THE BALL OF ENCHANTMENT. 377 



tone familiar to those who heard it. Could it be the voice of 

 her they had been seeking ? It was none other ; and alarm 

 was all forgotten in joyful surprise when, peeping through the 

 rent in the misshapen sphere, they saw the little head of Pic- 

 coletta. Without waiting to inquire how she had got into that 

 world of wonder, or how she had fallen in, with it, amongst 

 her friends, some of the latter lifted her, ball and all, upon their 

 shoulders, and carried her, rejoicingly, to the city. 



The history of her second escape was soon told. When 

 she awoke from her sleep of terror, on the bed of sand in 

 the pitfall where her friends had left her with so little cere- 

 mony, she looked first at the ball whose issuing tenant had 

 so sorely frightened her ; but, through the yawning rent in its 

 side, saw, or thought she saw, that it was now empty. Then 

 she looked at the sandy walls, which rose sloping round her, 

 and, seeing all clear, lost no time in beginning to scale them. 

 This, though a very laborious, she found (as she had expected) 

 no impracticable task, and had half achieved it, when she heard 

 in a tree at hand, the well-known knocking of the great 

 Pecchio. 1 This time, from her precarious position, it made her 

 heart sink, and, what was worse, caused her foot to slip, so that 

 she fell rolling with a stream of sand to the bottom of the pit. 

 The Pecchio heard and saw her, and, darting from his station 

 on the trunk of an elm, lighted on the edge of the cavity, 

 devouring her with his great eyes, and ready to swallow her 

 down his great throat. There was only one place of refuge 

 open for the trembling Piccoletta, and that was the ball beside 

 her, into which, in her desperate strait, she was right glad to 

 creep. But the Pecchio was not to be so easily baulked of his 

 coveted morsel. He dipped his enormous red head into the 

 pitfall, seized both the ball and its shaking occupant, rose with 

 them into the air, and dropped them, by good luck, for Picco- 

 letta, in the midst of her acquaintance. 



This was an explanation, simple enough, of Piccoletta's 

 1 Pecchio Italian for Woodpecker. 



