e
quiet!"

And without further ado he began, in a terribly hoarse and cracked
voice,--

"Snip-snap, frip-frap,
Bungalee, tee hee lees;
Jip-jap; nip-nap,
Tungatee tinum gee me strap,
Bring me a bottle of cheese."

"Oh, come," exclaimed the Prince, "you must really know that that is
nonsense! It certainly means nothing."

[Illustration]

"How do you know?" demanded the raven, fixing his glittering eye on the
Prince. "Do you understand the language of love?"

"No," said Vance, more humbly; "I must confess that I don't, though I've
always heard it was very silly."

"Speaking of the boundaries of a king--" the raven began easily; but the
Prince interrupted in great haste.

"Nobody _was_ speaking of boundaries," he said sharply; "you made that
up yourself."

"--dom," resumed the raven, calmly, paying no sort of attention to the
interruption of the Prince, but cocking his head on one side and looking
wickedly out of one eye, "they are very useful to know, and there are
various ways of learning them. Some people learn them in the school
room; that's one way: some travel; that's--"

But before he could get any farther Vance had caught up a stone and
flung it at him. With a terrible croaking the raven flew up into the air
in circles higher and higher until he vanished straight overhead.

"Ten to one that was Godmother herself," grumbled Vance, as he picked up
his box and started again along the dusty road.

All the rest of the day he travelled, growing more and more weary, until
at sunset he came to a very old woman sitting beside a great tree upon
the river's bank.

"Hallo!" cried Vance, not too politely.

The wrinkled old creature looked at the river, at the tree, at the
sky,--everywhere, in a word, except at the travel-stained Vance.

"Come!" he said more roughly yet, "why don't you speak when you are
spoken to? Do you know who I am?"

The aged crone wrinkled her forehead and lifted her grizzled eyebrows,
still without looking at him.

"No," she answered coolly, "I don't know that I do. You look like a
boot-black with that box on your shoulders, only that a boot-black would
be more civil-spoken."

An angry retort sprang to the lips of the Prince, but before he could
give vent to it a terrible little shrill sound from the box struck his
ears. In sudden dismay he unslung the baby-house, and opened it to
discover what was the matter with his family.

In the middle of the floor