So the unhappy father had to return home without the white satin dress trimmed with lace and pearls, and without the bag of money, and he dreaded meeting his two daughters, for he knew they would be terribly angry.

[Illustration]

Now on his way home from the station to his house he had to pass by part of the wall that surrounded the Great Park where the Great Beast lived in his Great Castle; and as he passed by a corner of the wall what should he see hanging just over the top, and just within his reach if he stood on his toes, but a lovely red rose.

“At any rate I can take my Beauty what she asked for,” he said to himself, and, without so much as giving a thought to the wrong he was doing, he stood on his toes and plucked the rose.

He was sorry he did it.

Of a sudden there was a roar, such a roar that the very ground shook, and as to the poor merchant he quivered like a leaf.

Enough to make him quiver indeed, for a gate in the wall suddenly opened, and out rushed the Beast.

Yes, the Beast, if you please, and he seized the merchant by the scruff of his neck, and dragged him into the Park, and shut the gate after him.

“Don’t you know it’s a sin to steal?” roared the Beast.  “How dare you steal my roses?  I am going to kill you.”

“Oh, mercy, Mr. Beast,” cried the unhappy man, flinging himself on his knees before the monster.

[Illustration]

“I’m going to kill you,” roared the Beast still more loudly.  “It’s taken years to cultivate this sort of rose, and—­and I’m going to kill you.  Unless,” he added after a pause, “you send me one of your daughters here instead.”

“All right,” said the merchant and got on his feet again.

“She must be here to-morrow by breakfast time, and I breakfast early,” said the Beast, as he let the merchant out of the gate.  “If she is not here, I shall come for you, and don’t you forget it.”

It was by no means likely that he would forget it, in fact he could think of nothing else.  He hurried home and told his dreadful news, and received a dreadful scolding from his two elder daughters, who were angry at not getting their presents.

“And it is Beauty’s fault that you have got into this trouble,” they said.  “Beauty and her stupid rose.  Beauty had better get you out of the trouble.”  Beauty said little, but smiled on, with sunshine in her heart, and trust in her loving nature, and cooked the dinner.

[Illustration:  “WHEN SHE CAME TO THE GATE IN THE WALL SHE KNOCKED UPON IT THREE TIMES”]

Early next morning when the dawn was breaking she left her father’s house, leaving a little note behind her begging him not to be anxious but that she had gone to the Beast’s castle.

When she came to the gate in the wall she knocked upon it three times and it opened as if by magic, for she could see no one.  And she stepped into the garden of red roses, and in the distance across the Park she saw the Castle, and she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful.  For it was built of mother-of-pearl, and the red and yellow gleams of the rising sun shone upon its glistening walls, and lit them up with a thousand radiant lights.