“Alas! Alas!” he cried aloud, “my dear lady is drowned in this desolate pool.”
“Would that I were, good friend,” the princess’s voice made answer, “it had been better than this my sad captivity, for I am in the power of a wicked water-kelpie who woos me for his wife.”
When he heard these words, the cobbler fell to thinking how he might deliver his princess from her sorrowful fate, and soon he bethought him of the jewelled cross. This he took and flung it far into the tarn, and as the saving sign touched the surface the evil, wine-dark water began to seethe and boil in its depths, and the stately pearl-white palace of the kelpie broke up and dissolved upon the instant. So the princess was released and came forth from the tarn. Then the cobbler hastened to tell her of the discovery of the
