e story of his wanderings and produced the
goblet.

"Where is the Princess?" he inquired.

At these words the old Queen upon the throne burst into loud
weeping.

"Long have you been gone, Shamus," said she. "It is seven times
seven years since you left me. And now I am old, and you are as you
were. It is too late!"

To Shamus, the time passed in Elfland had been no more than a year,
and his heart was sorrowful as he turned away without a word.

"Belike my father is dead," said he as he bent his steps toward
home.

There he also found new faces and was given the word that his
father had been dead this many a year. In sorrow Shamus turned
away, making sad songs to comfort his heart.

Thus he wandered through the world, finding no place where he could
rest. His songs were sad and all who heard them wept, but he was
not unhappy, for there is a certain pleasure in even a sad song.

Yet always he longed for Elfland and the ways of the Little People,
and the sound of the bell on the magic dog, whose chime brings
forgetfulness of all sorrow. Try as he would, he could never find
the way, and he knew that it was because his songs were sad and he
was no longer young at heart.

Older he grew with white hair and feeble step, and one day he was
weary and sat himself down in a wood to rest. He sat there,
thinking of his lost youth and the sad ways of the world, longing
to die.

As he lamented, his fingers plucked his harp and he played again
his best songs, those of running water, and the sound of wind in
the trees, and of moonlight on a grassy slope.

His heart grew young within him as he played, and when he rose to
his feet, the dimness of age fell away from his eyes. Before him
stood the Queen of the Little People, as she had stood long before.

"Will you come with me, Shamus?" said she.

"Alas," said he, "I am now too old."

"Your songs are young," said she, "and you are young again in
heart. Come with me, where you may be young forever and play glad
songs."

Shamus mounted up behind on the beautiful horse, away they flew,
and that was the last ever seen of him upon earth.

* * * * *

Hortense and Andy sat silent a moment as Fergus looked at them with his
merry blue eyes.

"I wish there were still Little People,"