of a book the other day; when suddenly,
as I gaze upward, my suitor's white hair turns to brown, his beard drops
off, his wrinkles disappear, and he stands before me a young Knight, in
full armor. 'Wilt go to the yellow castle with me, sweet lady?' he asks.
'_Wilt I_!' I cry in ecstasy, and we leap on the back of a charger
hitched to the Colonel's horseblock. We dash down the avenue of elms and
maples that line the village street, and we are at our journey's end
before the Knight has had time to explain to me that he was changed into
the guise of an old man by an evil sorcerer some years before, and could
never return to his own person until some one appeared who wished to
live in the yellow house, which is Beulah Castle.

"We approach the well-known spot and the little picket gate, and the
Knight lifts me from the charger's back. 'Here are house and lands, and
all are yours, sweet lady, if you have a younger brother. There is
treasure hidden in the ground behind the castle, and no one ever finds
such things save younger brothers.'

"'I have a younger brother,' I cry, '_and his name is Peter_!'"

At this point in Nancy's chronicle Peter is nearly beside himself with
excitement. He has been sitting on his hassock, his hands outspread upon
his fat knees, his lips parted, his eyes shining. Somewhere, sometime,
in Nancy's stories there is always a Peter. He lives for that moment!

Nancy, stifling her laughter, goes on rapidly:

"And so the Knight summons Younger Brother Peter to come, and he flies
in a great air ship from Charlestown to Beulah. And when he arrives the
Knight asks him to dig for the buried treasure."

(Peter here turns up his sleeves to his dimpled elbows and seizes an
imaginary implement.)

"Peter goes to the back of the castle, and there is a beautiful garden
filled with corn and beans and peas and lettuce and potatoes and beets
and onions and turnips and carrots and parsnips and tomatoes and
cabbages. He takes his magic spade and it leads him to the cabbages. He
digs and digs, and in a moment the spade strikes metal!

"'He has found the gold!' cries the Knight, and Peter speedily lifts
from the ground pots and pots of ducats and florins, and gulden and
doubloons."

(Peter nods his head at the mention of each precious coin and then claps
his hands, and hugs himself with joy, and rocks himself to and fro on
the hassock, in his ecstasy at being the little god in the machine.)

"Then down the vill