fin, on the Island of the Nine Whirlpools.

The Queen, left at home, cried for a day and a night, and then she
remembered the witch and called to her. And the witch came, and the
Queen told her all.

"For the sake of the twice twenty-five kisses you gave me," said the
witch, "I will help you. But it is the last thing I can do, and it is
not much. Your daughter is under a spell, and I can take you to her.
But, if I do, you will have to be turned to stone, and to stay so till
the spell is taken off the child."

"I would be a stone for a thousand years," said the poor Queen, "if at
the end of them I could see my dear again."

So the witch took the Queen in a carriage drawn by live sunbeams (which
travel more quickly than anything else in the world, and much quicker
than thunder), and so away and away to the Lone Tower on the Island of
the Nine Whirlpools. And there was the Princess sitting on the floor in
the best room of the Lone Tower, crying as if her heart would break, and
the dragon and the griffin were sitting primly on each side of her.

"Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother," she cried, and hung around the Queen's
neck as if she would never let go.

"Now," said the witch, when they had all cried as much as was good for
them, "I can do one or two other little things for you. Time shall not
make the Princess sad. All days will be like one day till her deliverer
comes. And you and I, dear Queen, will sit in stone at the gate of the
tower. In doing this for you I lose all my witch's powers, and when I
say the spell that changes you to stone, I shall change with you, and if
ever we come out of the stone, I shall be a witch no more, but only a
happy old woman."

Then the three kissed one another again and again, and the witch said
the spell, and on each side of the door there was now a stone lady. One
of them had a stone crown on its head and a stone scepter in its hand;
but the other held a stone tablet with words on it, which the griffin
and the dragon could not read, though they had both had a very good
education.

And now all days seemed like one day to the Princess, and the next day
always seemed the day when her mother would come out of the stone and
kiss her again. And the years went slowly by. The wicked King died, and
some one else took his kingdom, and many things were changed in the
world; but the island did not change, nor the Nine Whirlpools, nor the
griffin, nor the dragon, nor the two stone ladies. And all