grew a little thinner, an
uncertain hint of light came from the east, and the poor woman,
stopping on the brow of a little hill, opened her cloak, and set the
princess down.

"I can carry you no farther," she said. "Sit there on the grass till
the light comes. I will stand here by you."

Rosamond had been asleep. Now she rubbed her eyes and looked, but it
was too dark to see any thing more than that there was a sky over her
head. Slowly the light grew, until she could see the form of the poor
woman standing in front of her; and as it went on growing, she began to
think she had seen her somewhere before, till all at once she thought
of the wise woman, and saw it must be she. Then she was so ashamed that
she bent down her head, and could look at her no longer. But the poor
woman spoke, and the voice was that of the wise woman, and every word
went deep into the heart of the princess.

"Rosamond," she said, "all this time, ever since I carried you from
your father's palace, I have been doing what I could to make you a
lovely creature: ask yourself how far I have succeeded."

All her past story, since she found herself first under the wise
woman's cloak, arose, and glided past the inner eyes of the princess,
and she saw, and in a measure understood, it all. But she sat with her
eyes on the ground, and made no sign.

Then said the wise woman:--

"Below there is the forest which surrounds my house. I am going home.
If you pledge to come there to me, I will help you, in a way I could
not do now, to be good and lovely. I will wait you there all day, but
if you start at once, you may be there long before noon. I shall have
your breakfast waiting for you. One thing more: the beasts have not yet
all gone home to their holes; but I give you my word, not one will
touch you so long as you keep coming nearer to my house."

She ceased. Rosamond sat waiting to hear something more; but nothing
came. She looked up; she was alone.

Alone once more! Always being left alone, because she would not yield
to what was right! Oh, how safe she had felt under the wise woman's
cloak! She had indeed been good to her, and she had in return behaved
like one of the hyenas of the awful wood! What a wonderful house it was
she lived in! And again all her own story came up into her brain from
her repentant heart.

"Why didn't she take me with her?" she said. "I would have gone
gladly." And she wept. But her own conscience told her that, in the
v