"And now for one last time the witch stands up, more proud and revengeful then ever, and cries out that she has beaten them all, for the swan is really the brother, and that it was she who wound the chain about his neck that enchanted him and made him a swan. But while she exults in her triumph, there flies down over the heads of all of them a beautiful white dove. It is the dove that comes once a year to the temple and strengthens the power of the Holy Grail, and as the knight sees it he kneels and prays and then rises and unwinds the silver chain from the swan's neck, and at the very instant the swan is changed into a beautiful boy, the lost brother, and he runs to his sister and they clasp each other in their arms, while the witch falls down upon the ground, overcome at last and powerless, and the knight steps into the boat, the dove lifts the silver chain, and they glide away upon the river, farther and farther, and the little spot where they were, that was the brightest in the fire, grows dimmer and fainter and goes out and is dark."
"And won't the knight come back at all?" asked the little girl.
"No," I answered, "the brother and the sister are close in each other's arms and they are gazing away upon the river as far as they can see, but the Knight of the Swan will never come back."
THE PRIZE OF A SONG
The fire was almost out. It was so late in the spring that none at all was needed, but we liked it to look at. As for the little girl and me, we should hardly have known how to get on without it, and the little girl's mother chose to humor us, so we wasted a great deal of wood, as ignorant people would think, and were just as comfortable with the sky smiling and the trees budding all around us as if we had been in the midst of snow-drifts and howling storms. This afternoon the sun had been shining right in upon the fire, as if he would like to know what it was doing there at all, when he was making the weather quite warm enough, in the house as well as out. A fire never burns well when the sun shines on it, and besides, nobody had taken much care of ours, so that after the sun had gone it looked very low and discouraged.
"Do you think anybody could see anything in a fire like that?" the little girl asked, with a doubtful gaze into it and a meaning, clearly enough, that, if I thought it at all possible for anybody to see anything, she wished that I myself would try.
"We will put on another stick," I said, "and have a better fire. It will not be a very hot fire even then, and with all this soft spring air about us, I don't think we can see any more gods and giants and knights and dragons in it. But we may see some simpler people, with bright young hearts that begin to stir and move and to beat quicker and harder in the spring, as young hearts ought to do, not only in the spring of the year, but in their own spring, and we may perhaps see some people with older hearts, which stirred and beat too in their time, and we shall see by them that those which move freest and grow warmest in their spring are the fullest and the richest in their autumn and can never be hurt in the winter, just as the tree in which the sap flows best in the spring spreads out the broadest shade in the fierce heat of the summer, bears the finest fruit in the autumn, and lives the strongest till the next spring comes. If you ever tell any very learned people what we see here in this fire they may tell you, perhaps, that it all happened on Midsummer Day and not in the spring at all, and they will be quite right, in their own poor way of being right, but Midsummer Day is not in the middle of the summer, you know, but just at the beginning of it, when the spring has been gone only a few days. It is then that the lovely touch of the spring has done all that it can for the world, when the sun climbs his very highest in the heavens to look at all the sweetness and beauty that have been spread over the earth, when the summer is young and happy and kind and has not begun to burn and wither everything that would like to love its brightness and its power. So if you would see all the joy and the light that the spring can bring, you must look for them not far from Midsummer Day.
"We shall not begin to see all this till our new stick begins to burn better, but in the meantime we may see some things that are pleasant enough, if they are not quite so radiant, and while the fire is still rather dark, just burning quietly in a few little places, we seem to me to be in a dim, old church. The service is just ending. In one of the pews sits a pretty girl who is behaving herself in a most unbecoming way, for she is constantly sending shy glances toward a young man who leans against a pillar not far off and looks at her in his turn in a way that really ought to shock her, instead of pleasing her, as it seems to do."
"Is he a knight?" asked the little girl, instinctively knowing him for the hero of the story.
"Do you want him to be a knight?"