“Save me!” cried the squirrel.
Katrina hid the shivering little creature in the folds of her blue gossamer scarf, and with a last look around the dread dungeon, extended her arms and put her head and shoulders through the opening in the wall. Even before the rain-drops outside fell upon her hands, she felt both hands grasped strongly, and she was drawn gently and steadily forward until she could spring to her feet upright upon the soft ground.
Before her stood—not the gray owl she had expected to see, but a tall young man with a graceful figure, and richly dressed in a princely robe of dark green velvet.
The young man bowed low before Katrina. “Princess,” he said, “I am the oldest son of the king, your neighbour. I was slightly wounded in one of my father’s battles, and I came home the very day that your old nurse escaped to my father’s castle and told of your imprisonment in this dungeon. I took the shape of an owl and flew across the moat, and as it was my right arm which was wounded, I kept the owl’s shape and worked with the strong beak to remove this stone and free you.”
“Sir, never did a knight do more for a maiden,” said the princess, in turn bowing low. She saw that his right arm hung in a sling.
“I will now fly with you to my father’s castle, where my mother, the queen, and your faithful nurse await you,” said the prince.
Seeing the wonder on the sweet face of the princess, the prince said: “Once, when I was a boy, I saved a young gray owl from a fierce eagle; and the gray owl’s father was so grateful that he gave me the power to change into a gray owl, at will.”
Then the prince said something which sounded like—
“Gray owl, gray owl,
I would be