TWILIGHT LAND

you can prove yourself to be a greater man than my
husband.”

“ Pooh!” said the magician, “that will be easy enough
to prove; tell me how you would have me do so and I
will do it.”

“Very well,” said the princess, “then let me see you
change yourself into a lion. If you can do that I may
perhaps believe you to be as great as my husband.”

‘Tt shall,” said the magician, “be as you say. He
began to mutter spells and strange words, and then all of
a sudden he was gone, and in his place there stood a lion
with bristling mane and flaming eyes—a sight fit of itself
to kill a body with terror.

“That will do!” cried the princess, quaking and
trembling at the sight, and thereupon the magician took
his own shape again.

“Now,” said he, ‘‘do you believe that I am as great as
the poor soldier ? ”

‘Not yet,” said the princess; “I have seen how big
you can make yourself, now I wish to see how little you
can become. Let me see you change yourself into a
mouse.”

“So be it,” said the magician, and began again to
mutter his spells. Then all of a sudden he was gone
just as he was gone before, and in his place was a little
mouse sitting up and looking at the princess with a pair.
of eyes like glass beads,

But he did not sit there long. This was what the
soldier had planned for, and all the while he had been
standing by with his feather hat upon his head. Up he
raised his foot, and down he set it upon the mouse.

Crunch !—that was an end of the magician.

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