THE STORY of THE HERONS

THE STORY OF THE HERONS

A LONG time ago there lived a King and a Queen who loved each other dearly. They had both fallen in love at first sight; and as their love began so it went on through all their life. Yet this, which was the cause of all their happiness, was the cause also of all their misfortunes.

In his youth, when he was a beautiful young bachelor, the King had had the ill-luck to attract the heart of a jealous and powerful Fairy; and though he never gave her the least hope or encouragement, when she heard that his love had been won at first sight by a mere mortal, her rage and resentment knew no bounds. She said nothing, however, but bided her time.

After they had been married a year the Queen presented her husband with a little daughter; before she was yet a day old she was the most beautiful object in the world, and life seemed to promise her nothing but fortune and happiness.

The family Fairy came to the blessing of the new-born; and she, looking at it as it lay beautifully asleep in its cradle, and seeing that it had already as much beauty and health as the heart could desire, promised it love as the next best gift it was within her power to offer. The Queen, who knew how much happiness her own love had brought her, was kissing the good Fairy with all the warmth of gratitude, when a black kite came and perched upon the window-sill crying: "And I will give her love at first sight! The first living thing that she sets eyes on she shall love to distraction, whether it be man or monster, prince or pauper, bird, beast or reptile." And as the wicked Fairy spoke she clapped her wings, and up through the boards of the floor, and out from under the bed, and in through the window, came a crowd of all the ugliest shapes in the world. Thick and fast they came, gathering about the cradle and lifting their heads over the edge of it, waiting for the poor little Princess to wake up and fall in love at first sight with one of them.

Luckily the child was asleep; and the good Fairy, after driving away the black kite and the crowd of beasts it had called to its aid, wrapped the Princess up in a shawl and carried her away to a dark room where no glimmer of light could get in.

She said to the Queen: "Till I can devise a better way, you must keep her in the dark; and when you take her into the open air you must blindfold her eyes. Some day, when she is of a fit age, I will bring a handsome Prince for her; and only to him shall you unblindfold her at last, and make love safe for her."

She went, leaving the King and Queen deeply stricken with grief over the harm which had befallen their daughter. They did not dare to present even themselves before her eyes lest love for them, fatal and consuming, should drive her to distraction. In utter darkness the Queen would sit and cherish her daughter, clasping her to her breast, and calling her by all sweet names; but the little face, except by stealth when it was sound asleep, she never dared to see, nor did the baby-Princess know the face of the mother who loved her.

By and by, however, the family Fairy came again, saying: "Now, I have a plan by which your child may enjoy the delights of seeing, and no ill come of it." And she caused to be made a large chamber, the whole of one side of which was a mirror. High up in the opposite wall were windows so screened that from below no one could look out of them, but across on to the mirror came all the sweet sights of the world, glimpses of wood and field, and the sun and the moon and the stars, and of every bird as it flew by. So the little Princess was brought and set in a screened place looking towards the mirror, and there her eyes learned gradually all the beautiful things of the world. Over the screen, in the glass before her, she learned to know her mother's face, and to love it dearly in a gentle child-like fashion; and when she could talk she became very wise, understanding all that was told her about the danger of looking at anything alive, except by its reflection in the glass.

When she went out into the open air for her health, she always wore a bandage over her eyes, lest she should look, and love something too well: but in the chamber of the mirror her eyes were free to see whatever they could. The good Fairy, making herself invisible, came and taught her to read and make music, and draw; so that before she was fifteen she was the most charming and accomplished, as well as the most beautiful Princess of her day.

At last the Fairy said that the time was come for her world of reflections to be made real, and she went away to fetch the ideal Prince that the Princess might at first sight fall in love with him.

The very day after she was gone, as the morning was fine, the Princess went out with one of her maids for a wait through the woods. Over her patient eyes she wore a bandage of green silk, through which she felt the sunlight fall pleasantly.

Out of doors the Princess knew most things by their sounds. She passed under rustling leaves, and along by the side of running water; and at last she heard the silence of the water, and knew that she was standing by the great fish-pond in the middle of the wood. Then she said to her waiting-woman, "Is there not some great bird fishing out there, for I hear the dipping of his bill, and the water falling off it as he draws out the fish?"

And just as she was saying that, the wicked Fairy, who had long bided her time, coming softly up from behind, pushed the waiting-woman off the bank into the deep water of the pond. Then she snatched away the silk bandage, and before the Princess had time to think or close her eyes, she had lost her heart to a great heron that was standing half-way up to his feathers fishing among the reeds.

The Princess, with her eyes set free, laughed for joy at the sight of him. She stretched out her arms from the bank and cried most musically for the bird to come to her; and he came in grave, stately fashion, with trailing legs, and slow sobbing creak of his wings, and settled down on the bank beside her. She drew his slender neck against her white throat, and laughed and cried with her arms round him, loving him so that she forgot all in the world beside. And the heron looked gravely at her with kind eyes, and, bird-like, gave her all the love he could, but not more; and so, presently, casting his grey wings abroad, lifted himself and sailed slowly back to his fishing among the reeds.

The waiting-woman had got herself out of the water, and stood wringing her clothes and her hands beside the Princess. "O, sweet mistress," she cried, with lamentation, "now is all the evil come about which it was our whole aim to avoid! And what, and what will the Queen your mother say?"

But the Princess answered, smiling, "Foolish girl, I had no thought of what happiness meant till now! See you where my love is gone? and did you notice the bend of his neck, and the exceeding length of his legs, and the stretch of his grey wings as he flew? This pond is his hall of mirrors, wherein he sees the reflection of all his world. Surely I, from my hall of mirrors, am the true mate for him!"

Her maid, seeing how far the evil had gone, and that no worse could now happen, ran back to the palace and curdled all the court's blood with her news. The King and the Queen and all their nobility rushed down, and there they found the Princess with the heron once more in her arms, kissing and fondling it with all the marks of a sweet and maidenly passion. "Dear mother," she said, as soon as she saw the Queen, "the happiness, which you feared would be sorrow, has come; and it is such happiness I have no name for it! And the evil that you so dreaded, see how sweet it is! And how sweet it is to see all the world with my own eyes and you also at last!" And for the first time in her life she kissed her mother's face in the full light of day.

But her mother hung sobbing upon her neck, "O, my darling, my beautiful," she wept, "does your heart belong for ever to this grey bird?"

Her daughter answered, "He is more than all the world to me! Is he not goodly to look upon? Have you considered the bend of his neck, the length of his legs, and the waving of his wings; his skill also when he fishes: what imagination, what presence of mind!"

"Alas, alas," sorrowed the Queen, "dear daughter, is this all true to you?"

"Mother," cried the Princess, clinging to her with entreaty, "is all the world blind but me?"

The heron had become quite fond of the Princess; wherever she went it followed her, and, indeed, without it nowhere would she go. Whenever it was near her, the Princess laughed and sang, and when it was out of her sight she became sad as night. All the courtiers wept to see her in such bondage. "Ah," said she, "your eyes have been worn out with looking at things so long; mine have been kept for me in a mirror."

When the good family Fairy came (for she was at once sent for by the Queen, and told of all that had happened), she said, "Dear Madam, there are but two things you can do: either you can wring the heron's neck, and leave the Princess to die of grief; or you can make the Princess happy in her own way, by——" Her voice dropped, and she looked from the King to the Queen before she went on. "At her birth I gave your daughter love for my gift; now it is hers, will you let her keep it?"

The King and the Queen looked softly at each other. "Do not take love from her," said they, "let her keep it!"

"There is but one way," answered the Fairy.

"Do not tell me the way," said the Queen weeping, "only let the way be!"

So they went with the Fairy down to the great pond, and there sat the Princess, with the grey heron against her heart. She smiled as she saw them come. "I see good in your hearts towards me!" she cried. "Dear godmother, give me the thing that I want, that my love may be happy!"

Then the Fairy stroked her but once with her wand, and two grey herons suddenly rose up from the bank, and sailed away to a hiding-place in the reeds.

The Fairy said to the Queen, "You have made your daughter happy; and still she will have her voice and her human heart, and will remember you with love and gratitude; but her greatest love will be to the grey heron, and her home among the reeds."

So the changed life of the Princess began; every day her mother went down to the pool and called, and the Princess came rising up out of the reeds, and folded her grey wings over her mother's heart. Every day her mother said, "Daughter of mine, are you happy?"

And the Princess answered her, "Yes, for I love and am loved."

Yet each time the mother heard more and more of a note of sadness come into her daughter's voice; and at last one day she said, "Answer me truly, as the mother who brought you into the world, whether you be happy in your heart of hearts or no?"

Then the heron-Princess laid her head on the Queen's heart, and said, "Mother, my heart is breaking with love!"

"For whom, then?" asked the Queen astonished.

"For my grey heron, whom I love, and who loves me so much. And yet it is love that divides us, for I am still troubled with a human heart, and often it aches with sorrow because all the love in it can never be fully understood or shared by my heron; and I have my human voice left, and that gives me a hundred things to say all day, for which there is no word in heron's language, and so he cannot understand them. Therefore these things only make a gulf between him and me. For all the other grey herons in the pools there is happiness, but not for me who have too big a heart between my wings."

Her mother said softly, "Wait, wait, little heron-daughter, and it shall be well with you!" Then she went to the Fairy and said, "My daughter's heart is lonely among the reeds, for the grey heron's love covers but half of it. Give her some companions of her own kind that her hours may become merry again!"

So the Fairy took and turned five of the Princess's ladies'-maids into herons, and sent them down to the pool.

The five herons stood each on one leg in the shallows of the pool, and cried all day long; and their tears fell down into the water and frightened away the fish that came their way. For they had human hearts that cried out to be let go. "O, cruel, cruel," they wept, whenever the heron-Princess approached, "see what we suffer because of you, and what they have made of us for your sake!"

The Princess came to her mother and said, "Dear mother, take them away, for their cry wearies me, and the pool is bitter with their tears! They only awake the human part of my heart that wants to sleep; presently, maybe, if it is let alone, it will forget itself."

Her mother said, "It is my coming every day also that keeps it awake." The Princess answered, "This sorrow belongs to my birthright; you must still come; but for the others, let the Fairy take them away."

So the Fairy came and released the five ladies'-maids whom she had changed into herons. And they came up out of the water, stripping themselves of their grey feather-skins and throwing them back into the pool. The Fairy said, "You foolish maids, you have thrown away a gift that you should have valued; these skins you could have kept and held as heirlooms in your family."

The five maids answered, "We want to forget that there are such things as herons in the world!"

After much thought the Queen said to the Fairy, "You have changed a Princess into a heron, and five maids into herons and back again; cannot you change one heron into a Prince?" But the Fairy answered sadly, "Our power has limits; we can bring down, but we cannot bring up, if there be no heart to answer our call. The five maids only followed their hearts, that were human, when I called them back; but a heron has only a heron's heart, and unless his heart become too great for a bird and he earn a human one, I cannot change him to a higher form." "How can he earn a human one?" asked the Queen. "Only if he love the Princess so well that his love for her becomes stronger than his life," answered the Fairy. "Then he will have earned a human body, and then I can give him the form that his heart suits best. There may be a chance, if we wait for it and are patient, for the Princess's love is great and may work miracles."

A little while after this, the Queen watching, saw that the two herons were making a nest among the reeds. "What have you there?" said the mother to her daughter. "A little hollow place," answered the heron-Princess, "and in it the moon lies." A little while after she said again, "What have you there, now, little daughter?" And her daughter answered, "Only a small hollow space; but in it two moons lie."

The Queen told the family Fairy how in a hollow of the reeds lay two moons. "Now," said the Fairy, "we will wait no longer. If your daughter's love has touched the heron's heart and made it grow larger than a bird's, I can help them both to happiness; but if not, then birds they must still remain."

Among the reeds the heron said in bird language to his wife, "Go and stretch your wings for a little while over the water; it is weary work to wait here so long in the reeds." The heron-Princess looked at him with her bird's eyes, and all the human love in her heart strove, like a fountain that could not get free, to make itself known through them; also her tongue was full of the longing to utter sweet words, but she kept them back, knowing they were beyond the heron's power to understand. So she answered merely in heron's language, "Come with me, and I will come!"

They rose, wing beating beside wing; and the reflection of their grey breasts slid out under them over the face of the water.

Higher they went and higher, passing over the tree tops, and keeping time together as they flew. All at once the wings of the grey heron flagged, then took a deep beat; he cried to the heron-Princess, "Turn, and come home, yonder there is danger flying to meet us!" Before them hung a brown blot in the air, that winged and grew large. The two herons turned and flew back. "Rise," cried the grey heron, "we must rise!" and the Princess knew what was behind, and struggled with the whole strength of her wings for escape.

The grey heron was bearing ahead on stronger wing. "With me, with me!" he cried. "If it gets above us, one of us is dead!" But the falcon had fixed his eye on the Princess for his quarry, and flew she fast, or flew she slow, there was little chance for her now. Up and up she strained, but still she was behind her mate, and still the falcon gained.

The heron swung back to her side; she saw the anguish and fear of his downward glance as his head ranged by hers. Past her the falcon went, towering for the final swoop.

The Princess cried in heron's language, "Farewell, dear mate, and farewell, two little moons among the reeds!" But the grey heron only kept closer to her side.

Overhead the falcon closed in its wings and fell like a dead weight out of the clouds. "Drop!" cried the grey heron to his mate.

At his word she dropped; but he stayed, stretching up his wings, and, passing between the descending falcon and its prey, caught in his own body the death-blow from its beak. Drops of his blood fell upon the heron-Princess.

He stricken in body, she in soul, together they fell down to the margin of the pool. The falcon still clung fleshing its beak in the neck of its prey. The heron-Princess threw back her head, and, darting furiously, struck her own sharp bill deep into the falcon's breast. The bird threw out its wings with a hoarse cry and fell back dead, with a little tuft of the grey heron's feathers still upon its beak.

The heron-Princess crouched down, and covered with her wings the dying form of her mate; in her sorrow she spoke to him in her own tongue, forgetting her bird's language. The grey heron lifted his head, and, gazing tenderly, answered her with a human voice:

"Dear wife," he said, "at last I have the happiness so long denied to me of giving utterance in the speech that is your own to the love that you have put into my heart. Often I have heard you speak and have not understood; now something has touched my heart, and changed it, so that I can both speak and understand."

"O, beloved!" She laid her head down by his. "The ends of the world belong to us now. Lie down, and die gently by my side, and I will die with you, breaking my heart with happiness."

"No," said the grey heron, "do not die yet! Remember the two little moons that lie in the hollow among the reeds." Then he laid his head down by hers, being too weak to say more.

They folded their wings over each other, and closed their eyes; nor did they know that the Fairy was standing by them, till she stroked them both softly with her wand, saying to each of them the same words:

"Human heart, and human form, come out of the grey heron!"

And out of the grey heron-skins came two human forms; the one was the Princess restored again to her own shape, but the other was a beautiful youth, with a bird-like look about the eyes, and long slender limbs. The Princess, as she gazed on him, found hardly any change, for love remained the same, binding him close to her heart; and, grey heron or beautiful youth, he was all one to her now.

Then came the Queen, weeping for joy, and embracing them both, and after them, the Fairy. "O, how good an ending," she cried, "has come to that terrible dream! Let it never be remembered or mentioned between us more!" And she began to lead the way back to the palace.

But the youth, to whom the Fairy gave the name of Prince Heron, turned and took up the two heron-skins which he and his wife had let fall, and followed, carrying them upon his arm. And as they came past the bed of reeds, the Princess went aside, and, stooping down in a certain place drew out from thence something which she came carrying, softly wrapped in the folds of her gown.

With what rejoicing the Princess and her husband were welcomed by the King and all the Court needs not to be told. For a whole month the festivities continued; and whenever she showed herself, there was the Princess sitting with two eggs in her lap, and her hands over them to keep them warm. The King was impatient. "Why cannot you send them down to the poultry yard to be hatched?" he said.

But the Princess replied smiling, "My moons are my own, and I will keep them to myself."

"Do you hear?" she said one day, at last; and everybody who listened could hear something going "tap, tap," inside the shells. Presently the eggs cracked, and out of each, at the same moment, came a little grey heron.

When she saw that they were herons, the Queen wrung her hands. "O Fairy," she cried, "what a disappointment is this! I had hoped two beautiful babies would have come out of those shells."

But the Fairy said, "It is no matter. Half of their hearts are human already; birds' hearts do not beat so. If you wish it, I can change them." So she stroked them softly with her wand, saying to each, "Human heart, and human form, come out of the grey heron!"

Yet she had to stroke them three times before they would turn; and she said to the Princess, "My dear, you were too satisfied with your lot when you laid your moon-children. I doubt if more than a quarter of them is human."

"I was very satisfied," said the Princess, and she laughed across to her husband.

At last, however, on the third stroke of the wand, the heron's skins dropped off, and they changed into a pair of very small babies, a boy and a girl. But the difference between them and other children was, that instead of hair, their heads were covered with a fluff of downy grey feathers; also they had queer, round, bird-like eyes, and were able to sleep standing.

Now, after this the happiness of the Princess was great; but the Fairy said to her, "Do not let your husband see the heron-skins again for some while, lest with the memory a longing for his old life should return to him and take him away from you. Only by exchange with another can he ever get back his human form again, if he surrenders it of his own free will. And who is there so poor that he would willingly give up his human form to become a bird?"

So the Princess took the four coats of feathers—her own and her husband's and her two children's—and hid them away in a closet of which she alone kept the key. It was a little gold key, and to make it safe she hung it about her neck, and wore it night and day.

The Prince said to her, "What is that little key that you wear always hung round your neck?"

She answered him, "It is the key to your happiness and mine. Do not ask more than that!" At that there was a look in his face that made her say, "You are happy, are you not?"

He kissed her, saying, "Happy, indeed! Have I not you to make me so?" Yet though, indeed, he told no untruth, and was happy whenever she was with him, there were times when a restlessness and a longing for wings took hold of him; for, as yet, the life of a man was new and half strange to him, and a taint of his old life still mixed itself with his blood. But to her he was ashamed to say what might seem a complaint against his great fortune; so when she said "happiness," he thought, "Is it just the turning of that key that I want before my happiness can be perfect?"

Therefore, one night when the early season of spring made his longing strong in him, he took the key from the Princess while she slept, and opened the little closet in which hung the four feather coats. And when he saw his own, all at once he remembered the great pools of water, and how they lay in the shine and shadow of the moonlight, while the fish rose in rings upon their surface. And at that so great a longing came into him to revisit his old haunts that he reached out his hand and took down the heron-skin from its nail and put it over himself; so that immediately his old life took hold of him, and he flew out of the window in the form of a grey heron.

In the morning the Princess found the key gone from her neck, and her husband's place empty. She went in haste to the closet, and there stood the door wide with the key in it, and only three heron-skins hanging where four had used to be.

Then she came crying to the family Fairy, "My husband has taken his heron-skin and is gone! Tell me what I can do!"

The Fairy pitied her with all her heart, but could do nothing. "Only by exchange," said she, "can he get back his human shape; and who is there so poor that he would willingly lose his own form to become a bird? Only your children, who are but half human, can put their heron-skins on and off as they like and when they like."

In deep grief the Princess went to look for her husband down by the pools in the wood. But now his shame and sorrow at having deceived her were so great that as soon as he heard her voice he hid himself among the reeds, for he knew now that, having put on his heron-skin again, he could not take it off unless some one gave him a human form in exchange.

At last, however, so pitiful was the cry of the Princess for him, that he could bear to hear it no more; but rising up from the reeds came trailing to her sadly over the water. "Ah, dear love!" she said when he was come to her, "if I had not distrusted you, you would not have deceived me: thus, for my fault we are punished." So she sorrowed, and he answered her:

"Nay, dear love, for if I had not deceived you, you would not have distrusted me. I thought I was not happy, yet I feared to tell it you." Thus they sorrowed together, both laying on themselves the blame and the burden.

Then she said to him: "Be here for me to-night, for now I must go; but then I shall return."

She went back to the palace, and told her mother of all that had happened. "And now," she said, "you who know where my happiness lies will not forbid me from following it; for my heart is again with the grey heron." And the Queen wept, but would not say her no.

So that night the Princess went and kissed her children as they slept standing up in their beds, with their funny feather-pates to one side; and then she took down her skin of feathers and put it on, and became changed once more into a grey heron. And again she went up to the two in their cots, and kissed their birdish heads saying: "They who can change at will, being but half human, they will come and visit us in the great pool by the wood, and bring back word of us here."

In the morning the Princess was gone, and the two children when they woke looked at each other and said: "Did we dream last night?"

They both answered each other, "Yes, first we dreamed that our mother came and kissed us; and we liked that. And then we dreamed that a grey heron came and kissed us, and we liked that better still!" They waved their arms up and down. "Why have we not wings?" they kept asking. All day long they did this, playing that they were birds. If a window were opened, it was with the greatest difficulty that they were kept from trying to fly through.

In the Court they were known as the "Feather-pates"; nothing could they be taught at all. When they were rebuked they would stand on one leg and sigh with their heads on one side; but no one ever saw tears come out of their birdish eyes.

Now at night they would dream that two grey herons came and stood by their bedsides, kissing them; "And where in the world," they said when they woke, "are our wings?"

One day, wandering about in the palace, they came upon the closet in which hung the two little feather coats. "O!!!" they cried, and opened hard bright eyes at each other, nodding, for now they knew what they would do. "If we told, they would be taken from us," they said; and they waited till it was night. Then they crept back and took the two little coats from their pegs, and, putting them on, were turned into two young herons.

Through the window they flew, away down to the great fish-pond in the wood. Their father and mother saw them coming, and clapped their wings for joy. "See," they said, "our children come to visit us, and our hearts are left to us to love with. What further happiness can we want?" But when they were not looking at each other they sighed.

All night long the two young herons stayed with their parents; they bathed, and fished, and flew, till they were weary. Then the Princess showed them the nest among the reeds, and told them all the story of their lives.

"But it is much nicer to be herons than to be real people," said the young ones, sadly, and became very sorrowful when dawn drew on, and their mother told them to go back to the palace and hang up the feather coats again, and be as they had been the day before.

Long, long the day now seemed to them; they hardly waited till it was night before they took down their feather-skins, and, putting them on, flew out and away to the fish-pond in the wood.

So every night they went, when all in the palace were asleep; and in the morning came back before anyone was astir, and were found by their nurses lying demurely between the sheets, just as they had been left the night before.

One day the Queen when she went to see her daughter said to her, "My child, your two children are growing less like human beings and more like birds every day. Nothing will they learn or do, but stand all day flapping their arms up and down, and saying, 'Where are our wings, where are our wings?' The idea of one of them ever coming to the throne makes your father's hair stand on end under his crown."

"Oh, mother," said the heron-Princess, "I have made a sad bed for you and my father to lie on!"

One day the two children said to each other, "Our father and mother are sad, because they want to be real persons again, instead of having wings and catching fish the way we like to do. Let us give up being real persons, which is all so much trouble, and such a want of exercise, and make them exchange with us!" But when the two young herons went down to the pond and proposed it to them, their parents said, "You are young; you do not know what you would be giving up." Nor would they consent to it at all.

Now one morning it happened that the Feather-pates were so late in returning to the palace that the Queen, coming into their chamber, found the two beds empty; and just as she had turned away to search for them elsewhere, she heard a noise of wings and saw the two young herons come flying in through the window. Then she saw them take off their feather-skins and hang them up in the closet, and after that go and lie down in their beds so as to look as if they had been there all night.

The Queen struck her hands together with horror at the sight, but she crept away softly, so that they did not know they had been found out. But as soon as they were out of their beds and at play in another part of the palace, the Queen went to the closet, and setting fire to the two heron-skins where they hung, burnt them till not a feather of them was left, and only a heap of grey ashes remained to tell what had become of them.

At night, when the Feather-pates went to the closet and found their skins gone, and saw what had become of them, their grief knew no bounds. They trembled with fear and rage, and tears rained out of their eyes as they beheld themselves deprived of their bird bodies and made into real persons for good and all.

"We won't be real persons!" they cried. But for all their crying they knew no way out of it. They made themselves quite ill with grief; and that night, for the first time since they had found their way to the closet, they stayed where their nurses had put them, and did not even stand up in their beds to go to sleep. There they lay with gasping mouth, and big bird-like eyes all languid with grief, and hollow grey cheeks.

Presently their father and mother came seeking for them, wondering why they had not come down to the fish-pond as they were wont. "Where are you, my children?" cried the heron-Princess, putting her head in through the window.

"Here we are, both at death's door!" they cried. "Come and see us die! Our wicked grandam has burnt our feather-skins and made us into real persons for ever and ever, Amen. But we will die rather!"

The parent herons, when they heard that, flew in through the window and bent down over the little ones' beds.

The two children reached up their arms. "Give us your feathers!" they cried. "We shall die if you don't! We will die if you don't! O, do!" But still the parent birds hesitated, nor knew what to do.

"Bend down, and let me whisper something!" said the boy to his father: and "Bend down, and whisper!" cried the girl to her mother. And father and mother bent down over the faces of their sick children. Then these, both together, caught hold of them, and crying, "Human heart, and human form, exchange with the grey heron!" pulled off their parents' feather-skins, and put them upon themselves.

And there once more stood Prince Heron and the Princess in human shape, while the two children had turned into herons in their place.

The young herons laughed and shouted and clapped their wings for joy. "Are you not happy now?" cried they. And when their parents saw the joy, not only in their children's eyes, but in each other's, and felt their hearts growing glad in the bodies they had regained, then they owned that the Feather-pates had been wise in their generation, and done well according to their lights.

So it came about that the Prince and the Princess lived happily ever after, and the two young herons lived happily also, and were the best-hearted birds the world ever saw.

In course of time the Prince and Princess had other children, who pleased the old King better than the first had done. But the parents loved none better than the two who lived as herons by the great fish-pond in the wood; nor could there be greater love than was found between these and their younger brothers and sisters, whose nature it was to be real persons.