young fellow whom she had encountered at the pool of Haranton. She
blushed, and spoke with her father in the whistling and hissing language
which the Apsarasas use among themselves: and her father laughed long
and loud.

Says Raymond Bérenger: "Things might have fallen out much worse. Come
tell me now, Count of Poictesme, what is that I see in your breast
pocket wrapped in red silk?"

"It is a feather, King," replied Manuel, a little wearily, "wrapped in a
bit of my sister's best petticoat."

"Ay, ay," says Raymond Bérenger, with a grin that was becoming even more
benevolent, "and I need not ask what price you come expecting for that
feather. None the less, you are an excellently spoken-of young wizard of
noble condition, who have slain no doubt a reasonable number of giants
and dragons, and who have certainly turned kings from folly and
wickedness. For such fine rumors speed before the man who has fine deeds
behind him that you do not come into my realm as a stranger: and, I
repeat, things might have fallen out much worse."

"Now listen, all ye that hold Christmas here!" cried Manuel "A while
back I robbed this Princess of a feather, and the thought of it lay in
my mind more heavy than a feather, because I had taken what did not
belong to me. So a bond was on me, and I set out toward Provence to
restore to her a feather. And such happenings befell me by the way that
at Michaelmas I brought wisdom into one realm, and at All-Hallows I
brought piety into another realm. Now what I may be bringing into this
realm of yours at Heaven's most holy season, Heaven only knows. To the
eye it may seem a quite ordinary feather. Yet life in the wide world, I