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144 one, lest some harm should come to the Real Kitchen-Maid. For he meant to marry her, and he had a feeling that his parents would not approve of the match.

Now that night, when the whole palace was asleep, the Real Kitchen-Maid got up and crept out past the sleepy sentinel and went home to her father the farmer and got one of his great white cart horses and rode away through the woods to the cavern where the Great White Rat sits sleeplessly guarding the Magic Cat’s-eye.

And every one wondered why he guarded it so carefully, for it seemed to have no great value. But the Great White Rat watched it constantly, without ever closing one of those round bright rat’-eyes of his, and when folk sought to lay hands on it he said—

“Be careful: it has the power to change you into a mouse.”

On which folk dropped it hastily and went their ways, leaving him still on guard.

To him now went the little Kitchen-Maid, and asked for help, for he was thousands of years old, and had more wisdom between his nose and ears than all the books in all the world. She told him all that had happened.