so the month passed prosperously and uneventfully, while the servitors of queen freydis behaved in every respect as if they were human beings: and at the end of the month the stork came.

manuel and niafer, it happened, were fishing on the river bank rather late that evening, when they saw the great bird approaching, high overhead, all glistening white in the sunset, except for his thin scarlet legs and the blue shadowings in the hollows of his wings. from his beak depended a largish bundle, in pale blue wrappings, so that at a glance they knew the stork was bringing a girl.

statelily the bird lighted on the window sill, as though he were quite familiar with this way of entering manuel's bedroom, and the bird went in, carrying the child. this was a high and happy moment for the fond parents as they watched him, and they kissed each other rather solemnly.

then niafer left manuel to get together the fishing tackle, and she hastened into the house to return to the stork the first of his promissory notes in exchange for the baby. and as manuel was winding up the lines, queen freydis came to him, for she too had seen the stork's approach; and was, she said, with a grave smile, well pleased that the affair was settled.

"for now the stork has come, yet others may come," says freydis, "and we shall celebrate the happy event with a gay feast this night in honor of your child."

"that is very kind and characteristic of you," said manuel, "but i suppose you will be wanting me to make a speech, and i am quite unprepared."

"no, we will have none of your high-minded and devastating speeches at our banquet. no, for your place is with your wife. no, manuel, you are not bidden to this feast, for all that it is to do honor to your child. no, no, gray manuel, you must remain upstairs this evening and throughout the night, because this feast is for them that serve me: and you do not serve me any longer, and the ways of them that serve me are not your ways."

"ah!" says manuel, "so there is sorcery afoot! yes, freydis, i have quite given over that sort of thing. and while not for a moment would i seem to be criticizing anybody, i hope before long to see you settling down, with some fine solid fellow, and forsaking these empty frivolities for the higher and real pleasures of life."

"and what are these delights, gray manuel?"

"the joy that is in the sight of your children playing happily about your hearth, and developing into honorable men and gracious women, and bringing their children in turn to cluster about your tired old knees, as the winter evenings draw in, and in the cosy fire-light you smile across the curly heads of these children's children at the dear wrinkled white-haired face of your beloved and time-tested helpmate, and are satisfied, all in all, with your life, and know that, by and large, heaven has been rather undeservedly kind to you," says manuel, sighing. "yes, freydis, yes, you may believe me that such are the real joys of life; and that such pleasures are more profitably pursued than are the idle gaieties of sorcery and witchcraft, which indeed at our age, if you will permit me to speak thus frankly, dear friend, are hardly dignified."

freydis shook her proud dark head. her smiling was grim.

"decidedly, i shall not ever understand you. doddering patriarch, do you not comprehend you are already discoursing about a score or two of grandchildren on the ground of having a five-minute-old daughter, whom you have not yet seen? nor is that child's future, it may be, yours to settle—but go to your wife, for this is niafer's man who is talking, and not mine. go up, methuselah, and behold the new life which you have created and cannot control!"

manuel went to niafer, and found her sewing. "my dear, this will not do at all, for you ought to be in bed with the newborn child, as is the custom with the mothers of philistia."

"what nonsense!" says niafer, "when i have to be changing every one of the pink bows on melicent's caps for blue bows."

"still, niafer, it is eminently necessary for us to be placating the philistines in all respects, in this delicate matter of your having a baby."

niafer grumbled, but obeyed. she presently lay in the golden bed of freydis: then manuel duly looked at the contents of the small heaving bundle at niafer's side: and whether or no he scaled the conventional peaks of emotion was nobody's concern save manuel's. he began, in any event, to talk in the vein which fathers ordinarily feel such high occasions to demand. but niafer, who was never romantic nowadays, merely said that, anyhow, it was a blessing it was all over, and that she hoped, now, they would soon be leaving sargyll.

"but freydis is so kind, my dear," said manuel, "and so fond of you!"

"i never in my life," declared niafer, "knew anybody to go off so terribly in their looks as that two-faced cat has done since the first time i saw her prancing on her tall horse and rolling her snake eyes at you. as for being fond of me, i trust her exactly as far as i can see her."

"yet, niafer, i have heard you declare, time and again—"

"but if you did, manuel, one has to be civil."

manuel shrugged, discreetly. "you women!" he observed, discreetly.

"—as if it were not as plain as the nose on her face—and i do not suppose that even you, manuel, will be contending she has a really good nose,—that the woman is simply itching to make a fool of you, and to have everybody laughing at you, again! manuel, i declare i have no patience with you when you keep arguing about such unarguable facts!"

manuel, exercising augmented discretion, now said nothing whatever.

"—and you may talk yourself black in the face, manuel, but nevertheless i am going to name the child melicent, after my own mother, as soon as a priest can be fetched from the mainland to christen her. no, manuel, it is all very well for your dear friend to call herself a gray witch, but i do not notice any priests coming to this house unless they are especially sent for, and i draw my own conclusions."

"well, well, let us not argue about it, my dear."

"yes, but who started all this arguing and fault-finding, i would like to know!"

"why, to be sure i did. but i spoke without thinking. i was wrong. i admit it. so do not excite yourself, dear snip."

"—and as if i could help the child's not being a boy!"

"but i never said—"

"no, but you keep thinking it, and sulking is the one thing i cannot stand. no, manuel, no, i do not complain, but i do think that, after all i have been through with, sleeping around in tents, and running away from northmen, and never having a moment's comfort, after i had naturally figured on being a real countess—" niafer whimpered sleepily.

"yes, yes," says manuel, stroking her soft crinkly hair.

"—and with that silky hell-cat watching me all the time,—and looking ten years younger than i do, now that you have got my face and legs all wrong,—and planning i do not know what—"

"yes, to be sure," says manuel, soothingly: "you are quite right, my dear."

so a silence fell, and presently niafer slept. manuel sat with hunched shoulders, watching the wife he had fetched back from paradise at the price of his youth. his face was grave, his lips were puckered and protruded. he smiled by and by, and he shook his head. he sighed, not as one who is grieved, but like a man perplexed and a little weary.

now some while after niafer was asleep, and when the night was fairly advanced, you could hear a whizzing and a snorting in the air. manuel went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain figured with ramping gold dragons, and he looked out, to find a vast number of tiny bluish lights skipping about confusedly and agilely in the darkness, like shining fleas. these approached the river bank, and gathered there. then the assembled lights began to come toward the house. you could now see these lights were carried by dwarfs who had the eyes of owls and the long beaks of storks. these dwarfs were jumping and dancing about freydis like an insane body-guard.

freydis walked among them very remarkably attired. upon her head shone the uraeus crown, and she carried a long rod of cedar-wood topped with an apple carved in bluestone, and at her side came the appearance of a tall young man.

so they all approached the house, and the young man looked up fixedly at the unlighted window, as though he were looking at manuel. the young man smiled: his teeth gleamed in the blue glare. then the whole company entered the house, and from manuel's station at the window you could see no more, but you could hear small prancing hoof-beats downstairs and the clattering of plates and much whinnying laughter. manuel was plucking irresolutely at his grizzled short beard, for there was no doubt as to the strapping tall young fellow.

presently you could hear music: it was the ravishing nis air, which charms the mind into sweet confusion and oblivion, and manuel did not make any apparent attempt to withstand its wooing. he hastily undressed, knelt for a decorous interval, and climbed vexedly into bed.