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[Illustration: Red Cap among the Wizard's Treasures.]
STOLEN FROM THE TREASURE CHEST OF THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1904.
=Norwood Press= J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
SO I told them these stories--and others--to lure them to the printed book, much as carrots are dangled before the nose of the reluctant donkey. They are four average intelligent children enough, but they hold severely modern views upon storybooks. _Waverley_, in especial, they could not away with. They found themselves stuck upon the very threshold.
Now, since the first telling of these Red Cap Tales, the Scott shelf in the library has been taken by storm and escalade. It is permanently gap-toothed all along the line. Also there are nightly skirmishes, even to the laying on of hands, as to who shall sleep with _Waverley_ under his pillow.
It struck me that there must be many oldsters in the world who, for the sake of their own youth, would like the various Sweethearts who now inhabit their nurseries, to read Sir Walter with the same breathless eagerness as they used to do--how many years agone? It is chiefly for their sakes that I have added several interludes, telling how Sweetheart, Hugh John, Sir Toady Lion, and Maid Margaret received my petty larcenies from the full chest of the Wizard.
At any rate, Red Cap succeeded in one case--why should he not in another? I claim no merit in the telling of the tales, save that, like medicines well sugar-coated, the patients mistook them for candies and--asked for more.
The books are open. Any one can tell Scott's stories over again in his own way. This is mine.
CERTAIN SMALL PHARAOHS THAT KNEW NOT JOSEPH 1
THE FIRST TALE: I. GOOD-BYE TO WAVERLEY-HONOUR 11 II. THE ENCHANTED CASTLE 16 III. THE BARON AND THE BEAR 21 _THE FIRST INTERLUDE OF ACTION_ 28
THE SECOND TALE: I. THE CATTLE-LIFTING 31 II. THE ROBBER'S CAVE 35 _THE SECOND INTERLUDE_ 41
THE THIRD TALE: I. THE CHIEF OF THE MAC-IVORS AND THE CHIEF'S SISTER 46 II. MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLE 55 _THE THIRD INTERLUDE--BEING MAINLY A FEW WORDS UPON HEROES_ 62