ort her.
"Come, dance and sing with us and forget your grief," they said. She
shook her head. "The terrible fighting!" she said. "See where far below
men rage, killing each other. Rivers run red with blood, and the sorrow
of weeping women rises through the air to where I sit. How can I dance
and sing?"

"It is the world at war," said an older fairy sadly. "I too have wept in
earlier days when men have fought. But our tears are wasted, little
sister. Come away."

Fairy Tenderheart looked eagerly at her. "You who have watched the world
so many years," she said, "tell me why such dreadful deeds are done down
there."

The older fairy bent her eyes on the blackened plains of earth. "I
cannot tell you that," she slowly said. "We watch and pity, but we
cannot know what works in the hearts of men that they should gather in
their millions to destroy their brothers and themselves. No other
creature turns on its own kind and kills so terribly as man."

[Illustration: In twos and threes her sisters flew from Fairyland to put
their arms about her, but none could comfort her.]

"What can we do? It must be stopped. What can we do?"

"We can do nothing, little sister. See where the women of the world
stretch out their hands, imploring men to live in peace. They beg the
lives of fathers, husbands, sons; they point to ruined homes and
desolated lands. 'War wrecks our lives!' they cry. Yet even for those
they love men will not give up battle. What, then, can fairies do? Tears
are useless. Come away."

"I must stay here. I must think of something I can do," said Fairy
Tenderheart; and she would not go.

Her tears had stopped. She searched with anxious eyes across the world
to find some means of helping men to better things, but no way could she
find. And still the fighters shot and stabbed, and the dying and the
dead lay piled upon the fields.

Another fairy flew to her. "Come away, little sister!" she said. "I
cannot bear to see you sorrowing. Come, or you will forget the merry
ways of Fairyland and grow like the Oldest Fairy of All, who spends her
life brooding over this dreary earth."

Fairy Tenderheart sprang up. "Where is she? Tell me where to find her.
Why did I not know of her before? I will go to her that we may be
companions in our sorrow. Perhaps together we may find a way to help."

"Ah, do not go. Listen! She is so old that she has watched the world
since the beginning of wars, yet, as you see, she has found no wa