Looking out through the window, down at the end of a long moonbeam they saw the Red Mole gnashing his whiskers for rage. Then the Prince took off his shoes, and threw them with all his might down the moonbeam at the Mole. As the shoes fell, they went faster, and faster, and faster, till they came to earth; and they struck the Mole so hard upon the head that he died. Now as for Gammelyn and the shoes we may hear of them again elsewhere; but as for the Prince and his beautiful Princess Berenice, the happiness in which they lived for the rest of their days is too great even to be told of. HAPPY RETURNS _TO_ JEANNIE [Illustration] HAPPY RETURNS By the side of a great river, whose stream formed the boundary to two countries, lived an old ferryman and his wife. All the day, while she minded the house, he sat in his boat by the ferry, waiting to carry travellers across; or, when no travellers came, and he had his boat free, he would cast drag-nets along the bed of the river for fish. But for the food which he was able thus to procure at times, he and his wife might well have starved, for travellers were often few and far between, and often they grudged him the few pence he asked for ferrying them; and now he had grown so old and feeble that when the river was in flood he could scarcely ferry the boat across; and continually he feared lest a younger and stronger man should come and take his place, and the bread from his mouth. But he had trust in Providence. “Will not God,” he said, “who has given us no happiness in this life, save in each other’s help and companionship, allow us to end our days in peace?” And his wife answered, “Yes, surely, if we trust Him enough He will.” One morning, it being the first day of the year, the ferryman going down to his boat, found that during the night it had been loosed from its moorings and taken across the river, where it now lay fastened to the further bank. “Wife,” said he, “I can remember this same thing happening a year ago, and the year before also. Who is this traveller who comes once a year, like a thief in the night, and crosses without asking me to ferry him over?” “Perhaps it is the good folk,” said his wife. “Go over and see if they have left no coin behind them in the boat.” The old man got on to a log and poled himself across, and found, down in the keel of the boat, the mark of a man’s bare foot driven deep into the wood; but there was no coin or other trace to show who it might be. Time went on; the old ferryman was all bowed down with age, and his body was racked with pains. So slow was he now in making the passage of the stream, that all travellers who knew those parts took a road higher up the bank, where a stronger ferryman plied.