The soldiers sent out by the king, had no great difficulty in finding Agnes’s father and mother, of whom they demanded if they knew anything of such a young princess as they described. The honest pair told them the truth in every point—that, having lost their own child and found another, they had taken her home, and treated her as their own; that she had indeed called herself a princess, but they had not believed her, because she did not look like one; that, even if they had, they did not know how they could have done differently, seeing they were poor people, who could not afford to keep any idle person about the place; that they had done their best to teach her good ways, and had not parted with her until her bad temper rendered it impossible to put up with her any longer; that, as to the king’s proclamation, they heard little of the world’s news on their lonely hill, and it had never reached them; that if it had, they did not know how either of them could have gone such a distance from home, and left their sheep or their cottage, one or the other, uncared for.
“You must learn, then, how both of you can go, and your sheep must take care of your cottage,” said the lawyer, and commanded the soldiers to bind them hand and foot.
Heedless of their entreaties to be spared such an indignity, the soldiers obeyed, bore them to a cart, and set out for the king’s palace, leaving the cottage door open, the fire burning, the pot of potatoes boiling upon it, the sheep scattered over the hill, and the dogs not knowing what to do.
Hardly were they gone, however, before the wise woman walked up, with Prince behind her, peeped into the cottage, locked the door, put the key in her pocket, and then walked away up the hill. In a few minutes there