was she as she entered the castle door, that the Prince came down to meet her, and kneeling, kissed her hand and claimed her as his bride. Then came the bishop in his mitre, and led her to the throne, and before them all the Flax-spinner's maiden was married to the Prince, and made the Princess Olga.
Then until the seven days
and seven nights were done, the revels lasted in the castle. And in the merriment the old Flax-spinner was again forgotten. Her kindness of the past, her loneliness in the present had no part in the thoughts of the Princess Olga.
All night the old Oak, tapping on the thatch, called down, "Thou'rt forgotten! Thou'rt forgotten!"
But the beads that had rolled away in the darkness, buried themselves in the earth, and took root, and sprang up, as the old woman knew they would do. There at the castle gate they bloomed, a strange, strange flower, for on every stem hung a row of little bleeding hearts.
One day the Princess Olga, seeing them from her
window, went down to them in wonderment.
"What do you here?" she cried, for in her forest life she'd learned all speech of bird and beast and plant.
"We bloom for love's sweet sake," they answered. "We have sprung from the old Flax-spinner's gift—the necklace thou didst break and scatter. From her