"Be judged by thine own words, O Flower of Iceland!" replied the fairy king quietly. "Why didst thou not listen to the voice of thy heart? We fairies know nothing of human weakness, therefore we cannot forgive it. Dost thou know the fate that now awaits thee, Helga?" "I know it well," answered Helga firmly, "and if my mouth has been unfaithful, my heart has been true. I welcome death, for it will reunite me to you!" Then a happy smile passed over the fairy king's noble countenance; he stretched out his arms, and pressed Helga dying to his heart. Finding that his wife did not come back, Olaffson hastened with his father-in-law to the stranger's room. They found fair Helga in the fairy king's arms. Both were cold and dead; in the same moment both hearts had broken. Olaffson tried to take Helga away from the stranger's arms, but in vain. What life had robbed him of, he held in death with a grasp that could not be loosed. "Leave them, my son," said the old grief-stricken father; "she is his by right. What has all our prudence done for us? Worse than nothing! The fairy king has reclaimed his own in spite of us." They laid them in the same coffin, and next morning the soil of Iceland was to receive them into its cold lap. But in the night that followed this eventful day, sleep fell more heavily than usual on the eyes of the mourners. They did not hear the whispering of gentle voices or the hasty tread of many feet. They did not see the multitude of fairies who had assembled from all parts of the island to show the last honour to their beloved king. Noiselessly the spirits lifted the coffin, carried it out of the house, and away to the rock where fair Helga had begged in vain for admission. To-day it was not denied her. The magic gates sprang open as the coffin approached. With drooping wings the white birds hovered round, and mourned the royal pair in notes of soft lamentation. At the shore of the beautiful blue sea the faithful spirits lowered their burden. There Helga and her fairy husband rest beneath the flowers of this paradise, and beside the gentle murmur of the waves. On the branches of the cypress that grows on their grave hangs the fairy king's harp. The hand is cold that once touched its chords; but when the morning breeze sweeps through them, they sound as of old in magic melody. The sweet notes float on the sunbeams through the evergreen paradise, pierce the hard rock, and hover as beautiful and undying legends over Iceland's heaths and snow-clad hills. THE SEA-FAIRY. [Illustration: THE OLD MAN BESIDE THE CORPSE OF ANTONIO.] The evening sun was sinking in a glow of colour on the waters of the North Atlantic and on the rocky coast of Norway as a youth wandered alone by the edge of one of its numerous fiords. He was alone in the world; father and mother, brothers and sisters, were all dead, and he strove to still the longings of his heart by the wonders of foreign lands.