“Then the old dame went into an inner room and pricked herself with her spindle until a great red drop of her heart’s blood fell into her trembling hand.  With witchery of words she blew upon it, and rolled it in her palm, and muttering, turned and turned and turned it.  And as the spell was laid upon it, it shrivelled it into a tiny round ball like a seed, and she strung it on to a thread where were many others like it.  Seventy times seven was the number of beads on this strange rosary.  Then she laid it away until the time when it should be needed.

“When the night of the first ball rolled around, Olga combed her long golden hair and twined it with a wreath of snowy water-lilies, and then she stood before the old dame in her dress of tow.  To her wonderment and grief she saw the old flax-spinner had no silken robe in waiting, only a string of beads which she clasped around Olga’s white throat.  Each bead in the necklace looked like a little shrivelled seed, and Olga’s eyes were filled with tears of disappointment.

“‘Obey me and all will be well,’ said the old dame.  ’When thou reachest the castle gate clasp one bead in thy fingers and say: 

     “’"For love’s sweet sake, in my hour of need,
        Blossom and deck me, little seed.”

“’Straightway, right royally shalt thou be clad.  Thou hast been a good daughter to me, and thus I reward thee.  But remember carefully the charm.  Only to the magic words, “For love’s sweet sake,” will the necklace give up its treasures.  If thou shouldst forget, then must thou be doomed alway to bear thy gown of tow.’

“So Olga sped on her moon-lighted way through the forest until she came to the castle gate.  There she paused, and grasping a bead of the strange necklace between her fingers, repeated the old dame’s charm: 

     “’For love’s sweet sake, in my hour of need,
       Blossom and deck me, little seed.’

“Immediately the bead burst with a little puff, as if a seed pod had snapped asunder.  A faint perfume surrounded her, rare and subtle as if it had been blown across from some flower of Eden.  Olga looked down and found herself enveloped in a robe of such delicate texture that it seemed soft as a rose leaf, and as airy as the pink clouds that sometimes float across the sunset.  The water-lilies in her hair had become a coronal of opals.

“When she entered the great ballroom, the prince of the castle started up from his throne in amazement.  Never before had he seen such a vision of loveliness.  ‘Surely,’ said he, ’some rose of Paradise hath found a soul and drifted earthward to blossom here.’  And all that night he had eyes for none but her.

“The next night Olga started again to the castle in her dress of tow, and at the gate she grasped the second bead in her fingers, repeating the charm.  This time the pale yellow of the daffodils seemed to have woven itself into a cloth of gold for her adorning.  It was like a shimmer of moonbeams, and her hair held the diamond flashings of a hundred tiny stars.