placid and still, and the priest thought he marked a smile on his face. Doubting no more, he blessed him, and hallowed him as a Christian; and the child still lay as though glad and peaceful, and his mother's heart leapt up, for she hoped that she might love him without fear.

"Ha!" sneered the old aunt, " Robin Goodfellow was christened, man; and did that save him from becoming the spiteful Hob-goblin?"18

“Even so,” the priest made answer, "he followed unchecked the longings and promptings of his elvish nature, till he sported away the hallowing grace, and became an elf outright."

"And will it be thus with our babe ?" asked Owen.

Surely that depends on yourselves and on him," answered the old man. "To overcome the Imp and to draw forth the

Christian, is the task of his life."

"Nor need we look on him as sent for our misdeed," said the mother, wistfully, as she fondled him more freely.

"The wish was not a sinful one," said the priest, "though you may have been over much set on it; and since it hath been granted, your aim must be that it may work good and not harm." So the priest departed, and Owen and his wife rejoiced, though with fear as well as joy.

Much did the good housewife marvel how to clothe her tiny boy. Truly, for the first few days he grew fast, soon exchanged his acorn cup for a walnut shell, and outgrowing that again, had to sleep in the warm nest of the long-tailed titmouse, which

his father found in the thorn bush by the yard gate.

But there his growth stopped, and though he could trot and run as fast as the nimble lady-bird, he never became higher than his father's thumb; and as cold weather came on, his mother so feared that the frost would pinch him to death, that she never let him out of his bed till evening, when what freaks he would play ! climbing up his father from toe to head, where he sat peeping, as out of a forest, from the good farmer's thick black hair, or scrambling on the handle of his mug of ale, and laughing to see the bubbles rise and float.

Noble ladies, as well as country folks, came to see the wonderful child peep out of the round opening of his nest and make his bow, so that Owen used to call him his little Tom Tit, and by and by every one knew him as Tom Thumb. The grand ladies brought gifts of silver posset cups, scarlet mantles, and furred kirtles to his mother, and they would have given choice robes for the babe, but none could he wear; his arms and legs went through the meshes of their finest lace, and their warm. cloth stifled him, so that it was as if he had been dressed in fishing nets and door mats. Yet he longed to see the world, and would cry to be allowed one run out of doors, were it only along the window sill.

One evening, at sunset, his mother was trying to comfort him by promising to carry him in his nest round the farm-yard as soon as the frost was gone, when something even less than Tom Thumb himself was seen on the top of the nest.'

19

It was a chariot made of a hazel nut, covered in with grasshoppers' wings, and drawn by half a dozen midges, which were checked by a pull at the cobweb reins given by a grey-coated gnat, who sat on the coach-box. Within was seated a lady, richly robed in the royal purple of the pansy-flower, and with a sparkling crown of green and red light upon her head, while there followed a train of little elves and fays, in their roughweather garments of bats' fur, with fairy-caps on their heads, 20

Sorely frightened was the good housewife, for she knew it was no other than Mab herself, the Queen of the Fairies, and she feared that she could have come for no purpose but to steal away her precious boy. She caught him in her hand, and, crossing herself, fell down on her knees.

"Fear

Queen Mab smiled graciously and nodded her head. not, good dame," she said; "your son is safe with you now, though we may yet claim him as one of us. Know that he is a special favourite with the fairies, and I am come to provide him with raiment, since you rude mortals know not how to make your fingers serve for fairy needs. Elves, produce my gifts!""1

Half a dozen elves flew forward, bearing between them such an urn as that wherein the poppy seed is nursed, and from it they drew a suit of clothes made by the workmen of the fairies. The shirt was spun by the gossamer spider, the doublet was woven of the down of the thistle, the hose were of apple and while the mother was admiring them, she felt a prick

rind;

Ꭰ

in each eye, and raised her hand to chase away the gnat, as she thought, but she heard, "Ha! ha! ho! ho!" in her ear, and before her flashed Puck. "Ho! ho! mistress, you took me for a midge! It was in your son's service. We forgot his garters, and I was providing him."

The housewife found that the elf had drawn out two of her eyelashes, and that the other fairies were tying up Tom's hose with them. They also gave him a pair of mouse-skin shoes, the hair turned inwards, a pair of slippers from the columbine flower, for his evening wear, and an oak-leaf hat.

When the fairies had finished robing him, they stood back that the Queen might see him, and Tom, doffing his hat, made so courtly a bow that Mab was highly pleased, and said that he should yet be her page.

"O your grace, your grace!" began the dame; but at that moment Owen's hand was on the latch, there was a gust of wind, and her sight and breath passed from her for a moment. she looked up, all the fairies were gone

When

She dreaded lest Tom was gone too, but something pinched her ear, and laughed. "Ho, ho! mother!" and Tom leaped down on the table, and tumbled head over heels.

She was a blithe woman to see him safe; she had feared that she was punished by losing him, for having once hearkened to the fairies and taken their gifts; and Mab's words had given her great disquiet for what was to come, lest the wearing fairy garments should bind him to fairy service. Eager as Tom was to show

himself in them, neither Owen nor his mother would consent to his doing so, till they knew from the priest that it might be lawfully and safely done. And as the little robes endured the holy sign, and neither shrank nor shrivelled when brought near the church, the holy man pronounced that they would bring no ill, and establish no claim upon Tom, provided they were worn on no evil errands.

Truly, nothing could look more fair than he did when thus clad. He had reached his full height, that of a thumb, and was well made in all his limbs, slender and straight as a grass stalk, while his tiny hands and fingers were slight and fair as the little feet of a dormouse. His cheeks were bright, and his hair, which he brushed daily with the foot of a fly, was in glossy curls of gold; and when he had washed his face in the morning's dew in a lily cup, or bathed in the scarlet lined fairy-bath, his mother might well say, he was the prettiest and sprucest lad in all the country-side.