d the
Princess's feet she saw the red mark left by the ankle ring, and knew
that her son's wife was no true Princess, but a convict's daughter.
And full of rage and shame she went away and mixed two cups.
The first she gave to the Princess to drink; and when it had killed
her (for it was poison) she dipped a finger into the dregs and rubbed
it inside the child's lips, and very soon he was dead too. Then she
sent for two ankle-chains and weights--one larger and one very
small--and fitted them on the two bodies and had them flung into the
creek. When the Prince came home he asked after his wife. 'She is
sleeping,' said the Queen, 'and you must be thirsty with hunting?'
She held out the second cup, and the Prince drank and passed it to
John, who drank also. Now in this cup was a drug which took away all
memory. And at once the Prince forgot all about his wife and child;
and John forgot too.

"For weeks after this the Prince complained that he felt unwell.
He told the doctors that there was an empty place in his head, and
they advised him to fill it by travelling. So he set out again, and
John went with him as before. On their journey they stayed for a
week with the King of Spain, and there the Prince fell in love with
the King of Spain's daughter, and married her, and brought her home
at the end of a year, during which she, too, had brought him a son.

"The night after their return, when the Prince and his second wife
slept, John kept watch outside the door. About midnight he heard the
noise of a chain dragging, but very softly, and up the stairs came a
lady in white with a child in her arms. John knew his former
mistress at once, and all his memory came back to him, but she put a
finger to her lips and went past him into the bed-chamber. She went
to the bed, laid a hand on her husband's pillow, and whispered:"

'Wife and babe below the river,
Twice will I come and then come never.'

"Without another word she turned and went slowly past John and down
the stairs."

"I know _that_, anyhow," Honoria interrupted. "That's 'East of the
Sun and West of the Moon,' or else it's the Princess whose brother
was changed into a Roebuck, or else--" But George flicked a pebble
at her, and Taffy went on, warming more and more to the story:--

"In the morning, when the Prince woke, his second wife saw his pillow
on the side farthest from her, and it was wet. 'Husband,' she said,
'you have been weeping to-ni