The dragon heard the voices as well; his evil intentions died away; the chronic fear of discovery came upon him again. He grew paler and paler; clouds of smoke came from his nostrils, until he became invisible. At the same moment Helmut groping against the wall that lay in shadow, found the opening of the passage through which they had come. Through this the three boys now crawled, hardly daring to breathe, for fear of exciting the dragon again. Soon a gleam of light at the other end told of their deliverance. Their tender mothers fell on their necks, and scolded them at the same time. Truly, never did boys look dirtier or more disreputable. "We feel positively ashamed to go home with you," their mothers said to them. "Well, for once I was jolly glad you did come, mother," said Helmut. "That treacherous old dragon wanted to turn on us after all; he might have devoured us, if you had not turned up in the nick of time. Not that I believe that he _really_ would have done anything of the sort, he was a coward you know, and when we levelled our guns at him he was awfully frightened. Still he _might_ have found out that our guns were not properly loaded, and then it would have been unpleasant." Mother smiled, she did not seem to take the story quite so seriously as Helmut wished. "We had a gorgeous ride on his back, mother dear; would you like to see him? You have only to lie down flat and squeeze yourself through that crack in the rocks till you come to his cave." "No thank you," said mother, "I think I can do without seeing your dragon." "Oh, we have forgotten our flags!" called out Wolf and Werner, "wait a minute for us," and they climbed up over the rocks and rescued the flags. "He's still in there," they whispered to Helmut in a mysterious whisper. "Mother," said Helmut that evening when she came to wish him good night, "do you know, if you stand up to a dragon like a man, and are not afraid of him, he is not so difficult to vanquish after all." "I'm glad you think so," said mother, "'Volo cum Deo'--there is a Latin proverb for you; it means, that with God's help, will-power is the chief thing necessary; this even dragons know. Thus a little boy can conquer even greater dragons than the monsters vast of ages past." "Hum!" said Helmut musingly, "mother, dear, I was a real hero to-day, I think you would have been proud of me; but I must confess between ourselves, that the old dragon was a bit of a fool!" THE EASTER HARE