been sent to take the place of the O'Briens' child.

"What for are you here without the child?" the King cried. "And what
are you all doing there on the floor, like fish tumbled out of a
basket? Get up and tell me what's wrong with you! Where is the
child?"

The fairies all choked and gasped and groaned and tried to speak. Then
the leader of the party staggered up to his feet and stammered out:
"The child is where it was before we went for it. We could not bring
it; we could not take it; we could not touch it. You might as well be
asking us to bring a lily from the fields of heaven."

"And why could you not take it?" the King asked. "Was the mother
holding it so fast in her arms? Could you not make her look the other
way while you'ld be taking it? Could you not put some charm on her so
that she'ld let it go? Or was she praying all the time, so that you
could do nothing with her? Or was she making those signs over it that
none of us can stand?"

"No, no," said the leader, so low that they could scarcely hear him;
"no, it wasn't that; the mother was doing none of them things. The
mother was dead!"

For a minute everybody was still. The Queen started and looked at the
leader of the party and leaned toward him. All the others gazed at him
too. Then the King said, "And why did you not bring the child?"

"I'm after telling you we couldn't touch the child," the leader
answered. "I went to take it, and all at once I felt burning hot, and
like I was all dried up into a cinder, and I think they must have
drawn a circle of fire round the child. And then I had that fearful
feeling that you have when you're near a horseshoe nail. There must
have been one somewhere about. You couldn't mistake that feeling--as
if needles of ice were going all through and through you. And so I was
driven back and could get no nearer to the child."

The woman who had been sent to take the place of the child was
standing near the King now, though she could scarcely stand at all,
and her face was all wet with tears. "But they made me go nearer to
the child than that," she cried. "These others pushed me close to her,
so that I'ld take her place and give the child to them. And I felt
burned up like a cinder, too, and then I felt the icy needles, and
then worse than that. I felt as if I was all cut across and across and
through and through with flaming swords, and torn with red-hot saws.
Not the way it is when you divide yourself, so that you can be