"Dearest Zac!" she said, running up at once to the boy and embracing him tenderly, "forgive me for the trial to which I have put your constancy. It was not my wish to do so, but the order of those who have the right to command. I have found a friend who is as able as he is willing to help us, and by his assistance I believe our happiness will yet be secured. By his power I have been enabled to visit you in your dungeon in the shape of a mouse, in order that I might convey to you some information which is quite necessary to your safety."
"But who is this powerful friend?" asked Zac, when, having returned her caress, he found words to express his feelings.
"He is Canetto, the Prince of the Forest Mannikins," replied Belinda; "and having been a near relative of my dear mother's, he is very well disposed towards me."
"What then am I to do?" asked the boy. "For, shut up, as I am, in this horrid dungeon, it seems to me that nobody can do anything for me, unless indeed they would change me into a mouse, that I might pass out by the same hole as that by which you entered."
"That," said Belinda, "might doubtless be a very good plan, but it is not the one which I am directed to follow. You must know that our friend, all-powerful in the forest, has elsewhere bounds and limits to his power, the reasons and degree of which you and I cannot understand. It is for this cause that he does not come here at once and deliver you from the dungeon; but, though he does not attempt this, he will give you such help as shall assuredly procure your deliverance in due time. He bade me tell you that you will certainly be taken out of this place to-morrow, when the king will advise with his council what to do with you. Be firm—though this I need scarcely tell you: if they give you your choice of death, or if they offer you one wish before you die, choose to be killed in the forest, under the shadow of the trees near my foster-mother's cottage, and if they grant that wish the rest will be easy. If (as is of course possible) they offer you no choice at all in the matter, you must pronounce the magic word which alone can prevent them harming you, but with which you are invulnerable."
"And what may that word be?" anxiously inquired Zac.
"It is not an easy one," replied the princess, "but as I may only say it twice, listen very carefully whilst I do so, that you may remember it well, since the least mistake might be attended with disastrous consequences. The word is—'Ballykaluphmenonabababandleby."
"What?" exclaimed Zac in a horrified voice; upon which the princess repeated the word again very slowly; but, though it doubtless appears very easy to the reader, it completely puzzled poor Zac. He shook his head mournfully—
"If it depends upon that," said he, "the game is up—I should never be able to pronounce that word, if I waited till apples grow on peach trees."
"I am very sorry," answered the princess in a sorrowful voice, "but you see I can only tell you what Canetto told me, and we must hope for the best. But now it is time for me to be off, for if I am not back at the palace soon, my absence will be discovered, and I may be exposed to unpleasant questions." So saying, she once more embraced the boy, and then, approaching the hole, muttered some words which the mannikin king had, no doubt, told her, and in another moment became once more a mouse, and vanished from his sight.