Welcome back, everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales. This is your host, John

Haggardorn. Today, a great story from O'Henry, from the days he spent in Texas.

This story, a chaparral prince, is the story of 11-year-old Lena, a German girl enslaved as a kitchen

made in a brutal Texas quarry hotel, whose only solace is her book of Grimm's fairy tales.

When even that is taken from her, she learns that fairy tales

sometimes come true in the most unexpected ways. I always knew he would come. Last night he came

with his armed knights and captured the ogre's castle. And now our story.

Nine o'clock at last, and the dredging tale of the day was ended.

Lena climbed to a room in the third half-story at the quarryman's hotel.

Since daylight, she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman, scrubbing the floors,

washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups,

making the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wooden water in that turbulent and

depressing hostelry. The din of the day's quarrying was over, the blasting and drilling,

the creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foreman, the backing and shifting of the

flat cars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone. Down in the hotel office, three or four of the

laborers were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers. Heavy odors of stewed

meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a depressing fog about the house.

Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair.

She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished.

Her back and limbs were sore and aching, but the ache in her heart made the biggest trouble.

The last straw had been added to the burden upon her small

shoulders. They had taken away Grimm. Always at night, however tired she might be, she had

...