It was then the oyster king went and told the men who change the alphabets just what happened. When the men who change the alphabets heard just what happened, they decided to put in a new letter, the letter X, near the end of the alphabet, the sign of the crossed fingers. On the wedding day of Pig Wisps and Shovel Ears, the men who change the alphabets all came to the wedding, with their fingers crossed. Pig Wisps and Shovel Ears stood up to be married. They crossed their fingers. They told each other other they would remember their promises. And Pig Wisps had two ropes of pearls twisted down her back and a sweet young face saying, “Here we come—where from?” [Illustration] Kiss Me Many years ago when pigs climbed chimneys and chased cats up into the trees, away back, so they say, there was a lumber king who lived in a river city with many wildcats in the timbers near by. And the lumber king said, “I am losing my hair and my teeth and I am tired of many things; my only joy is a daughter who is a dancing shaft of light on the ax handles of morning.” She was quick and wild, the lumber king’s daughter. She had never kissed. Not her mother nor father nor any sweetheart ever had a love print from her lips. Proud she was. They called her Kiss Me. She didn’t like that name, Kiss Me. They never called her that when she was listening. If she happened to be listening they called her Find Me, Lose Me, Get Me. They never mentioned kisses because they knew she would run away and be what her father called her, “a dancing shaft of light on the ax handles of morning.” But—when she was not listening they asked, “Where is Kiss Me to-day?” Or they would say, “Every morning Kiss Me gets more beautiful—I wonder if she will ever in her young life get a kiss from a man good enough to kiss her.” One day Kiss Me was lost. She went out on a horse with a gun to hunt wildcats in the timbers near by. Since the day before, she was gone. All night she was out in a snowstorm with a horse and a gun hunting wildcats. And the storm of the blowing snow was coming worse on the second day. [Illustration: Out into the snowstorm Flax Eyes rode that day] It was then the lumber king called in a long, loose, young man with a leather face and hay in his hair. And the king said, “Flax Eyes, you are the laziest careless man in the river lumber country—go out in the snowstorm now, among the wildcats, where Kiss Me is fighting for her life—and save her.” “I am the hero. I am the man who knows how. I am the man who has been waiting for this chance,” said Flax Eyes. On a horse, with a gun, out into the snowstorm Flax Eyes rode that day. Far, far away he rode to where Kiss Me, the quick wild Kiss Me, was standing with her back against a big rock fighting off the wildcats.