she dashed again.

By this time, the man was so vexed that he lost his temper; and he who
does that, usually loses the game, while he who controls the wrath
within, wins. Mad as a flaming fire, he lost his brains also and threw
bit and bridle and the whole harness after the fleet animal.

Alas! alas! the wife had started to run after the filly and the iron
bit struck her on the cheek. It did not hurt, but he had broken his
vow.

Now came the surprise of his life. It was as if, at one moment, a
flash of lightning had made all things bright; and then in another
second was inky darkness. He saw this lovely wife, one moment active
and fleet as a deer. In another, in the twinkling of an eye, nothing
was there. She had vanished. After this, there was a lonely home,
empty of its light and cheer.

But by living with human beings, a new idea and form of life had
transformed this fairy, and a new spell was laid on her. Mother-love
had been awakened in her heart. Henceforth, though the law of the
fairy world would not allow her to touch again the realm of earth,
she, having once been wife and parent, could not forget the babies
born of her body. So, making a sod raft, a floating island, she came
up at night, and often, while these three mortals lived, this fairy
mother would spend hours tenderly talking to her husband and her two
children, who were now big boy and girl, as they stood on the lake
shore.

On his part, the father did not think it "an ideal arrangement," as