Page:The sleeping beauty (IA sleepingbeauty00evanrich).pdf/80

 Even the spits which were turning at the fire, laden with perigee and pheasants cooking for the Princess’s birthday east—even they ceased to turn, and the very fire stopped flickering and the flames sank down.

A deep silence fell over the castle. In the fields the lambs ceased to bleat, the horses to neigh and the cows to low. The birds in the trees were silent. One moment the air was full of the music of their twittering; the next, all was as still as in a desert. The very wind dropped to sleep in the woods; not a leaf stirred, and the white clouds were motionless in the sky.

So sleep fell upon the enchanted castle and upon all within it, because of the Princess Briar-Rose, who lay there on her couch in the ancient tower waiting till the hundred years should be past and the Prince should come to waken her.

And all round the castle there grew up a hedge of thorn, tangled with ivy, woodbine and creeping plants, so dense that from a distance it seemed like a little wood. Higher and higher it grew, closing round the castle like a wall until all that could be seen was the top of the highest tower, and the flagstaff from which the royal standard hung limp and motionless.

And the years went by, each with its changing seasons. Spring came and brought to the fields and woods outside the new life of leaf and flower. The trees awoke from their winter sleep and clothed themselves gloriously in