have listened to your mother's advice,
you have brought bad luck on us both, and then, all that has passed
between us will be as nothing."

"No," she said, "she hadn't listened to her mother's advice."

So when she reached home, and had gone to bed, it was the old story
over again. There came a man and lay down beside her; but at dead of
night, when she heard he slept, she got up and struck a light, lit the
candle, and let the light shine on him, and so she saw that he was the
loveliest _Prince_ one ever set eyes on, and she fell so deep in love
with him on the spot, that she thought she couldn't live if she didn't
give him a kiss there and then. And so she did; but as she kissed him,
she dropped three hot drops of tallow on his shirt, and he woke up.

"What have you done?" he cried; "now you have made us both unlucky,
for had you held out only this one year, I had been freed. For I have
a step-mother who has bewitched me, so that I am a _White Bear_ by
day, and a _Man_ by night. But now all ties are snapt between us; now
I must set off from you to her. She lives in a Castle which stands
_East of the Sun and West of the Moon_, and there, too, is a
_Princess_, with a nose three ells long, and she's the wife I must
have now."

She wept and took it ill, but there was no help for it; go he must.

Then she asked if she mightn't go with him.

No, she mightn't.

"Tell me the way, then," she said, "and I'll search you out; _that_
surely I may get leave to do."

[Illustration: "Tell me the way, then," she said, "and I'll search you
out."]

"Yes," she might do that, he said; "but there was no way to that
place. It lay _East of the Sun and West of the Moon_, and thither
she'd never find her way."

So next morning, when she woke up, both _Prince_ and castle were gone,
and then she lay on a little green patch, in the midst of the gloomy
thick wood, and by her side lay the same bundle of rags she had
brought with her from her old home.

[Illustration: And then she lay on a little green patch in the midst of
the gloomy thick wood.]

So when she had rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and wept till she
was tired, she set out on her way, and walked many, many days, till
she came to a lofty crag. Under it sat an old hag, and played with a
gold apple which she tossed about. Here the lassie asked if she knew
the way to the Prince, who lived with his step-mother in the Castle,
that lay _East of the Sun and West of the Moon_,