In a moment we had reached the city gate and passed out. The Guardian was standing there, his face clouded with a frown, and his scimitar raised. “Why do you flee?” said he. “From the wrath of the people!” I cried. “Let us pass!” “You cannot pass,” said he. His scimitar glittered in the sun. “But we repent! We repent!” cried my sister. “Too late, too late!” said the Guardian. “See!” He pointed upward, and afar off in the sky appeared a black speck, speeding toward us. “The genie!” I cried; and I had no sooner said it, than the earth trembled, and before us on the ground towered the genie, breathing fire. “Save us from him!” I cried, turning to the Guardian, but he was gone. We were alone with the genie. _The Pulling Off of the Genie’s Ring_ “Off with the ring! That will send him away!” I cried to my sister, and she tugged at the ring on her forefinger, to pull it off; but it came unwillingly; and as she pulled, her finger lengthened; she tugged harder, and as the ring came her finger stretched out longer and longer; and when the ring was off and dropped on the ground, the first finger of her right hand was more than a foot long,--a black, stiff rod, hooked at the end like a poker. [Illustration: The genie swung him back and forth and tossed him out to sea] The genie stooped, and gathered me under his right arm and my sister under his left; and giving a stamp upon the ground which shook the earth he mounted into the air.... Far out over the Great Sea, as the sun was setting, the genie drew downward toward an island; and on a bluff of this island, overlooking a cove in which fishing boats lay moored, he alighted and set us on our feet. Over my sister’s head and back he passed his hand, speaking strange words in his throat. She shriveled before my eyes; her face became old and wrinkled and her body bent; and before I could speak she was the hideous creature I had seen in the Fool’s glass, with a forefinger like the poker of a ragpicker. “Paravaine!” I cried; but the genie turned her away toward a village which showed itself at the back of the cove, and sent her off in that direction; and when she had gone, he picked me up in his mighty hands, and carrying me to the further edge of the bluff where it looked down on the rolling surf, he swung me back and forth three or four times and tossed me out to sea. I sank into the depths; I rose to the surface; and as my head came up I looked for the genie. Far up in the evening sky flew what seemed a tiny, black arrow. I cried aloud; and instead of a shriek there came from my throat a bark. It was the bark of a seal. [Illustration] THE SIXTH NIGHT THE ENCHANTED HIGHWAYMAN _Mortimer the Executioner, very grand and uncomfortable in his new suit, placed a chair for the Queen before Solario’s worktable, and the old tailor having seated himself cross-legged on the table, the entire company sat down in a row, facing him._