The Wagner Story Book

The Wagner Story Book

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Title: The Wagner Story Book
Author: Henry Frost
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THE WAGNER STORY BOOK
[Illustration: "AT LAST WE CAN SEE SOMETHING IN THE
FIRE."]
THE WAGNER STORY BOOK
FIRELIGHT TALES OF THE GREAT MUSIC DRAMAS
BY WILLIAM HENRY FROST
ILLUSTRATED BY SYDNEY RICHMOND BURLEIGH
To
Helen Krebbier

CONTENTS
THE STOLEN TREASURE
THE DAUGHTER OF THE GOD
THE HERO WHO KNEW NO FEAR
THE END OF THE RING
THE KNIGHT OF THE SWAN
THE PRIZE OF A SONG
THE BLOOD-RED SAIL
THE LOVE POTION
THE MINSTREL KNIGHT
THE KING OF THE GRAIL
THE ASHES

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"AT LAST WE CAN SEE SOMETHING IN THE FIRE"
"THE GOLD SHINES OUT SO BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL"
"THE DAUGHTER OF THE GOD"

"THE SUNLIGHT FOLLOWS HIM STRAIGHT INTO THE CAVE"
"THEIR TREASURE IS THEIR OWN AGAIN"
"THE KNIGHT OF HER DREAM"
"HE SAW HER EYES BRIGHTER THAN THE STARS"
"THROUGH THE BLACK STORM AND HIS OWN BLACKER
DESPAIR"
"AS IF THEY COULD NEVER GAZE ENOUGH"
"THE STRANGEST FLOWERS GROW UP UNDER THEIR FEET"
"THE KING OF THE GRAIL"

THE STOLEN TREASURE
There is a certain little girl who sometimes tries to find out when I am
not over busy, so that she may ask me to tell her a story. She is kind
enough to say that she likes my stories, and this so flatters my vanity
that I like nothing better than telling them to her. One reason why she
likes them, I suspect, is that they are not really my stories at all, the
most of them. They are the stories that the whole world has known and
loved all these hundreds and thousands of years, tales of the gods and
the heroes, of the giants and the goblins. Those are the right stories to
tell to children, I believe, and the right ones for children to hear--the
wonderful things that used to be done, up in the sky, and down under
the ocean, and inside the mountains. If the boys and girls do not find
out now, while they are young, all about the strange, mysterious,
magical life of the days when the whole world was young, it is ten to
one that they will never find out about it at all, for the most of us do not
keep ourselves like children always, though surely we have all been
told plainly enough that that is what we ought to do.
This little girl's mother is rather a strange sort of woman. I do not know
that she exactly disagrees with us about these stories that we both like
so much, but she seems to have a different way of looking at them from
ours. I sometimes suspect that she does not even believe in fairies at all,
that she never so much as thought she saw a ghost, that, if she heard a
dozen wild horses galloping over the roof of the house and then flying
away into the sky, she would think it was only the wind, and that she is
no more afraid of ogres than of policemen. Still she is a woman whom
one cannot help liking, in some respects.
But one day she said something to the little girl that surprised me, and

made me think that perhaps I had done her injustice. The child came to
me with a face full of perplexity and said: "What do you suppose
mamma just told me?"
"I am sure I can't guess," I replied; "your mother tells you such
ridiculous