e dotted with the white
sails of the fisher boats, and directly in front, climbing up to the
sky, a high mountain on which stood a castle, where from a tall tower
all night long shone a light that could hardly be told from the stars
around it.

Mary Louise jumped from the boat to the beach, and then turned to wave
good-by to the Polar Bear as he sailed away to the North Pole.

Nearby sat an old fisherman on a bench mending his net.

"Hello, little girl," he said, as Mary Louise hesitated. "Moor your
little hulk 'longside o' me an' I'll spin you a yarn!"

Then he began to tell how, many hundred years ago, all the land around
about was covered with a thick forest instead of the deep blue water of
the bay.

Then came the great giant Cormoran, who was 18 feet high and 3 yards
wide, and his wife Cormelian, who was just as big, and they brought
from the hills great gray rocks which they piled up, one on the other,
hundreds of feet high, until they had made a mountain. And on the top
of this they built their castle, where they lived until the giant's
wife died and was buried under the Chapel rock.

Then Jack the Giant Killer climbed up the mountain, and after a hard
fight Cormoran was killed, and there were no more giants in the land.

Next came the Small People, who cut down most of the forest, and built
cottages for themselves, ploughed the fields and made gardens.

But one day a great enchanter came that way, and his strange dress and
long gray beard frightened the women and children, and they shut their
doors in his face whenever he asked for a drink, for he had walked far
and was tired and thirsty.

At last he found the principal man of the Small People, a little old
crusty fellow and very miserly. And when the great enchanter asked him
for a drink of water, the Small Man told him he didn't keep a hotel for
beggars. And this made the great enchanter so angry that he struck the
ground with his staff, so that it made a deep hole, and then he went
upon his journey.

Soon a little spring of water bubbled up through the hole, and by and
by a stream burst forth that swelled to a river, and after a time the
whole land was drowned, and only the high mountain remained above the
water.

But the Small People who were buried under the water didn't die. They
lived on just the same, waiting for the enchanter to return and lift
the spell, and the land to rise, again with all the people on it.

When the old fisherman h