In a lane where red-stemmed tamarisks grew lived another Wise Woman. She was a nice old body, as many of her kind were, and, like them, was well acquainted with the healing properties of herbs and blossoms—revealed to them, it was said, by the fairies. But this Wise Woman was not at all liked; nobody seemed to know why, except that she could do many wonderful things her neighbours could not, and was, moreover, very ugly. People were even afraid of her, and never went near her cottage unless they wanted to buy her herb physic, ointments, and that sort of thing. But there was one who was not afraid of her at all, and that was a dear little girl called Bessie Jane Rosewarne, the only child of a farmer who lived near Tamarisk Lane.

This little maid had a kind heart, especially for those who were lonely or sad; and when she knew how lonely the poor old Wise Woman was, she often went to see her, and took her little presents in the shape of fruit and flowers.

Annis, as the old woman was called, soon got to be very fond of the kind-hearted child; and to show how she appreciated her kindness she used to tell her stories about the Small People and the dear little brown, winking Piskeys, whom she seemed to know very intimately.

Bessie Jane was always interested in the Wee Folk, particularly the cliff ones and the sea-fairies, and expressed a great desire to see them.

Early one afternoon the child brought her old friend a basket of red currants and a cup of cream; and when she had set her gifts on the table, the Wise Woman went to her dresser and took from it a very small shrimping-net, or what looked like a shrimping-net.

‘It is a present I have made for you, dear little maid,’ she said.

‘What is it for?’ asked the child, when she had thanked Old Annis for her gift. ‘It looks like a shrimping-net, only its meshes are so fine—as fine as gossamer—that I am afraid it will not bear even the weight of a baby-shrimp!’

‘It is stronger than it looks,’ said the Wise Woman, with a curious look in her sloe-black eyes. ‘Its meshes are made out of Piskey-wool, which the Small People spun on their own little spinning-wheels, and which they gave me to mesh into a net. Its hoop and handle I cut from an ash-tree, where the Wee Folk gather to hold their gammets1 in the moonshine.’

‘Did you really?’ cried little Bessie Jane. ‘How very interesting! I shall go down to Harlyn Bay at once and catch shrimps in the great pool under the shadow of the cliffs there.’

‘It will catch something nicer than shrimps, I hope,’ said Old Annis, following the child to the door. ‘Whatever you catch in it, my dear, don’t let it get out of the net until it promises to lend you its eyes and its ears for a night and a day.’

‘I don’t think I want anyone’s eyes and ears but my own,’ laughed the little maid as she went down Tamarisk Lane, which led to Harlyn Bay, swinging the shrimping-net as if it were a common net, and not spun from Piskey-wool by the Small People and made by a Wise Woman.

The bay, with its great beach of golden sand, its many hillocks—silvery-blue in places with sea-holly, and green with clumps of feathery tamarisk—lay open before her as she came out of the lane. There were many gulls on the wing to-day, white as the waves that broke gently over the rocks and against the sides of the cliffs. She looked about her, as was her wont, when she reached the beach, but there was nobody on the bar save an old man with his donkey, its panniers full of sand, coming up the beach on the way back to Higher Harlyn, where he lived.

Bessie Jane made straight for the pool of which she had spoken. It was a very deep pool, full of sea-anemones, shrimps, and lovely seaweed, and in the centre of the pool was a rock, in the shape of an arch, covered with mussels.

As the child was about to dip her net into the pool, she saw a streak of silver dancing up and down in the clear water.

She watched it for a minute, and then she thought she would try and catch it, and leaning over the pool, she put her shrimping-net under the whirling brightness and caught it. Looking into the net to see if it were a fish, to her great delight she saw it was like one of the tiny sea-fairies Old Annis had told her about. It was a most beautiful little creature; its eyes were the colour of the Cornish sea at its bluest, and its hair, which was a pale shade of gold, was sprinkled all over with sunbeams. It had no clothes on save a little green shift!

‘Oh, you dear little darling!’ cried Bessie Jane, after gazing at the lovely atom sitting in her shrimping-net. ‘I came down here to this bay to catch shrimps, and I do believe I’ve caught a sea-fairy instead!’

‘You have,’ piped the little creature in the most silvery of voices; ‘and woe is me that I am the first of the sea-fairies to be caught in a net!’

‘I hope you don’t mind very much,’ said Bessie Jane, looking uncomfortable. ‘I have never seen a fairy before of any sort, and I have been longing to see a little sea-fairy like you. The Wise Woman who lives in Tamarisk Lane, near our farm, told me about the sea-fairies. It was she who made me the net, which she meshed her own self out of Piskey-wool spun by the dear Little People.’

‘That explains my being caught in a net!’ cried the little creature, with a sigh of relief. ‘I do not mind so much now—that is, if you will put me back into the pool. You will do me that kindness, won’t you? I and my little companions were playing Buck and Hide Away here in the bay when the tide was in, and as I was hiding under the rock in the pool where you netted me, the tide went out and left me behind. You see that great bar of sand’—pointing at it with her tiny pink finger, which was even a more delicate pink than the beautiful tamarisk blossom that makes Tamarisk Lane and all the other lanes near Harlyn Bay so pretty in the summer and autumn months—‘it is a terrible thing to us little sea-fairies,’ as Bessie Jane nodded. ‘We have not the power to get over sand-bars. My companions are in a wisht2 way about me, knowing all the dangers that beset us when we are cut off from the sea.’

‘You must not be afraid of me,’ Bessie Jane hastened to assure her, thinking the little sea-fairy’s words were meant for her. ‘I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your bright little head. And if I can’t do what you ask me, it is because I love you so much, and want to take you home to our farm. We live in such a dear old house! I would be ever so kind to you, and you should be my own dear little sister. It would be lovely to have you to play with!’

‘I am sure you are very kind,’ said the sea-fairy in a voice that trembled. ‘But, dear little maid, I couldn’t be happy anywhere away from my relations and friends, and I couldn’t live out of the sea very long, and if you were to take me to your house and keep me there I should fade away and vanish with fretting.’

‘Would you really?’ cried Bessie Jane. ‘Then I won’t take you to my home. If you like, I’ll carry you down the sand and put you back into the sea.’

‘Oh, will you, dear little girl?’ cried the tiny creature joyfully, her eyes growing as bright as her hair. ‘I will be always grateful to you if you will. My little brothers and sisters and crowds of my friends are in the sea close to the shore watching me.’

‘I can’t see them,’ said Bessie Jane, turning her gaze seaward. ‘I can only see sun-sparks on the edges of the waves.’

‘They are sea-fairies,’ said the wee creature. ‘You can’t see their forms, of course, and you would not have seen me if I had not been caught in a net made out of Piskey-wool spun by the Small People and meshed by a Wise Woman. Will you please take me down to the sea now? It seems ages since the tide cut me off from my dear ones.’

‘I will this very minute, if you will lend me your eyes and your ears for a night and a day,’ answered Bessie Jane, remembering Old Annis’s injunction.

‘I will do what you ask gladly,’ said the little sea-fairy, ‘for I am very grateful for your kindness in offering to take me back to my friends. When you have put me into the sea a wave will bring to your feet a little red ball, which will contain my ears and my eyes, and which you must take to the Wise Woman, who will keep them until sunrise to-morrow.’

Bessie Jane carried the little sea-fairy very carefully down the sandy beach in the shrimping-net, and when she had put her into the sea, the water all around her broke into white fire, and a soft, sweet sound, like the coos of young pigeons, filled the air; and then, as the brightness enclosed the tiny creature, she disappeared—ears, eyes, and all!

‘Oh, the sea-fairy has forgotten her promise,’ cried Bessie Jane, gazing dolefully at the spot where she had sunk.

As she was speaking, a wavelet broke at her feet, and looking down, she saw a round ball of airy lightness and brightness lying on the sand. It was red as pools when the sun sets, and the child picked it up and looked at it, and through its almost transparent skin she saw a shadow of ears and a glimmer of something blue; and she took it to the Wise Woman, as the fairy had bidden her.

Old Annis smiled when the little girl told her what she had caught in the shrimping-net.

‘It was what I had expected,’ she said. ‘Now, dear little maid, you must get up with the larks to-morrow and come here, and you shall then see what you will see.’

Bessie Jane got out of bed the minute she awoke the next day, which was just as the little skybirds were beginning to sing; and when she was dressed she hurried off to Tamarisk Lane.

Early though it was, the Wise Woman was also up, and when she saw her little friend coming, she went and opened her door.

The first thing the child saw as she came into the cottage were two tiny ears—smaller even than a harvest-mouse’s ears—on the table, and near them two round eyeballs, with a sapphire spark in each of them.

As her glance rested on the wee eyes and ears, Old Annis called her to her side, and taking up the ears, she dropped them into the child’s ears; then she took up the eyes, and putting some Wee Folk’s glue on their back, she put them into Bessie Jane’s pretty brown ones, and told her to look round her cottage.

The child did so, and saw to her amazement that it was full of Small People, including little Brown Piskey-men. They were all amusing themselves in various ways: some were running about the sanded floor; some were looking into the depths of a Toby jug full of milk; and some tickling Old Annis’s large grey cat. The Piskeys were astride her fiddle-backed chairs and her settle, and winked at the sweet little maid whenever she turned her gaze their way, and they winked so funnily she could not have helped laughing to save her life. As she was looking at them, the Wise Woman told her if she wished to see the sea-fairies in Harlyn Bay she must go at once.

She did not at all want to go, for the Small People were most fascinating, she told the old woman, particularly the little brown winking Piskeys; but she went all the same.

As she walked down the lane to the bay, she looked through the tamarisk hedge into the common, and saw that somehow or other it looked different. There was a soft green light hanging over it, and where the sand was only the day before there was a multitude of most beautiful flowers of every colour and shade, the like of which she had never seen before. Amongst the flowers cows were feeding. The cows were ever so small, not bigger than rats. There were teeny tiny goats there, too, and dear little men in queer hats and coats looking after them. The cows and goats belonged to the Wee Folk, she supposed. It was all so delightfully different and odd, and she couldn’t think how she had never noticed all this on the common before, till she remembered she was seeing through a sea-fairy’s eyes.

As she climbed the cliffs overlooking the bay a sound of sweetest music stole upon her borrowed ears, and glancing to where the sound came, she saw that the edge of the low cliff was crowded with Small People, who were singing away like a choir of song-birds. Some of them were sitting on Piskey-stools,3 some on the edge of the cliff, others were standing. In the background were a score or more of tiny musicians, with reeds, flutes, and other instruments of music in their hands. These last were quaintly dressed in poppy-coloured coats and speedwell-blue breeches, and on their dear little heads were blue three-cornered hats turned up with the same rich colour as their coats. The whole company of Wee Folk were delightful to look at as they were to listen to; and as for the tiny ladies of the party, they were, Bessie Jane told herself, little nosegays of wild-flowers, and if they had not been trilling and piping as she came upon them, she would have mistaken them for cliff-blossoms, so bright they looked in their lovely gowns of trefoil-gold and reds, thrift-pink, squill-blue, and all those exquisite colours that make the Cornish cliffs so beautiful in the late spring and early summer-time.

The Small People saw the child, and seemed quite pleased to see her, for they smiled most graciously, and one of the little musicians took off his three-cornered hat and bowed like a courtier, and said he hoped she did not mind their singing, as it was their custom to sing a little impromptu song to their cousins—the sea-fairies—every beautiful morning in May, that being, he told her, the month of flowers and music.

Bessie Jane did not mind in the least. Indeed, she was delighted to think she had come in time to hear one of their little songs, only she was far too shy to say so.

She sat on the cliff where she could see the Wee Folk and Harlyn Bay at the same time. The sea was coming in, and was already under the cliff where she was sitting; as she looked down into the water she saw it was full of lovely little creatures, who were gazing up at her with all the eyes in their heads. They were sea-fairies, she could tell, by their resemblance to the dear little thing she had caught in her shrimping-net. They all wore little green shifts or shirts, through which their tiny pink bodies glowed like a rose, and all had sun-beamed hair and deep-blue eyes. Some of the sea-fairies were riding on the backs of the waves and tossing tiny spray-balls when she first saw them; others were darting in and out the sea-ripples as quick as sun-flashes, and playing over the inner bay in waves of light. A short distance out were a hundred or more little female sea-fairies dancing, and as they danced and held each other’s hands they looked like tiny garlands of sunbeams. They were dancing to a sweet tune of their own, or perhaps to the music of the sea, which was full of lovely sounds to-day, and colour too—that wonderful ethereal blue which is only seen in a summer’s dawn.

Whilst Bessie Jane was watching the sea-fairies, and wondering if the little friend she had put back into the sea were amongst them, and if she could see her without eyes, the Wee Folk on the cliff suddenly broke into music and song. The song was so wild and free and the music so sweet that the sea-fairies far out in the bay came close under the cliff and listened with the utmost joy, their tiny faces shining with pleasure, and their small bodies swaying in time to the rhythm of the song. As for the child, she thought it was the loveliest music she had ever heard. The song, which was accompanied by lutes, flutes, and reeds, and by the tapping of tiny feet and clapping of hands, was as follows:

Bessie Jane held her breath until the music died away in the silver cadence of the morning sea, and the song was still in her ears, so that she was hardly conscious it was finished until she noticed the Small People had risen from the Piskey-stools and were leaving the cliff.

‘You aren’t going, are you, dear Little People?’ she cried, forgetting her shyness in her dismay at their going so soon.

‘Yes,’ answered one of them. ‘I hope you liked our song.’

‘I did a terrible lot,’ responded Bessie Jane, flushing to the roots of her pretty brown hair; ‘your singing was lovely, and I should like to hear you sing every morning of my life! It was sweeter even than the thrush’s song at sunset, I think.’

The Wee Folk were delighted at the child’s praise; the small musicians beamed upon her, and the tiny ladies made her a deep curtsey, and then they all disappeared into the cliff.

She waited ever so long, hoping they would appear again and sing another song, but as they did not, she went down the cliff-path to the beach. At the ending of the song, all the sea-fairies had gone out into the bay to join the merry dancers, who were dancing away like a Bobby Griglan,4 she told herself as she sent her glance over the sunlit waters to where they were. When she stood close to the waves all these little whirligigs came dancing shorewards, until they stopped only a few feet away and gazed at her curiously.

When they found their tongues, which they quickly did, to her great delight they began talking to her. They thanked her for being so kind to their little companion in giving her back to them the day before, and said how glad they were she had repaid the little girl’s kindness in lending Bessie Jane her eyes and ears for a night and a day, as they heard she had so much wanted to see the sea-fairies.

‘Yes, I did,’ replied Bessie Jane, ‘and I am awfully grateful to that pretty little dear for the loan of her ears and eyes, but I am afraid it was very selfish of me to get her to lend them.’

‘She was very glad to lend them for the time you asked,’ the sea-fairies reassured her—‘not only because you did her all that kindness, but because you have been so very good to the poor old Wise Woman, who loves all the Little People, sea-fairies and all,’ they said.

It was a great surprise to Bessie Jane that the fairies should know about her kindness to poor Old Annis; and as she did not like being praised, she turned the conversation, and asked the dear little sea-sprites to tell her all about themselves, and what they did all day long, where they lived, and a hundred and one other questions which the sweet-voiced, sun-beamed little creatures seemed only too pleased to answer.

Amongst other interesting things, they told the child about their work. They said their chief happiness was to do good, and that their special work was to seek out all wounded things and take them down to the bottom of the sea, where they had a Place of Healing, and where they tended with gentle care all the poor, hurt creatures they found, until they were all healed and happy again. Another mission of theirs was to sing requiems over the poor drowned human beings, and to plant sea-lilies and other sea-flowers on their graves.

They were always busy, they told her, and when there was no special work for them to do they busied themselves with games, singing and dancing, and flashing in and out of the sea to make it beautiful with light. Their special time for merry-making and dancing was at sunset and sunrise, particularly sunset, for then the great sun went down into the sea to shine upon their lovely gardens, parks, and meadows under the sea where they lived, and where dear little fishes sang instead of birds!

It would fill pages to tell all those little sea-fairies told Bessie Jane, and which they told in such entrancing way that time flew. The tide came in and went out, and was again coming in, and the entranced child did not even notice it, or that the big white sun was wheeling down towards his setting.

A great lane of crimson fire stretched away on the blue-grey water from the outer bay to the horizon, and just as the sea-fairies had finished telling her all the wonders of their life and doings she saw coming towards her down this lane of rich light a tiny carriage in the shape of a scallop-shell, drawn by four little horses, two abreast, and white as sea-spray. As the tiny steeds sped onward and drew near, Bessie Jane saw leaning back in the carriage a sea-fairy with a bandage of red seaweed across her eyes and ears.

When the horses stopped, all the sea-fairies formed themselves in a circle round the carriage, and looked intently at the child on the shore.

As Bessie Jane noted all this, telling herself what handsome horses they were and what an elegant little carriage, and how beautiful it looked on the sun’s pathway, a silvery voice, like the twitter of a baby lark low in its nest amongst the heather, piped from the carriage:

‘Please give me back my eyes and my ears.’

‘What eyes and ears?’ asked the child, bewildered, for she had quite forgotten that she had got the sea-fairy’s eyes and ears.

‘Why, my own dear little eyes and ears that I lent you for a night and a day,’ piped the sweet voice again.

‘Must I give them back?’ asked Bessie Jane.

‘Indeed you must,’ said the fairy. ‘I have missed them oh so much! No beautiful vision have I seen, no lovely sounds have I heard, since I lent them to you yesterday afternoon. I waited until the sun had put on his flame-coloured robe before coming for them.’

‘How can I give you back your eyes and your ears?’ asked the child helplessly. ‘The Wise Woman put them in, and she isn’t here to take them out.’

‘Say, “Little Blue Eyes, go back to your homes,” and, “Little Pink Ears, return to your places,” and they will do as you tell them,’ answered the little fairy.

Bessie Jane, though very reluctant to give back what had given her so much pleasure, knew she would be dreadfully selfish if she did not do as she was told, and after gazing full five minutes on the wonderful sight—the circle of sea-fairies, the wee white horses, and scallop-shaped carriage, the like of which she might never see again—and letting her last gaze rest on her first friend waiting so patiently for the return of her eyes and ears, her clear young voice rang out:

‘Dear Little Blue Eyes, go back to your homes; dear Little Pink Ears, go back to your holes.’

As she spoke a blue spark leapt out of her eyes, followed by a whizzing of something pink, and when she opened her eyes again, the radiant circle of sea-fairies round the mother-of-pearl carriage, the dazzling white steeds with flowing manes and tails, were all gone, and she only saw the usual sights of eventide on the beach: the gulls flying over the hillocks and across the sands to their sleeping-places in the cliffs; a man driving the cows up the bay to be milked; the stems of the tamarisk on the hedges, scarlet in the sun-glow; and the vast luminous sky over it all. Beautiful as everything was, it was not nearly so beautiful, Bessie Jane thought, as were those little sea-fairies and horses on the pathway of crimson fire!

She stood close to the edge of the water till the line of light was gone, and then she turned away from the sea and went up the beach towards Tamarisk Lane, to tell Old Annis what she had heard and seen.

As she was going up, she met the same old man and his donkeys she had seen the day before. He was coming down for his last pannier of sand. He stopped and spoke to her, and asked why she was looking so happy.

‘I have seen the Small People,’ answered the child, ‘and the dear little fairies that live in the sea.’

‘You don’t mean to say so?’ cried the old man. ‘You are a lucky little maid to have seen all they little dears!’ as Bessie Jane nodded. ‘’Tis not often folks do see ‘em nowadays; but they did backalong, my mother told me. What was ‘em like, Miss Bessie Jane?’

‘I cannot stop to tell you now,’ said the child. ‘It is rather late, and I want to go and see the Wise Woman in Tamarisk Lane. You are late getting sand, arn’t you?’

‘Iss fy, I be. ’Tis for your father—Maister Rosewarne—and I must make haste and get it. My donkey do want his supper, and so do I.’

Old Annis was at her cottage gate watching for her little friend’s return, and when the child came up she listened with the greatest interest to all she had to tell her, and said how pleased she was that she had seen and heard so much.

‘It is a reward,’ she added, ‘for being so kind to a poor lonely old woman.’

Bessie Jane never saw any more of the Little People, and never went shrimping again with the shrimping-net made by a Wise Woman out of Piskey-wool spun by the Small People, for the simple reason she lost the net the day after she saw the dear Wee Folk and the sea-fairies with her borrowed eyes. How she lost it, or where, she did not know, and the Wise Woman, wise as she was, could not tell her. But she was ever afterwards grateful for having seen them, especially the sea-fairies, and she showed her gratitude by being kinder than ever to her poor, lonely old friend.

When our great-great-grandmothers were young, a small lad called William John Pendarvey went on a visit to his Great-Aunt Ann, a very silent, austere old maid, who lived by herself in the Vale beautiful of Lanherne.

Great-Aunt Ann being old and very quiet, was the last person in the world that a tender-hearted, sensitive little chap as William John was should have gone to stay with.

The house where she lived was rather small and very gloomy, and had nothing nice about it, but it possessed a large and beautiful orchard, protected from the rough and cutting winds by the escarpment of the downs that rose above it and the valley.

But delightful as this orchard was, nobody except Great-Aunt Ann—and she not often—ever went into it, because it was known to be haunted by something, in the shape of a little White Hare which had been seen there from time unknown, wandering like a shadow over the grass, and in and out amongst the trees, or sitting motionless at the foot of a blasted apple-tree.

Who or what this apparition was nobody could tell, but not a man, woman or child in the Vale, except Great-Aunt Ann, would have gone into that orchard for all they were worth.

Little William John might never have known there was an orchard belonging to the gloomy old house if he had not wandered into a bedroom at the back of the house overlooking the entrance to the orchard and peeped out of the window.

He asked to be allowed to go and play there, as it looked so bright and sunny in its open spaces, but Great-Aunt Ann said: ‘Not to-day.’

It was always ‘Not to-day’ whenever he asked to go into that orchard, and probably he would never have gone into it at all if the old maid had not occasion one day to go to St. Columb, a small market town three miles from where she lived.

She could not take the boy with her, she said, and so she left him at home to take care of the house.

Looking after a house was not in little William John’s line, and Great-Aunt Ann had not been gone more than an hour before he found himself at the small wicket-gate opening into the orchard, where to his joy he saw a great multitude of golden-headed daffadillies rising out of the lowly grass, and a light that was softer than silver moving mysteriously in and out amongst the trees.

The temptation to go into that sun-lighted, fascinating spot was irresistible, and finding the gate unlocked, little William John opened it and went in.

It was the spring of the year, and the spring was late, and there were as yet no carmine buds on the apple trees, but their upper branches were misty with the silvery green of budding leaves. And the pear trees were in virgin whiteness, and so were the plum and cherry trees, which made a shining background to all the yellow lilies in blossom there.

‘It makes me feel happy only to be here,’ whispered little William John to himself; ‘and oh! the daffies are making golden dawns under the trees!’

He wandered about to his heart’s content, staying his young feet now and then to listen to a blackbird’s liquid pipe, and to touch with reverent hand a daffadilly’s drooping head, or to watch with puzzled eyes that thing of brightness moving on in front of him amongst the trees and blossoms.

He lost sight of this wandering light when he had gone the length of the orchard; but he saw it again as he turned across to its top, and when he got close he saw, to his astonishment, it was a little Hare of silvery whiteness.

It was sitting on its haunches under the blasted tree, and did not move away as the boy drew near.

A thrill of gladness filled William John’s kind young heart at so fair and strange a vision, and his delight was even greater when the small White Hare suffered him to stroke its fur.

‘Oh, you dear little soft thing!’ he cried. ‘I am so glad you are not afraid of me; I love all animals, and would not hurt any of them for worlds, nor a hair of your beautiful white coat.’

‘I knew you would not,’ answered the little White Hare. ‘I was sure your heart was gentle and good the moment I saw you.’

‘What! Can you talk?’ asked little William John in amazement. ‘I never knew animals could speak like human beings before. I am so glad you can. It is so nice to have someone to talk to. Nobody hardly ever speaks to me here, and I have felt so lonely.’

‘Poor boy!’ said the little White Hare; ‘I can sympathize with you, for I know what it is to be lonely and have nobody to speak to. You are the first human being who has spoken to me since a wicked Witch turned me into the shape of a hare.’

‘What! Are you not really a hare?’ asked little William John, more and more amazed.

‘No,’ answered the little creature sadly; ‘I am a maiden in the shape of a hare, and I have had to bear the hare-shape ever since the Witch worked a spell upon me, which was back in the days of the “giants.”’

‘What a shame!’ cried the boy. ‘Whatever made her turn you into a hare?’

‘She had a spite against me because I would not be wicked like herself.’

‘How dreadful of her!’ cried little William John indignantly. ‘Will you never be able to get back your real shape, you poor little thing?’

‘I am afraid not,’ said the little White Hare sadly, ‘unless somebody who is really sorry for me, and is not afraid of me, can find the Magic Horn—by the blast of which Jack the Giant-Killer overthrew the Giant Galligantus and Hocus-Pocus the Conjurer—and blow over me three strong, clear blasts.’

‘Where is the Magic Horn?’ asked little William John.

‘I do not know the exact spot, but it is buried somewhere in the ruins of an old castle called the Castle of Porthmeor, which is on a cliff above Porthmeor Cove.’

‘Why, that old castle is mine, or will be, I am told, when I am of age!’ cried little William John. ‘It is not a great way from where I live, and often I go there to play. I wish I wasn’t only a little boy, and could look for the Magic Horn,’ he added, after a moment’s silence.

‘Age is no barrier to your seeking it,’ said the little White Hare. ‘All that is needed to loosen the wicked old Witch’s spell is what I have now told you.’

‘Then I will look for the Magic Horn directly I get home,’ cried little William John, ‘and if I can find it I’ll come back and blow it over you, if you think I can.’

‘I am sure you can,’ answered the little White Hare. ‘You must go now, for your Great-Aunt is coming into the valley. It is not wrong to come into this orchard, since she has not forbidden you; but she knows it is haunted by a little White Hare, and is afraid if you see it it will work you harm. So you must be patient with her.’

The Hare vanished as it spoke, and little William John found himself alone with the yellow-headed daffadillies, and the trees and dear little birds, and he soon went back to the house.

‘Have you been out anywhere?’ asked Great-Aunt Ann, when she had come in and taken off her bonnet.

‘Yes, into the orchard,’ said the boy truthfully. ‘It is a lovely place, full of song-birds and flowers.’

‘Was that all you saw there?’ she asked anxiously.

‘No,’ answered little William John again, lifting his clear child-eyes to the stern old maid’s. ‘I saw trees with snow on them, and a dear little Hare with fur as white as milk.’

The old lady shook all over like a wind-tossed leaf when he said that, but she did not scold him or say he ought not to have gone into her orchard, but the next day she sent him home.

At the end of three years William John came again to stay with his Great-Aunt Ann—not that she wanted him, but because his guardian thought the balmy air of the lovely Vale would do him good.

The spring was very early this year, and when William John arrived the daffadillies had gone, and the pear and cherry trees had scattered all their snow-white blossoms on the grass; but the apple flowers were out in rosy splendour on the gnarled old trees, and where the daffadillies had made ‘golden dawns’ there were blue-grey periwinkles trying to lift themselves to the heavenly blue shining down upon them.

William John was anxious to go out into the orchard directly he came, but Great-Aunt Ann said the grass was too wet.

The grass was always ‘too wet,’ according to the old maid, and the boy was afraid she would not allow him to go into the orchard at all.

When he had been there two weeks and a day, Great-Aunt Ann had again occasion to go to St. Columb town, and as there was only room in the gig for the driver and herself, she was obliged to leave him at home.

The moment the gig was out of sight William John made his way to the orchard, where he found the grass as green and beautiful as spring grass could be, and his little friend the Hare sitting under the blasted tree, whiter and smaller than ever.

‘I began to fear you would never come into this orchard again,’ said the White Hare plaintively.

‘I began to fear so myself,’ responded William John, stroking very gently the little White Hare. ‘This is my first opportunity of coming here.’

‘Have you found the Magic Horn?’ the small creature asked anxiously.

‘Not yet, and I have never stopped looking for it since I was last here. I have searched all over the old castle, and every stone has been lifted on the place, and the ground dug up both outside the ruins and inside, and I am afraid the Magic Horn was not hidden away in that old castle, as you said.’

‘It was hidden there, and is there now,’ insisted the little White Hare, ‘and I do hope you aren’t going to give up looking for it.’

‘I won’t, for your sake, you dear little soft thing!’ cried the boy, and again he stroked her gently and tenderly; ‘and as you are sure it is there somewhere, I’ll search until I find it.’

‘Have you looked in the cave under the castle?’ asked the little White Hare.

‘No,’ returned William John; ‘the entrance to it is not known, and even if it were, the passage leading down to the cave is so foul with bad air, my guardian said, that it would be death to anybody who went through it.’

‘If you are not afraid to go down into the cave, I can give you a plant that will purify all the foul air you pass through.’

‘I will not be afraid for your sake, dear little White Hare,’ said the boy.

The Hare vanished, and in a little while became visible again, and in her mouth she held a strange-looking weed, the like of which he had never seen before.

‘It is called the little All-Pure,’ said the White Hare, as William John took it in his hand. ‘Keep it close to your heart until you have discovered the passage to the cave, and when it is foul hold it in your hand until its brightness shines on the Magic Horn.’

Again she disappeared, and the boy, after waiting some time to see if she would appear again, went back to the house, where he found his Great-Aunt Ann limping in at the front-door.

The old lady had hurt her leg in getting out of the gig, and when he told her he had been in the orchard, she made her slight accident an excuse to send him back to his home, which she did that same day.

William John did not have the chance of paying another visit to his Great-Aunt Ann until he was a youth of nineteen, and he would not have come then if he had waited to be invited.

The old maid was now terribly old and feeble, and had to keep a servant. Unhappily for William John, the servant was quite as crabbed and silent as her mistress, and even more opposed to his going into the old orchard. She even locked the orchard-gate and kept the key in her pocket.

But William John, being now no longer a child, but a handsome youth with a strong will of his own, was determined to get into the orchard with or without permission, for he had found the Magic Horn.

He watched his opportunity, and one day when the servant was out he went to the wicket gate and sprang over it, and quickly made his way to the blasted tree, where he found, as he had expected to find, the little White Hare sitting on her haunches under it.

She was very white and ever so small—so small, in fact, that she did not look much bigger than a baby hare.

‘You have come at last,’ she said, as the tall handsome lad knelt on the grass and caressed her. ‘Have you found the Magic Horn?’

‘I have found it,’ he answered gladly.

‘When did you find it?’

‘Only yesterday,’ returned the youth. ‘Every day since I last saw you I have searched for the entrance to the cave, and at last, when I was in despair of ever finding it, I came upon it under my bedroom window. I discovered it quite by accident, as I was planting maiden-blush rose-trees. I never knew till then that our house was built on the old castle grounds. The passage opened on to steps, which led down and down till they ended at the door of the cave.’

‘Were you not afraid?’ asked the little White Hare very softly.

‘I was a little bit,’ confessed the youth, ‘for I did not know where it would lead me. But love and pity for poor little you made me go on. And I had the little All-Pure to cheer me; for it not only made the foul air through which I passed pure and sweet, but gave out a soft clear light. I found the Magic Horn on a slab of stone in the corner of the cave. I took it up quickly and returned the way I came, and started the earliest moment to pay a visit to my Great-Aunt Ann.’

‘Have you brought the Magic Horn with you?’ asked the little White Hare, with deep anxiety in her voice.

‘Yes,’ he said, with shining eyes, ‘and here it is;’ and he laid a black thing in the shape of a horn on the grass beside her.

‘It is the Magic Horn!’ cried the little White Hare joyfully. ‘Will you blow over me three strong, clear blasts, dear William John? If you are as pure-hearted as you are kind-hearted, as I am sure you are, the last blast will break the Witch’s spell, and give me back my own shape. The Horn should be blown at sunset.’

‘It is sundown now,’ said William John, looking westward, where between the trees he could see a splendour of rose and gold painted on the lower sky.

‘Then blow it now!’ cried the little White Hare; and stiffening herself on her form, she crossed her paws on her breast and waited.

William John took up the Magic Horn in his strong young hands and put it to his mouth, and in a minute or less there sounded out through the orchard, all gay with apple-blossom and melody of birds, and over the Vale of Lanherne, a great blast, so rich in sound that the thrushes stopped their singing, and the people in St. Mawgan village came rushing to their doors to know whatever it was. It was quickly followed by two more blasts, richer and louder than the first. When the last blast had died away, William John, looking down at the foot of the blasted tree, saw in the place of the little White Hare the most beautiful maiden he had ever seen.

The Magic Horn fell from his hand at so lovely a sight, and he blushed red as the buds clinging in rosy infancy to the apple-trees, and stammered something out that he had not expected to see her half so beautiful.

‘I am myself now, thanks to you,’ laughed the maiden; and William John thought it was the sweetest laugh he had ever heard in all his life. ‘I can never be sufficiently grateful for all you have done for me.’

‘Mine is the gratitude for having been allowed to find the Magic Horn and loosen you from the wicked spell,’ said the lad, still stammering and blushing.

‘You are very good to say so,’ said the lovely maid, blushing in her turn as she felt the gaze of the handsome youth upon her. ‘Now the evil spell has been undone I must go my way.’

‘What way?’ asked William John eagerly, drinking in the beauty of her face.

‘To a country beyond the sun-setting, where all who love me are,’ she said gently.

‘If you go, I must also go,’ said William John in a masterful way, still keeping his eyes on her face. ‘I learnt to love you in your hare-shape, dear, but I love you a thousand times more now I see you as you are. I could not live without you now.’

‘If you love me as you say you do, and cannot live without me, you may come,’ said the lovely maid, lifting her shy eyes to his. ‘You have the right to come with me by the good you have wrought. It is a fair land whither I am going, where there are always buds and blossoms on the trees, where the happy birds are always in song, and where the Foot of Evil dare not enter. It is time I was away. The sun is setting, and his path of glory is narrowing on the sea. Come, if you will. I love you, too, dear.’

And giving him her little hand, which he gladly took, they went both of them together out of the old orchard in the glow of the setting sun; and as they climbed a slope above the place of blossoming trees, an old man crossing the downs wondered who that handsome youth and lovely maid were making their way with locked hands and steadfast faces towards the sunset. But he never knew.

From that day onwards the little White Hare was never again seen in the old beautiful orchard, and nobody ever knew what had become of William John.