"Do you not remember the fairy dell and the little fay to whom you gave a feather for his cap?" said Pease-Blossom then; and when the nightingale heard that, she was so overjoyed that she could scarcely keep from bursting into song.
STRAIGHT TO THE ENCHANTED WOOD THEY WENT.
To open the cage door was only a minute's work and the nightingale was soon as free as air. Pease-Blossom seated himself upon her back and she was just ready to fly through an open window near by when the giant waked up in real earnest and saw the open cage.
"Thieves! Robbers!" he called in such a terrible voice that the chimney-swift shook in her nest, and the big fish in the Silver Sea jumped out of the water.
If the Giant had spied Pease-Blossom and the nightingale it would have gone hard with them; but luckily for them his wife, who was a kind-hearted woman, saw them before he did, and upset the golden cage right in his way.
"The whole place is bewitched," thundered he, stumbling over the cage; and in the stir which followed the nightingale slipped away unseen.
Over the Silver Sea where the fish swam, over the hedge of thorns which guarded the palace of the lovely princess, over the fields and the fells where the dew sparkled, straight to the Enchanted Wood they went.
"Who comes here?" called the fairy warder of the dell.