not like to receive callers in the morning. But the silly
countryman was too vain of his great deed to notice the King's
disagreeable frown.

"You have here a wolf, Sire," he said proudly. "I have shot for you a
wolf, and I come to claim the promised reward."

But at this unlucky moment the King started up with an angry cry. He had
noticed his mark on the wolf's right ear.

"Ho! Seize the villain!" he shouted to his soldiers. "He has slain my
tame wolf; he has shot my pet! Away with him to prison; and to-morrow he
dies."

It was useless for the poor man to scream and cry and try to explain
that it was all a mistake. The King was furious. His wolf was killed,
and the murderer must die.

In those days this was the way kings punished men who displeased them in
any way. There were no delays; things happened very quickly. So they
dragged the poor fellow off to a dark, damp dungeon and left him there
howling and tearing his hair, wishing that wolves had never been saved
from the flood by Noah and his Ark.

Now not far from this place little Saint Bridget lived. When she chose
the beautiful spot for her home there were no houses near, only a great
oak-tree, under which she built her little hut. It had but one room and
the roof was covered with grass and straw. It seemed almost like a
doll's playhouse, it was so small; and Bridget herself was like a big,
golden-haired wax doll,--the prettiest doll you ever saw.

She was so beautiful and so good that people wanted to live near her,
where they could see her sweet face often and hear her voice. When they
found where she had built her cell, men came flocking from all the
country round about with their wives and children and their household
goods, their cows and pigs and chickens; and camping on the green grass
under the great oak-tree they said, "We will live here, too, where Saint
Bridget is."

So house after house was built, and a village grew up about her little
cell; and for a name it had _Kildare_, which in Irish means "Cell of the
Oak." Soon Kildare became so fashionable that even the King must have a
palace and a park there. And it was in this park that the King's wolf
had been killed.

Now Bridget knew the man who had shot the wolf, and when she heard into
what terrible trouble he had fallen she was very sorry, for she was a
kind-hearted little girl. She knew he was a silly fellow to shoot the
tame wolf; but still it was all a mistake, and she thought he ought n