"Oh, I know," interrupted the stranger hastily--"you thought it was something worse. That's it, that's just my luck! I'm the gentlest creature in the world and everybody's afraid of me. My business," he explained, turning to Ann, "is to redress wrongs and to see after the ladies, but--bless you--they won't let me get near enough to do anything for 'em!" A great tear rolled down his long nose as he spoke, and he looked so silly that Ann and Rudolf could hardly help laughing at him, though they did not in the least want to be rude. "And then," continued the creature, sobbing, "I'm so divided in my feelings. If I were only _all_ Knight, now, or even all Mare, I'd be thankful, but a Knight-mare is an unsatisfactory sort of thing to be." "A Knight-mare--Oh, how dreadful!" cried Ann, drawing away from him. "Is _that_ what you are?" "There! You see how it is!" exclaimed the Knight-mare, tossing his long black mane. "Nobody's got any sympathy for me. How would _you_ like it? Suppose you were a little girl only as far as your shoulders and all the rest of you hippopotamus, eh?" "I wouldn't like it at all," said Ann, after thinking a moment. "Then no more do I," said the Knight-mare, and sighed a long sad sigh. "Would you mind telling us how it happened?" asked Rudolf politely. "Not at all," said the Knight-mare. "You see I was a great boy for fighting in the old days--though you mightn't think it to see me now--and I used to ride forth to battle on my coal-black steed, this very mare whose head I'm wearing now. Well, of course I was a terror to my enemies, used to scare 'em into fits, and I suppose it was one of those very fellows that got me into this fix, dreamed me into it one night, you know, only he got me and my steed mixed. We've stayed mixed ever since, and the worst of it is I oughtn't to be a Bad Dream at all. I was the nicest kind of a Good Dream once--why I belonged to a lady who lived in a castle, and she thought a lot of me, she did!" "It's too bad," said Rudolf sympathetically; "but isn't there anything you can do about it?" "Nothing," groaned the Knight-mare, "nothing at all. At least not till I can find a way to get rid of this ugly head of mine. If there was anybody big enough and brave enough, now, to--" He interrupted his speech to stoop down and snatch up something from the grass. It was Rudolf's sword which he had dropped from his hand in his weariness after his battle with the Fidgets. "What's this?" the Knight-mare cried. "Hurrah, a sword!" "My sword," said Rudolf, stretching out his hand for it. "Just the thing for cutting heads off!" cried the Knight. "Will you lend it to me, like a good fellow? Mine is lost." "What for?" asked Rudolf suspiciously. "Why, to cut my head off with, of course, or better yet, perhaps you'll do it for me. Come, now! Just to oblige me?"