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40 "The gander and Ellen began to let the rope slip" face page 55 "There stood a little dwarf holding a great wooden spoon" page 59 "It beat and buffeted them with its wings and hissed so piercingly in their ears that they did not know what was after them" face page 73 "Close to her was an enormous gray wolf" page 78 "Spread its wings and flew up over his head" page 86 "The slaves threw themselves down before her" face page 91 "A terrible black genie appeared before her" page 100 "Ellen climbed upon the gander's back and she then could just reach the knocker" page 112 "Ellen raised the horn to her lips and blew" page 122 "Still he kept whispering in its ear" page 126 "An enormous dragon lay stretched in a rocky defile" page 129 "She saw a tall man oddly dressed in green and yellow" page 138 "Timidly the little girl took the white hand" face page 154 "The fairy knelt before her and lifted the edge of the cloak" page 162 "The fairy drew his sword and pointed it at her" face page 171 "Ellen put her ear against the golden wall" page 179 Tailpiece page 183

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Chapter One

Behind the Bookcase

Ellen stood at the nursery window looking out at the gray sky and the wet, blowing branches of the trees. It had been raining and blowing all day. The roof pipes poured out steady waterfalls; the lilacs bent over, heavy with the rain. Up in the sky a bird was trying to beat its way home against the wind.

But Ellen was not thinking of any of these things. She was thinking of the story that her grandmother had forgotten again.

Ellen's grandmother was very old; so old that she often called Ellen by the names of her own little children; children who had grown up or died years and years ago. She was so old she could remember things that had happened seventy years before, but then she forgot a great many things, even things that had occurred only a few minutes before. Sometimes she forgot where her spectacles were when they were pushed back on her head. Most of all she forgot the stories she tried to tell Ellen. She would just get to a very interesting place, and then she would push her spectacles up on her forehead and look vaguely about her. "I forget what came next," she would say.

Very often Ellen could help her out. "Why, granny, don't you know the little bear's voice was so thin and shrill it woke little Silverhair right up? Then when she opened her eyes and saw the three bears—" or, "Why then when Jack saw the giant was fast asleep he caught up the golden hen—" and so the little girl would go on and finish the story for the old grandmother.

But there was one story that Ellen could not finish for her grandmother. It was a story that she had never heard; at least she had never heard the end of it. It was about a little princess named Goldenlocks who always had to wear a sooty hood over her beautiful shining hair, and who had a wicked stepmother.

Again and again the grandmother had begun the story, but she never got further in it than where Goldenlocks was combing her hair at night all alone in the kitchen. When she had reached that point she would stop and say, "Ah, what was it that came next? What was it, little Clara? Can't you remember? It's so long since I have told it." Clara was the name by which the grandmother oftenest called Ellen.

Sometimes the little girl tried to make up an ending to the story, but always