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never have any step-mother, and your father will always love you well.”

Then last of all she went to the bedside of her husband the King, and laid her letter on the pillow, close by his head.

“ Alas! dear husband,” she said, “ to-night I am looking at you, and you do not see me, but to-morrow morning you will be looking at me, when I shall not see you.”

Then she kissed him softly thrice, and bid him adieu, and went out of the palace to her dear rose-tree in the garden. It was nothing now but a bare black stump. So Queen Blanchelys lay down on the ground, and put her arms round the trunk, and from the dead branch she tore a long smooth thorn, and pierced her heart with it, and the drops of blood trickled to the roots of the tree, and at once the serpent at the roots shrivelled and died, and the tree again began to bud and sprout.

When the King woke in the morning the first thing he saw was the Queen’s letter, and he took it and read it at once, and as he read his cheeks turned pale, and he sighed bitterly, and then he called his courtiers, and told them what had happened, and they all went out into the garden