ced trembling, and then they saw that she was a
fair-haired young girl of about eighteen or twenty, but so thin and
pale that at first glance she appeared to be a child. She was
dreadfully dirty too, and clad in various garments that seemed to have
belonged to someone else much larger.

"Don't frighten her, Daimur," said Prince Redmond as he stepped over
beside the poor little thing.

"Tell us who you are, and what you are doing here," he said, addressing
her kindly. "We will do you no harm."

"I am Princess Helda of Oaklands," she said in a very timid voice.

"And where may that be?" asked Daimur, thinking she was probably out of
her head, as so far as he knew no such place existed.

"Alas," said the Princess. "Oaklands is now the Island of Despair,"
and she wrung her hands with a hopeless gesture.

At this answer Daimur was so amazed that he could not say a word, and
it was Prince Redmond who asked the Princess to tell them her story,
and whether she knew anything of Queen Amy. The Duchess had dried her
eyes and stood waiting in silence for every word.

The Princess began in her quiet voice.

"When I was only fourteen years old, my parents, who were King and
Queen of Oaklands and very much beloved by their subjects, one day
quite by accident, offended the Evil Magician, who had been traveling
through the kingdom disguised as a juggler, and entertaining crowds in
the streets with his skilful tricks.

"In revenge the Evil Magician enchanted the whole kingdom, tearing our
island up from the eastern sea and setting it down in this western one.
He turned my father and mother and their subjects into stones and built
a house and wall of them, and changed our beautiful cities into a dense
forest.

"Me he could not change, as I wear upon my arm a bracelet placed there
by a good fairy at my birth, which guards me from enchantment and harm.

"I lived then in the Magician's house, and his old witch of a
housekeeper and her ugly daughter made me do all manner of rough work,
and many a time would have beaten me had it not been for my magic
bracelet. At any rate they half starved me. I lived in the cellar
when I was not working in the kitchen."

"My dear," said the Duchess, "how can you expect us to believe such a
story? You say you were fourteen when all this happened. You cannot
be more than twenty now, and yet the Island of Despair has been where
it is for over seventy years."

"Yes," said the Princess, "t