Page:English Fairy Tales.djvu/258



ONG before Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, there reigned in the eastern part of England a king who kept his court at Colchester. In the midst of all his glory, his queen died, leaving behind her an only daughter, about fifteen years of age who for her beauty and kindness was the wonder of all that knew her. But the king hearing of a lady who had likewise an only daughter, had a mind to marry her for the sake of her riches, though she was old, ugly, hook-nosed, and hump-backed. Her daughter was a yellow dowdy, full of envy and ill-nature; and, in short, was much of the same mould as her mother. But in a few weeks the king, attended by the nobility and gentry, brought his deformed bride to the palace, where the marriage rites were performed. She had not been long in the Court before she set the king against his own beautiful daughter by false reports. The young princess having lost her father's love, grew weary of the Court, and one day, meeting with her father in the garden, she begged him, with tears in her eyes, to let her go and seek