But she raised her hand and spoke:—
“And I swear to you to work, to fight, and to endure, with and for you, to my life’s end!” Then she turned to the King and whispered low to him: “Give me thy hand, father; I am weary.”
The old man cast his mantle round her, and clasping his arm about her, led her homewards. She leaned her head on his shoulder, but as she went she felt something snuffing about her ear, and there was Graur, her faithful stag.
“Ha, do thou carry me!” she cried, and kissing the beast’s warm, downy nose, she sprang on his back and was out of sight in the twinkling of an eye. Graur bore her down to the river, in which she bathed for a long time, stretching and cooling her bruised limbs. She drank greedily, too, of the ice-cold water, and then came dashing homewards as merrily as though she had endured nothing.
For a while life went on again as of old, and Vijelia was once more the same untamed creature that she had ever been—wild as the storm-wind, and refusing to hear aught that concerned the affairs of government. But King Briar aged visibly, and his people besieged him with requests that he would choose a mate for his daughter, so that he might soon hope to hold a fair grandson upon his knee.
“Whom wilt thou have for thy husband, my child?” he one day asked his daughter. “Do none of our people please thee?”
“Nay,” answered Vijelia, “I cannot wed any of those who stoned me; I should always remember it, and could not give myself to him in true love. The man whom I shall love must come down from the air above, into which none belonging to us can rise up—none save our winged stags.”
She had scarcely ceased speaking, when there appeared as it were a mighty cloud, descending from the heavens, and from the midst of the cloud the sound of a harp rang forth unearthly sweet. Slowly the cloud sank earthwards, and now it disclosed to view a radiant youth, his head covered with waving curls, who held in his hand a harp, that towered aloft as high as the forest trees, and was strung with golden strings, that glittered, like a rainbow, with a thousand changing hues. Now he would smite the chords with a powerful hand, and again he would only blow softly upon them, and then they sent forth such sounds as melted the very heart in one’s breast.
Vijelia stood motionless, gazing up at him, and still she gazed on, as he sprang boldly to the ground, and with a thrust of his hand sent back the cloud that had brought him thither, away into the blue distance above. And now he came straight toward the maiden, and stretching out his hands to her, spoke thus:—