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 enough to remember every line. As soon as I heard him blundering and floundering like a fish upon dry land, through the first verse, and perceived him at a stand, I knew where the shoe pinched, and helped him to the next word, when he caught me up in an ecstasy, even as you saw but now. I promised, as the price of your admission, to hide me under his bearish gaberdine, and prompt him in the hour of need. I have just now been getting some food in the Castle, and am about to return to him."

"That's right--that's right, my dear Dickie," replied Wayland; "haste thee, for Heaven's sake! else the poor giant will be utterly disconsolate for want of his dwarfish auxiliary. Away with thee, Dickie!"

"Ay, ay!" answered the boy--"away with Dickie, when we have got what good of him we can. You will not let me know the story of this lady, then, who is as much sister of thine as I am?"

"Why, what good would it do thee, thou silly elf?" said Wayland.

"Oh, stand ye on these terms?" said the boy. "Well, I care not greatly about the matter--only, I never smell out a secret but I try to be either at the right or the wrong end of it, and so good evening to ye."

"Nay, but, Dickie," said Wayland, who knew the boy's restless and intriguing disposition too well not to fear his enmity--"stay, my dear Dickie--part not with old friends so shortly! Thou shalt know all I know of the lady one day."

"Ay!" said Dickie; "and that day