know! I know!"

The Queen-mother looked over the garden wall. Hobbling along the road
was the old woman who had bade her go to Westroyal. "You who helped me
before, help me again!" cried the Queen-mother. "I have obeyed you. How
now shall I get a magic mirror for my son?"

The old woman looked up at her. "Go to the Deeps," she said, and she
hobbled off.

Now this was a dreadful command to the Queen-mother, for the Deeps was a
horrible black pool in the roughest and most dangerous part of the
country. It was said to be formed of the country's tears and to be also
bottomless, and to be haunted by beings of strange shape. There were
stories of their mysterious power and evil ways. Yet go she must, if
going meant the gaining of a magic mirror for her son. And she must go
alone, for only so could any seeker find the pathway to the pool, so it
was said.

"I will go at once, before my courage fails," she said, and she left her
sheltered garden and set off across the land.

She had many weary miles to travel, past villages and towns and fields,
and she was footsore and faint when at last she reached the winding
track that led between the darkening hills. Yet on she went, following
the murmur of a tiny stream that dropped through thick-set bushes into a
shadowed valley. On she went still, and now the darkness came, and she
had lost her way. She stumbled over fallen logs, pushed with bleeding
hands and torn clothes through bramble wildernesses, and found at last
her way again to the narrow track beside the little stream that murmured
in the dark.

On she went, and down. The stream suddenly widened into a round
blackness open to the sky, but walled in by jagged rocks. It was the
pool. Utterly spent through weariness and fear, she sank down among the
rocks to rest, and waited there for what might come to her.

Strange rustlings sounded round the rocks, strange forms loomed close
beside her, strange voices asked her: "What are you? Why come you to our
haunts?" Though her heart was sick with dread she answered boldly in a
firm clear voice. "Give me a magic mirror for my son, that he may learn
to rule."

There was a flash, and the pool and all the rocks were lit by a light
brighter and softer than that of moon or stars. All round her stood the
beings who had loomed so strangely in the darkness. They were fairies,
exquisite in shape and fineness, robed in flowing gossamer of many
colours. They smiled at her, and touched her w