The wizard now turned his attention to Fiona, who was a very pretty girl with a skin like milk and roses. He did not change her form, but he changed her colour to grass green, and he roared with laughter when he saw the result.
"Look you!" he said to the brother and sister. "Look at the bonny pair of you now! You will never become as you were, unless and until—and indeed it is not very likely to happen—you, Fergus, can find a beautiful girl who will of her own free will marry a greyhound! And until you, Fiona, have nursed three children of a King's son, and got a kiss from a King's lips. Until that happens, the bones of your father must lie unburied ! "
Time went on, and the King of a far-away region of the Higklands set out with his followers to make war on a neighbouring King. They were marching among the hills when a great mist came down and veiled the mountains, so that they could not tell in what direction the were going at all. One wandered here to seek the road, and another wandered there; and although the King kept calling to them to keep together, they soon got separated.
The first time he called, three hundred voices answered him. The second time, only thirty replied; then only three; and at last, none at all ! So there he was—a King without a single follower, and he not even knowing where his kingdom lay! He wandered up and down, and at last he came to the Castle where the greyhound and the green girl lived.
They gave him food and a bed, and the tired King slept for many hours. Next day, when he was looking about the Castle grounds, he saw some bones lying in a corner and he began to kick them idly. To his surprise the greyhound sprang at him angrily, and, finding his tongue, he said to the King: "Touch not the bones of my father!" |
