cups to catch their share, while others cowered down,

laughing, under the soft patting blows of the heavy warm drops;--

while this lovely rain was washing all the air clean from the motes,

and the bad odors, and the poison-seeds that had escaped from their

prisons during the long drought;--while it fell, splashing and

sparkling, with a hum, and a rush, and a soft clashing--but stop! I

am stealing, I find, and not that only, but with clumsy hands

spoiling what I steal:--

    "O Rain! with your dull twofold sound,

     The clash hard by, and the murmur all round:"

--there! take it, Mr. Coleridge;--while, as I was saying, the lovely

little rivers whose fountains are the clouds, and which cut their

own channels through the air, and make sweet noises rubbing against

their banks as they hurry down and down, until at length they are

pulled up on a sudden, with a musical plash, in the very heart of an

odorous flower, that first gasps and then sighs up a blissful scent,

or on the bald head of a stone that never says, Thank you;--while

the very sheep felt it blessing them, though it could never reach

their skins through the depth of their long wool, and the veriest

hedgehog--I mean the one with the longest spikes--came and spiked

himself out to impale as many of the drops as he could;--while the

rain was thus falling, and the leaves, and the flowers, and the

sheep, and the cattle, and the hedgehog, were all busily receiving

the golden rain, something happened. It was not a great battle, nor

an earthquake, nor a coronation, but something more important than

all those put together. A BABY-GIRL WAS BORN; and her father was a

king; and her mother was a queen; and her uncles and aunts were

princes and princesses; and her first-cousins were dukes and

duchesses; and not one of her second-cousins was less than a marquis

or marchioness, or of their third-cousins less than an earl or

countess: and below a countess they did not care to count. So the

little girl was Somebody; and yet for all that, strange to say, the

first thing she did was to cry. I told you it was a strange country.

As she grew up, everybody about her did his best to convince her

that she was Somebody; and the girl herself was so easily persuaded

of it that she quite forgot that anybody had ever told her so, and

took it for a fundamental, innate, primary, first-born, self-

evident, necessary, and incontrovertible idea and principle that SHE

WAS SOMEBODY. And far be it from me to deny it. I will even go so

far as to assert that in this odd country there was a huge number of

Somebodies. Indeed, it was one of its oddities that every boy and

girl in it, was rather too ready to think he or she was Somebody;

and the worst of it was that the princess never thought of there

being more than one Somebody--and that was herself.

Far away to the north in the same country, on the side of a bleak

hill, where a horse-chestnut or a sycamore was never seen, where

were no meadows rich with buttercups, only steep, rough, breezy

slopes, covered with dry prickly furze and its flowers of red gold,

or moister, softer broom with its flowers of yellow gold, and great

sweeps of purple heather, mixed with bilberries, and crowberries,

and cranberries--no, I am all wrong: there was nothing out yet but a

few furze-blossoms; the rest were all waiting behind their doors

till they were called; and no full, slow-gliding river with

meadow-sweet along its oozy banks, only a little brook here and

there, that dashed past without a moment to say, "How do you

do?"--there (would you believe it?) while the same cloud that was

dropping down golden rain all about the queen's new baby was dashing

huge fierce handfuls of hail upon the hills, with such force that

they flew spinning off the rocks and stones, went burrowing in the

sheep's wool, stung the cheeks and chin of the shepherd with their

sharp spiteful little blows, and made his dog wink and whine as they

bounded off his hard wise head, and long sagacious nose; only, when

they dropped plump down the chimney, and fell hissing in the little

fire, they caught it then, for the clever little fire soon sent them

up the chimney again, a good deal swollen, and harmless enough for a

while, there (what do you think?) among the hailstones, and the

heather, and the cold mountain air, another little girl was born,

whom the shepherd her father, and the shepherdess her mother, and a

good many of her kindred too, thought Somebody. She had not an uncle

or an aunt that was less than a shepherd or dairymaid, not a cousin,

that was less than a farm-laborer, not a second-cousin that was less

than a grocer, and they did not count farther. And yet (would you

believe it?) she too cried the very first thing. It WAS an odd

country! And, what is still more surprising, the shepherd and

shepherdess and the dairymaids and the laborers were not a bit wiser

than the king and the queen and the dukes and the marquises and the

earls; for they too, one and all, so constantly taught the little

woman that she was Somebody, that she also forgot that there were a

great many more Somebodies besides herself in the world.

It was, indeed, a peculiar country, very different from ours--so

different, that my reader must not be too much surprised when I add

the amazing fact, that most of its inhabitants, instead of enjoying

the things they had, were always wanting the things they had not,

often even the things it was least likely they ever could have. The

grown men and women being like this, there is no reason to be

further astonished that the Princess Rosamond--the name her parents

gave her because it means Rose of the World--should grow up like

them, wanting every thing she could and every thing she couldn't

have. The things she could have were a great many too many, for her

foolish parents always gave her what they could; but still there

remained a few things they couldn't give her, for they were only a

common king and queen. They could and did give her a lighted candle

when she cried for it, and managed by much care that she should not

burn her fingers or set her frock on fire; but when she cried for

the moon, that they could not give her. They did the worst thing

possible, instead, however; for they pretended to do what they could

not. They got her a thin disc of brilliantly polished silver, as

near the size of the moon as they could agree upon; and, for a time

she was delighted.

But, unfortunately, one evening she made the discovery that her moon

was a little peculiar, inasmuch as she could not shine in the dark.

Her nurse happened to snuff out the candles as she was playing with

it; and instantly came a shriek of rage, for her moon had vanished.

Presently, through the opening of the curtains, she caught sight of

the real moon, far away in the sky, and shining quite calmly, as if

she had been there all the time; and her rage increased to such a

degree that if it had not passed off in a fit, I do not know what

might have come of it.

As she grew up it was still the same, with this difference, that not

only must she have every thing, but she got tired of every thing

almost as soon as she had it. There was an accumulation of things in

her nursery and schoolroom and bedroom that was perfectly appalling.

Her mother's wardrobes were almost useless to her, so packed were

they with things of which she never took any notice. When she was

five years old, they gave her a splendid gold repeater, so close set

with diamonds and rubies, that the back was just one crust of gems.

In one of her little tempers, as they called her hideously ugly

rages, she dashed it against the back of the chimney, after which it

never gave a single tick; and some of the diamonds went to the

ash-pit. As she grew older still, she became fond of animals, not in

a way that brought them much pleasure, or herself much satisfaction.

When angry, she would beat them, and try to pull them to pieces, and

as soon as she became a little used to them, would neglect them

altogether. Then, if they could, they would run away, and she was

furious. Some white mice, which she had ceased feeding altogether,

did so; and soon the palace was swarming with white mice. Their red

eyes might be seen glowing, and their white skins gleaming, in every

dark corner; but when it came to the king's finding a nest of them

in his second-best crown, he was angry and ordered them to be

drowned. The princess heard of it, however, and raised such a

clamor, that there they were left until they should run away of

themselves; and the poor king had to wear his best crown every day

till then. Nothing that was the princess's property, whether she

cared for it or not, was to be meddled with.

Of course, as she grew, she grew worse; for she never tried to grow

better. She became more and more peevish and fretful every

day--dissatisfied not only with what she had, but with all that was

around her, and constantly wishing things in general to be

different. She found fault with every thing and everybody, and all

that happened, and grew more and more disagreeable to every one who

had to do with her. At last, when she had nearly killed her nurse,

and had all but succeeded in hanging herself, and was miserable from

morning to night, her parents thought it time to do something.

A long way from the palace, in the heart of a deep wood of

pine-trees, lived a wise woman. In some countries she would have

been called a witch; but that would have been a mistake, for she

never did any thing wicked, and had more power than any witch could

have. As her fame was spread through all the country, the king heard

of her; and, thinking she might perhaps be able to suggest

something, sent for her. In the dead of the night, lest the princess

should know it, the king's messenger brought into the palace a tall

woman, muffled from head to foot in a cloak of black cloth. In the

presence of both their Majesties, the king, to do her honor,

requested her to sit; but she declined, and stood waiting to hear

what they had to say. Nor had she to wait long, for almost instantly

they began to tell her the dreadful trouble they were in with their

only child; first the king talking, then the queen interposing with

some yet more dreadful fact, and at times both letting out a torrent

of words together, so anxious were they to show the wise woman that

their perplexity was real, and their daughter a very terrible one.

For a long while there appeared no sign of approaching pause. But

the wise woman stood patiently folded in her black cloak, and

listened without word or motion. At length silence fell; for they

had talked themselves tired, and could not think of any thing more

to add to the list of their child's enormities.

After a minute, the wise woman unfolded her arms; and her cloak

dropping open in front, disclosed a garment made of a strange stuff,

which an old poet who knew her well has thus described:--

    "All lilly white, withoutten spot or pride,

     That seemd like silke and silver woven neare;

     But neither silke nor silver therein did appeare."

"How very badly you have treated her!" said the wise woman. "Poor

child!"

"Treated her badly?" gasped the king.

"She is a very wicked child," said the queen; and both glared with

indignation.

"Yes, indeed!" returned the wise woman. "She is very naughty indeed,

and that she must be made to feel; but it is half your fault too."

"What!" stammered the king. "Haven't we given her every mortal thing

she wanted?"

"Surely," said the wise woman: "what else could have all but killed

her? You should have given her a few things of the other sort. But

you are far too dull to understand me."

"You are very polite," remarked the king, with royal sarcasm on his

thin, straight lips.

The wise woman made no answer beyond a deep sigh; and the king and

queen sat silent also in their anger, glaring at the wise woman. The

silence lasted again for a minute, and then the wise woman folded

her cloak around her, and her shining garment vanished like the moon

when a great cloud comes over her. Yet another minute passed and the

silence endured, for the smouldering wrath of the king and queen

choked the channels of their speech. Then the wise woman turned her

back on them, and so stood. At this, the rage of the king broke

forth; and he cried to the queen, stammering in his fierceness,--

"How should such an old hag as that teach Rosamond good manners? She

knows nothing of them herself! Look how she stands!--actually with

her back to us."

At the word the wise woman walked from the room. The great folding

doors fell to behind her; and the same moment the king and queen

were quarrelling like apes as to which of them was to blame for her

departure. Before their altercation was over, for it lasted till the

early morning, in rushed Rosamond, clutching in her hand a poor

little white rabbit, of which she was very fond, and from which,

only because it would not come to her when she called it, she was

pulling handfuls of fur in the attempt to tear the squealing,

pink-eared, red-eyed thing to pieces.

"Rosa, RosaMOND!" cried the queen; whereupon Rosamond threw the

rabbit in her mother's face. The king started up in a fury, and ran

to seize her. She darted shrieking from the room. The king rushed

after her; but, to his amazement, she was nowhere to be seen: the

huge hall was empty.--No: just outside the door, close to the

threshold, with her back to it, sat the figure of the wise woman,

muffled in her dark cloak, with her head bowed over her knees. As

the king stood looking at her, she rose slowly, crossed the hall,

and walked away down the marble staircase. The king called to her;

but she never turned her head, or gave the least sign that she heard

him. So quietly did she pass down the wide marble stair, that the

king was all but persuaded he had seen only a shadow gliding across

the white steps.

For the princess, she was nowhere to be found. The queen went into

hysterics; and the rabbit ran away. The king sent out messengers in

every direction, but in vain.

In a short time the palace was quiet--as quiet as it used to be

before the princess was born. The king and queen cried a little now

and then, for the hearts of parents were in that country strangely

fashioned; and yet I am afraid the first movement of those very

hearts would have been a jump of terror if the ears above them had

heard the voice of Rosamond in one of the corridors. As for the rest

of the household, they could not have made up a single tear amongst

them. They thought, whatever it might be for the princess, it was,

for every one else, the best thing that could have happened; and as

to what had become of her, if their heads were puzzled, their hearts

took no interest in the question. The lord-chancellor alone had an

idea about it, but he was far too wise to utter it.

II.

The fact, as is plain, was, that the princess had disappeared in the

folds of the wise woman's cloak. When she rushed from the room, the

wise woman caught her to her bosom and flung the black garment

around her. The princess struggled wildly, for she was in fierce

terror, and screamed as loud as choking fright would permit her; but

her father, standing in the door, and looking down upon the wise

woman, saw never a movement of the cloak, so tight was she held by

her captor. He was indeed aware of a most angry crying, which

reminded him of his daughter; but it sounded to him so far away,

that he took it for the passion of some child in the street, outside

the palace-gates. Hence, unchallenged, the wise woman carried the

princess down the marble stairs, out at the palace-door, down a

great flight of steps outside, across a paved court, through the

brazen gates, along half-roused streets where people were opening

their shops, through the huge gates of the city, and out into the

wide road, vanishing northwards; the princess struggling and

screaming all the time, and the wise woman holding her tight. When

at length she was too tired to struggle or scream any more, the wise

woman unfolded her cloak, and set her down; and the princess saw the

light and opened her swollen eyelids. There was nothing in sight

that she had ever seen before. City and palace had disappeared. They

were upon a wide road going straight on, with a ditch on each side

of it, that behind them widened into the great moat surrounding the

city. She cast up a terrified look into the wise woman's face, that

gazed down upon her gravely and kindly. Now the princess did not in

the least understand kindness. She always took it for a sign either

of partiality or fear. So when the wise woman looked kindly upon

her, she rushed at her, butting with her head like a ram: but the

folds of the cloak had closed around the wise woman; and, when the

princess ran against it, she found it hard as the cloak of a bronze

statue, and fell back upon the road with a great bruise on her head.

The wise woman lifted her again, and put her once more under the

cloak, where she fell asleep, and where she awoke again only to find

that she was still being carried on and on.

When at length the wise woman again stopped and set her down, she

saw around her a bright moonlit night, on a wide heath, solitary and

houseless. Here she felt more frightened than before; nor was her

terror assuaged when, looking up, she saw a stern, immovable

countenance, with cold eyes fixedly regarding her. All she knew of

the world being derived from nursery-tales, she concluded that the

wise woman was an ogress, carrying her home to eat her.

I have already said that the princess was, at this time of her life,

such a low-minded creature, that severity had greater influence over

her than kindness. She understood terror better far than tenderness.

When the wise woman looked at her thus, she fell on her knees, and

held up her hands to her, crying,--

"Oh, don't eat me! don't eat me!"

Now this being the best SHE could do, it was a sign she was a low

creature. Think of it--to kick at kindness, and kneel from terror.

But the sternness on the face of the wise woman came from the same

heart and the same feeling as the kindness that had shone from it

before. The only thing that could save the princess from her

hatefulness, was that she should be made to mind somebody else than

her own miserable Somebody.

Without saying a word, the wise woman reached down her hand, took

one of Rosamond's, and, lifting her to her feet, led her along

through the moonlight. Every now and then a gush of obstinacy would

well up in the heart of the princess, and she would give a great

ill-tempered tug, and pull her hand away; but then the wise woman

would gaze down upon her with such a look, that she instantly sought

again the hand she had rejected, in pure terror lest she should be

eaten upon the spot. And so they would walk on again; and when the

wind blew the folds of the cloak against the princess, she found

them soft as her mother's camel-hair shawl.

After a little while the wise woman began to sing to her, and the

princess could not help listening; for the soft wind amongst the low

dry bushes of the heath, the rustle of their own steps, and the

trailing of the wise woman's cloak, were the only sounds beside.

And this is the song she sang:--

        Out in the cold,

        With a thin-worn fold

        Of withered gold

        Around her rolled,

    Hangs in the air the weary moon.

        She is old, old, old;

        And her bones all cold,

        And her tales all told,

        And her things all sold,

    And she has no breath to croon.

        Like a castaway clout,

        She is quite shut out!

        She might call and shout,

        But no one about

    Would ever call back, "Who's there?"

        There is never a hut,

        Not a door to shut,

        Not a footpath or rut,

        Long road or short cut,

    Leading to anywhere!

        She is all alone

        Like a dog-picked bone,

        The poor old crone!

        She fain would groan,

    But she cannot find the breath.

        She once had a fire;

        But she built it no higher,

        And only sat nigher

        Till she saw it expire;

    And now she is cold as death.

        She never will smile

        All the lonesome while.

        Oh the mile after mile,

        And never a stile!

    And never a tree or a stone!

        She has not a tear:

        Afar and anear

        It is all so drear,

        But she does not care,

    Her heart is as dry as a bone.

        None to come near her!

        No one to cheer her!

        No one to jeer her!

        No one to hear her!

    Not a thing to lift and hold!

        She is always awake,

        But her heart will not break:

        She can only quake,

        Shiver, and shake:

    The old woman is very cold.

As strange as the song, was the crooning wailing tune that the wise

woman sung. At the first note almost, you would have thought she

wanted to frighten the princess; and so indeed she did. For when

people WILL be naughty, they have to be frightened, and they are not

expected to like it. The princess grew angry, pulled her hand away,

and cried,--

"YOU are the ugly old woman. I hate you!"

Therewith she stood still, expecting the wise woman to stop also,

perhaps coax her to go on: if she did, she was determined not to

move a step. But the wise woman never even looked about: she kept

walking on steadily, the same space as before. Little Obstinate

thought for certain she would turn; for she regarded herself as much

too precious to be left behind. But on and on the wise woman went,

until she had vanished away in the dim moonlight. Then all at once

the princess perceived that she was left alone with the moon,

looking down on her from the height of her loneliness. She was

horribly frightened, and began to run after the wise woman, calling

aloud. But the song she had just heard came back to the sound of her

own running feet,--

    All all alone,

    Like a dog-picked bone!

and again,--

        She might call and shout,

        And no one about

    Would ever call back, "Who's there?"

and she screamed as she ran. How she wished she knew the old woman's

name, that she might call it after her through the moonlight!

But the wise woman had, in truth, heard the first sound of her

running feet, and stopped and turned, waiting. What with running and

crying, however, and a fall or two as she ran, the princess never

saw her until she fell right into her arms--and the same moment into

a fresh rage; for as soon as any trouble was over the princess was

always ready to begin another. The wise woman therefore pushed her

away, and walked on; while the princess ran scolding and storming

after her. She had to run till, from very fatigue, her rudeness

ceased. Her heart gave way; she burst into tears, and ran on

silently weeping.

A minute more and the wise woman stooped, and lifting her in her

arms, folded her cloak around her. Instantly she fell asleep, and

slept as soft and as soundly as if she had been in her own bed. She

slept till the moon went down; she slept till the sun rose up; she

slept till he climbed the topmost sky; she slept till he went down

again, and the poor old moon came peaking and peering out once more:

and all that time the wise woman went walking on and on very fast.

And now they had reached a spot where a few fir-trees came to meet

them through the moonlight.

At the same time the princess awaked, and popping her head out

between the folds of the wise woman's cloak--a very ugly little

owlet she looked--saw that they were entering the wood. Now there is

something awful about every wood, especially in the moonlight; and

perhaps a fir-wood is more awful than other woods. For one thing, it

lets a little more light through, rendering the darkness a little

more visible, as it were; and then the trees go stretching away up

towards the moon, and look as if they cared nothing about the

creatures below them--not like the broad trees with soft wide leaves

that, in the darkness even, look sheltering. So the princess is not

to be blamed that she was very much frightened. She is hardly to be

blamed either that, assured the wise woman was an ogress carrying

her to her castle to eat her up, she began again to kick and scream

violently, as those of my readers who are of the same sort as

herself will consider the right and natural thing to do. The wrong

in her was this--that she had led such a bad life, that she did not

know a good woman when she saw her; took her for one like herself,

even after she had slept in her arms.

Immediately the wise woman set her down, and, walking on, within a

few paces vanished among the trees. Then the cries of the princess

rent the air, but the fir-trees never heeded her; not one of their

hard little needles gave a single shiver for all the noise she made.

But there were creatures in the forest who were soon quite as much

interested in her cries as the fir-trees were indifferent to them.

They began to hearken and howl and snuff about, and run hither and

thither, and grin with their white teeth, and light up the green

lamps in their eyes. In a minute or two a whole army of wolves and

hyenas were rushing from all quarters through the pillar like stems

of the fir-trees, to the place where she stood calling them, without

knowing it. The noise she made herself, however, prevented her from

hearing either their howls or the soft pattering of their many

trampling feet as they bounded over the fallen fir needles and

cones.

One huge old wolf had outsped the rest--not that he could run

faster, but that from experience he could more exactly judge whence

the cries came, and as he shot through the wood, she caught sight at

last of his lamping eyes coming swiftly nearer and nearer. Terror

silenced her. She stood with her mouth open, as if she were going to

eat the wolf, but she had no breath to scream with, and her tongue

curled up in her mouth like a withered and frozen leaf. She could do

nothing but stare at the coming monster. And now he was taking a few

shorter bounds, measuring the distance for the one final leap that

should bring him upon her, when out stepped the wise woman from

behind the very tree by which she had set the princess down, caught

the wolf by the throat half-way in his last spring, shook him once,

and threw him from her dead. Then she turned towards the princess,

who flung herself into her arms, and was instantly lapped in the

folds of her cloak.

But now the huge army of wolves and hyenas had rushed like a sea

around them, whose waves leaped with hoarse roar and hollow yell up

against the wise woman. But she, like a strong stately vessel, moved

unhurt through the midst of them. Ever as they leaped against her

cloak, they dropped and slunk away back through the crowd. Others

ever succeeded, and ever in their turn fell, and drew back

confounded. For some time she walked on attended and assailed on all

sides by the howling pack. Suddenly they turned and swept away,

vanishing in the depths of the forest. She neither slackened nor

hastened her step, but went walking on as before.

In a little while she unfolded her cloak, and let the princess look

out. The firs had ceased; and they were on a lofty height of

moorland, stony and bare and dry, with tufts of heather and a few

small plants here and there. About the heath, on every side, lay the

forest, looking in the moonlight like a cloud; and above the forest,

like the shaven crown of a monk, rose the bare moor over which they

were walking. Presently, a little way in front of them, the princess

espied a whitewashed cottage, gleaming in the moon. As they came

nearer, she saw that the roof was covered with thatch, over which

the moss had grown green. It was a very simple, humble place, not in

the least terrible to look at, and yet, as soon as she saw it, her

fear again awoke, and always, as soon as her fear awoke, the trust

of the princess fell into a dead sleep. Foolish and useless as she

might by this time have known it, she once more began kicking and

screaming, whereupon, yet once more, the wise woman set her down on

the heath, a few yards from the back of the cottage, and saying

only, "No one ever gets into my house who does not knock at the

door, and ask to come in," disappeared round the corner of the

cottage, leaving the princess alone with the moon--two white faces

in the cone of the night.

III.

The moon stared at the princess, and the princess stared at the

moon; but the moon had the best of it, and the princess began to

cry. And now the question was between the moon and the cottage. The

princess thought she knew the worst of the moon, and she knew

nothing at all about the cottage, therefore she would stay with the

moon. Strange, was it not, that she should have been so long with

the wise woman, and yet know NOTHING about that cottage? As for the

moon, she did not by any means know the worst of her, or even, that,

if she were to fall asleep where she could find her, the old witch

would certainly do her best to twist her face.

But she had scarcely sat a moment longer before she was assailed by

all sorts of fresh fears. First of all, the soft wind blowing gently

through the dry stalks of the heather and its thousands of little

bells raised a sweet rustling, which the princess took for the

hissing of serpents, for you know she had been naughty for so long

that she could not in a great many things tell the good from the

bad. Then nobody could deny that there, all round about the heath,

like a ring of darkness, lay the gloomy fir-wood, and the princess

knew what it was full of, and every now and then she thought she

heard the howling of its wolves and hyenas. And who could tell but

some of them might break from their covert and sweep like a shadow

across the heath? Indeed, it was not once nor twice that for a

moment she was fully persuaded she saw a great beast coming leaping

and bounding through the moonlight to have her all to himself. She

did not know that not a single evil creature dared set foot on that

heath, or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither up

and cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have

melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She

even imagined that the moon was slowly coming nearer and nearer down

the sky to take her and freeze her to death in her arms. The wise

woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottage looked asleep, was

watching her at some little window. In this, however, she would have

been quite right, if she had only imagined enough--namely, that the

wise woman was watching OVER her from the little window. But after

all, somehow, the thought of the wise woman was less frightful than

that of any of her other terrors, and at length she began to wonder

whether it the moonlight to have her all to himself. She did not

know that not a single evil creature dared set foot on that heath,

or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither up and

cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have

melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She

even imagined that the moon was slowly coming nearer and nearer down

the sky to take her and freeze her to death in her arms. The wise

woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottage looked asleep, was

watching her at some little window. In this, however, she would have

been quite right, if she had only imagined enough--namely, that the

wise woman was watching OVER her from the little window. But after

all, somehow, the thought of the wise woman was less frightful than

that of any of her other terrors, and at length she began to wonder

whether it her sadly through her gay silken slippers. She threw

herself on the heath, which came up to the walls of the cottage on

every side, and roared and screamed with rage. Suddenly, however,

she remembered how her screaming had brought the horde of wolves and

hyenas about her in the forest, and, ceasing at once, lay still,

gazing yet again at the moon. And then came the thought of her

parents in the palace at home. In her mind's eye she saw her mother

sitting at her embroidery with the tears dropping upon it, and her

father staring into the fire as if he were looking for her in its

glowing caverns. It is true that if they had both been in tears by

her side because of her naughtiness, she would not have cared a

straw; but now her own forlorn condition somehow helped her to

understand their grief at having lost her, and not only a great

longing to be back in her comfortable home, but a feeble flutter of

genuine love for her parents awoke in her heart as well, and she

burst into real tears--soft, mournful tears--very different from

those of rage and disappointment to which she was so much used. And

another very remarkable thing was that the moment she began to love

her father and mother, she began to wish to see the wise woman

again. The idea of her being an ogress vanished utterly, and she

thought of her only as one to take her in from the moon, and the

loneliness, and the terrors of the forest-haunted heath, and hide

her in a cottage with not even a door for the horrid wolves to howl

against.

But the old woman--as the princess called her, not knowing that her

real name was the Wise Woman--had told her that she must knock at

the door: how was she to do that when there was no door? But again

she bethought herself--that, if she could not do all she was told,

she could, at least, do a part of it: if she could not knock at the

door, she could at least knock--say on the wall, for there was

nothing else to knock upon--and perhaps the old woman would hear

her, and lift her in by some window. Thereupon, she rose at once to

her feet, and picking up a stone, began to knock on the wall with

it. A loud noise was the result, and she found she was knocking on

the very door itself. For a moment she feared the old woman would be

offended, but the next, there came a voice, saying,

"Who is there?"

The princess answered,

"Please, old woman, I did not mean to knock so loud."

To this there came no reply.

Then the princess knocked again, this time with her knuckles, and

the voice came again, saying,

"Who is there?"

And the princess answered,

"Rosamond."

Then a second time there was silence. But the princess soon ventured

to knock a third time.

"What do you want?" said the voice.

"Oh, please, let me in!" said the princess.

"The moon will keep staring at me; and I hear the wolves in the

wood."

Then the door opened, and the princess entered. She looked all

around, but saw nothing of the wise woman.

It was a single bare little room, with a white deal table, and a few

old wooden chairs, a fire of fir-wood on the hearth, the smoke of

which smelt sweet, and a patch of thick-growing heath in one

corner. Poor as it was, compared to the grand place Rosamond had

left, she felt no little satisfaction as she shut the door, and

looked around her. And what with the sufferings and terrors she had

left outside, the new kind of tears she had shed, the love she had

begun to feel for her parents, and the trust she had begun to place

in the wise woman, it seemed to her as if her soul had grown larger

of a sudden, and she had left the days of her childishness and

naughtiness far behind her. People are so ready to think themselves

changed when it is only their mood that is changed! Those who are

good-tempered because it is a fine day, will be ill-tempered when it

rains: their selves are just the same both days; only in the one

case, the fine weather has got into them, in the other the rainy.

Rosamond, as she sat warming herself by the glow of the peat-fire,

turning over in her mind all that had passed, and feeling how

pleasant the change in her feelings was, began by degrees to think

how very good she had grown, and how very good she was to have grown

good, and how extremely good she must always have been that she was

able to grow so very good as she now felt she had grown; and she

became so absorbed in her self-admiration as never to notice either

that the fire was dying, or that a heap of fir-cones lay in a corner

near it. Suddenly, a great wind came roaring down the chimney, and

scattered the ashes about the floor; a tremendous rain followed, and

fell hissing on the embers; the moon was swallowed up, and there was

darkness all about her. Then a flash of lightning, followed by a

peal of thunder, so terrified the princess, that she cried aloud for

the old woman, but there came no answer to her cry.

Then in her terror the princess grew angry, and saying to herself,

"She must be somewhere in the place, else who was there to open the

door to me?" began to shout and yell, and call the wise woman all

the bad names she had been in the habit of throwing at her nurses.

But there came not a single sound in reply.

Strange to say, the princess never thought of telling herself now

how naughty she was, though that would surely have been reasonable.

On the contrary, she thought she had a perfect right to be angry,

for was she not most desperately ill used--and a princess too? But

the wind howled on, and the rain kept pouring down the chimney, and

every now and then the lightning burst out, and the thunder rushed

after it, as if the great lumbering sound could ever think to catch

up with the swift light!

At length the princess had again grown so angry, frightened, and

miserable, all together, that she jumped up and hurried about the

cottage with outstretched arms, trying to find the wise woman. But

being in a bad temper always makes people stupid, and presently she

struck her forehead such a blow against something--she thought

herself it felt like the old woman's cloak--that she fell back--not

on the floor, though, but on the patch of heather, which felt as

soft and pleasant as any bed in the palace. There, worn out with

weeping and rage, she soon fell fast asleep.

She dreamed that she was the old cold woman up in the sky, with no

home and no friends, and no nothing at all, not even a pocket;

wandering, wandering forever, over a desert of blue sand, never to

get to anywhere, and never to lie down or die. It was no use

stopping to look about her, for what had she to do but forever look

about her as she went on and on and on--never seeing any thing, and

never expecting to see any thing! The only shadow of a hope she had

was, that she might by slow degrees grow thinner and thinner, until

at last she wore away to nothing at all; only alas! she could not

detect the least sign that she had yet begun to grow thinner. The

hopelessness grew at length so unendurable that she woke with a

start. Seeing the face of the wise woman bending over her, she threw

her arms around her neck and held up her mouth to be kissed. And the

kiss of the wise woman was like the rose-gardens of Damascus.

IV.

The wise woman lifted her tenderly, and washed and dressed her far

more carefully than even her nurse. Then she set her down by the

fire, and prepared her breakfast. The princess was very hungry, and

the bread and milk as good as it could be, so that she thought she

had never in her life eaten any thing nicer. Nevertheless, as soon

as she began to have enough, she said to herself,--

"Ha! I see how it is! The old woman wants to fatten me! That is why

she gives me such nice creamy milk. She doesn't kill me now because

she's going to kill me then! She IS an ogress, after all!"

Thereupon she laid down her spoon, and would not eat another

mouthful--only followed the basin with longing looks, as the wise

woman carried it away.

When she stopped eating, her hostess knew exactly what she was

thinking; but it was one thing to understand the princess, and quite

another to make the princess understand her: that would require

time. For the present she took no notice, but went about the affairs

of the house, sweeping the floor, brushing down the cobwebs,

cleaning the hearth, dusting the table and chairs, and watering the

bed to keep it fresh and alive--for she never had more than one

guest at a time, and never would allow that guest to go to sleep

upon any thing that had no life in it All the time she was thus

busied, she spoke not a word to the princess, which, with the

princess, went to confirm her notion of her purposes. But whatever

she might have said would have been only perverted by the princess

into yet stronger proof of her evil designs, for a fancy in her own

head would outweigh any multitude of facts in another's. She kept

staring at the fire, and never looked round to see what the wise

woman might be doing.

By and by she came close up to the back of her chair, and said,

"Rosamond!"

But the princess had fallen into one of her sulky moods, and shut

herself up with her own ugly Somebody; so she never looked round or

even answered the wise woman.

"Rosamond," she repeated, "I am going out. If you are a good girl,

that is, if you do as I tell you, I will carry you back to your

father and mother the moment I return."

The princess did not take the least notice.

"Look at me, Rosamond," said the wise woman.

But Rosamond never moved--never even shrugged her shoulders--perhaps

because they were already up to her ears, and could go no farther.

"I want to help you to do what I tell you," said the wise woman.

"Look at me."

Still Rosamond was motionless and silent, saying only to herself,

"I know what she's after! She wants to show me her horrid teeth. But

I won't look. I'm not going to be frightened out of my senses to

please her."

"You had better look, Rosamond. Have you forgotten how you kissed me

this morning?"

But Rosamond now regarded that little throb of affection as a

momentary weakness into which the deceitful ogress had betrayed her,

and almost despised herself for it. She was one of those who the

more they are coaxed are the more disagreeable. For such, the wise

woman had an awful punishment, but she remembered that the princess

had been very ill brought up, and therefore wished to try her with

all gentleness first.

She stood silent for a moment, to see what effect her words might

have. But Rosamond only said to herself,--

"She wants to fatten and eat me."

And it was such a little while since she had looked into the wise

woman's loving eyes, thrown her arms round her neck, and kissed her!

"Well," said the wise woman gently, after pausing as long as it

seemed possible she might bethink herself, "I must tell you then

without; only whoever listens with her back turned, listens but

half, and gets but half the help."

"She wants to fatten me," said the princess.

"You must keep the cottage tidy while I am out. When I come back, I

must see the fire bright, the hearth swept, and the kettle boiling;

no dust on the table or chairs, the windows clear, the floor clean,

and the heather in blossom--which last comes of sprinkling it with

water three times a day. When you are hungry, put your hand into

that hole in the wall, and you will find a meal."

"She wants to fatten me," said the princess.

"But on no account leave the house till I come back," continued the

wise woman, "or you will grievously repent it. Remember what you

have already gone through to reach it. Dangers lie all around this

cottage of mine; but inside, it is the safest place--in fact the

only quite safe place in all the country."

"She means to eat me," said the princess, "and therefore wants to

frighten me from running away."

She heard the voice no more. Then, suddenly startled at the thought

of being alone, she looked hastily over her shoulder. The cottage

was indeed empty of all visible life. It was soundless, too: there

was not even a ticking clock or a flapping flame. The fire burned

still and smouldering-wise; but it was all the company she had, and

she turned again to stare into it.

Soon she began to grow weary of having nothing to do. Then she

remembered that the old woman, as she called her, had told her to

keep the house tidy.

"The miserable little pig-sty!" she said. "Where's the use of

keeping such a hovel clean!"

But in truth she would have been glad of the employment, only just

because she had been told to do it, she was unwilling; for there ARE

people--however unlikely it may seem--who object to doing a thing

for no other reason than that it is required of them.

"I am a princess," she said, "and it is very improper to ask me to

do such a thing."

She might have judged it quite as suitable for a princess to sweep

away the dust as to sit the centre of a world of dirt. But just

because she ought, she wouldn't. Perhaps she feared that if she gave

in to doing her duty once, she might have to do it always--which

was true enough--for that was the very thing for which she had been

specially born.

Unable, however, to feel quite comfortable in the resolve to neglect

it, she said to herself, "I'm sure there's time enough for such a

nasty job as that!" and sat on, watching the fire as it burned away,

the glowing red casting off white flakes, and sinking lower and

lower on the hearth.

By and by, merely for want of something to do, she would see what

the old woman had left for her in the hole of the wall. But when she

put in her hand she found nothing there, except the dust which she

ought by this time to have wiped away. Never reflecting that the

wise woman had told her she would find food there WHEN SHE WAS

HUNGRY, she flew into one of her furies, calling her a cheat, and a

thief, and a liar, and an ugly old witch, and an ogress, and I do

not know how many wicked names besides. She raged until she was

quite exhausted, and then fell fast asleep on her chair. When she

awoke the fire was out.

By this time she was hungry; but without looking in the hole, she

began again to storm at the wise woman, in which labor she would no

doubt have once more exhausted herself, had not something white

caught her eye: it was the corner of a napkin hanging from the hole

in the wall. She bounded to it, and there was a dinner for her of

something strangely good--one of her favorite dishes, only better

than she had ever tasted it before. This might surely have at least

changed her mood towards the wise woman; but she only grumbled to

herself that it was as it ought to be, ate up the food, and lay down

on the bed, never thinking of fire, or dust, or water for the

heather.

The wind began to moan about the cottage, and grew louder and

louder, till a great gust came down the chimney, and again scattered

the white ashes all over the place. But the princess was by this

time fast asleep, and never woke till the wind had sunk to silence.

One of the consequences, however, of sleeping when one ought to be

awake is waking when one ought to be asleep; and the princess awoke

in the black midnight, and found enough to keep her awake. For

although the wind had fallen, there was a far more terrible howling

than that of the wildest wind all about the cottage. Nor was the

howling all; the air was full of strange cries; and everywhere she

heard the noise of claws scratching against the house, which seemed

all doors and windows, so crowded were the sounds, and from so many

directions. All the night long she lay half swooning, yet listening

to the hideous noises. But with the first glimmer of morning they

ceased.

Then she said to herself, "How fortunate it was that I woke! They

would have eaten me up if I had been asleep." The miserable little

wretch actually talked as if she had kept them out! If she had done

her work in the day, she would have slept through the terrors of the

darkness, and awaked fearless; whereas now, she had in the

storehouse of her heart a whole harvest of agonies, reaped from the

dun fields of the night!

They were neither wolves nor hyenas which had caused her such

dismay, but creatures of the air, more frightful still, which, as

soon as the smoke of the burning fir-wood ceased to spread itself

abroad, and the sun was a sufficient distance down the sky, and the

lone cold woman was out, came flying and howling about the cottage,

trying to get in at every door and window. Down the chimney they

would have got, but that at the heart of the fire there always lay a

certain fir-cone, which looked like solid gold red-hot, and which,

although it might easily get covered up with ashes, so as to be

quite invisible, was continually in a glow fit to kindle all the

fir-cones in the world; this it was which had kept the horrible

birds--some say they have a claw at the tip of every

wing-feather--from tearing the poor naughty princess to pieces, and

gobbling her up.

When she rose and looked about her, she was dismayed to see what a

state the cottage was in. The fire was out, and the windows were all

dim with the wings and claws of the dirty birds, while the bed from

which she had just risen was brown and withered, and half its purple

bells had fallen. But she consoled herself that she could set all to

rights in a few minutes--only she must breakfast first. And, sure

enough, there was a basin of the delicious bread and milk ready for

her in the hole of the wall!

After she had eaten it, she felt comfortable, and sat for a long

time building castles in the air--till she was actually hungry

again, without having done an atom of work. She ate again, and was

idle again, and ate again. Then it grew dark, and she went trembling

to bed, for now she remembered the horrors of the last night. This

time she never slept at all, but spent the long hours in grievous

terror, for the noises were worse than before. She vowed she would

not pass another night in such a hateful haunted old shed for all

the ugly women, witches, and ogresses in the wide world. In the

morning, however, she fell asleep, and slept late.

Breakfast was of course her first thought, after which she could not

avoid that of work. It made her very miserable, but she feared the

consequences of being found with it undone. A few minutes before

noon, she actually got up, took her pinafore for a duster, and

proceeded to dust the table. But the wood-ashes flew about so, that

it seemed useless to attempt getting rid of them, and she sat down

again to think what was to be done. But there is very little indeed

to be done when we will not do that which we have to do.

Her first thought now was to run away at once while the sun was

high, and get through the forest before night came on. She fancied

she could easily go back the way she had come, and get home to her

father's palace. But not the most experienced traveller in the world

can ever go back the way the wise woman has brought him.

She got up and went to the door. It was locked! What could the old

woman have meant by telling her not to leave the cottage? She was

indignant.

The wise woman had meant to make it difficult, but not impossible.

Before the princess, however, could find the way out, she heard a

hand at the door, and darted in terror behind it. The wise woman

opened it, and, leaving it open, walked straight to the hearth.

Rosamond immediately slid out, ran a little way, and then laid

herself down in the long heather.

V.

The wise woman walked straight up to the hearth, looked at the fire,

looked at the bed, glanced round the room, and went up to the table.

When she saw the one streak in the thick dust which the princess had

left there, a smile, half sad, half pleased, like the sun peeping

through a cloud on a rainy day in spring, gleamed over her face. She

went at once to the door, and called in a loud voice,

"Rosamond, come to me."

All the wolves and hyenas, fast asleep in the wood, heard her voice,

and shivered in their dreams. No wonder then that the princess

trembled, and found herself compelled, she could not understand how,

to obey the summons. She rose, like the guilty thing she felt,

forsook of herself the hiding-place she had chosen, and walked

slowly back to the cottage she had left full of the signs of her

shame. When she entered, she saw the wise woman on her knees,

building up the fire with fir-cones. Already the flame was climbing

through the heap in all directions, crackling gently, and sending a

sweet aromatic odor through the dusty cottage.

"That is my part of the work," she said, rising. "Now you do yours.

But first let me remind you that if you had not put it off, you

would have found it not only far easier, but by and by quite

pleasant work, much more pleasant than you can imagine now; nor

would you have found the time go wearily: you would neither have

slept in the day and let the fire out, nor waked at night and heard

the howling of the beast-birds. More than all, you would have been

glad to see me when I came back; and would have leaped into my arms

instead of standing there, looking so ugly and foolish."

As she spoke, suddenly she held up before the princess a tiny

mirror, so clear that nobody looking into it could tell what it was

made of, or even see it at all--only the thing reflected in it.

Rosamond saw a child with dirty fat cheeks, greedy mouth, cowardly

eyes--which, not daring to look forward, seemed trying to hide

behind an impertinent nose--stooping shoulders, tangled hair,

tattered clothes, and smears and stains everywhere. That was what

she had made herself. And to tell the truth, she was shocked at the

sight, and immediately began, in her dirty heart, to lay the blame

on the wise woman, because she had taken her away from her nurses

and her fine clothes; while all the time she knew well enough that,

close by the heather-bed, was the loveliest little well, just big

enough to wash in, the water of which was always springing fresh

from the ground, and running away through the wall. Beside it lay

the whitest of linen towels, with a comb made of mother-of-pearl,

and a brush of fir-needles, any one of which she had been far too

lazy to use. She dashed the glass out of the wise woman's hand, and

there it lay, broken into a thousand pieces!

Without a word, the wise woman stooped, and gathered the

fragments--did not leave searching until she had gathered the last

atom, and she laid them all carefully, one by one, in the fire, now

blazing high on the hearth. Then she stood up and looked at the

princess, who had been watching her sulkily.

"Rosamond," she said, with a countenance awful in its sternness,

"until you have cleansed this room--"

"She calls it a room!" sneered the princess to herself.

"You shall have no morsel to eat. You may drink of the well, but

nothing else you shall have. When the work I set you is done, you

will find food in the same place as before. I am going from home

again; and again I warn you not to leave the house."

"She calls it a house!--It's a good thing she's going out of it

anyhow!" said the princess, turning her back for mere rudeness, for

she was one who, even if she liked a thing before, would dislike it

the moment any person in authority over her desired her to do it.

When she looked again, the wise woman had vanished.

Thereupon the princess ran at once to the door, and tried to open

it; but open it would not. She searched on all sides, but could

discover no way of getting out. The windows would not open--at least

she could not open them; and the only outlet seemed the chimney,

which she was afraid to try because of the fire, which looked angry,

she thought, and shot out green flames when she went near it. So she

sat down to consider. One may well wonder what room for

consideration there was--with all her work lying undone behind her.

She sat thus, however, considering, as she called it, until hunger

began to sting her, when she jumped up and put her hand as usual in

the hole of the wall: there was nothing there. She fell straight

into one of her stupid rages; but neither her hunger nor the hole in

the wall heeded her rage. Then, in a burst of self-pity, she fell

a-weeping, but neither the hunger nor the hole cared for her tears.

The darkness began to come on, and her hunger grew and grew, and the

terror of the wild noises of the last night invaded her. Then she

began to feel cold, and saw that the fire was dying. She darted to

the heap of cones, and fed it. It blazed up cheerily, and she was

comforted a little. Then she thought with herself it would surely be

better to give in so far, and do a little work, than die of hunger.

So catching up a duster, she began upon the table. The dust flew

about and nearly choked her. She ran to the well to drink, and was

refreshed and encouraged. Perceiving now that it was a tedious plan

to wipe the dust from the table on to the floor, whence it would

have all to be swept up again, she got a wooden platter, wiped the

dust into that, carried it to the fire, and threw it in. But all the

time she was getting more and more hungry and, although she tried

the hole again and again, it was only to become more and more

certain that work she must if she would eat.

At length all the furniture was dusted, and she began to sweep the

floor, which happily, she thought of sprinkling with water, as from

the window she had seen them do to the marble court of the palace.

That swept, she rushed again to the hole--but still no food! She was

on the verge of another rage, when the thought came that she might

have forgotten something. To her dismay she found that table and

chairs and every thing was again covered with dust--not so badly as

before, however. Again she set to work, driven by hunger, and drawn

by the hope of eating, and yet again, after a second careful wiping,

sought the hole. But no! nothing was there for her! What could it

mean?

Her asking this question was a sign of progress: it showed that she

expected the wise woman to keep her word. Then she bethought her

that she had forgotten the household utensils, and the dishes and

plates, some of which wanted to be washed as well as dusted.

Faint with hunger, she set to work yet again. One thing made her

think of another, until at length she had cleaned every thing she

could think of. Now surely she must find some food in the hole!

When this time also there was nothing, she began once more to abuse

the wise woman as false and treacherous;--but ah! there was the bed

unwatered! That was soon amended.--Still no supper! Ah! there was

the hearth unswept, and the fire wanted making up!--Still no

supper! What else could there be? She was at her wits' end, and in

very weariness, not laziness this time, sat down and gazed into the

fire. There, as she gazed, she spied something brilliant,--shining

even, in the midst of the fire: it was the little mirror all whole

again; but little she knew that the dust which she had thrown into

the fire had helped to heal it. She drew it out carefully, and,

looking into it, saw, not indeed the ugly creature she had seen

there before, but still a very dirty little animal; whereupon she

hurried to the well, took off her clothes, plunged into it, and

washed herself clean. Then she brushed and combed her hair, made her

clothes as tidy as might be, and ran to the hole in the wall: there

was a huge basin of bread and milk!

Never had she eaten any thing with half the relish! Alas! however,

when she had finished, she did not wash the basin, but left it as it

was, revealing how entirely all the rest had been done only from

hunger. Then she threw herself on the heather, and was fast asleep

in a moment. Never an evil bird came near her all that night, nor

had she so much as one troubled dream.

In the morning as she lay awake before getting up, she spied what

seemed a door behind the tall eight-day clock that stood silent in

the corner.

"Ah!" she thought, "that must be the way out!" and got up instantly.

The first thing she did, however, was to go to the hole in the wall.

Nothing was there.

"Well, I am hardly used!" she cried aloud. "All that cleaning for

the cross old woman yesterday, and this for my trouble,--nothing for

breakfast! Not even a crust of bread! Does Mistress Ogress fancy a

princess will bear that?"

The poor foolish creature seemed to think that the work of one day

ought to serve for the next day too! But that is nowhere the way in

the whole universe. How could there be a universe in that case? And

even she never dreamed of applying the same rule to her breakfast.

"How good I was all yesterday!" she said, "and how hungry and ill

used I am to-day!"

But she would NOT be a slave, and do over again to-day what she had

done only last night! SHE didn't care about her breakfast! She might

have it no doubt if she dusted all the wretched place again, but she

was not going to do that--at least, without seeing first what lay

behind the clock!

Off she darted, and putting her hand behind the clock found the

latch of a door. It lifted, and the door opened a little way. By

squeezing hard, she managed to get behind the clock, and so through

the door. But how she stared, when instead of the open heath, she

found herself on the marble floor of a large and stately room,

lighted only from above. Its walls were strengthened by pilasters,

and in every space between was a large picture, from cornice to

floor. She did not know what to make of it. Surely she had run all

round the cottage, and certainly had seen nothing of this size near

it! She forgot that she had also run round what she took for a

hay-mow, a peat-stack, and several other things which looked of no

consequence in the moonlight.

"So, then," she cried, "the old woman IS a cheat! I believe she's an

ogress, after all, and lives in a palace--though she pretends it's

only a cottage, to keep people from suspecting that she eats good

little children like me!"

Had the princess been tolerably tractable, she would, by this time,

have known a good deal about the wise woman's beautiful house,

whereas she had never till now got farther than the porch. Neither

was she at all in its innermost places now.

But, king's daughter as she was, she was not a little daunted when,

stepping forward from the recess of the door, she saw what a great

lordly hall it was. She dared hardly look to the other end, it

seemed so far off: so she began to gaze at the things near her, and

the pictures first of all, for she had a great liking for pictures.

One in particular attracted her attention. She came back to it

several times, and at length stood absorbed in it.

A blue summer sky, with white fleecy clouds floating beneath it,

hung over a hill green to the very top, and alive with streams

darting down its sides toward the valley below. On the face of the

hill strayed a flock of sheep feeding, attended by a shepherd and

two dogs. A little way apart, a girl stood with bare feet in a

brook, building across it a bridge of rough stones. The wind was

blowing her hair back from her rosy face. A lamb was feeding close

beside her; and a sheepdog was trying to reach her hand to lick it.

"Oh, how I wish I were that little girl!" said the princess aloud.

"I wonder how it is that some people are made to be so much happier

than others! If I were that little girl, no one would ever call me

naughty."

She gazed and gazed at the picture. At length she said to herself,

"I do not believe it is a picture. It is the real country, with a

real hill, and a real little girl upon it. I shall soon see whether

this isn't another of the old witch's cheats!"

She went close up to the picture, lifted her foot, and stepped over

the frame.

"I am free, I am free!" she exclaimed; and she felt the wind upon

her cheek.

The sound of a closing door struck on her ear. She turned--and there

was a blank wall, without door or window, behind her. The hill with

the sheep was before her, and she set out at once to reach it.

Now, if I am asked how this could be, I can only answer, that it was

a result of the interaction of things outside and things inside, of

the wise woman's skill, and the silly child's folly. If this does

not satisfy my questioner, I can only add, that the wise woman was

able to do far more wonderful things than this.

VI.

Meantime the wise woman was busy as she always was; and her business

now was with the child of the shepherd and shepherdess, away in the

north. Her name was Agnes.

Her father and mother were poor, and could not give her many things.

Rosamond would have utterly despised the rude, simple playthings she

had. Yet in one respect they were of more value far than hers: the

king bought Rosamond's with his money; Agnes's father made hers with

his hands.

And while Agnes had but few things--not seeing many things about

her, and not even knowing that there were many things anywhere, she

did not wish for many things, and was therefore neither covetous nor

avaricious.

She played with the toys her father made her, and thought them the

most wonderful things in the world--windmills, and little crooks,

and water-wheels, and sometimes lambs made all of wool, and dolls

made out of the leg-bones of sheep, which her mother dressed for

her; and of such playthings she was never tired. Sometimes, however,

she preferred playing with stones, which were plentiful, and

flowers, which were few, or the brooks that ran down the hill, of

which, although they were many, she could only play with one at a

time, and that, indeed, troubled her a little--or live lambs that

were not all wool, or the sheep-dogs, which were very friendly with

her, and the best of playfellows, as she thought, for she had no

human ones to compare them with. Neither was she greedy after nice

things, but content, as well she might be, with the homely food

provided for her. Nor was she by nature particularly self-willed or

disobedient; she generally did what her father and mother wished,

and believed what they told her. But by degrees they had spoiled

her; and this was the way: they were so proud of her that they

always repeated every thing she said, and told every thing she did,

even when she was present; and so full of admiration of their child

were they, that they wondered and laughed at and praised things in

her which in another child would never have struck them as the least

remarkable, and some things even which would in another have

disgusted them altogether. Impertinent and rude things done by THEIR

child they thought SO clever! laughing at them as something quite

marvellous; her commonplace speeches were said over again as if they

had been the finest poetry; and the pretty ways which every

moderately good child has were extolled as if the result of her

excellent taste, and the choice of her judgment and will. They would

even say sometimes that she ought not to hear her own praises for

fear it should make her vain, and then whisper them behind their

hands, but so loud that she could not fail to hear every word. The

consequence was that she soon came to believe--so soon, that she

could not recall the time when she did not believe, as the most

absolute fact in the universe, that she was SOMEBODY; that is, she

became most immoderately conceited.

Now as the least atom of conceit is a thing to be ashamed of, you

may fancy what she was like with such a quantity of it inside her!

At first it did not show itself outside in any very active form; but

the wise woman had been to the cottage, and had seen her sitting

alone, with such a smile of self-satisfaction upon her face as would

have been quite startling to her, if she had ever been startled at

any thing; for through that smile she could see lying at the root of

it the worm that made it. For some smiles are like the ruddiness of

certain apples, which is owing to a centipede, or other creeping

thing, coiled up at the heart of them. Only her worm had a face and

shape the very image of her own; and she looked so simpering, and

mawkish, and self-conscious, and silly, that she made the wise woman

feel rather sick.

Not that the child was a fool. Had she been, the wise woman would

have only pitied and loved her, instead of feeling sick when she

looked at her. She had very fair abilities, and were she once but

made humble, would be capable not only of doing a good deal in time,

but of beginning at once to grow to no end. But, if she were not

made humble, her growing would be to a mass of distorted shapes all

huddled together; so that, although the body she now showed might

grow up straight and well-shaped and comely to behold, the new body

that was growing inside of it, and would come out of it when she

died, would be ugly, and crooked this way and that, like an aged

hawthorn that has lived hundreds of years exposed upon all sides to

salt sea-winds.

As time went on, this disease of self-conceit went on too, gradually

devouring the good that was in her. For there is no fault that does

not bring its brothers and sisters and cousins to live with it. By

degrees, from thinking herself so clever, she came to fancy that

whatever seemed to her, must of course be the correct judgment, and

whatever she wished, the right thing; and grew so obstinate, that at

length her parents feared to thwart her in any thing, knowing well

that she would never give in. But there are victories far worse than

defeats; and to overcome an angel too gentle to put out all his

strength, and ride away in triumph on the back of a devil, is one of

the poorest.

So long as she was left to take her own way and do as she would, she

gave her parents little trouble. She would play about by herself in

the little garden with its few hardy flowers, or amongst the heather

where the bees were busy; or she would wander away amongst the

hills, and be nobody knew where, sometimes from morning to night;

nor did her parents venture to find fault with her.

She never went into rages like the princess, and would have thought

Rosamond--oh, so ugly and vile! if she had seen her in one of her

passions. But she was no better, for all that, and was quite as ugly

in the eyes of the wise woman, who could not only see but read her

face. What is there to choose between a face distorted to

hideousness by anger, and one distorted to silliness by

self-complacency? True, there is more hope of helping the angry

child out of her form of selfishness than the conceited child out of

hers; but on the other hand, the conceited child was not so terrible

or dangerous as the wrathful one. The conceited one, however, was

sometimes very angry, and then her anger was more spiteful than the

other's; and, again, the wrathful one was often very conceited too.

So that, on the whole, of two very unpleasant creatures, I would say

that the king's daughter would have been the worse, had not the

shepherd's been quite as bad. But, as I have said, the wise woman

had her eye upon her: she saw that something special must be done,

else she would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till

feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their

hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they

grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards,

each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being

in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run

about forever looking for their own shadows, that they may worship

them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves

too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at

last there is but one who knows.

The wise woman, therefore, one day walked up to the door of the

shepherd's cottage, dressed like a poor woman, and asked for a drink

of water. The shepherd's wife looked at her, liked her, and brought

her a cup of milk. The wise woman took it, for she made it a rule to

accept every kindness that was offered her.

Agnes was not by nature a greedy girl, as I have said; but

self-conceit will go far to generate every other vice under the sun.

Vanity, which is a form of self-conceit, has repeatedly shown itself

as the deepest feeling in the heart of a horrible murderess.

That morning, at breakfast, her mother had stinted her in milk--just

a little--that she might have enough to make some milk-porridge for

their dinner. Agnes did not mind it at the time, but when she saw

the milk now given to a beggar, as she called the wise

woman--though, surely, one might ask a draught of water, and accept

a draught of milk, without being a beggar in any such sense as

Agnes's contemptuous use of the word implied--a cloud came upon her

forehead, and a double vertical wrinkle settled over her nose. The

wise woman saw it, for all her business was with Agnes though she

little knew it, and, rising, went and offered the cup to the child,

where she sat with her knitting in a corner. Agnes looked at it, did

not want it, was inclined to refuse it from a beggar, but thinking

it would show her consequence to assert her rights, took it and

drank it up. For whoever is possessed by a devil, judges with the

mind of that devil; and hence Agnes was guilty of such a meanness as

many who are themselves capable of something just as bad will

consider incredible.

The wise woman waited till she had finished it--then, looking into

the empty cup, said:

"You might have given me back as much as you had no claim upon!"

Agnes turned away and made no answer--far less from shame than

indignation.

The wise woman looked at the mother.

"You should not have offered it to her if you did not mean her to

have it," said the mother, siding with the devil in her child

against the wise woman and her child too. Some foolish people think

they take another's part when they take the part he takes.

The wise woman said nothing, but fixed her eyes upon her, and soon

the mother hid her face in her apron weeping. Then she turned again

to Agnes, who had never looked round but sat with her back to both,

and suddenly lapped her in the folds of her cloak. When the mother

again lifted her eyes, she had vanished.

Never supposing she had carried away her child, but uncomfortable

because of what she had said to the poor woman, the mother went to

the door, and called after her as she toiled slowly up the hill. But

she never turned her head; and the mother went back into her

cottage.

The wise woman walked close past the shepherd and his dogs, and

through the midst of his flock of sheep. The shepherd wondered where

she could be going--right up the hill. There was something strange

about her too, he thought; and he followed her with his eyes as she

went up and up.

It was near sunset, and as the sun went down, a gray cloud settted

on the top of the mountain, which his last rays turned into a rosy

gold. Straight into this cloud the shepherd saw the woman hold her

pace, and in it she vanished. He little imagined that his child was

under her cloak.

He went home as usual in the evening, but Agnes had not come in.

They were accustomed to such an absence now and then, and were not

at first frightened; but when it grew dark and she did not appear,

the husband set out with his dogs in one direction, and the wife in

another, to seek their child. Morning came and they had not found

her. Then the whole country-side arose to search for the missing

Agnes; but day after day and night after night passed, and nothing

was discovered of or concerning her, until at length all gave up the

search in despair except the mother, although she was nearly

convinced now that the poor woman had carried her off.

One day she had wandered some distance from her cottage, thinking

she might come upon the remains of her daughter at the foot of some

cliff, when she came suddenly, instead, upon a disconsolate-looking

creature sitting on a stone by the side of a stream.

Her hair hung in tangles from her head; her clothes were tattered,

and through the rents her skin showed in many places; her cheeks

were white, and worn thin with hunger; the hollows were dark under

her eyes, and they stood out scared and wild. When she caught sight

of the shepherdess, she jumped to her feet, and would have run away,

but fell down in a faint.

At first sight the mother had taken her for her own child, but now

she saw, with a pang of disappointment, that she had mistaken. Full

of compassion, nevertheless, she said to herself:

"If she is not my Agnes, she is as much in need of help as if she

were. If I cannot be good to my own, I will be as good as I can to

some other woman's; and though I should scorn to be consoled for the

loss of one by the presence of another, I yet may find some gladness

in rescuing one child from the death which has taken the other."

Perhaps her words were not just like these, but her thoughts were.

She took up the child, and carried her home. And this is how

Rosamond came to occupy the place of the little girl whom she had

envied in the picture.

VII.

Notwithstanding the differences between the two girls, which were,

indeed, so many that most people would have said they were not in

the least alike, they were the same in this, that each cared more

for her own fancies and desires than for any thing else in the

world. But I will tell you another difference: the princess was like

several children in one--such was the variety of her moods; and in

one mood she had no recollection or care about any thing whatever

belonging to a previous mood--not even if it had left her but a

moment before, and had been so violent as to make her ready to put

her hand in the fire to get what she wanted. Plainly she was the

mere puppet of her moods, and more than that, any cunning nurse who

knew her well enough could call or send away those moods almost as

she pleased, like a showman pulling strings behind a show. Agnes, on

the contrary, seldom changed her mood, but kept that of calm assured

self-satisfaction. Father nor mother had ever by wise punishment

helped her to gain a victory over herself, and do what she did not

like or choose; and their folly in reasoning with one unreasonable

had fixed her in her conceit. She would actually nod her head to

herself in complacent pride that she had stood out against them.

This, however, was not so difficult as to justify even the pride of

having conquered, seeing she loved them so little, and paid so

little attention to the arguments and persuasions they used.

Neither, when she found herself wrapped in the dark folds of the

wise woman's cloak, did she behave in the least like the princess,

for she was not afraid. "She'll soon set me down," she said, too

self-important to suppose that any one would dare do her an injury.

Whether it be a good thing or a bad not to be afraid depends on what

the fearlessness is founded upon. Some have no fear, because they

have no knowledge of the danger: there is nothing fine in that. Some

are too stupid to be afraid: there is nothing fine in that. Some who

are not easily frightened would yet turn their backs and run, the

moment they were frightened: such never had more courage than fear.

But the man who will do his work in spite of his fear is a man of

true courage. The fearlessness of Agnes was only ignorance: she did

not know what it was to be hurt; she had never read a single story

of giant, or ogress or wolf; and her mother had never carried out

one of her threats of punishment. If the wise woman had but pinched

her, she would have shown herself an abject little coward, trembling

with fear at every change of motion so long as she carried her.

Nothing such, however, was in the wise woman's plan for the curing

of her. On and on she carried her without a word. She knew that if

she set her down she would never run after her like the princess, at

least not before the evil thing was already upon her. On and on she

went, never halting, never letting the light look in, or Agnes look

out. She walked very fast, and got home to her cottage very soon

after the princess had gone from it.

But she did not set Agnes down either in the cottage or in the great

hall. She had other places, none of them alike. The place she had

chosen for Agnes was a strange one--such a one as is to be found

nowhere else in the wide world.

It was a great hollow sphere, made of a substance similar to that of

the mirror which Rosamond had broken, but differently compounded.

That substance no one could see by itself. It had neither door, nor

window, nor any opening to break its perfect roundness.

The wise woman carried Agnes into a dark room, there undressed her,

took from her hand her knitting-needles, and put her, naked as she

was born, into the hollow sphere.

What sort of a place it was she could not tell. She could see

nothing but a faint cold bluish light all about her. She could not

feel that any thing supported her, and yet she did not sink. She

stood for a while, perfectly calm, then sat down. Nothing bad could

happen to HER--she was so important! And, indeed, it was but this:

she had cared only for Somebody, and now she was going to have only

Somebody. Her own choice was going to be carried a good deal farther

for her than she would have knowingly carried it for herself.

After sitting a while, she wished she had something to do, but

nothing came. A little longer, and it grew wearisome. She would see

whether she could not walk out of the strange luminous dusk that

surrounded her.

Walk she found she could, well enough, but walk out she could not.

On and on she went, keeping as much in a straight line as she might,

but after walking until she was thoroughly tired, she found herself

no nearer out of her prison than before. She had not, indeed,

advanced a single step; for, in whatever direction she tried to go,

the sphere turned round and round, answering her feet accordingly.

Like a squirrel in his cage she but kept placing another spot of the

cunningly suspended sphere under her feet, and she would have been

still only at its lowest point after walking for ages.

At length she cried aloud; but there was no answer. It grew dreary

and drearier--in her, that is: outside there was no change. Nothing

was overhead, nothing under foot, nothing on either hand, but the

same pale, faint, bluish glimmer. She wept at last, then grew very

angry, and then sullen; but nobody heeded whether she cried or

laughed. It was all the same to the cold unmoving twilight that

rounded her. On and on went the dreary hours--or did they go at

all?--"no change, no pause, no hope;"--on and on till she FELT she

was forgotten, and then she grew strangely still and fell asleep.

The moment she was asleep, the wise woman came, lifted her out, and

laid her in her bosom; fed her with a wonderful milk, which she

received without knowing it; nursed her all the night long, and,

just ere she woke, laid her back in the blue sphere again.

When first she came to herself, she thought the horrors of the

preceding day had been all a dream of the night. But they soon

asserted themselves as facts, for here they were!--nothing to see

but a cold blue light, and nothing to do but see it. Oh, how slowly

the hours went by! She lost all notion of time. If she had been told

that she had been there twenty years, she would have believed it--or

twenty minutes--it would have been all the same: except for

weariness, time was for her no more.

Another night came, and another still, during both of which the wise

woman nursed and fed her. But she knew nothing of that, and the same

one dreary day seemed ever brooding over her.

All at once, on the third day, she was aware that a naked child was

seated beside her. But there was something about the child that made

her shudder. She never looked at Agnes, but sat with her chin sunk

on her chest, and her eyes staring at her own toes. She was the

color of pale earth, with a pinched nose, and a mere slit in her

face for a mouth.

"How ugly she is!" thought Agnes. "What business has she beside me!"

But it was so lonely that she would have been glad to play with a

serpent, and put out her hand to touch her. She touched nothing. The

child, also, put out her hand--but in the direction away from Agnes.

And that was well, for if she had touched Agnes it would have killed

her. Then Agnes said, "Who are you?" And the little girl said, "Who

are you?" "I am Agnes," said Agnes; and the little girl said, "I am

Agnes." Then Agnes thought she was mocking her, and said, "You are

ugly;" and the little girl said, "You are ugly."

Then Agnes lost her temper, and put out her hands to seize the

little girl; but lo! the little girl was gone, and she found herself

tugging at her own hair. She let go; and there was the little girl

again! Agnes was furious now, and flew at her to bite her. But she

found her teeth in her own arm, and the little girl was gone--only

to return again; and each time she came back she was tenfold uglier

than before. And now Agnes hated her with her whole heart.

The moment she hated her, it flashed upon her with a sickening

disgust that the child was not another, but her Self, her Somebody,

and that she was now shut up with her for ever and ever--no more for

one moment ever to be alone. In her agony of despair, sleep

descended, and she slept.

When she woke, there was the little girl, heedless, ugly, miserable,

staring at her own toes. All at once, the creature began to smile,

but with such an odious, self-satisfied expression, that Agnes felt

ashamed of seeing her. Then she began to pat her own cheeks, to

stroke her own body, and examine her finger-ends, nodding her head

with satisfaction. Agnes felt that there could not be such another

hateful, ape-like creature, and at the same time was perfectly aware

she was only doing outside of her what she herself had been doing,

as long as she could remember, inside of her.

She turned sick at herself, and would gladly have been put out of

existence, but for three days the odious companionship went on. By

the third day, Agnes was not merely sick but ashamed of the life she

had hitherto led, was despicable in her own eyes, and astonished

that she had never seen the truth concerning herself before.

The next morning she woke in the arms of the wise woman; the horror

had vanished from her sight, and two heavenly eyes were gazing upon

her. She wept and clung to her, and the more she clung, the more

tenderly did the great strong arms close around her.

When she had lain thus for a while, the wise woman carried her into

her cottage, and washed her in the little well; then dressed her in

clean garments, and gave her bread and milk. When she had eaten it,

she called her to her, and said very solemnly,--

"Agnes, you must not imagine you are cured. That you are ashamed of

yourself now is no sign that the cause for such shame has ceased. In

new circumstances, especially after you have done well for a while,

you will be in danger of thinking just as much of yourself as

before. So beware of yourself. I am going from home, and leave you

in charge of the house. Do just as I tell you till my return."

She then gave her the same directions she had formerly given

Rosamond--with this difference, that she told her to go into the

picture-hall when she pleased, showing her the entrance, against

which the clock no longer stood--and went away, closing the door

behind her.

VIII.

As soon as she was left alone, Agnes set to work tidying and dusting

the cottage, made up the fire, watered the bed, and cleaned the

inside of the windows: the wise woman herself always kept the

outside of them clean. When she had done, she found her dinner--of

the same sort she was used to at home, but better--in the hole of

the wall. When she had eaten it, she went to look at the pictures.

By this time her old disposition had begun to rouse again. She had

been doing her duty, and had in consequence begun again to think

herself Somebody. However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty

will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do

it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their

dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself

on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To

be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one

does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not

to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being

contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we

are poor creatures.

So Agnes began to stroke herself once more, forgetting her late

self-stroking companion, and never reflecting that she was now doing

what she had then abhorred. And in this mood she went into the

picture-gallery.

The first picture she saw represented a square in a great city, one

side of which was occupied by a splendid marble palace, with great

flights of broad steps leading up to the door. Between it and the

square was a marble-paved court, with gates of brass, at which stood

sentries in gorgeous uniforms, and to which was affixed the

following proclamation in letters of gold, large enough for Agnes to

read:--

"By the will of the King, from this time until further notice, every

stray child found in the realm shall be brought without a moment's

delay to the palace. Whoever shall be found having done otherwise

shall straightway lose his head by the hand of the public

executioner."

Agnes's heart beat loud, and her face flushed.

"Can there be such a city in the world?" she said to herself. "If I

only knew where it was, I should set out for it at once. THERE would

be the place for a clever girl like me!"

Her eyes fell on the picture which had so enticed Rosamond. It was

the very country where her father fed his flocks. Just round the

shoulder of the hill was the cottage where her parents lived, where

she was born and whence she had been carried by the beggar-woman.

"Ah!" she said, "they didn't know me there. They little thought what

I could be, if I had the chance. If I were but in this good, kind,

loving, generous king's palace, I should soon be such a great lady

as they never saw! Then they would understand what a good little

girl I had always been! And I shouldn't forget my poor parents like

some I have read of. _I_ would be generous. _I_ should never be

selfish and proud like girls in story-books!"

As she said this, she turned her back with disdain upon the picture

of her home, and setting herself before the picture of the palace,

stared at it with wide ambitious eyes, and a heart whose every beat

was a throb of arrogant self-esteem.

The shepherd-child was now worse than ever the poor princess had

been. For the wise woman had given her a terrible lesson one of

which the princess was not capable, and she had known what it meant;

yet here she was as bad as ever, therefore worse than before. The

ugly creature whose presence had made her so miserable had indeed

crept out of sight and mind too--but where was she? Nestling in her

very heart, where most of all she had her company, and least of all

could see her. The wise woman had called her out, that Agnes might

see what sort of creature she was herself; but now she was snug in

her soul's bed again, and sue did not even suspect she was there.

After gazing a while at the palace picture, during which her

ambitious pride rose and rose, she turned yet again in condescending

mood, and honored the home picture with one stare more.

"What a poor, miserable spot it is compared with this lordly

palace!" she said.

But presently she spied something in it she had not seen before, and

drew nearer. It was the form of a little girl, building a bridge of

stones over one of the hill-brooks.

"Ah, there I am myself!" she said. "That is just how I used to

do.--No," she resumed, "it is not me. That snub-nosed little fright

could never be meant for me! It was the frock that made me think so.

But it IS a picture of the place. I declare, I can see the smoke of

the cottage rising from behind the hill! What a dull, dirty,

insignificant spot it is! And what a life to lead there!"

She turned once more to the city picture. And now a strange thing

took place. In proportion as the other, to the eyes of her mind,

receded into the background, this, to her present bodily eyes,

appeared to come forward and assume reality. At last, after it had

been in this way growing upon her for some time, she gave a cry of

conviction, and said aloud,--

"I do believe it is real! That frame is only a trick of the woman to

make me fancy it a picture lest I should go and make my fortune. She

is a witch, the ugly old creature! It would serve her right to tell

the king and have her punished for not taking me to the palace--one

of his poor lost children he is so fond of! I should like to see her

ugly old head cut off. Anyhow I will try my luck without asking her

leave. How she has ill used me!"

But at that moment, she heard the voice of the wise woman calling,

"Agnes!" and, smoothing her face, she tried to look as good as she

could, and walked back into the cottage. There stood the wise woman,

looking all round the place, and examining her work. She fixed her

eyes upon Agnes in a way that confused her, and made her cast hers

down, for she felt as if she were reading her thoughts. The wise

woman, however, asked no questions, but began to talk about her

work, approving of some of it, which filled her with arrogance, and

showing how some of it might have been done better, which filled her

with resentment. But the wise woman seemed to take no care of what

she might be thinking, and went straight on with her lesson. By the

time it was over, the power of reading thoughts would not have been

necessary to a knowledge of what was in the mind of Agnes, for it

had all come to the surface--that is up into her face, which is the

surface of the mind. Ere it had time to sink down again, the wise

woman caught up the little mirror, and held it before her: Agnes saw

her Somebody--the very embodiment of miserable conceit and ugly

ill-temper. She gave such a scream of horror that the wise woman

pitied her, and laying aside the mirror, took her upon her knees,

and talked to her most kindly and solemnly; in particular about the

necessity of destroying the ugly things that come out of the

heart--so ugly that they make the very face over them ugly also.

And what was Agnes doing all the time the wise woman was talking to

her? Would you believe it?--instead of thinking how to kill the ugly

things in her heart, she was with all her might resolving to be more

careful of her face, that is, to keep down the things in her heart

so that they should not show in her face, she was resolving to be a

hypocrite as well as a self-worshipper. Her heart was wormy, and the

worms were eating very fast at it now.

Then the wise woman laid her gently down upon the heather-bed, and

she fell fast asleep, and had an awful dream about her Somebody.

When she woke in the morning, instead of getting up to do the work

of the house, she lay thinking--to evil purpose. In place of taking

her dream as a warning, and thinking over what the wise woman had

said the night before, she communed with herself in this fashion:--

"If I stay here longer, I shall be miserable, It is nothing better

than slavery. The old witch shows me horrible things in the day to

set me dreaming horrible things in the night. If I don't run away,

that frightful blue prison and the disgusting girl will come back,

and I shall go out of my mind. How I do wish I could find the way to

the good king's palace! I shall go and look at the picture again--if

it be a picture--as soon as I've got my clothes on. The work can

wait. It's not my work. It's the old witch's; and she ought to do it

herself."

She jumped out of bed, and hurried on her clothes. There was no wise

woman to be seen; and she hastened into the hall. There was the

picture, with the marble palace, and the proclamation shining in

letters of gold upon its gates of brass. She stood before it, and

gazed and gazed; and all the time it kept growing upon her in some

strange way, until at last she was fully persuaded that it was no

picture, but a real city, square, and marble palace, seen through a

framed opening in the wall. She ran up to the frame, stepped over

it, felt the wind blow upon her cheek, heard the sound of a closing

door behind her, and was free. FREE was she, with that creature

inside her?

The same moment a terrible storm of thunder and lightning, wind and

rain, came on. The uproar was appalling. Agnes threw herself upon

the ground, hid her face in her hands, and there lay until it was

over. As soon as she felt the sun shining on her, she rose. There

was the city far away on the horizon. Without once turning to take a

farewell look of the place she was leaving, she set off, as fast as

her feet would carry her, in the direction of the city. So eager was

she, that again and again she fell, but only to get up, and run on

faster than before.

IX.

The shepherdess carried Rosamond home, gave her a warm bath in the

tub in which she washed her linen, made her some bread-and-milk, and

after she had eaten it, put her to bed in Agnes's crib, where she

slept all the rest of that day and all the following night.

When at last she opened her eyes, it was to see around her a far

poorer cottage than the one she had left--very bare and

uncomfortable indeed, she might well have thought; but she had come

through such troubles of late, in the way of hunger and weariness

and cold and fear, that she was not altogether in her ordinary mood

of fault-finding, and so was able to lie enjoying the thought that

at length she was safe, and going to be fed and kept warm. The idea

of doing any thing in return for shelter and food and clothes, did

not, however, even cross her mind.

But the shepherdess was one of that plentiful number who can be

wiser concerning other women's children than concerning their own.

Such will often give you very tolerable hints as to how you ought to

manage your children, and will find fault neatly enough with the

system you are trying to carry out; but all their wisdom goes off in

talking, and there is none left for doing what they have themselves

said. There is one road talk never finds, and that is the way into

the talker's own hands and feet. And such never seem to know

themselves--not even when they are reading about themselves in

print. Still, not being specially blinded in any direction but their

own, they can sometimes even act with a little sense towards

children who are not theirs. They are affected with a sort of

blindness like that which renders some people incapable of seeing,

except sideways.

She came up to the bed, looked at the princess, and saw that she was

better. But she did not like her much. There was no mark of a

princess about her, and never had been since she began to run alone.

True, hunger had brought down her fat cheeks, but it had not turned

down her impudent nose, or driven the sullenness and greed from her

mouth. Nothing but the wise woman could do that--and not even she,

without the aid of the princess herself. So the shepherdess thought

what a poor substitute she had got for her own lovely Agnes--who was

in fact equally repulsive, only in a way to which she had got used;

for the selfishness in her love had blinded her to the thin pinched

nose and the mean self-satisfied mouth. It was well for the

princess, though, sad as it is to say, that the shepherdess did not

take to her, for then she would most likely have only done her harm

instead of good.

"Now, my girl," she said, "you must get up, and do something. We

can't keep idle folk here."

"I'm not a folk," said Rosamond; "I'm a princess."

"A pretty princess--with a nose like that! And all in rags too! If

you tell such stories, I shall soon let you know what I think of

you."

Rosamond then understood that the mere calling herself a princess,

without having any thing to show for it, was of no use. She obeyed

and rose, for she was hungry; but she had to sweep the floor ere she

had any thing to eat.

The shepherd came in to breakfast, and was kinder than his wife. He

took her up in his arms and would have kissed her; but she took it

as an insult from a man whose hands smelt of tar, and kicked and

screamed with rage. The poor man, finding he had made a mistake, set

her down at once. But to look at the two, one might well have judged

it condescension rather than rudeness in such a man to kiss such a

child. He was tall, and almost stately, with a thoughtful forehead,

bright eyes, eagle nose, and gentle mouth; while the princess was

such as I have described her.

Not content with being set down and let alone, she continued to

storm and scold at the shepherd, crying she was a princess, and

would like to know what right he had to touch her! But he only

looked down upon her from the height of his tall person with a

benignant smile, regarding her as a spoiled little ape whose mother

had flattered her by calling her a princess.

"Turn her out of doors, the ungrateful hussy!" cried his wife. "With

your bread and your milk inside her ugly body, this is what she

gives you for it! Troth, I'm paid for carrying home such an ill-bred

tramp in my arms! My own poor angel Agnes! As if that ill-tempered

toad were one hair like her!"

These words drove the princess beside herself; for those who are

most given to abuse can least endure it. With fists and feet and

teeth, as was her wont, she rushed at the shepherdess, whose hand

was already raised to deal her a sound box on the ear, when a better

appointed minister of vengeance suddenly showed himself. Bounding in

at the cottage-door came one of the sheep-dogs, who was called

Prince, and whom I shall not refer to with a WHICH, because he was a

very superior animal indeed, even for a sheep-dog, which is the most

intelligent of dogs: he flew at the princess, knocked her down, and

commenced shaking her so violently as to tear her miserable clothes

to pieces. Used, however, to mouthing little lambs, he took care not

to hurt her much, though for her good he left her a blue nip or two

by way of letting her imagine what biting might be. His master,

knowing he would not injure her, thought it better not to call him

off, and in half a minute he left her of his own accord, and,

casting a glance of indignant rebuke behind him as he went, walked

slowly to the hearth, where he laid himself down with his tail

toward her. She rose, terrified almost to death, and would have

crept again into Agnes's crib for refuge; but the shepherdess

cried--

"Come, come, princess! I'll have no skulking to bed in the good

daylight. Go and clean your master's Sunday boots there."

"I will not!" screamed the princess, and ran from the house.

"Prince!" cried the shepherdess, and up jumped the dog, and looked

in her face, wagging his bushy tail.

"Fetch her back," she said, pointing to the door.

With two or three bounds Prince caught the princess, again threw her

down, and taking her by her clothes dragged her back into the

cottage, and dropped her at his mistress' feet, where she lay like a

bundle of rags.

"Get up," said the shepherdess.

Rosamond got up as pale as death.

"Go and clean the boots."

"I don't know how."

"Go and try. There are the brushes, and yonder is the blacking-pot."

Instructing her how to black boots, it came into the thought of the

shepherdess what a fine thing it would be if she could teach this

miserable little wretch, so forsaken and ill-bred, to be a good,

well-behaved, respectable child. She was hardly the woman to do it,

but every thing well meant is a help, and she had the wisdom to beg

her husband to place Prince under her orders for a while, and not

take him to the hill as usual, that he might help her in getting the

princess into order.

When the husband was gone, and his boots, with the aid of her own

finishing touches, at last quite respectably brushed, the

shepherdess told the princess that she might go and play for a

while, only she must not go out of sight of the cottage-door.

The princess went right gladly, with the firm intention, however, of

getting out of sight by slow degrees, and then at once taking to her

heels. But no sooner was she over the threshold than the shepherdess

said to the dog, "Watch her;" and out shot Prince.

The moment she saw him, Rosamond threw herself on her face,

trembling from head to foot. But the dog had no quarrel with her,

and of the violence against which he always felt bound to protest in

dog fashion, there was no sign in the prostrate shape before him; so

he poked his nose under her, turned her over, and began licking her

face and hands. When she saw that he meant to be friendly, her love

for animals, which had had no indulgence for a long time now, came

wide awake, and in a little while they were romping and rushing

about, the best friends in the world.

Having thus seen one enemy, as she thought, changed to a friend, she

began to resume her former plan, and crept cunningly farther and

farther. At length she came to a little hollow, and instantly rolled

down into it. Finding then that she was out of sight of the cottage,

she ran off at full speed.

But she had not gone more than a dozen paces, when she heard a

growling rush behind her, and the next instant was on the ground,

with the dog standing over her, showing his teeth, and flaming at

her with his eyes. She threw her arms round his neck, and

immediately he licked her face, and let her get up. But the moment

she would have moved a step farther from the cottage, there he was

it front of her, growling, and showing his teeth. She saw it was of

no use, and went back with him.

Thus was the princess provided with a dog for a private tutor--just

the right sort for her.

Presently the shepherdess appeared at the door and called her. She

would have disregarded the summons, but Prince did his best to let

her know that, until she could obey herself, she must obey him. So

she went into the cottage, and there the shepherdess ordered her to

peel the potatoes for dinner. She sulked and refused. Here Prince

could do nothing to help his mistress, but she had not to go far to

find another ally.

"Very well, Miss Princess!" she said; "we shall soon see how you

like to go without when dinner-time comes."

Now the princess had very little foresight, and the idea of future

hunger would have moved her little; but happily, from her game of

romps with Prince, she had begun to be hungry already, and so the

threat had force. She took the knife and began to peel the potatoes.

By slow degrees the princess improved a little. A few more outbreaks

of passion, and a few more savage attacks from Prince, and she had

learned to try to restrain herself when she felt the passion coming

on; while a few dinnerless afternoons entirely opened her eyes to

the necessity of working in order to eat. Prince was her first, and

Hunger her second dog-counsellor.

But a still better thing was that she soon grew very fond of Prince.

Towards the gaining of her affections, he had three advantages:

first, his nature was inferior to hers; next, he was a beast; and

last, she was afraid of him; for so spoiled was she that she could

more easily love what was below than what was above her, and a

beast, than one of her own kind, and indeed could hardly have ever

come to love any thing much that she had not first learned to fear,

and the white teeth and flaming eyes of the angry Prince were more

terrible to her than any thing had yet been, except those of the

wolf, which she had now forgotten. Then again, he was such a

delightful playfellow, that so long as she neither lost her temper,

nor went against orders, she might do almost any thing she pleased

with him. In fact, such was his influence upon her, that she who had

scoffed at the wisest woman in the whole world, and derided the

wishes of her own father and mother, came at length to regard this

dog as a superior being, and to look up to him as well as love him.

And this was best of all.

The improvement upon her, in the course of a month, was plain. She

had quite ceased to go into passions, and had actually begun to take

a little interest in her work and try to do it well.

Still, the change was mostly an outside one. I do not mean that she

was pretending. Indeed she had never been given to pretence of any

sort. But the change was not in HER, only in her mood. A second

change of circumstances would have soon brought a second change of

behavior; and, so long as that was possible, she continued the same

sort of person she had always been. But if she had not gained much,

a trifle had been gained for her: a little quietness and order of

mind, and hence a somewhat greater possibility of the first idea of

right arising in it, whereupon she would begin to see what a

wretched creature she was, and must continue until she herself was

right.

Meantime the wise woman had been watching her when she least fancied

it, and taking note of the change that was passing upon her. Out of

the large eyes of a gentle sheep she had been watching her--a sheep

that puzzled the shepherd; for every now and then she would appear

in his flock, and he would catch sight of her two or three times in

a day, sometimes for days together, yet he never saw her when he

looked for her, and never when he counted the flock into the fold at

night. He knew she was not one of his; but where could she come

from, and where could she go to? For there was no other flock within

many miles, and he never could get near enough to her to see whether

or not she was marked. Nor was Prince of the least use to him for

the unravelling of the mystery; for although, as often as he told

him to fetch the strange sheep, he went bounding to her at once, it

was only to lie down at her feet.

At length, however, the wise woman had made up her mind, and after

that the strange sheep no longer troubled the shepherd.

As Rosamond improved, the shepherdess grew kinder. She gave her all

Agnes's clothes, and began to treat her much more like a daughter.

Hence she had a great deal of liberty after the little work required

of her was over, and would often spend hours at a time with the

shepherd, watching the sheep and the dogs, and learning a little

from seeing how Prince, and the others as well, managed their

charge--how they never touched the sheep that did as they were told

and turned when they were bid, but jumped on a disobedient flock,

and ran along their backs, biting, and barking, and half choking

themselves with mouthfuls of their wool.

Then also she would play with the brooks, and learn their songs, and

build bridges over them. And sometimes she would be seized with such

delight of heart that she would spread out her arms to the wind, and

go rushing up the hill till her breath left her, when she would

tumble down in the heather, and lie there till it came back again.

A noticeable change had by this time passed also on her countenance.

Her coarse shapeless mouth had begun to show a glimmer of lines and

curves about it, and the fat had not returned with the roses to her

cheeks, so that her eyes looked larger than before; while, more

noteworthy still, the bridge of her nose had grown higher, so that

it was less of the impudent, insignificant thing inherited from a

certain great-great-great-grandmother, who had little else to leave

her. For a long time, it had fitted her very well, for it was just

like her; but now there was ground for alteration, and already the

granny who gave it her would not have recognized it. It was growing

a little liker Prince's; and Prince's was a long, perceptive,

sagacious nose,--one that was seldom mistaken.

One day about noon, while the sheep were mostly lying down, and the

shepherd, having left them to the care of the dogs, was himself

stretched under the shade of a rock a little way apart, and the

princess sat knitting, with Prince at her feet, lying in wait for a

snap at a great fly, for even he had his follies--Rosamond saw a

poor woman come toiling up the hill, but took little notice of her

until she was passing, a few yards off, when she heard her utter the

dog's name in a low voice.

Immediately on the summons, Prince started up and followed her--with

hanging head, but gently-wagging tail. At first the princess thought

he was merely taking observations, and consulting with his nose

whether she was respectable or not, but she soon saw that he was

following her in meek submission. Then she sprung to her feet and

cried, "Prince, Prince!" But Prince only turned his head and gave

her an odd look, as if he were trying to smile, and could not. Then

the princess grew angry, and ran after him, shouting, "Prince, come

here directly." Again Prince turned his head, but this time to growl

and show his teeth.

The princess flew into one of her forgotten rages, and picking up a

stone, flung it at the woman. Prince turned and darted at her, with

fury in his eyes, and his white teeth gleaming. At the awful sight

the princess turned also, and would have fled, but he was upon her

in a moment, and threw her to the ground, and there she lay.

It was evening when she came to herself. A cool twilight wind, that

somehow seemed to come all the way from the stars, was blowing upon

her. The poor woman and Prince, the shepherd and his sheep, were all

gone, and she was left alone with the wind upon the heather.

She felt sad, weak, and, perhaps, for the first time in her life, a

little ashamed. The violence of which she had been guilty had

vanished from her spirit, and now lay in her memory with the calm

morning behind it, while in front the quiet dusky night was now

closing in the loud shame betwixt a double peace. Between the two

her passion looked ugly. It pained her to remember. She felt it was

hateful, and HERS.

But, alas, Prince was gone! That horrid woman had taken him away!

The fury rose again in her heart, and raged--until it came to her

mind how her dear Prince would have flown at her throat if he had

seen her in such a passion. The memory calmed her, and she rose and

went home. There, perhaps, she would find Prince, for surely he

could never have been such a silly dog as go away altogether with a

strange woman!

She opened the door and went in. Dogs were asleep all about the

cottage, it seemed to her, but nowhere was Prince. She crept away to

her little bed, and cried herself asleep.

In the morning the shepherd and shepherdess were indeed glad to find

she had come home, for they thought she had run away.

"Where is Prince?" she cried, the moment she waked.

"His mistress has taken him," answered the shepherd.

"Was that woman his mistress?"

"I fancy so. He followed her as if he had known her all his life. I

am very sorry to lose him, though."

The poor woman had gone close past the rock where the shepherd lay.

He saw her coming, and thought of the strange sheep which had been

feeding beside him when he lay down. "Who can she be?" he said to

himself; but when he noted how Prince followed her, without even

looking up at him as he passed, he remembered how Prince had come to

him. And this was how: as he lay in bed one fierce winter morning,

just about to rise, he heard the voice of a woman call to him

through the storm, "Shepherd, I have brought you a dog. Be good to

him. I will come again and fetch him away." He dressed as quickly as

he could, and went to the door. It was half snowed up, but on the

top of the white mound before it stood Prince. And now he had gone

as mysteriously as he had come, and he felt sad.

Rosamond was very sorry too, and hence when she saw the looks of the

shepherd and shepherdess, she was able to understand them. And she

tried for a while to behave better to them because of their sorrow.

So the loss of the dog brought them all nearer to each other.

X.

After the thunder-storm, Agnes did not meet with a single

obstruction or misadventure. Everybody was strangely polite, gave

her whatever she desired, and answered her questions, but asked none

in return, and looked all the time as if her departure would be a

relief. They were afraid, in fact, from her appearance, lest she

should tell them that she was lost, when they would be bound, on

pain of public execution, to take her to the palace.

But no sooner had she entered the city than she saw it would hardly

do to present herself as a lost child at the palace-gates; for how

were they to know that she was not an impostor, especially since she

really was one, having run away from the wise woman? So she wandered

about looking at every thing until she was tired, and bewildered by

the noise and confusion all around her. The wearier she got, the

more was she pushed in every direction. Having been used to a whole

hill to wander upon, she was very awkward in the crowded streets,

and often on the point of being run over by the horses, which seemed

to her to be going every way like a frightened flock. She spoke to

several persons, but no one stopped to answer her; and at length,

her courage giving way, she felt lost indeed, and began to cry. A

soldier saw her, and asked what was the matter.

"I've nowhere to go to," she sobbed.

"Where's your mother?" asked the soldier.

"I don't know," answered Agnes. "I was carried off by an old woman,