‘gO PRINCE PRIGIO.

 

caps of darkness, or anything nice and impos-
sible, but only in horrid useless facts, and
chemistry, and geology, and arithmetic, and
mathematics, and even political economy.
And the Firedrake would have. made a
mouthful of him, then.

So she was delighted when she heard this,
almost as much delighted as she was afraid
that he might fail in the most difficult adven-
ture. For it was one thing to egg on a Remora
to kill a Firedrake, and quite another to find
the princes if they were alive, and restore
them if they were dead!

But the prince said he had his plan, and
he stayed that night at the ambassador’s.
Next morning he rose very early, before
anyone else was up, that he might not have to
say ‘‘ Good-bye” to Lady Rosalind. Then he
flew in a moment to the old lonely castle,
where nobody went for fear of ghosts, ever
since the Court retired to Falkenstein.

How still it was, how deserted; not a sign
of life, and yet the prince was looking every-
where for some living thing. He hunted the
castle through in vain, and then went out to
the stable-yard; but all the dogs, of course,
had been taken away, and the farmers had
offered homes to the poultry. At last, stretched
at full length in a sunny place, the prince found
a very old, half-blind, miserable cat. The poor
creature was lean, and its fur had fallen off in