The Blue Rose Fairy Book. Baring Maurice

and into the dark, and when he had counted thirty-two of them they stopped and he came to the door. He knocked at this door, and he heard a hoarse voice saying: 'Who is there?'

      "'It is I, Lieblich Gedacht,' he answered. 'I have come for advice.'

      "The door was opened at once, and Lieblich Gedacht found himself in a cell lit by a lantern, and in front of him, sitting at a table and reading a large book, which had nothing but notes in it, was Sackbut the Hermit.

      "'Well, what do you want?' asked the hermit in a gruff voice. 'Be quick and tell me, because I am busy and I have got no time to waste. I am learning a fugue by one of those new-fangled German musicians, and I must know it by next Sunday, for there's a man in one of their cities who has the gift, and I shall have to go.'

      "'I have plighted my troth to Vox Angelica,' said Lieblich Gedacht. 'We were travelling together to the City of Pleasant Sounds to be married, and we stopped on the way in the Forest of Discord.'

      "'That was a silly thing to do,' said Sackbut.

      "'We slept the night there, and when I woke up in the morning Vox Angelica had disappeared.'

      "'Did you hear anything in the night?' asked Sackbut.

      "'No,' said Lieblich Gedacht, 'but I had a bad nightmare. I dreamed the trees were taking her away and strangling me.'

      "'I see,' said Sackbut, 'it's Bourdon the wizard; he's at his old tricks again. Vox Angelica has been carried away by Bourdon, and he has probably hidden her somewhere. He would not dare keep her in his castle, because the Chromatics are such gossips that the whole kingdom would know it at once. She is a prisoner somewhere; of that you can be sure. But where I cannot tell you. All I can advise you is to go and ask Echo: she hears everything.'