head, was a horse no farther down than the
shoulders, all the rest of him was a Knight, a splendid knight in full
armor of shining steel. He was without weapon of any kind, and even
while the children shrank from the sight of his big ugly head with its
sad eyes and long yellow teeth, they saw that this was not a creature
to be much afraid of.

"Well, I scared 'em away, didn't I?" he asked triumphantly, and then,
hanging his head a little, he added in rather a humble tone, "It's
pretty poor sport hunting Fidgets, I know, but it's about all I can
get nowadays. Hope they didn't hurt you?" he added politely.

"Not a bit," said Rudolf, "but I'm sure I'm glad you came along when
you did, for I don't know how we ever would have got rid of the
beastly little things. Only when we first saw you, we thought--"

"Oh, I know," interrupted the stranger hastily--"you thought it was
something worse. That's it, that's just my luck! I'm the gentlest
creature in the world and everybody's afraid of me. My business," he
explained, turning to Ann, "is to redress wrongs and to see after the
ladies, but--bless you--they won't let me get near enough to do
anything for 'em!" A great tear rolled down his long nose as he spoke,
and he looked so silly that Ann and Rudolf could hardly help laughing
at him, though they did not in the least want to be rude.

"And then," continued the creature, sobbing, "I'm so divided in my
feelings. If I were only _all_ Knight, now, or even all Mare, I'd be
thankful, but a Knight-mare is an unsatisfactory sort of thing to be."

"A Knight-mare--Oh, how dreadful!" cried Ann, drawing away from him.
"Is _that_ what you are?"

"There! You see how it is!" exclaimed the Knight-mare, tossing his
long black mane. "Nobody's got any sympathy for me. How would _you_
like it? Suppose you were a little girl only as far as your shoulders
and all the rest of you hippopotamus, eh?"

"I wouldn't like it at all," said Ann, after thinking a moment.

"Then no more do I," said the Knight-mare, and sighed a long sad sigh.

"Would you mind telling us how it happened?" asked Rudolf politely.

"Not at all," said the Knight-mare. "You see I was a great boy for
fighting in the old days--though you mightn't think it to see me
now--and I used to ride forth to battle on my coal-black steed, this
very mare whose head I'm wearing now. Well, of course I was a terror
to my enemies, used to scare 'em into fits, and I suppose it was one
of th