Page:The Enchanted Knights; or The Chronicle of the Three Sisters.djvu/16

4 take her away, as the country’s custom requires.” “It is a bargain—your hand,” exclaimed the bear, stretching out his rough paw, “in seven days I redeem my love with an hundred weight of gold, and take her home.” “Let it be so settled,” said the count,” uponcount, “upon [sic] the word of a man!” They then separated in peace, the bear trotting to his den; the count, who did not tarry long in the terrible forest, arrived, by the glimmer of the stars, tired and harrassed, at his castle.

A bear who can speak and act like a man, every one knows, is not a natural, but a bewitched one. This the count easily conceived, and therefore tried to outdo his shaggy son-in-law, and to barricade himself in his fortified castle in such a way as to make it impossible for the brute to get in on the appointed day, and carry off his bride. If ever speech and sense, he reasoned, are given to a bear, he is after all but a bear, and possesses no more than the qualities of a natural one. I hope he will not be able to fly, like a bird through the air nor, pass through the keyhole like a ghost.

The next morning he related his adventure in the forest to his spouse and the young ladies. Wulfield, hearing that she was to be wedded to a hideous bear,