1] THE LOST PRINCE. 57

Out laughed the Giant as he heard this observa-
tion. op

‘Sweet girls!’ he said. ‘Know you not, Mackle-
thorpe, that these maidens claim me as their Uncle
Pattle-perry ? they have come to look for their brother
forsooth—ha ha!

At these words, and at the manner of the speaker,
Pettina grew very angry, and stepping quickly forward
was about to address to the Giant some remark by
which he would not have been flattered. Unfortu-
nately, the suddenness of her movement left Pincher
for a moment unconcealed, and the eyes of the Dwarf
Macklethorpe fell directly upon him. With a shrill
yell, which so startled the girl that she quite forgot what
she was about to say, the Dwarf screamed out fran-
tically :

‘That's he! that’she! I see him! Isee him! The
little beast has taken the shape of a dog! Kill him!
kill him!’

And now ensued a most extraordinary scene.
Macklethorpe placed one of his hands on the small
of his back, the other on his forehead, and uttered a
strange sound, immediately after which he became a
large bull-terrier of twice the size and weight of his
adversary, and rushed furiously at him. But Rindel-
grover was equal to the occasion; curving his tail
over his back, lifting his paw on to his nose, and
giving vent in his turn to a wondrous noise, he in-
stantly became a tremendously powerful mastiff, from
whom the bull-terrier had only just time to escape.
In another instant, however, he reappeared in the
form of a tiger, with whom the mastiff would have