of indescribable sharpness, who would eat any one daring to come within a hundred yards of the entrance gates.
Even the grown people believed in this dreadful monster, and no one of them would have been found on the other side of the valley after sunset.
One very aged man always declared that he had seen the Dragon when he was young, and that he had had green and gold scales all over his body; that he breathed fire and smoke, and that he flew by like a streak of lightning. Most persons were sure that they had heard him bellowing on stormy winter nights.
But no one took so much interest in the Dragon as Cherry-Bloom.
She was a very courageous child, and fond of an adventure; and as she looked across the valley at the castle of the Dragon, lying in the sunlight, gray and silent and mysterious, she felt as if some spell were drawing her towards it.
