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The Hair Tree.

life. I was standing upon a rock looking into the clear green water, and thinking whether I would wait another day or spring into it at once, and so end my troubles, when I heard a soft voice above me saying, “Trevina,” and looking up, I saw a beautiful sea-gull floating in the air.

“Poor Trevina,” it said, “I can’t carry you away, but I can take a message to your father. I hate the tortoise-king and his mother as much as you do, and would gladly do anything to annoy them. Tell me what I shall say to your father, and I will fly to him to-night.”

“Will you really, dear, dear gull?” cried I, joyfully. “I shall be grateful to you all my life. Go, then, and tell him that I was stolen by the tortoise-king, and am upon the little island. Tell him to come for me at once, and to bring plenty of guns and swords with which to kill the tortoises.” But scarcely were the words out of my mouth when there was a rumbling noise beside me, and with a bang like thunder a gulf opened in the ground, and there started up through it a hideous figure, very much like the tortoise-king, but bigger and fatter, whom I at once guessed to be his mother. The sea-gull,

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