hat the close of the ceremony which finds us cousins will leave us
brother and sister."

Poor Molinda merely stared; for she could not imagine what he meant. In
a moment he was gone; and having taken, by the king's permission, the
flying carpet, he was back at the ambassador's house in Gluckstein.

CHAPTER XVII.

_The Black Cat and the Brethren_!

Who was glad to see the prince, if it was not Lady Rosalind? The white
roses of her cheeks turned to red roses in a moment, and then back to
white again, they were so alarmed at the change. So the two went into
the gardens together, and talked about a number of things; but at last
the prince told her that, before three days were over, all would be well,
or all would be over with him. For either he would have brought his
brothers back, sound and well, to Falkenstein, or he would not survive
his dishonour.

"It is no more than right," he said; "for had I gone first, neither of
them would have been sent to meet the monster after I had fallen. And I
_should_ have fallen, dear Rosalind, if I had faced the Firedrake before
I knew _you_."

Then when she asked him why, and what good she had done him, he told her
all the story; and how, before he fell in love with her, he didn't
believe in fairies, or Firedrakes, or caps of darkness, or anything nice
and impossible, but only in horrid useless facts, and chemistry, and
geology, and arithmetic, and mathematics, and even political economy. And
the Firedrake would have made a mouthful of him, then.

So she was delighted when she heard this, almost as much delighted as she
was afraid that he might fail in the most difficult adventure. For it
was one thing to egg on a Remora to kill a Firedrake, and quite another
to find the princes if they were alive, and restore them if they were
dead!

But the prince said he had his plan, and he stayed that night at the
ambassador's. Next morning he rose very early, before anyone else was
up, that he might not have to say "Good-bye" to Lady Rosalind. Then he
flew in a moment to the old lonely castle, where nobody went for fear of
ghosts, ever since the Court retired to Falkenstein.

How still it was, how deserted; not a sign of life, and yet the prince
was looking everywhere _for some living thing_. He hunted the castle
through in vain, and then went out to the stable-yard; but all the dogs,
of course, had been taken away, and the farmers had offered homes to the
poultry. At