a tournament and other gaieties, and the two young folks were left as usual all alone at the window looking out to the north.  They sat silent for a time gazing away to the hills.  It was a grey sad day, the sky was overcast, and the weather seemed to draw to rain.  At last the prince said, “There will be no sunshine to-day.  What if we were to drive over and join the rest at the tournament?” His young wife gladly consented, for she longed to see more of the world than those eternal green woods and those eternal blue hills, which were all she ever saw from the window.  So the horses were put into the coach, and it rattled up to the door, and in they got and away they drove.  At first all went well.  The clouds hung low over the woods, the wind sighed in the trees, a drearier day you could hardly imagine.  So they joined the rest at the other castle and took their seats to watch the jousting in the lists.  So intent were they in watching the gay spectacle of the prancing steeds, the fluttering pennons, and the glittering armour of the knights, that they failed to mark the change, the fatal change, in the weather.  For the wind was rising and had begun to disperse the clouds, and suddenly the sun broke through, and the glory of it fell like an aureole on the young wife, and at once she vanished away.  No sooner did her husband miss her from his side than he, too, mysteriously disappeared.  The tournament broke up in confusion, the bereft father hastened home, and shut himself up in the dark castle from which the light of life had departed.  The green woods and the blue hills could still be seen from the window that looked to the north, but the young faces that had gazed out of it so wistfully were gone, as it seemed, for ever.[166]

[Tyrolese story of the girl who might not see the sun.]

A Tyrolese story tells how it was the doom of a lovely maiden with golden hair to be transported into the belly of a whale if ever a sunbeam fell on her.  Hearing of the fame of her beauty the king of the country sent for her to be his bride, and her brother drove the fair damsel to the palace in a carefully closed coach, himself sitting on the box and handling the reins.  On the way they overtook two hideous witches, who pretended they were weary and begged for a lift in the coach.  At first the brother refused to take them in, but his tender-hearted sister entreated him to have compassion on the two poor footsore women; for you may easily imagine that she was not acquainted with their true character.  So down he got rather surlily from the box, opened the coach door, and in the two witches stepped, laughing in their sleeves.  But no sooner had the brother mounted the box and whipped up the horses, than one of the two wicked witches bored a hole in the closed coach.  A sunbeam at once shot through the hole and fell on the fair damsel.  So she vanished from the coach and was spirited away into the belly of a whale in the neighbouring sea.  You can imagine the consternation of the king, when the coach door opened and instead of his blooming bride out bounced two hideous hags![167]