hole she was willing to trust herself to the
kindness of the dwarfs.

They were already busy constructing the litter. Those with hatchets were
felling two young fir trees with resounding blows. This brought back to
Rug his original suggestion.

"If instead of a litter we made a cage," he urged.

But he aroused a unanimous protest. Tad looked at him scornfully.

"You are more like a human being than a dwarf, Rug," he said. "But at
least it is to the honour of our race that the most wicked dwarf is also
the most stupid."

In the meantime the task had been accomplished. The dwarfs leaped into
the air and in a bound seized and cut the branches, out of which they
deftly wove a basket chair. Having covered it with moss and leaves, they
placed Honey-Bee upon it, then they seized the two poles, placed them on
their shoulders and, then! off they went to the mountain.

X

In which we are faithfully told how King Loc received Honey-
Bee of Clarides

They climbed a winding path along the wooded slope of the hill. Here and
there granite boulders, bare and blasted, broke through the grey verdure
of the dwarf oaks, and the sombre purple mountain with its bluish
ravines formed an impassable barrier about the desolate landscape.

The procession, preceded by Bob on his feathered steed, passed through
a chasm overgrown with brambles. Honey-Bee, with her golden hair flowing
over her shoulders, looked like the dawn breaking on the mountains,
supposing, of course, that the dawn was ever frightened and called her
mother and tried to escape, for all these things she did as she caught
a confused glimpse of dwarfs, armed to the teeth, lying in ambush along
the windings of the rocks.

With bows bent or lance at rest they stood immovable. Their tunics of
wild beast skins and their long knives that hung from their belts gave
them a most terrible appearance. Game, furred and feathered, lay beside
them. And yet these huntsmen, to judge only by their faces, did not
seem very grim; on the contrary, they appeared gentle and grave like the
dwarfs of the forest, whom they greatly resembled.

In their midst stood a dwarf full of majesty. He wore a cock feather
over his ear, and on his head a diadem set with enormous gems. His
mantle raised at the shoulder disclosed a muscular arm covered with
circlets of gold. A horn of ivory and chased silver hung from his belt.
His left hand rested on his lance in an attitude of quiet strengt