queen then placed the patients in pairs in the inner ring, and the
sixty fairies in pairs in the middle ring. Each little fairy was
three feet and a half high, and carried a small wand in her right
hand, and a bunch of fairy flowers--cuckoo's boots, baby's bells,
and day's-eyes--in her left hand. Then the queen, who was four feet
and a half in height, took the outside ring. On her head was a crown
of wild flowers, in her right hand she carried a wand, and in her
left a posy of fairy flowers. At a signal from the queen they began
marching round the rings, singing in chorus:

"We march round by two and two
The circles of the sacred well
That lies in the dell."

When they had walked twice round the ring singing, the queen took
her seat upon the throne, and calling each patient to her, she
touched him with her wand and bade him go down to the sacred well
and dip his body into the water three times, promising that all his
ills should be cured. As each one came forth from the spring he
knelt before the queen, and she blessed him, and told him to hurry
home and put on dry clothes. So that all were cured of their ills.



II.

Now the old witch who had worked all these evils lived near the well
in a cottage. She had first learned witchcraft from a book called
_The Black Art_, which a gentleman farmer had lent her when a
girl. She progressed rapidly with her studies, and being eager to