It was now the night before the great holiday.  Sweet Marjoram Eve had not been a very gay time, and the people did not expect to have much fun the next day.  How could they if the fairy sisters did not come?  Corette felt badly, for she had never told that the sisters had been condensed, and the Condensed Pirate, who had insisted on her secrecy, felt worse.  That night he lay in his great bed, really afraid to go to sleep on account of rats and mice.

He was so extremely wakeful that he lay and thought, and thought, and thought for a long time, and then he got up and dressed and went out.

It was a beautiful moonlight night, and he made his way directly to Corette’s house.  There, by means of a vine, he climbed up to her window, and gently called her.  She was not sleeping well, and she soon heard him and came to the window.

He then asked her to bring him two spools of fine thread.

Without asking any questions, she went for the thread, and very soon made her appearance at the window with one spool in her arms, and then she went back for another.

“Now, then,” said the Condensed Pirate, when he had thrown the spools down to the ground, “will you dress yourself and wait here at the window until I come and call you?”

Corette promised, for she thought he had some good plan in his head, and he hurried down the vine, took up a spool under each arm, and bent his way to the church.  This building had a high steeple which overlooked the whole country.  He left one of his spools outside, and then, easily creeping with the other under one of the great doors, he carried it with infinite pains and labor up into the belfry.

There he tied it on his back, and, getting out of a window, began to climb up the outside of the steeple.

[Illustration:  THE CONDENSED PIRATE CLIMBS UP THE OUTSIDE OF THE STEEPLE.]

It was not hard for him to do this, for the rough stones gave him plenty of foot-hold, and he soon stood on the very tip-top of the steeple.  He then took tight hold of one end of the thread on his spool and let the spool drop.  The thread rapidly unrolled, and the spool soon touched the ground.

Then our friend took from his pocket the pink ball, and passing the end of the thread through a little hole in the middle of it, he tied it firmly.  Placing the ball in a small depression on the top of the steeple, he left it there, with the thread hanging from it, and rapidly descended to the ground.  Then he took the other spool and tied the end of its thread to that which was hanging from the steeple.

He now put down the spool and ran to call Corette.  When she heard his voice she clambered down the vine to him.

“Now, Corette.” he said, “run to my house and stand on the beach, near the water, and wait for me.”