"There! I've done it, and it didn't hurt a bit!"
"Tell me, dear brother; is the charm broken?" asked Shaggy.
"I do not know," was the reply. "It may be, or it may not be. I cannot tell."
"Then let Ruggedo strike one of them and look at your brother's face, while we all turn our backs. Ruggedo made your brother ugly, so I guess he can stand the horror of looking at him, if the charm isn't broken."
Agreeing to this, Ruggedo took the match and lighted it. He gave one look and then blew out the match.
"Ugly as ever!" he said with a shudder. "So it wasn't the kiss of a Mortal Maid, after all."
"Let me try," proposed the Rose Princess, in her sweet voice. "I am a Mortal Maid who was once a Fairy. Perhaps my kiss will break the charm."
Files did not wholly approve of this, but he was too generous to interfere. So the Rose Princess felt her way through the darkness to Shaggy's brother and kissed him.
Ruggedo struck another match, while they all turned away.
"No," announced the former King; "that didn't break the charm, either. It must be the kiss of a Fairy that is required--or else my memory has failed me altogether."
"Polly," said Betsy, pleadingly, "won't _you_ try?"
"Of course I will!" answered Polychrome, with a merry laugh. "I've never kissed a mortal man in all the thousands of years I have existed, but I'll do it to please our faithful Shaggy Man, whose unselfish affection for his ugly brother deserves to be rewarded."
Even as Polychrome was speaking she tripped lightly to the side of the Ugly One and quickly touched his cheek with her lips.
"Oh, thank you--thank you!" he fervently cried. "I've changed, this time, I know. I can feel it! I'm different. Shaggy--dear Shaggy--I am myself again!"
Files, who was near the opening, touched the spring that released the big rock and it suddenly swung backward and let in a flood of daylight.
Everyone stood motionless, staring hard at Shaggy's brother, who, no longer masked by the polka-dot handkerchief, met their gaze with a glad smile.
"Well," said Shaggy Man, breaking the silence at last and drawing a long, deep breath of satisfaction, "you are no longer the Ugly One, my dear brother; but, to be entirely frank with you, the face that belongs to you is no more handsome than it ought to be."