t before. As soon as day came he also
saw the castle, and set out towards it; but when he reached it he
could see no signs of fire or living being about it. Before long,
however, he heard the window opened above his head, looked up, and
beheld the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He asked if she
would give him food and drink, and she answered kindly and heartily
that she would, if he would only come inside. This he did very
willingly, and she set before him food and drink that he had never
seen the like of before. In the room there was a bed, with diamond
rings hanging at every loop of the curtains, and everything that was
in the room besides astonished him so much that he actually forgot
that he was hungry. When she saw that he was not eating at all, she
asked him what he wanted yet, to which he replied that he would
neither eat nor drink until he knew who she was, or where she came
from, or who had put her there.

'I shall tell you that,' said she. 'I am an enchanted Princess, and my
father has promised that the man who releases me from the spell shall
have the third of his kingdom while he is alive, and the whole of it
after he is dead, and marry me as well. If ever I saw a man who looked
likely to do this, you are the one. I have been here for sixteen years
now, and no one who ever came to the castle has asked me who I was,
except yourself. Every other man that has come, so long as I have been
here, lies asleep in the big room down there.'

'Tell me, then,' said the Irishman, 'what is the spell that has been
laid on you, and how you can be freed from it.'

'There is a little room there,' said the Princess, 'and if I could get
a man to stay in it from ten o'clock till midnight for three nights on
end I should be freed from the spell.'

'I am the man for you, then,' said he; 'I will take on hand to do it.'

Thereupon she brought him a pipe and tobacco, and he went into the
room; but before long he heard a hammering and knocking on the outside
of the door, and was told to open it.

[Illustration: The Princess Revives the Irishman.]

'I won't,' he said.

The next moment the door came flying in, and those outside along with
it. They knocked him down, and kicked him, and knelt on his body till
it came to midnight; but as soon as the cock crew they all
disappeared. The Irishman was little more than alive by this time. As
soon as daylight appeared the Princess came, and found him lying full
length on the flo