SOLARIO THE TAILOR [Illustration: Mortimer the Executioner] [Illustration: “Then I will begin,” said Solario, the Tailor, “the story of----”] SOLARIO THE TAILOR _HIS TALES OF THE MAGIC DOUBLET_ BY WILLIAM BOWEN [Illustration] New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922 _All rights reserved_ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [Illustration] COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922. [Illustration] CONTENTS THE FIRST NIGHT STORY OF THE OLD MAN IN THE SPANGLED COAT PAGE _The doublet with the missing button--The dark mansion in the walled park--The tailor meets the tall black man and his fair daughter--The Black Prince tells his story--Eight tailors who could not sew on a single button--The tailor is visited by a hideous old woman--The jolly mule driver and his sing-song--Adventures in search of Alb the Unicorn--Solario encounters Alb the Unicorn--The button is sewed on with the unicorn’s hair--The Prince receives the tailor’s terms--The magic doublet is suddenly produced_ 1 THE SECOND NIGHT ALB THE UNICORN _Alb the Fortunate and the Princess Hyla--A tattered old beggar comes to the goldsmith’s shop--The old man proposes a strange bargain--The three black hairs in the yellow head--Alb wins the promise of the Princess’s hand--A trifling incident disturbs Alb’s mother--Unreasonable conduct of the goldsmith’s widow--The merrymakers are suddenly sobered by the goldsmith’s son--The Princess behaves in an amusing fashion--The Princess finds her husband bewitched--Alb and the Princess visit the One-Armed Sorcerer--The Old Man of Ice, The Laughing Nymph, and the Great Horned Owl--The burning glass, the brass pin, and the loop of thread--He hears thunder in a clear sky--He goes down into the cave in Thunder Mountain--He pursues the Man of Ice with the burning glass--He commences to make his escape from the cave--He sails across the Great Sea--He finds a child in a pool of the rock--The Laughing Nymph in the Three-Spire Rock--He remembers the brass pin in time--The second black hair is gone--The Great Horned Owl stands ready for the loop of thread--The wrong hand and a desperate fall--Alb sees in the river the reflection of a unicorn_ 31 THE THIRD NIGHT THE SON OF THE TAILOR OF OOGH