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“Good people,” said the pedlar, pulling his red cap over his face, and speaking in a mild, fawning voice, “I hope you’ll protect me. I hope you won’t see me insulted.”

“My ring, my ring!” cried Hulda; “he wore it on his finger but now!”

“Show your hand like a man!” said the people. “If the lady says falsely, can’t you face her and tell her so? Never hold it down so cowardly!”

The pedlar had tucked his feet under him, and when the people cried out to him to let the rings on his hand be seen, he had already burrowed with them up to his knees in the earth.

“Oh, he will go down into the earth!” cried Hulda. “But I will not let go! Pedlar, pedlar, it is useless! If I follow you before the Lizard, your mistress, I will not let go!”

The pedlar turned his terrified, cowardly eyes upon Hulda, and sank lower and lower. The people were too frightened to move.

“Stop, child,” cried her mother. “Oh, he will go down and drag thee with him.”

But Hulda would not and could not let go. The pedlar had now sunk up to his waist. Her mother wrung her hands, and in an instant the earth closed upon them both, and, after falling in the dark down a steep abyss, they found themselves, not at all the worse, standing in a dimly lighted cave with a large table in it piled with mouldy books. Behind the table was a smooth and perfectly round hole in the wall about the size of a cartwheel.

Hulda looked that way, and saw how intensely dark it was through this hole, and she was wondering where it led to when an enormous green Lizard put its head through into the cave, and gazed at her with its great brown eyes.

“What is thy demand, fine child of the daylight?” said the Lizard.

“Princess,” replied Hulda, “I demand that this thy servant should give up to me a ring which he stole in my father’s castle when I was a child.”

The pedlar no sooner heard Hulda boldly demand her rights than he fell on his knees and began to cry for mercy.

“Mercy rests with this maiden,” said the Lizard. At the same time she darted out her tongue, which was several yards in length and like a scarlet thread, and with it stripped the ring from the gnome’s finger and gave it to Hulda.

“Speak, maiden, what reparation do you demand of this culprit, and what shall be his punishment?”

“Great princess,” replied Hilda, “let him restore to me a golden wand which I sold to him, for it belongs to a fairy whom he has long persecuted.”

“Here it is, here it is!” cried the cowardly gnome, putting his hand into his bosom and pulling it out, shaking all the time, and crying out most piteously, “Oh, don’t let me be banished from the sunshine!”

“After this double crime no mercy can be shown you,” said the Lizard, and she twined her scarlet tongue round him, and drew him through the hole to herself. At the same instant it closed, and a crack came in the roof of the cave, through which the sunshine stole, and as Hulda looked up in flew a brown moth and settled on the magic bracelet. She touched the moth with the wand, and instantly it stood upon her wrist–a beautiful and joyous fairy. She took her wand from Hulda’s hand, and stood for a moment looking gratefully in her face without speaking. Then she said to the wand:

“Art thou my own again, and wilt thou serve me?”

“Try me,” said the wand.

So she struck the wall with it, and said, “Cleave, wall!” and a hole came in the wall large enough for Hulda to creep through, and she found herself at the foot of a staircase hewn in the rock, and, after walking up it for three hours, she came out in the old ruined castle, and was astonished to see that the sun had set. The moment she appeared her father and mother, who had given her over for lost, clasped her in their arms and wept for joy as they embraced her.

“My child,” said her father, “how happy thou lookest, not as if thou hadst been down in the dark earth!”

Hulda kissed her parents and smiled upon them; then she turned to look for the fairy, but she was gone. So they all three walked home in the twilight, and the next day Hulda set out again with her parents to return to the old castle in Norway. As for the fairy, she was happy from that day in the possession of her wand; but the little golden bird folded its wings and never sang any songs again.