d
immediately there was a rustling among the trees, and Black Caroline
stood beside her!

The two Carolines were now reunited. But White Caroline was sad because
Black Caroline was not as pretty as she herself, and, remembering the
White Woman's promise, she resolved to wish that they might both be
exactly the same.

Then she wished that both of them should be changed into something
exactly alike!

Immediately they began to change. Little white feathers appeared on
their shoulders and spread until they were entirely covered; and there
they stood together, two beautiful white swans! And ever after they swam
up and down on the peaceful water and no one could tell one from the
other. And never again did the nymphs and the vampires come near to harm
them.

THE SEVEN CONQUERORS OF THE QUEEN OF THE MISSISSIPPI

A BELGIAN FAIRY TALE

Once upon a time there was a boy who was ambitious. One day he said to
his mother: 'Give me a muffin and patch my trousers, for I am going to
set out to win the Queen of the Mississippi.'

So the mother gave him a muffin and patched his trousers, and the boy
went off.

He had not gone very far when he came to a mountain path, on which was a
great cross, beneath which stood a man holding a bow with an arrow fixed
on the string.

This man looked down at the boy as if to say, 'What are you doing here?'

The boy immediately answered his unspoken question by demanding, 'Hello,
friend! What are you doing there?'

'You see that fly on that cross?' said the man, pointing to a minute
speck on one of its arms. 'Wait then, and watch me! I will put out one
of its eyes.'

With this, while the boy watched, he drew his bow to the full, and let
the arrow fly.

It was a wonderful shot, for one of the eyes of the fly fell on the
ground at the foot of the cross.

The boy was so taken with this, that he seemed to grow two whole years
in half a minute. To look at him, you would have thought he was no
longer a boy. He drew himself up proudly to his full height, and said in
the voice of a young man:

'Will you travel with me, my pippy?'

'Pardon?'

Then it was question and answer between them:

_'Come, travel with me, my pippy.'
'Oh! Whither away? To old Mandalay?'
'But no; to the far Mississippi,
Where a beautiful Queen holds sway:
And I'll marry that Queen some day.'
'I am yours! And the bounty?'
'Give it a name: I will pay.'_

Then the young m