hen the people armed themselves
with swords and spears and marched in a great body to the castle of the
Purple Dragon.

This remarkable beast, which for so long had kept the Valley of Mo in
constant terror, was standing on the front porch of its castle when the
army arrived. It looked at the crowd of people in surprise, and said:

"Are you not weary with your attempts to destroy me? What selfish
people you must be! Whenever I eat anything that belongs to you, there
is a great row, and immediately you come here to fight me. These
battles are unpleasant to all of us. The best thing for you to do is to
return home and behave yourselves; for I am not in the least afraid of
you."

Neither the King nor his people replied to these taunts. They simply
brought forward the big pair of forceps and reached them toward the
Dragon.

This movement astonished the monster, who, never having been to a
dentist in his life, had no idea what the strange instrument was for.

"Surely you can not think to hurt me with that iron thing," it called
out, in derision. And then the Dragon laughed at the idea of any one
attempting to injure it.

But when the Dragon opened its mouth to laugh, the King opened the jaws
of the forceps, quickly closing them again on one of the monster's
front teeth.

"Pull!" cried the King; and fifty men seized the handles of the forceps
and began to pull with all their strength.

But, pull as they might, the tooth would not come out, and this was the
reason: The teeth of Dragons are different from ours, for they go
through the jaw and are clinched on the other side. Therefore, no
amount of pulling will draw them out.

The King did not know this fact, but thought the tooth must have a long
root; so he called again:

"Pull! my brave men; pull!"

And they pulled so hard that the Dragon was nearly pulled from the
porch of its castle. To avoid this danger the cunning beast wound the
end of its tail around a post of the porch, and tied a hard knot in it.

"Pull!" shouted the King for the third time.

Then a surprising thing happened. Any one who knows anything at all
about Dragons is aware that these beasts stretch as easily as if made
of india-rubber. Therefore the strong pulling of the fifty men resulted
in the Dragon being pulled from its foothold, and, as its tail was
fastened to the post, its body began to stretch out.

The King and his people, thinking the tooth was being pulled, started
down the hill,