[Illustration:  DAME ELIZABETH STARED WITH ASTONISHMENT.]

As for the count, he had not been so much alarmed as the others, since he had been to the wars and was braver.  Moreover, he felt that his dignity as a noble had been insulted.  So he at once dismounted and fastened his horse to the gate, and strode up to the door with his sword clanking and the plumes on his hat nodding.

“What,” he begun; then he stopped short.  He had recognized his daughter in Dame Clementina.  She recognized him at the same moment.  “O, my dear daughter!” said he.  “O, my dear father!” said she.

“And this is my little grandchild?” said the count; and he took Nan upon his knee, and covered her with caresses.

Then the story of the dill and the verse was told.  “Yes,” said the count, “I truly was envious of you, Clementina, when I saw Nan.”

After a little, he looked at his daughter sorrowfully.  “I should dearly love to take you up to the castle with me, Clementina,” said he, “and let you live there always, and make you and the little child my heirs.  But how can I?  You are disinherited, you know.”

“I don’t see any way,” assented Dame Clementina, sadly.

Dame Elizabeth was still there, and she spoke up to the count with a curtesy.

“Noble sir,” said she, “why don’t you make another will?”

“Why, sure enough,” cried the count with great delight, “why don’t I?  I’ll have my lawyer up to the castle to-morrow.”

[Illustration:  THE COUNT THINKS HIMSELF INSULTED.]

He did immediately alter his will, and his daughter was no longer disinherited.  She and Nan went to live at the castle, and were very rich and happy.  Nan learned to play on the harp, and wore snuff-colored satin gowns.  She was called Lady Nan, and she lived a long time, and everybody loved her.  But never, so long as she lived, did she pin the sprig of dill and the verse over the door again.  She kept them at the very bottom of a little satin-wood box—­the faded sprig of dill wrapped round with the bit of paper on which was written the charm-verse: 

  “Alva, aden, winira mir,
    Villawissen lingen;
  Sanchta, wanchta, attazir,
    Hor de mussen wingen.”

[Illustration:  THEY FAIRLY DANCED AND FLOURISHED THEIR HEELS.]

THE SILVER HEN.

Dame Dorothea Penny kept a private school.  It was quite a small school, on account of the small size of her house.  She had only twelve scholars and they filled it quite full; indeed one very little boy had to sit in the brick oven.  On this account Dame Penny was obliged to do all her cooking on a Saturday when school did not keep; on that day she baked bread, and cakes, and pies enough to last a week.  The oven was a very large one.

It was on a Saturday that Dame Penny first missed her silver hen.  She owned a wonderful silver hen, whose feathers looked exactly as if they had been dipped in liquid silver.  When she was scratching for worms out in the yard, and the sun shone on her, she was absolutely dazzling, and sent little bright reflections into the neighbors’ windows, as if she were really solid silver.