PRINCE RICARDO. 205

 

remember that she was back in her own
country. The hills were those she used to see
from her father’s palace windows when she was.
a child. And she remembered with horror that
once a year her people used to send a beautiful
girl to the Earthquaker, by way of keeping him
quiet, as you shall hear presently. And now
she heard light footsteps and a sound of weep-
ing, and lo! a great troop of pretty girls passed,
sweeping in and out of the halls in a kind of
procession, and looking unhappy and lost.

Jaqueline ran to them..

“Where am I? who are you?” she cried, in
the language of her own country, which came
back to her on a sudden.

“We are nurses of the Earthquaker,” they
said. ‘‘ Our duty is to sing him asleep, and every
year he must have a new song; and every year
a new maiden must be sent down from earth,
with a new sleepy song she has learned from
the priests of Manoa, the City of the Sun. Are
you the new singer ?”

“No, I’m not,” said Jaqueline. ‘‘I don’t
know the priests of Manoa; I don’t know any
new sleepy song. I only want to find the way
out.”

“There is no way, or we should have
found it,” said one of the maidens; ‘‘and, if
you are the wrong girl, by the day after
to-morrow they must send the right one,
otherwise the Earthquaker will waken, and