His companion smiled grimly. “Hast thou so soon forgotten thine own objection to questions concerning our legends when finished?” he asked. “Nevertheless I would tell thee if I could, but I fear to speak with certainty upon a subject which has ever been shrouded in doubt. Most authorities agree that this mighty being could be none other than he of whom mention was made in my first legend--that of the Wild Boar of Windsor Forest. But the great fairy, Toddlekins, did not announce himself on the occasion of the transformation of the three witches; and the only proof that it was he who reigned over the mannikins and delivered them from their enemies consists in the similarity of his appearance with that of the rescuer of Smith in the Druid days. I incline to think it may have been him; and we know that wherever Toddlekins has power good prevails {228}and evil flies from his presence; but more I cannot tell you.” “Be it so, brother,” returned he of the Rhine; “the matter, anyhow, ended well, and I would that my Rhineland had a fairy Toddlekins as well as thy favoured country.” Father Thames smiled grimly. “There never could be two such as Toddlekins in this world,” replied he; “and it is a blessing for me and mine that there has been one. But come, Brother Rhine, there is yet time for another legend. Hast thou none of the old war times, and of the brave German barons who fought so oft and so fiercely?” “Ay, that have I, many an one,” responded the other. “I bethink me, moreover, of one which is not strictly or wholly of mine own land, nor in truth do I know precisely to what land it can be said entirely to belong. It is one, however, which has been handed down to us in verse, if you object not to a tale told in such fashion.” “Object, indeed!” cried jolly old Father Thames in a pleasant voice. “How or why should I object? Are not some of our very best English legends told in verse? Witness that excellent old story of-- ‘Old King Cole was a merry old soul, And so was old King Tudor; But merrier still was Miss Mary Cole, When the Earl of Pembroke woo’d her.’ That _is_ a fine legend, if you please! I heard it all told by a descendant of the Cole family, who stumbled on the story in an old manuscript, and instantly went out to Cannes, in the South of France, where he studied it carefully {229}with a view to producing it for the benefit of the English public, and was only prevented from doing so by his sisters, who insisted upon it that the wooing done in their family, even at a remote period, was a matter of private history which should never be allowed to become public property. Perhaps they had some affair of the same kind in hand themselves, and did not want to establish an inconvenient precedent.”