[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PRINCESS.]
After several days Ethelried reached the place on foot. "See him,"
laughed one of the brothers that was dark to one that was fair. "He comes afoot; no prancing steed, no waving plumes, no trusty sword; little and lorn, he is not fit to be called a brother to princes."
But Ethelried heeded not their taunts. He dashed across the drawbridge, and, opening his scissors, cried:
"Giant scissors, rise in power!
Grant me my heart"s desire this hour!"
The crowds on the other side held their breath as the Ogre rushed out, brandishing a club as big as a church steeple. Then Whack! Bang! The blows of the scissors, warding off the blows of the mighty club, could be heard for miles around.
At last Ethelried became so exhausted that he could scarcely raise his hand, and it was plain to be seen that the scissors could not do battle much longer. By this time a great many people, attracted by the terrific noise, had come running up to the moat. The news had spread far and wide that Ethelried was in danger; so every one whom he had ever served dropped whatever he was doing, and ran to the scene of the battle. The peasant was there, and the shepherd, and the lords and beggars and high-born dames, all those whom Ethelried had ever befriended.
As they saw that the poor Prince was about to be vanquished, they all began a great lamentation, and cried out bitterly.
"He saved my harvest," cried one. "He found my lamb," cried another. "He showed me a greater kindness still," shouted a third. And so they went on, each telling of some unselfish service that the Prince had rendered him. Their voices all joined at last into such a roar of grat.i.tude that the scissors were given fresh strength on account of it. They grew longer and longer, and stronger and stronger, until with one great swoop they sprang forward and cut the ugly old Ogre"s head from his shoulders.
Every cap was thrown up, and such cheering rent the air as has never been heard since. They did not know his name, they did not know that he was Prince Ethelried, but they knew by his valor that there was royal blood in his veins. So they all cried out long and loud: "_Long live the Prince! Prince Ciseaux!_"
Then the King stepped down from his throne and took off his crown to give to the conqueror, but Ethelried put it aside.
"Nay," he said. "The only kingdom that I crave is the kingdom of a loving heart and a happy fireside. Keep all but the Princess."
So the Ogre was killed, and the Prince came into his kingdom that was his heart"s desire. He married the Princess, and there was feasting and merrymaking for seventy days and seventy nights, and they all lived happily ever after.
When the feasting was over, and the guests had all gone to their homes, the Prince pulled down the house of the Ogre and built a new one. On every gable he fastened a pair of shining scissors to remind himself that only through unselfish service to others comes the happiness that is highest and best.
Over the great entrance gate he hung the ones that had served him so valiantly, saying, "Only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts and happy homes can ever enter here."
One day the old King, with the brothers of Ethelried (the three that were dark and the three that were fair), came riding up to the portal.
They thought to share in Ethelried"s fame and splendor. But the scissors leaped from their place and snapped so angrily in their faces that they turned their horses and fled.
Then the scissors sprang back to their place again to guard the portal of Ethelried, and, to this day, only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts may enter the Gate of the Giant Scissors.
CHAPTER III.
BEHIND THE GREAT GATE.
That was the tale of the giant scissors as it was told to Joyce in the pleasant fire-lighted room; but behind the great gates the true story went on in a far different way.
Back of the Ciseaux house was a dreary field, growing drearier and browner every moment as the twilight deepened; and across its rough furrows a tired boy was stumbling wearily homeward. He was not more than nine years old, but the careworn expression of his thin white face might have belonged to a little old man of ninety. He was driving two unruly goats towards the house. The chase they led him would have been a laughable sight, had he not looked so small and forlorn plodding along in his clumsy wooden shoes, and a peasant"s blouse of blue cotton, several sizes too large for his thin little body.
The anxious look in his eyes changed to one of fear as he drew nearer the house. At the sound of a gruff voice bellowing at him from the end of the lane, he winced as if he had been struck.
"Ha, there, Jules! Thou lazy vagabond! Late again! Canst thou never learn that I am not to be kept waiting?"
"But, Brossard," quavered the boy in his shrill, anxious voice, "it was not my fault, indeed it was not. The goats were so stubborn to-night.
They broke through the hedge, and I had to chase them over three fields."
"Have done with thy lying excuses," was the rough answer. "Thou shalt have no supper to-night. Maybe an empty stomach will teach thee when my commands fail. Hasten and drive the goats into the pen."
There was a scowl on Brossard"s burly red face that made Jules"s heart b.u.mp up in his throat. Brossard was only the caretaker of the Ciseaux place, but he had been there for twenty years,--so long that he felt himself the master. The real master was in Algiers nearly all the time.
During his absence the great house was closed, excepting the kitchen and two rooms above it. Of these Brossard had one and Henri the other.
Henri was the cook; a slow, stupid old man, not to be jogged out of either his good-nature or his slow gait by anything that Brossard might say.
Henri cooked and washed and mended, and hoed in the garden. Brossard worked in the fields and shaved down the expenses of their living closer and closer. All that was thus saved fell to his share, or he might not have watched the expenses so carefully.
Much saving had made him miserly. Old Therese, the woman with the fish-cart, used to say that he was the stingiest man in all Tourraine.
She ought to know, for she had sold him a fish every Friday during all those twenty years, and he had never once failed to quarrel about the price. Five years had gone by since the master"s last visit. Brossard and Henri were not likely to forget that time, for they had been awakened in the dead of night by a loud knocking at the side gate. When they opened it the sight that greeted them made them rub their sleepy eyes to be sure that they saw aright.
There stood the master, old Martin Ciseaux. His hair and fiercely bristling mustache had turned entirely white since they had last seen him. In his arms he carried a child.
Brossard almost dropped his candle in his first surprise, and his wonder grew until he could hardly contain it, when the curly head raised itself from monsieur"s shoulder, and the sleepy baby voice lisped something in a foreign tongue.
"By all the saints!" muttered Brossard, as he stood aside for his master to pa.s.s.
"It"s my brother Jules"s grandson," was the curt explanation that monsieur offered. "Jules is dead, and so is his son and all the family,--died in America. This is his son"s son, Jules, the last of the name. If I choose to take him from a foreign poorhouse and give him shelter, it"s n.o.body"s business, Louis Brossard, but my own."
With that he strode on up the stairs to his room, the boy still in his arms. This sudden coming of a four-year-old child into their daily life made as little difference to Brossard and Henri as the presence of the four-months-old puppy. They spread a cot for him in Henri"s room when the master went back to Algiers. They gave him something to eat three times a day when they stopped for their own meals, and then went on with their work as usual.
It made no difference to them that he sobbed in the dark for his mother to come and sing him to sleep,--the happy young mother who had petted and humored him in her own fond American fashion. They could not understand his speech; more than that, they could not understand him.
Why should he mope alone in the garden with that beseeching look of a lost dog in his big, mournful eyes? Why should he not play and be happy, like the neighbor"s children or the kittens or any other young thing that had life and sunshine?
Brossard snapped his fingers at him sometimes at first, as he would have done to a playful animal; but when Jules drew back, frightened by his foreign speech and rough voice, he began to dislike the timid child.
After awhile he never noticed him except to push him aside or to find fault.
It was from Henri that Jules picked up whatever French he learned, and it was from Henri also that he had received the one awkward caress, and the only one, that his desolate little heart had known in all the five loveless years that he had been with them.
A few months ago Brossard had put him out in the field to keep the goats from straying away from their pasture, two stubborn creatures, whose self-willed wanderings had brought many a scolding down on poor Jules"s head. To-night he was unusually unfortunate, for added to the weary chase they had led him was this stern command that he should go to bed without his supper.
He was about to pa.s.s into the house, shivering and hungry, when Henri put his head out at the window. "Brossard," he called, "there isn"t enough bread for supper; there"s just this dry end of a loaf. You should have bought as I told you, when the baker"s cart stopped here this morning."
Brossard slowly measured the bit of hard, black bread with his eye, and, seeing that there was not half enough to satisfy the appet.i.tes of two hungry men, he grudgingly drew a franc from his pocket.
"Here, Jules," he called. "Go down to the bakery, and see to it that thou art back by the time that I have milked the goats, or thou shalt go to bed with a beating, as well as supperless. Stay!" he added, as Jules turned to go. "I have a mind to eat white bread to-night instead of black. It will cost an extra son, so be careful to count the change.
It is only once or so in a twelvemonth," he muttered to himself as an excuse for his extravagance.
It was half a mile to the village, but down hill all the way, so that Jules reached the bakery in a very short time.
Several customers were ahead of him, however, and he awaited his turn nervously. When he left the shop an old lamplighter was going down the street with torch and ladder, leaving a double line of twinkling lights in his wake, as he disappeared down the wide "Paris road." Jules watched him a moment, and then ran rapidly on. For many centuries the old village of St. Symphorien had echoed with the clatter of wooden shoes on its ancient cobblestones; but never had foot-falls in its narrow, crooked streets kept time to the beating of a lonelier little heart.
The officer of Customs, at his window beside the gate that shuts in the old town at night, nodded in a surly way as the boy hurried past. Once outside the gate, Jules walked more slowly, for the road began to wind up-hill. Now he was out again in the open country, where a faint light lying over the frosty fields showed that the moon was rising.
Here and there lamps shone from the windows of houses along the road; across the field came the bark of a dog, welcoming his master; two old peasant women pa.s.sed him in a creaking cart on their glad way home.
At the top of the hill Jules stopped to take breath, leaning for a moment against the stone wall. He was faint from hunger, for he had been in the fields since early morning, with nothing for his midday lunch but a handful of boiled chestnuts. The smell of the fresh bread tantalized him beyond endurance. Oh, to be able to take a mouthful,--just one little mouthful of that brown, sweet crust!