The end of it was that the soldiers were called out, and Swayn and the
Goblin were thrown into prison. The Lord Mayor, whose antics had done so
much harm, took charge of the drum and the fiddle and locked them up in
the town-hall, and peace reigned once more.
And now we must hear something of what happened to Laurine when she ran
away from the Goblin’s house in such a hurry.
She found it very difficult to get free of the wood, but she did so at
last, and, by good fortune, came out on the side nearest to her
stepfather’s castle. But when she arrived there the first thing she saw
was the Baron himself looking out of a high window. At the sight of her
he began to shout with fury and to beat the window-sill with his cane,
just as he had beaten the bed-clothes.
“Off!” he roared, “hussy that you are! I have done with you. I have
found out all about you. Not content with being the plague of my life,
you encouraged all these knaves to break my head with their detestable
noise, and I have been at death’s door ever since. Off you go, or I will
let loose the dogs! You will soon see what a mistake you have made in
refusing all these husbands, for you will have to get your own living as
best you can.”
And he drew in his head, banging the window till the iron bars rattled.
Laurine turned to go, trembling, for she could hear the dogs which were
kept to chase away beggars howling inside the gates. She dared not even
beg a piece of bread from the servants, and she knew she could never
find her way back to the Goblin’s house.
She turned sadly away and wandered on till sundown, when a charitable
peasant-woman in a village shared her supper with her, and allowed her
to rest in a barn when night came on. But Laurine could not sleep for
thinking how she was to save herself from starving and what she could do
to earn enough to keep herself alive. If she were to offer to work as a
servant, people would laugh at her white hands and delicate ways.
The next day, before she departed, she thanked the woman, and said: “Now
I will do something to amuse you and your children, for it is all the
payment I can make.”
And so saying, she began to dance.
Never had anybody seen anything like her dancing; the village people
thought she must be a fairy and were almost afraid to go near her. She
gathered up her hair in both hands, whirling it round and round her like
a scarf; her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground. It was wonderful.
Everyone came to look on.
It so chanced that there passed by a fine chariot, in which sat a
red-faced, crooked old lady, very grandly dressed; and when the dame
beheld the crowd, she let down her window and shouted to her coachman to
stop, that she might see the dancing. At the end of the performance she
threw Laurine a purse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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