Once upon a time there dwelt in a far country two children, a sister and a brother, named Tilsa and Tobene. Tilsa was twelve and Tobene was ten, and they had grown up, as it were, hand in hand. Their father died when Tobene was only a little piece of pink dimpled dough, and when their mother died too, a few years after, old Alison was told to pack up the things and journey with Tilsa and Tobene to the children's grandfather, the Liglid (or Lord Mayor) of Ule, whom they had never yet seen. Old Alison was their nurse, and she had been their father's nurse before them. Alison was old and wrinkled and bent, but there was not a warmer heart in all the world, and no tongue could say kinder words than hers, and no hands minister so lovingly to those who needed help. It was said that Alison had only to look at a sore place and it was healed again. If any one loved her more than Tilsa it was Tobene; and if any one loved her more than Tobene it was Tilsa; and old Alison's love for them was as strong. On the day appointed, the three travellers set forth in a chariot driven by postilions, and in the course of a week's journeying through strange countries came at last to Ule. At the southern gate they were met by the Liglid. They discovered him to be more than a mere person a Personage! with white hair, and little beady eyes, and a red nose, and a gold laced hat. The borders of the plain were blue mountains whose peaks reached the sky, and among these peaks the sun made his bed. At least, so said the good people of Ule. The rare strangers who came now and then to the city and heard this story, were apt to smile unbelievingly and ask laughingly how, after laying his head among the pillows on the western side of the plain, the sun was able to wake up.
