Page 164 - Adventures in shadow-land

Then Aster told her how, in the crevice of the
rock, he had found that the Green Frog lay in wait
for him. How she and her servants had taken

him, bound and tied with the same spider’s web
from which Eva had, once before, in the forest,

released him, to her hut in the field of mud.
And how, when there, he had to lie 111 the mud,

as a footstool for the Frog,—and that every night
she made him stand before her, and would laugh

at him, and ask him why Eva and his friends did
not come to help him*

u I was too proud/* Aster said, “ and too angry,
to call for you* I thought I should, by myself, be

able to escape. I tried, but the power of t h e y
who kept me was too great for me, and I never

once succeeded even in passing the strange fence
around the hut.

“ But all the time, Eva, I knew—and it was
part of my punishment—that an appeal to you
could be heard, and that you would come to help

me; But that I—I, a prince,—powerful at home,
and only weak now because I had lost such a tri­

fling thing as a flower, should be compelled to ask
help of one who was able to help me only because

O