United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"But silence is a proverbial form of assent. At all events, we will have a look at him." "But that too will prove nothing, since Thragnar goes about his mischiefs so disguised by enchantments as invariably to resemble somebody else, and not himself at all." "Such dishonest habits introduce an element of uncertainty, I grant you," says Jurgen. "Still, one can rarely err by keeping on the safe side.
"Yet I dare say that Thragnar well, the Troll King, being very wise, must have made zoology much clearer." "Thragnar was a skilled enchanter," says a demure voice in the dark; "and through the potency of his abominable arts, I can remember nothing whatever about Thragnar." Jurgen laughed, ruefully. Still, he was tolerably sure about Thragnar now.
"My dear Princess, he has but to push up the trapdoor from beneath, and the cross, being tied to the trapdoor, is promptly moved out of his way. Failing this expedient, he can always come out of the cave by the other opening, through which I entered. If this Thragnar has any intelligence at all and a reasonable amount of tenacity, he will presently be at hand."
That you are Duke of Logreus you tell me, and I concede a duke is all very well: but I expect you in return to concede a king takes precedence, with any man whose daughter is marriageable. But to-morrow or the next day it may be, you and I will talk over your reward more privately. Meanwhile it is very queer and very frightened you are looking, to be the champion who conquered Thragnar."
A woman might, just possibly, have granted her own homeliness: but no woman that ever breathed would have conceded the Princess had a ray of good looks." So with Caliburn he smote, and struck off the head of this thing which foolishly pretended to be Dame Lisa. "Well done! oh, bravely done!" cried Guenevere. "Now the enchantment is dissolved, and Thragnar is slain by my clever champion."
"By that unhuman trait," says Jurgen, "Thragnar ought to be very easy to distinguish." Pitiful Disguises of Thragnar Next, the tale tells that as Jurgen and the Princess were nearing Gihon, a man came riding toward them, full armed in black, and having a red serpent with an apple in its mouth painted upon his shield.
At the top of the stairway was an iron trapdoor, and this door at the girl's instruction Jurgen lowered. There was no way of fastening the door from without. "But Thragnar is not to be stopped by bolts or padlocks," the girl said. "Instead, we must straightway mark this door with a cross, since that is a symbol which Thragnar cannot pass." Jurgen's hand had gone instinctively to his throat.
For, as she now told Jurgen, she was Guenevere, the daughter of Gogyrvan, King of Glathion and the Red Islands. So Jurgen told her he was the Duke of Logreus, because he felt it was not appropriate for a pawnbroker to be rescuing princesses: and he swore, too, that he would restore her safely to her father, whatever Thragnar might attempt.
"I wonder now for whom King Thragnar left this notice?" reflected Jurgen "certainly not for me. And I wonder, too, if he left it here a year ago or only this evening? And I wonder if it was Thragnar's head I removed in the black and silver pavilion? Ah, well, there are a number of things to wonder about in this incredible cave, wherein the lights are dying out, as I observe with some discomfort.
Word Of The Day